The Towering Sky

She sighed and looked again at the essay prompt. What matters most to you, and why?

Suddenly Rylin knew her answer. Stories, she keyed into the answer box.

Stories are the only real magic that exists. A story can breach the impossible distance between individuals, take us out of our own life and into someone else’s, if only for a moment. Our hunger for story is what makes us human.

Maybe it was her conversation with Hiral, or the fact that she still felt betrayed by what Cord had done. Maybe it was the strangeness of Avery Fuller, the princess of New York, doing something so irrevocably self-destructive. But even though she knew it was an unsophisticated and potentially embarrassing opinion—that no one serious ever admitted to this, especially not for university programs—Rylin kept typing.

In particular, we long for stories that make us happy.

Stories make sense in a way that the real world fails to. Because stories are the cleaned-up version of real life, a distilled version of human behavior that is more comic and more tragic and more perfect than real life. In a well-made holo, there are no lost narrative threads or stray shots. If the camera zooms in on a detail, that means you should pay attention to it, because that detail has some crucial meaning that will become apparent. Real life isn’t like that.

In real life the clues don’t add up to anything. Roads lead to dead ends. Lovers don’t make epic romantic gestures. People say ugly things, and leave without a good-bye, and suffer in senseless ways. Story threads are dropped with no resolution.

Sometimes what we need is a story—a well-made, uplifting story—to help the world make sense again.

Rylin’s eyes stung, her fingers flying over the surface of her tablet. She remembered something Cord had said about there not being endings in life and realized that he was right. The only endings were the ones that people made for themselves.

There aren’t any happy endings in real life, because there aren’t any endings in life, only moments of change, she wrote, repeating his words. There’s always another adventure, another challenge, another opportunity to find happiness or chase it away.

I want to study holography because my dream is to create stories. I hope that my holos someday inspire people to leave the world better than they found it. To believe in true love. To be brave enough to fight for happiness.

Rylin held her thumb over her tablet to submit the essay and smiled through her unexpected tears.

Her story was only beginning, and she had every intention of writing it herself.

Later that night, when she heard a knock on the front door, Rylin gave a dramatic sigh. “Seriously, Chrissa?” she snapped, going to open the door. “You need to bring your ID ring to volleyball; it’s starting to really—”

“Hey,” Cord said softly.

Rylin was too stunned to do anything except blink at him. Her pulse was suddenly running haywire, plucking a vibrant, erratic rhythm against the surface of her skin. Cord Anderton was at her apartment, down on the 32nd floor.

“Before you slam the door in my face, please hear me out,” he said quickly. “I thought a lot about what you said the other night. And you were right. I shouldn’t have helped Hiral move away. I never meant to manipulate you or hurt you or tell you what to do. Actually,” Cord added, with a tentative smile, “I would really appreciate it if you would tell me what to do, because I can make a real mess of things sometimes.”

“I did tell you what to do. You just didn’t listen,” Rylin pointed out.

Cord shifted uncomfortably. “I really am sorry.”

“I’m sorry too. We seem to have a real knack for hurting each other.”

“That’s because the better you know someone, the easier it is to hurt them,” Cord replied. “See? I actually learned something in psychology class.”

Rylin wasn’t so sure. Did she really know Cord? Sometimes it felt as if she did, as if he’d lowered his guard to reveal his real self, beneath the money and sarcasm. But then when she was alone again, Rylin always doubted that it had happened.

Cord’s expression grew more serious. “I felt terrible the other night, when you said that you thought I was ashamed of you.” He moved quickly over the word, as if he couldn’t even bear to say it. “I just sometimes get carried away and want to do things, buy you dresses or whatever, because I can—”

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should,” Rylin cut in.

Cord let out a breath. “Right. I get it.”

Rylin knew it had taken a lot of bravery for Cord to swallow his pride and say he was sorry. “Thanks for coming down here to apologize.”

“I’m not just here to ask for your forgiveness. I’m here to ask you for one more shot, because I know that what we have is worth fighting for.”

Rylin knew this was the moment where she was supposed to run forward into his arms, but some instinct of self-preservation held her back. Cord had hurt her one too many times. “I don’t know.”

Cord took a step closer and ran his hand down her arm. She shivered.

“You’re telling me you don’t feel the same way?”

“Cord,” she said helplessly, “we still live almost a thousand floors apart. If you stretched that horizontally, it would literally cross state lines.”

“Long-distance dating,” he joked, and Rylin cracked a smile at that. “I’m game to try, if you are. Or we could start as pen pals first, if you don’t want to move too fast.”