“Volcanic glass from Kilimanjaro. The moment I saw it, I thought of you.” Atlas looped the necklace around her neck, reaching to pull the blond curtain of her hair from underneath. His hands were certain, no fumbling with the clasp, and Avery couldn’t help wondering how often he’d done this before, with other girls. Her heart sank a little.
She turned and looked at her reflection. Atlas was still standing behind her, his tall, broad silhouette outlining hers. Their eyes met in the mirror just as his hands released the clasp and fell to his sides. Avery wished he would grab her bare shoulders, whisper in her ear, kiss her at the base of her neck where his hands had just been.
She stepped quickly away, as if to get a closer look at the necklace.
It really was beautiful. Usually Avery looked all bright and sunshiny, but the dark stones captured something else in her, the shadows flitting across her face and along the curve of her collarbone. “Thank you,” she said, and turned back around. “When were you at Kilimanjaro?”
“For a few days in April. I worked my way from South Africa up to Tanzania. You would have loved it, Aves. The view’s even better than this.” He gestured toward the windows that lined two of her walls, where a bright orange sunset burned its way into the atmosphere.
“Why did you do it, though? Leave like that?” Avery whispered. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t press him on this, but she couldn’t help it anymore; she was sick of not talking about it, of pretending that nothing in their perfect family had ever gone wrong.
He looked away. “A lot of reasons,” he said. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Atlas—” She reached out and grabbed his arm, feeling suddenly desperate, as if he might float off unless she anchored him here. “Promise me you won’t do that again. You can’t just run off like that, okay? I was worried.”
Atlas looked at her. For a moment Avery thought there was something alert and watchful in his gaze, but it disappeared before she could be sure of it. “I promise,” he told her. “Sorry I made you worry. That was why I kept calling you—so that at least you would know everything was fine,” he added.
“I know.” But everything isn’t fine, she thought. Now Leda liked Atlas, and meanwhile, she, Avery, was caught in some impossible place, loving him more than ever. She never imagined she’d say this, but she almost missed the days when he was halfway across the world. At least then he’d been all hers.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to your closet. Looks like you have a lot to clean out,” he said, sensing the subtle change in her mood, as he always did.
“Wait,” Avery called out. Atlas paused in the doorway. “Um, thanks. For the necklace,” she said, not totally sure why she’d stopped him, just wanting to delay his leaving her. “It means a lot, that you were thinking of me.”
“I’m always thinking of you, Aves.” Atlas shut the door behind him.
Avery reached up to feel the cold glass of her necklace. The silence of her room felt suddenly deafening. She needed to get out.
“Ping to Eris,” she said aloud, but Eris didn’t pick up. Avery flickered her too, stepping out of the tangerine gown—which of course she had to keep now—and into white jeans and a navy top. She started to take off the necklace, but hesitated, and let it fall back onto her throat.
Why wasn’t Eris answering? Avery knew her family was renovating, but that didn’t explain how absent she’d been lately.
Maybe she should just go to the Nuage and surprise Eris. Actually, Avery realized on second thought, that was a fantastic idea. They could get dinner at the sashimi bar there, or go to the steam room; anything to keep her from being alone in this closet, thinking of Atlas.
Fifteen minutes later she was getting off on the 940th floor and walking into the massive lobby of the Nuage, the most expensive—and highest—luxury hotel in the Tower. Tourists and businesspeople sat on the plush couches, which were incredibly soft despite the carbon polymers woven into each thread, which changed the color of the couches to match the color of the sky. Through the Nuage’s full-length windows, Avery saw that the sun was just sinking below the horizon. The couches matched: the same deep cobalt blue, shot through with glowing tendrils of red.
She and Leda used to come here to take sunset vids, back in eighth grade when they went through their hopeful-models phase. They would wear white dresses and pose on the couches for the half hour that they changed color, then edit the vid to a thirty-second speed frame and post it to the feeds. It had been silly and embarrassing and a ton of fun.
Avery sighed and made her way to the front desk, a slab of white Tuscan granite suspended in midair by powerful microhovers. “Can I help you?” the guy behind the desk asked. He wore a crisp white shirt and trousers, and his name tag read Pierre, which meant that he was probably a lower-floor kid named Peter.
“I’m looking for Eris Dodd-Radson,” Avery said. “She and her family have been staying here for a week or so.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t give out guests’ room numbers, for privacy reasons.”
“Of course.” Avery flashed him her most dazzling smile, the one she held in reserve for occasions like this, and saw him waver. “I understand. I was just wondering if you could call up to their room for me, pass along a message? She’s my best friend, and I haven’t heard from her in a while. I’m getting worried.”
Pierre bit his lip, then began waving in the air in front of him, studying a holoscreen visible only to him. “I don’t see an Eris Dodd-Radson in our system,” he said. “Are you sure she’s staying here?”
“She’s with her parents, Caroline Dodd and Everett Radson.”
“I see an Everett Radson—”
“That’s it!” Avery interrupted. “Can you call up?”
Pierre scowled, looking down his nose at her. “Mr. Radson is registered alone. You must be mistaken about your friend. Perhaps she’s at a different hotel?”
Avery paused. “Okay. Thanks,” she said, hiding her confusion, and stepped away.
She sank onto one of the couches, whose few remaining red-orange threads were rapidly turning a dusky blue, and ordered a lemonade from the touch screen in front of her. She didn’t want to go home just yet. She needed a minute to think. The drink arrived almost instantly, and Avery took a long sip, wondering why Eris would have lied about renovating their apartment, and why her dad would be staying here at the Nuage alone.
Mr. Radson had been divorced twice before. Was he doing it again, leaving Eris’s mom? And if so, where was Eris?
“Drinking alone?” Cord settled onto the couch opposite her and leaned back into the cushions.
“It’s lemonade,” Avery said wearily.
“How disappointing.” He smiled, showing his perfect white teeth. “You used to be more fun, you know, Fuller.”
“And you used to actually be tolerable,” Avery answered, though they both knew she didn’t mean it. She’d known Cord too long not to forgive him almost anything. “Are you looking for Eris too?” she went on, wondering if he had any answers for her.
“You didn’t know? Eris and I aren’t … anymore.”
“Oh, I—she didn’t tell me.” Avery’s worry flared up stronger than before; why hadn’t Eris called her? She always came to Avery after her breakups, and then they commiserated and ate ice cream and plotted Eris’s next conquest. Something was really wrong.
“What happened?” she asked Cord. She wasn’t really surprised they’d broken up—neither of them had seemed particularly invested in it—but she was still curious what he would say. Cord just shrugged, not answering. “Is there someone else?” Avery prodded, watching him. She knew all his tells.
“No, we just got bored,” he said. He was a good liar; Avery had to give him that, at least. She wondered who the new girl was.
“I’m looking for Brice,” Cord went on. “Have you seen him?”
“Brice is in town?” Avery didn’t particularly like Cord’s older brother. She blamed him for the asshole attitude Cord tried to put on these days.