“This is my favorite time of year,” Rylin declared. Autumn had always felt to her like the season of beginning, far more than spring. Children laughed on their way to school. The air was crisp and full of promise. The hours of daylight grew shorter, and therefore more precious.
Hiral lifted an eyebrow. “You do know that we live in a temperature-controlled building, right?”
“I know, but just look at this!” Rylin threw out an arm to indicate the deck, the hazy sunshine, then spun impulsively on her toes and kissed him.
When they pulled apart, Hiral was looking at her intently. “I’m going to miss you.”
Rylin knew what he meant. Even with her internship, they’d had a lot of time to spend together this summer. That was all about to change, now that Rylin would be commuting upTower for school again, focusing on homework. Applying for college scholarships.
“I know. I’m going to miss you too,” she said.
Neither of them mentioned the fact that Cord—the boy who had come between them last time—attended Rylin’s school too.
“ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER costume party,” Avery joked, glancing to where Leda stood next to her. The other girl didn’t even crack a smile.
They were at the top of Cord’s staircase, the same place they always caught their breath at Cord’s annual back-to-school party, except it all felt wrong. Or rather, Leda felt wrong. Normally Leda was in her element at events like this, her energy seeming to increase in proportion to the number of people around her. But tonight she was subdued, even sullen, as if she resented Avery for dragging her here.
Ever since she got home, Avery had been asking when they could meet up, yet Leda kept putting her off with vague excuses. Finally Avery had decided to stop by on her way to Cord’s. She didn’t even pause to ring the doorbell, just blinked up at the Coles’ retina scanner; she’d been on the entry list for years. The door instantly swung open to admit her.
Leda’s mom stood in the living room, pulling a sumptuous coat around her shoulders. “Avery!” she had cried out, with audible relief. “I’m so glad you’re here. It’ll be good for Leda to see you.”
Good for Leda? Avery thought, marching up the stairs in confusion. Then she reached Leda’s bedroom and understood.
It was entirely changed. Gone were the bright persimmon carpet, the vintage Moroccan pillows, the hand-painted side tables. The shelves, which used to hold an eclectic assortment of things—a chipped celadon vase, a mobile sunlamp, a funny stuffed giraffe that sang “Happy Birthday” when you pressed on its stomach—were bare. Everything felt dismal and utterly Spartan. And most starkly changed was Leda herself, who stood in a pool of shadow near her closet.
Leda had always been thin, yet now she was startlingly skinny, new shadows gathering at the base of her collarbone. Her hair was cropped close to the scalp, making her look more boyish than ever. But it was her twitchy nervousness that frightened Avery the most.
“I’ve missed you,” Avery cried out, crossing the room and engulfing her friend in a hug. Leda stood there stiffly, barely returning it. When Avery stepped back, Leda crossed her arms over her chest in an instantaneous defensive motion.
“What’s going on, Leda?” How did I miss this? Avery remembered what she’d said to Max the other day, that a lot had happened while she was gone. Clearly much more than she’d realized.
“I made a few changes when I got back from rehab,” Leda said tersely. “My doctors wanted me to start over fresh, with no reminders of my old life. So I wouldn’t slide back into my old habits.”
Avery refrained from pointing out that when they told Leda to start over, the doctors probably hadn’t been talking about furniture. “Should we do dinner before Cord’s party? I’ll wait while you change.”
Leda hurried to shake her head. “That’s okay. I wasn’t planning on going.”
“You live for this party!”
“I used to,” Leda said quietly, her eyes hooded. “Not anymore.”
This wasn’t Leda at all. The person before her was a hollow pod-person version of Leda, a mannequin Leda, who looked and sounded like Leda but couldn’t possibly be Avery’s sharp and vibrant best friend.
Well, if anything could snap Leda back into herself, it was a good party.
“Too bad,” Avery said briskly, pressing her palm against Leda’s wall to open her closet. “You’re coming, even if I have to drag you the entire way. I promise not to let you drink a single thing,” she said loudly, over Leda’s stammered protests. “I’ll even vid-chat your rehab counselor in real time, if that’s what it takes. But you’re coming. I want you to meet Max.”
Now, as they looked out over Cord’s living room, Avery couldn’t help thinking that she’d made a mistake. Leda stood there vacant and glassy-eyed, utterly disinterested in her surroundings.
A pair of freshman girls strutted up the stairs, both of them wearing cat ears and holographic tails that swished lazily behind them. “That’s her. Avery Fuller,” one of them whispered. “She’s so gorgeous.”
“You would be too, if you were genetically designed for it.”
“Can you believe her dad is running for mayor?”
“I’m sure he’s buying his way in, the same way he bought Avery. . . .”
Avery tried not to listen as the girls brushed past, but her grip on the railing tightened imperceptibly. She should be used to the gossip by now; it had been going on her entire life.
Everyone in New York knew the story of Avery’s creation: that her parents had custom-built her from the pool of their combined DNA in a very expensive genetic mining procedure. The year of her birth, her baby photo had even been on the cover of Time digital magazine, under the headline “Engineering Perfection.” Avery hated it.
“Want me to kick them out?”
Avery looked over in surprise. Anger was stormclouding over Leda’s features, fracturing her formerly cool surface.
She felt the strangest urge to laugh in relief. The old Leda was still in there after all.
“We’re at a party. No need to stir up unnecessary drama,” Avery said quickly.
“Where else does unnecessary drama belong, if not at a party?” Leda asked and then smiled. It came out a little rigid, as if she hadn’t smiled in a while and had half forgotten how to do it, but it was a smile all the same.
Unnecessary drama. Suddenly, Avery couldn’t help thinking of this time last year, when she and Leda had been standing at the top of these very stairs, both hiding the same monumental secret—that they were in love with Atlas.
“Where is he, anyway?” Leda asked.
“Who?” Surely Leda hadn’t been thinking about—
“This Klaus von Schnitzel of yours.”
Oh, right. “It’s Max von Strauss,” Avery corrected, hoping Leda hadn’t heard the beat of hesitation. “And I’m not sure. He disappeared earlier this afternoon, saying that he had to do something urgent. He promised to meet me here, though.”
“How mysterious,” Leda said, and it was almost teasing.
Avery swallowed and decided to ask the same question she’d posed earlier. “Leda. What’s going on?”
Leda opened her mouth as if to reassure Avery with a lie, only to pause. “I didn’t have