The Towering Sky. Катарина Макги
parents sent her to rehab, terrified that Leda had meant to kill herself. Maybe, on some subconscious level, she had. She would only be finishing what Mariel started.
And then, to Leda’s surprise, she learned that Mariel was dead too.
In the aftermath of that terrifying confrontation in Dubai, Leda had set an i-Net alert to flag any mentions of Mariel’s name. She’d never expected it to catch an obituary. But one day in rehab, she found the obit waiting in her inbox: Mariel Arellano Valconsuelo, age 17, has gone to the Lord. She is survived by her parents, Eduardo and Marina Valconsuelo, and her brother Marcos. . . .
Has gone to the Lord. That was even more vague than the usual passed away or died suddenly. Leda had no idea what had happened to Mariel, whether she’d been in an accident or suffered a sudden illness. Perhaps she too had turned to drugs—out of grief at losing Eris, or regret for what she’d done to Leda in Dubai.
At the news of Mariel’s death, a chilling new fear began to seep into Leda. It felt oddly like some kind of omen, like a terrible portent of things to come.
“I need to get better,” she announced to her doctor that afternoon.
Dr. Reasoner smiled. “Of course, Leda. We all want that for you.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Leda insisted, almost frantic. “I’m caught in this vicious cycle of hurt, and I want to break away from it, but I don’t know how!”
“Life is hard, and drugs are easy. They insulate you from real life, protect you from feeling anything too deeply,” Dr. Reasoner said softly. Leda caught her breath, wishing she could explain that her problem was more than just drugs. It was the gaping vortex of darkness within her that seemed to pull her, and everyone around her, inexorably downward.
“Leda,” the doctor went on, “you need to break the emotional patterns that cause your addiction, and start over. Which is why I’ve recommended that your parents send you to boarding school when you’ve finished your treatment here. You need a fresh start.”
“I can’t go to boarding school!” Leda couldn’t stand the thought of being away from her friends—or her family, as broken and fragile as it was.
“Then the only way you can escape this cycle is with a complete and total overhaul.”
Dr. Reasoner explained that Leda would have to amputate the poisoned parts of her life, like a surgeon with a scalpel, and move forward with whatever remained. She needed to cut out anything that might trigger her problematic behavior, and rebuild.
“What about my boyfriend?” Leda had whispered, and Dr. Reasoner sighed. She had actually met Watt earlier that year, when he came to Leda’s rehab check-in.
“I think that Watt is the worst trigger of them all.”
Even amid the blind haze of her pain, Leda realized that the doctor was right. Watt knew her—really knew her, beneath every last scrap of deceit, all her insecurities and fears, all the terrible things she had done. Watt was too tangled up in who she had been, and Leda needed to focus on who she was becoming.
So when she got back from rehab, she broke up with Watt for good.
Leda’s thoughts were interrupted by a bright-red notification flashing in the corner of her vision. “Look! It’s time for our massages!” Ilara exclaimed, glancing hopefully at her daughter.
Leda tried to muster up a smile, though she didn’t really care about massages anymore. Massages were something that had belonged to the old Leda.
She waded through the water after her mom, past the mud mask station and carved ice bar to the cordoned-off area reserved for private spa treatments. They stepped through an invisible sound barrier, and the laughter and voices of the Blue Lagoon cut off sharply, replaced by harp music that was piped in through speakers.
Two flotation mats were arranged in the sheltered space, each anchored to the bottom of the pool with an ivory ribbon. Leda froze with her hands on her mat. Suddenly, all she could see was the cream-colored ribbon of Eris’s scarf, fluttering against her red-gold hair as she tumbled into the darkness. The scarf that Leda had so drastically misinterpreted, because it was a gift from Leda’s dad—
“Leda? Is everything okay?” her mom asked, her brow furrowed in concern.
“Of course,” Leda said stiffly, and she hauled herself onto her massage mat. It began heating up, its sensors determining where she was sore and customizing her treatment.
Leda tried to force her eyes shut and relax. Everything would be fine, now that all the darkness of last year was behind her. She wouldn’t let the mistakes of her past weigh her down.
She let her hands trail in the artificially blue waters of the lagoon, trying to empty her mind, but her fingers kept splaying and then closing anxiously into a fist.
I’ll be fine, she repeated to herself. As long as she kept herself remote, cut away from anything that might trigger her old addictions, she would be safe from the world.
And the world would be safe from her.
CALLIOPE BROWN LEANED her palms on the cast-iron railing, looking down at the street seventy stories below.
“Oh, Nadav!” her mom, Elise, exclaimed behind her. “You were right. This is absolutely perfect for the wedding reception.”
They were standing on the outdoor terrace of the Museum of Natural History: a real exposed terrace, its doors thrown open to the syrupy golden air of September. The sky gleamed with the polished brilliance of enamel. This was one of the very last floors where you could actually step outside. Any higher and the terraces were no longer real terraces, just rooms with a nice view, enclosed in polyethylene glass.
Calliope’s soon-to-be stepsister, Nadav’s daughter, Livya, gave a little ooh of approval from where she stood near the doors. Calliope didn’t bother turning around. She was getting pretty tired of Livya, though she did her utmost to hide the feeling.
She and Livya were never going to be friends. Livya was an insufferable rule follower, the type of girl who still sent embossed thank-you notes and gave a shrill fake laugh whenever one of their teachers told a lame joke. Worse, there was something unavoidably sly and beady-eyed about her. Calliope had the sense that if you whispered secrets behind a closed door, Livya would be the one with her ear pressed hungrily to the keyhole.
She heard Nadav say something indistinguishable behind her, probably another quiet I love you to Elise. Poor Nadav. He really had no idea what he’d gotten into when he proposed to Calliope’s mom at the Fullers’ Dubai launch party. He couldn’t know that Elise was a professional at getting engaged, that his was the fourteenth proposal she’d received in the past few years.
When Calliope was a child, living in London, her mother had worked as a personal assistant to a cold, wealthy woman named Mrs. Houghton, who claimed to be descended from the aristocracy. Whether or not that was even true—which Calliope doubted—it certainly didn’t give Mrs. Houghton the right to abuse Calliope’s mom the way she did. Eventually the situation reached a breaking point, and Calliope and Elise ran away from London. Calliope was only eleven.
They had embarked upon a life of glamorous nomadism: jetting around the world, using their wits and beauty to, as Elise liked to phrase it, relieve wealthy people of their excess wealth. One of their many strategies for doing so was a proposal. Elise would trap someone into loving her, get engaged, then take the ring and run before the wedding. But it wasn’t just fake engagements; over the years, Elise and her daughter had fabricated all types of stories, from long-lost relatives to investment scams, tales of tears and passion—whatever it took to make people dip into their bitbanc accounts. The moment they had separated the mark from his or her money, Calliope and Elise would disappear.
It