Page 125 of The Towering Sky
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 withAtlas.
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 hadkilledherself 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, behindthe smooth, impassive masks of their faces. Before she died, Avery had apparently confessed tokillingEris, 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,reallyknown 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. Thisworldhadn’t deserved her; and ultimately, the world was what killed her, with its cold narrow-mindedness. Atlas didn’t give two shits what they calledhim, 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 andnotlove 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 PiersonFuller, 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.
The entire mind-numbing journey, Atlas felt consumed with guilt. It was all his fault. His fault that they were caught in the elevator, his fault that their parents had tried to make him disappear, his fault that he hadn’t figured out a better way to get Avery a message. He thought of the cupcakes he’d sent her, in those frantic few seconds, and felt sick. Had Avery not realized what he meant by them—that he would find a way to come forher, somehow, no matter what it took?
Atlas remembered the way her eyes had burned on him in the darkness of the elevator, when she turned to him and whispered,Don’t make promises you can’t guarantee you’ll keep.
He hadn’t been able to keep his promises, after all. He had failed her.
What a colossal idiot he’d been. Mr. Good Intentions, screwing things up yet again. He felt like someone from a Shakespearean tragedy, the ill-fated lovers torn apart, ruining his life through his own misguided mistakes.
Atlas had never guessed that Avery would do something like this, that she would leave a gaping, Avery-shaped hole in the universe. But then, she was the one who’d been left in New York, dealing with the vicious hate-soaked fallout of that night.
The priest sprinkled the casket with holy water. It was a massive, carved wooden casket, custom-built; and though Atlas hadn’t carried it, he knew it would be curiously empty, because it contained no Avery. They never found what remained of her body. All that survived were a few long strands of her fine-spun golden hair, buried in the ashes.
It might be better this way. At least now Atlas wouldn’t have to see her charred and mangled. He was free to remember Avery the way he wanted to, vibrant and laughing and acutely alive.
Father Harold began the concluding rites, and Atlas couldn’t breathe. He hated this service, and yet he didn’t want it to end, because when it ended Avery would truly be gone.
Finally the organ broke into up a recessional, the voices of the boys’ choir lifted in theRequiem Aeternam. The bereaved family made their way down the center aisle: Pierson and Elizabeth Fuller, Grandmother Fuller, a few scattered aunts and uncles. Atlas stepped farther into the shadows.
When Leda walked past, wearing a long-sleeved black knitdress and tights, Atlas couldn’t help noticing that she didn’t seem... afflicted enough. Her steps were brisk, her eyes as dark and darting as ever; and before Atlas could retreat any farther, those eyes had turned in his direction and were boring directly into his.
He should have known that of all people, Leda would spot him instantly.
He froze in terror, certain that Leda would make a scene. Instead she pursed her lips and jerked her head toward one of the blocked-off side chapels, as if to say,That way,then walked on through the main doors. Atlas felt he had no choice but to obey her summons.
He headed toward the chapel, where a pair of carved stone angels gazed down on him with inscrutable calm. Their wings were leathery instead of feathered—like a bat’s wings, rather than a bird’s. Maybe they weren’t angels at all. It felt oddly fitting.
