Katharine McGee - The Thousandth Floor

“Fine,” Leda said woodenly, interrupting her mom. “The party was great. Thank you for letting me go. I promise I won’t drink at the next one.”

They stared at each other, neither of them sure what to say next. There was affection on both their faces, but wariness too. They weren’t sure how to act around each other anymore.

Finally Ilara sighed and turned away. “I’m glad you had fun. See you in the morning.” The door clicked shut behind her.

Leda yanked off her dress and shimmied into her monogrammed pajamas. She sent a quick flicker to Avery, apologizing for her earlier outburst and saying that she’d left the party early. Then she crawled into bed, her mind spinning.

She wondered if Avery and Atlas were still at the party. Was it weird of her, to have left early? Was Avery upset with her about earlier? Why couldn’t Avery just accept that some things in Leda’s life were private? And now, as if she didn’t have enough to deal with, her stupid mom had started monitoring her every move on the feeds. Leda hadn’t even realized Ilara knew how to look that stuff up.

At the thought of the feeds, she decided to pull up Atlas’s, though she already knew what she would find. Sure enough, it was as vague as it had always been. While most of the guys she knew lived their entire lives on the feeds, Atlas’s profile had nothing but an old picture of him at his grandparents’ beach house and a few favorite quotes. He was so maddeningly opaque.

If only Leda could see past the public profile, to his messages and hidden check-ins and everything else he wasn’t sharing with the world. If only she knew what he was thinking , maybe she could put all this behind her and finally move on.

Or maybe she could get him back, part of her whispered; the part she couldn’t seem to ignore.

Leda rolled onto her stomach, tangling her fists in her sheets in frustration—and had an idea so simple that it must either be brilliant, or stupid.

Atlas might be hard to read, but maybe there was another way to figure him out.

SEVERAL HOURS INTO the party, Avery found herself in the liquor closet off Cord’s kitchen. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d come in here: maybe for some of the gold-leafed bourbon lined up on the top shelf, or the stash of illegal retros. She paused, swirling the ice chips in her empty cup. Her two empty cups, she realized; she had one in each hand.

Atlas was back. The look on his face when he saw her—and that word, later —kept replaying in her head. She’d been desperate for him to come home for so long, and yet now that he was finally here she didn’t know what it meant. So she’d decided the best course of action was to get as drunk as possible. Evidently she’d succeeded.

A shaft of light sliced through the darkness as the door was pushed open. “Avery?”

Cord. She sighed, wanting to just be alone with her thoughts right now. “Hey. Great party,” she murmured.

“Here’s to your guy,” he said, and reached over her to grab a handle of the bourbon. He took a long, slow sip, his eyes glittering in the dim light.

“Who?” she asked sharply. Did Cord somehow know? If anyone could figure it out, she thought darkly, it would be him. He’d known her forever. And he was screwed up enough himself to guess the crazy, twisted truth.

“Whoever got you so hot and bothered, and brought out Double-Fisting Fuller. Because it isn’t Zay Wagner. Even I can tell that.”

“You’re a real asshole sometimes, you know,” Avery said without thinking.

He barked out a laugh. “I do know. But I throw such great parties people forgive me for it. Kind of like they forgive you for being prudish and unreadable, because you’re the best-looking person on earth.”

Avery wanted to be angry with him, but for some reason she wasn’t. Maybe because she knew what Cord was really like, under all the layers of sarcasm.

“Remember when we were kids?” she said suddenly. “When you dared me to climb into the trash chute, and I got stuck inside? You waited with me the whole time until the safety bots came so I wouldn’t be in there alone.”

The lights in the liquor closet flickered off. They must have been standing very still to turn off the motion sensors. Cord was nothing but a shadow.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “So?”

“We’re all very different now, aren’t we?” Shaking her head, Avery pushed out the door and into the hallway.

She looped idly around the party for a while, saying hi to everyone she hadn’t seen since the end of last spring, drinking steadily from her two different cups. She couldn’t stop thinking about Atlas—or Leda. Where had Leda been all summer, that she refused to tell Avery about it? Whatever was going on, Avery felt terrible for the way she’d pressed the issue and clearly upset Leda. It wasn’t like her to leave a party early. Avery knew she should go to the Coles’ and check on her, yet she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving while Atlas was still here. After all those months apart, she just wanted to stay close to him.

I’m sorry about earlier. See you tomorrow? she sent to Leda, pushing aside her guilt.

Eventually she found Atlas in the downstairs library, playing a game of Spinners, and paused near the doorway to watch. He was leaning over the table as he Spun, his lashes casting subtle shadows on his cheekbones. Avery hadn’t played Spinners in years, since that time when she was fourteen—at another of Cord’s parties, in this very room. If she closed her eyes, it almost felt like it had happened yesterday, not three years ago.

She’d been so nervous to play. It was her first time drinking, and though she hadn’t told anyone, it was her first time at Spinners. She’d never even been kissed. What if they could all tell?

“Hurry up, Fuller!” Marc Rojas, a senior, had groaned at her hesitation. “Spin!”

“Spin! Spin!” the rest of the room took up the chant. Biting her lip, Avery reached up to swipe the holographic dial projected in the middle of the table.

The arrow whipped around the room in a blur. Everyone leaned forward to watch its progress. Finally it began to slow, and paused in front of Breccan Doyle. Avery braced herself, on the edge of her seat.

With its very last bit of momentum, the arrow shifted onto Atlas.

The game console immediately cast a privacy cone where they sat, refracting the light to hide them from the rest of the room, and deflecting all sound waves. Beyond the shimmering wall of photons—which rippled and bent like the surface of water in a pond—Avery could see the others, though they couldn’t see her. They were shouting and waving at the gaming console, probably trying to reset the game and make her spin again. Nothing fun about having siblings together in the cone, right?