The Towering Sky

Still, Atlas had to hand it to the Fullers. They sure could throw a funeral, with just as much fanfare and expense as they always threw a party.

It might as well have been opening night at the opera. White roses and carnations cascaded through the church, making a beautiful white carpet down the aisle, all the way to the altar. Hundreds of candles floated overhead. An angelic-looking boys’ choir sang behind the enormous carved organ.

None of it felt like Avery. She had been beautiful, Atlas thought fervently, but she wasn’t fragile or delicate. She was strong.

The pews were crowded with mourners in couture black dresses or tailored suits. They dripped with diamonds, dabbed at their eyes with monogrammed silk handkerchiefs. New York society had turned out in full force: Atlas saw the entire staff of Fuller Investments, and wasn’t that the governor of New York, with a bodyguard flanking him on either side? The fashion world was here too, a whole block of pews taken up by designers and boutique owners and bloggers, all the people who’d been such fanatic followers of Avery’s style. Which really was a laugh, given that her outfit choices were usually halfhearted and last minute.

Avery’s friends from school were in a pew near the front, their eyes wide with grief. Next to them, Atlas was surprised to see Max von Strauss. He felt a grudging stab of respect that Max had come here today, even though the last time Max had seen Avery, she was intertwined with Atlas.

Yes, they were all here, and all of them were whispering in not-so-quiet tones about Avery’s shocking demise.

The ironic part was, her death had accomplished exactly what Atlas assumed Avery had meant it to—it changed the narrative. She was no longer the disgusting girl who fell in love with the wrong boy, but a tragic victim of impossible love. That nasty article had been stripped from the i-Net, because after Avery had killed herself over it, to leave it up would have been in shockingly poor taste.

Atlas clenched his hands into fists at his sides. That was New York, he thought, fickle until the end. It just proved that he’d been right: If their parents had stood by them, instead of tearing them apart and splitting their family asunder, people would have eventually accepted their relationship and moved on.

At the front of the church, ensconced in a place of honor near his parents, Atlas saw Eris’s divorced parents, Caroline Dodd and Everett Radson. He wondered what they were thinking, behind the smooth, impassive masks of their faces. Before she died, Avery had apparently confessed to killing Eris, claiming that she accidentally pushed Eris off the roof. It was an admission that reopened old wounds and resurfaced old gossip. Especially when Avery then killed herself, setting fire to the Fullers’ apartment while she was still in it.

Atlas didn’t want to believe it of Avery, but he wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. He couldn’t help remembering that Avery had always been cagey around the subject of Eris’s death. Could it be true?

And what about the other piece of gossip, that Avery had confessed to another death, that of a lower-floor girl? It didn’t make sense. Atlas kept thinking that there was more to the story, that maybe Avery had been covering for someone—

No, he reminded himself. He’d come here to grieve, not to investigate.

Father Harold stepped up to the pulpit and began to deliver the opening prayer. The congregation bowed their heads.

“Eternal rest give to your servants, O Lord, and let your perpetual light shine upon us . . .” the priest intoned, but Atlas had stopped listening. He was looking out at the vast sea of people and wondering how many of them had known Avery, really known her. Not the delicate painted-on version of herself that she showed the world, but the vibrant, flesh-and-blood girl beneath.

He let the words of the service wash over him, overwhelmed by a million memories of Avery. All the summers they’d spent at the beach in Maine: running through the surf, sneaking chocolate bars from the kitchen and trying to eat them quickly, before they melted. The way the sun glinted in her hair, highlighting all the different shades of it. Her laugh, unexpectedly full-bodied and throaty. Her ferocity, her warmth, her indomitable spirit. The way it had felt to kiss her.

Atlas had never deserved her. This world hadn’t deserved her; and ultimately, the world was what killed her, with its cold narrow-mindedness. Atlas didn’t give two shits what they called him, but to tell Avery that she was vile and worthless, just because of who she loved—well, that wasn’t a world Atlas wanted any part of, either.

He refused to apologize for loving Avery. Honestly, he dared anyone with half a heart to meet her and not love her. Loving Avery was the greatest privilege the world had given him, and he couldn’t regret a single moment of it.

He prayed that Avery hadn’t regretted it, in the end.

“Our grief is like the shaking of the earth, like fires undying . . .” Father Harold was saying, and Atlas winced at the words of the prayer. He didn’t want to imagine Avery up there on the thousandth floor, alone, surrounded by a wall of flames.

He’d been in Laos when he heard, mere hours after it happened. That was how quickly this story had traveled: Because the death of the daughter of New York City’s mayor, of Pierson Fuller, the man who’d invented vertical living on a global scale, was international freaking news. Especially when that daughter burned down her family’s famous penthouse while she was still inside it.

The moment Atlas found out, he’d ditched his dad’s security team and boarded a flight back here, to return in time for the funeral.