Without stopping to think, she raised her arm and slapped him. The noise cracked through the air like a whip.
“I’m sorry,” Cord finally said, into the painful stillness. “I obviously misread the situation.”
Rylin watched the red mark of her hand blossoming on his face. She’d gone too far. He wouldn’t pay her for tonight, and all that hard work would have been for nothing. “I—um, I should get going.”
She was halfway out the front door when she heard footsteps in the entryway. “Hey, Myers,” Cord called out from behind her. “Catch.”
She turned and caught the bag of Gummy Buddies in midair.
“Thanks,” she said, confused, but the door was already closing behind him.
Rylin leaned against the door of Cord’s apartment and closed her eyes, trying to gather the frayed and tangled strands of her thoughts. Her mouth felt bruised, almost seared. She could still feel where Cord had held her tight around the waist.
With an angry sigh, she hurried down the three brick stairs that led to his entrance and started down the carbon-paved streets.
The entire two and a half miles home, Rylin pulled the heads off the Gummy Buddies one by one, letting their small screams fill the empty elevator car.
WATT
“WATT!” A TINY pink form barreled down the hallway as he walked inside the next day.
“Hey, Zahra.” Watt laughed, scooping his five-year-old sister into his arms. Her dark curls had something sticky in them, and a costume tiara was perched precariously atop her head. Watt noticed that her pajama pants, which used to drag along the ground, now barely hit mid-calf. He made a mental note to buy her a new set the next time he was paid. Zahra giggled, then wriggled impatiently out of his arms to run back into the living room, where her twin brother, Amir, was building something out of plastifoam blocks.
“Watzahn, is that you?” Watt’s mom called from the kitchen.
“Yeah, Mom?” It was never a good sign when she used his full name.
You might want to change first, Nadia suggested, but Watt was already at the doorway. Shirin hovered over the cook surface, pouring water into an instant noodle dinner. Watt remembered back before the twins were born, when she used to cook elaborate Persian meals from scratch: rich lamb stews and golden flatbreads and rice sprinkled with sumac. Then she’d unexpectedly gotten pregnant and stopped cooking altogether, claiming the smell of spices made her nauseous. But even after the twins were born, the home-cooked Persian meals never came back. There wasn’t enough time anymore.
Shirin pushed the cook-dial to high heat and turned to Watt. “You were at Derrick’s all day?” she asked, with a glance at his rumpled clothes from last night. Watt reddened. Nadia said nothing, but he could practically feel her thinking I told you so.
“Yeah. I stayed at Derrick’s last night,” Watt said to his mom, but she just stared at him blankly. “Today was our last day of summer, and we wanted to try finishing this game …” He trailed off.
It was true, though. He’d barely spent any time at Squid Ink Martini Girl’s last night—Nadia was right, she didn’t have much to say, and he felt somehow foolish for having left the bar with her. He’d ducked out almost immediately to head for Derrick’s. He’d spent the night there, and this morning they’d eaten enormous sandwiches from the bagel shop and watched soccer on the tiny screen in Derrick’s living room. It wasn’t that Watt had been avoiding home, exactly. But Derrick didn’t have two younger siblings who needed constant attention. His parents basically let him do what he wanted, as long as he kept up his grades.
“I could have used your help today,” Shirin went on, sounding more defeated than angry. “The twins had a checkup this afternoon. I had to get Tasha to fill in for me at the center so that I could take them, since I couldn’t find you. I’ll have to work double shifts the rest of the week just to make up the time.”
Watt felt like utter crap. “You could have pinged me,” he said lamely, pretty sure he’d ignored a call at some point last night.
“You were too busy playing that holo game,” his mom snapped, then let out a sigh. “It’s fine. Just get your brother and sister.” She set bowls and spoons on the table as the door opened again, eliciting more excited squeals from Zahra. Moments later Watt’s dad was in the kitchen, a twin on each hip. He usually had to work much later than this—having him home for dinner was practically a special occasion.
“Dinner’s ready, Rashid.” Watt’s mom greeted him with a tired kiss on the cheek.
They all crammed around the small table. Watt shoved the instant noodles and canned vegetables into his mouth without tasting them, not that they had much taste to begin with. He was angry with his mom for making him feel guilty. What was wrong with him occasionally blowing off steam at a midTower bar? Or spending the last day of summer hanging out with his friend?
The moment Zahra yawned, her hands making small fists over her head, Watt stood up as if on cue. “The bedtime monorail is about to leave! All aboard!” he announced, in a too-deep voice.
“Choo choo!” Zahra and Amir attempted a train noise and trotted alongside Watt. The actual monorail was silent, of course, but the twins watched tons of animated train holos and loved making that sound. Watt’s dad smiled, watching them. Shirin pursed her lips and said nothing.
Watt led the twins down a winding imaginary train track to the end of the hall. Their room was tiny, but still bigger than his: this used to be Watt’s room, actually, before they were born and he moved into the office nook. The dim light barely illuminated the bunk beds built into the wall. Watt had repeatedly tried to route more electricity to the twins, but it never seemed to be enough. He had a sinking suspicion that it was his fault, because of all the power-hungry hardware he’d set up in his room.
He helped the twins laser-clean their teeth and tucked them into bed. They didn’t have a room comp down here, of course, but Nadia did the best vitals check she could, watching the twins’ breathing and eye movement. When she’d confirmed they were asleep, Watt shut the door quietly and moved down the hallway to his makeshift bedroom.
He sank gratefully into his ergonomic swivel chair—which he’d lifted from an office space that was about to be foreclosed—and clicked on the high-def screen at his desk, which took up most of the room. His bed was shoved far to the corner, his clothes tucked on hoverbeams up near the ceiling. Nadia didn’t need the screen, of course, since she could project anything directly onto his contacts. But Watt still liked surfing the i-Net this way whenever possible. Even he thought it was weird sometimes, replacing your entire field of vision with the digital overlay.
He flipped through all the messages from the girls he’d met at Pulse last night, then closed out without answering any of them. Instead he logged into H@cker Haus, his favorite dark-web site for postings of “data services” jobs.
Watt’s family always needed money. His parents had moved from Isfahad to New York the year before he was born, when the Tower was new and the whole world was excited about it: before Shanghai and Hong Kong and S?o Paulo all got their own thousand story megatowers. Watt knew his parents had immigrated for his sake, hoping he would have a chance at a better future.