The Towering Sky

“I did know her, actually,” Avery said, and then prepared herself to deliver the punch line, the lethal blow: “She knew the truth about me and Atlas, you see.”

Silence. The shock of her words seemed to reverberate in the air.

“Don’t you dare say that again,” her father threatened, and now his voice was frighteningly low. “Don’t you even think about saying that, or anything like it. Do you realize how hard it was for me just to get you back home, after that ridiculous confession? I had to pull every string I had and then some, not to mention pay an obscene amount of money for temporary bail.”

“God forbid you have to spend money on me,” Avery said bitterly. “But then, everything has a price tag to you, doesn’t it, Dad? Even my happiness?”

Her mom gasped aloud, but Avery wasn’t looking at her. She had eyes only for her father.

He ran a hand wearily over his features. “What the hell were you thinking, Avery?”

“When I killed her, or when I told the police?”

“Stop saying that you killed her!”

“What does it matter to you anyway?” she shouted. “Nothing is sacred to you but your own ambition! You wouldn’t care if I actually had killed her, you only care that I confessed to it!” Her hands had balled into fists at her sides, her nails inscribing themselves into her skin.

“So you’re admitting that you didn’t do it.” Her father reached roughly for Avery’s arm. “I want to protect you, Avery, but I can’t help if you won’t talk to us. Who are you covering for? Was it Atlas?”

“Of course it wasn’t Atlas!” This was taking too long, she thought frantically. She needed them to leave before Leda found out what she had done, or before the sun rose too high.

Her mother was still wringing her hands, her voice breaking. “Then why are you—”

“I hate you!” Avery screamed as wildly and cruelly as she could, wanting to lash out, to hurt them. “I hate you for what you said to Atlas! He asked for your support, for your love, and what did you do in return? You made him disappear!” She began to cry—it wasn’t that hard, really, after everything she’d been through. “I just want you both to leave me alone!”

Her father was looking at her as if she was insane, or a stranger. “We’ll discuss this later,” he said at last, already stepping back through the front door. It was clear he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. “There’s no reasoning with you when you’re like this.”

Elizabeth paused at the doorway and turned back, her heartbreak written on her face. The sight of it almost changed Avery’s mind.

“I’m locking you in this apartment,” Pierson declared, tapping at the touch screen and scanning his iris to confirm his identity. “No more sneaking out to police stations or to see your friends or anywhere else.”

“Where would I go, now that you’ve taken Atlas from me and all of New York despises me?”

“They don’t despise you, Avery. They’re disgusted by you. As am I.”

Her father’s features hardened, and Avery’s resolve hardened too. So this is how it will be, she thought. This is our last good-bye.

“You stay here and think about what you’ve done,” her father snapped. Her mom was still crying, softly.

And then the elevator doors clicked shut behind them, leaving Avery alone on the thousandth floor.

She hurried breathlessly to her room and grabbed the bag she’d shoved under her bed late last night. Inside were dozens of fat red cylinders—spark-sticks, the tiny, single-use lighters that burst into flame when you pulled off their neoprene tab. These were the high-grade kind, producing an extra hot superflame, intended for campers stuck in the wild. In the Tower it was illegal even to possess something like this, especially up here where the oxygen circulated so freely, where everything was already a little too flammable.

Avery pulled the neoprene tab from the first one, and a flame leapt instantly out one side.

It wavered and flickered, seeming to contain a multitude of colors at once, colors she didn’t normally see in the Tower—not just red, but rich oranges and golds and even a bright liquid blue that seemed to crackle and spark over the whole thing like summer lightning. It was beautiful.

She tossed the spark-stick onto her bed, covered in its white lace pillows and coverlet, and watched dispassionately as it went up in flames.

From there Avery moved briskly around the apartment, tossing a live spark-stick on every surface. She noted with grim satisfaction that none of the smoke alarms went off. The tongues of flame fed hungrily on one another, growing higher and higher, casting a wild gleam on the bones of her face. Her eyes were narrowed, her cheekbones more sharply prominent than usual. She’d dressed for the occasion in jeans and a slim white sweater, diamond studs at her ears, looking for all the world like an avenging angel, heralding ash and brimstone and destruction. A pale smile curled on her lips as she watched her parents’ apartment burn to oblivion. The symbol of their wealth and status and sickening ambition, the most expensive thing they’d ever bought, except perhaps for Avery herself. Soon both would be gone.

Her steps faltered at Atlas’s room. This was sacred ground, and she could still feel his presence here, no matter how hard her parents had tried to erase him from it. She let herself sit for a moment on the bed, running her hands over the pillows, imagining that they still smelled like him—