Page 110 of The Towering Sky
Calliope lifted her eyes to the mirrored wall of the bitbanc on the corner and was startled at the version of herself she saw reflected there. Because she knew this girl. This was LeavingCalliope, the girl who skipped eagerly from one place to another, standing next to her mom in a sleek coat and boots, an assortment of luggage wheeling along in her wake.
She and Elise were clutching their usual hazelnut lattes, their bags jostling with their favorite snail-cream moisturizers and the massage pillows that helped them fall asleep on train rides. Each detail was part of the ritual, familiar from all the other times they’d left town at the end of a con; yet it felt all wrong. This time they weren’t skipping away, bowled over with laughter, flush with the cheap thrill of success.
They were subdued. A miasma of regret hung over them; and Calliope imagined that their steps resounded louder than usual, like in an echo chamber, because each step took them farther and farther away from New York. From the only people who actually cared about them.
Not even the bustle of Grand Central could cheer her up. Calliope kept her eyes on the floor, willing herself into invisibility. It wasn’t all that hard, really—after all, it was the other side of the coin from being stared at, and Calliope was an expert at that. The only difference was that this time she had to repel attention instead of attract it. She retreated into herself, imagining an invisible force field that she wore like a cloak.
She wondered how long it would take everyone to forget her.
The kids at school would go first, she thought. After all, what did they know about her, or she about them? They would whisper about her for a while—Whatever happened to that British girl, the one with the weird name?She hoped there would at least be some gossipy rumors. That she’d run away to Hawaii to work on a coffee plantation, or that she was eloping with an older man and her parents didn’t approve—hell, she’d even take rumors about drugs and rehab, as long as she wasn’t forgotten.
But Calliope wasn’t a fool; she knew they would rememberher for a week at most.
It would take longer for Nadav and Livya and Brice.Don’t think about Brice, she scolded herself. There was no use dwelling on it; it would only hurt her more. She hated to imagine herself quietly vanishing from his memory, like a holo fading out of focus.
These past few weeks, she had let herself hope that they might have some kind of future. She cared about Brice, with his irreverent humor and sense of adventure, his bouts of surprising sincerity. He knew Calliope better than anyone in the world, except for her mom. Which just went to show that no one in her life had really known her at all.
She had shown Brice her real self, underneath all the false layers and lies that she wore so well.
And now that she wouldn’t see him again, Calliope felt alone in a way she hadn’t felt since before New York: as if she would never connect with another person again, for the rest of her life.
“I wasn’t planning on stopping over in Lisbon, unless you want to,” Elise said, breaking the silence. Her eyes were still red-rimmed from crying, and she pulled a scarf closer around her neck, but at least her voice was steady.
Calliope knew her next line. She was supposed to suggest Biarritz or Marrakech, make a joke about how her tan was fading, and couldn’t they go someplace warm? Instead she shrugged and pulled the force field closer around herself.
Elise smiled bravely and tried again. “Beginning or end?” she asked, nodding toward a young couple holding hands. They looked very East Coast preppy, with their crisp sweaters and matching monogrammed luggage.
Calliope knew what her mom was doing, feeding her cues, reminding her of the dialogue they used to fling back and forth at each other. Beginning or End was a game they would play,guessing whether people were at the beginning or end of their respective journeys—whether they were starting out on a vacation or returning home. Calliope and Elise used to love it because it made them feel superior; because of course they were always at the start of a journey, every single time.
Calliope didn’t feel very superior right now, though. “I don’t know,” she said vaguely, and her mom fell silent.
A train pulled up to the platform, its sleek chrome curves stamped with the purple Rail Iberia logo. Calliope stepped back as the new arrivals flooded out. Some were flushed with excitement, others dull-eyed with weariness; but all of themhere, in New York, about to start whatever adventure this city might hold for them.
The moment the last passenger had de-boarded, the train’s doors closed, and the seats began to swivel a perfect 180-degree arc to face the other way. A flurry of lemon-yellow cleaning bots instantly scoured the train car from top to bottom, changing out the seat covers and sterilizing everything with ultraviolet light. Calliope remembered the first time she’d seen a train self-cleaning, when she was eleven and she and her mom ran away from London. The pulses of neon purple through the windows had looked to her like a fairy rave.
A crowd had started to gather around them, pushing hungrily toward the waiting train; because once its doors opened it would take off in a matter of minutes.
“I’m sorry. This is all my fault,” Elise said and sighed.
Calliope felt the bitter taste of guilt in her mouth. “No, it’s my fault. If it wasn’t for me, we would still be living our normal lives.”
“Whatnormal lives?” Elise kept untwisting and then re-twisting her scarf from around her neck. Calliope saw that her hand—still wearing her wedding ring—was shaking. “Nothingabout our lives is normal, and it’s allmydoing. I built this life for us, a life that consists of nothing but running away! And just when we were starting to live somewhere, when you finally had friends, and a boyfriend, we have to leave again.”
He wasn’t my boyfriend, Calliope wanted to protest, but the point didn’t seem worth arguing. Instead she wrapped an arm around her mom and pulled her close. “I’m not a child. I’ve known what I was doing for a while now. You can’t blame yourself,” she said reassuringly.
Elise pulled away. “Don’t you see? It’s because of me that you aren’t a child! I forced you to grow up too soon—to be an adult before you were ready!”
Calliope paused at the truthfulness of her mom’s words. Maybe she had grown up too soon. Maybe that was why she sucked at being a teenager, because she’d long ago adapted to the adult rules for conduct. She knew how to be sincere and how to be sneaky, how to dress for parties in prisons or palaces, how to evade the truth and get things for free.
She knew everything except how to be herself.
Behind Elise, the doors to the Hyperloop cars shot open, and the crowd shoved forward to pour themselves inside.
“You should stay,” Elise whispered, so softly that Calliope thought at first she hadn’t heard her.
“What?”
“Nadav isn’t angry with you. He’s angry withme. If you stayed, he wouldn’t blow your cover—wouldn’t tell everyone the truth about us.” Elise’s eyelashes trembled. They looked impossibly thick and fringed, but then, they weren’t real—like so much of her. “You could stay in New York. You couldn’t go back to Nadav’s apartment, of course, but you’ll figure something out. And now that you wouldn’t be living with him, you could be yourself, not so buttoned-up and prissy....”
