The Upper Air

The sun had climbed high enough to burn the mist off the water, and the Main Beach stretched in all directions, empty except for the three of them. Riley took the lead, black boots slung in one hand and a face that dared the day to try her. Chloe lagged behind, collecting a conga line of footprints in the powdery sand. Katherine walked between them, a pace and a half back, but never in anyone’s shadow—more like she was trying out every possible footfall, every angle of light, every micro-adjustment that the world could offer.

She wore nothing, because she couldn’t; she didn’t even move to cover herself, and the lack of self-consciousness made her seem less like a naked woman and more like a statue that had shrugged off the museum. Her hair hung black and glossy, the length of her back and all the way to her ankles, blowing in ribbons on the salt wind. She paused at the line where dry met wet, crouched, and pressed her fingers into the sand.

Chloe doubled back, watching her with the rapt attention reserved for both rescue animals and children. “It’s different here, isn’t it?” she said, squatting next to her. “I mean, the sand? It’s not normal sand. It’s… I don’t know. Softer.”

Katherine looked at her, considered, then scooped up a handful and let it sift through her fingers. She smiled, an expression that built slow but, when finished, was absolutely brilliant. Then she pointed at her own hand, made a fist, and slowly opened it, palm up.

Chloe studied the gesture. “You mean, you can feel it? Like, it’s real-real?” She realized how dumb that sounded and winced. “Sorry. I mean—more than before.”

Katherine nodded, then drew a circle in the sand and jabbed both index fingers at the surface. Chloe didn’t get it at first, then her mouth popped open: “You want to remember this.”

Another nod.

Riley, feet already wet, looked over her shoulder. “Are you planning to write your name in it, or should I call the archaeologists now?”

Chloe grinned. “Let her be. It’s her first time after fourteen years.”

That got a snort from Riley. She turned away, but not far enough to actually miss anything.

Katherine was content to just sit and touch the sand, but after a few minutes, a gull landed a few yards away and eyed her with comic suspicion. Katherine straightened, staring at it. Then she pointed at the gull, then at Riley, then shrugged, eyebrows lifted.

Chloe caught it instantly. “You think they’re related? Yeah, I see it. Same **** glare.”

Riley turned back and squinted, eyes sharp. “I don’t know who should be more insulted, me or the bird.” But she smiled as she said it, and the gull shuffled nervously, as if reconsidering its entire presence.

Chloe giggled. “It’s okay, Riley. The bird’s cute.”

“That is not comforting,” Riley said, but she was already smiling.

Katherine rose to her feet, brushing sand from her shins with an absent, graceful sweep. She looked at Chloe, then up at the sun, then at the horizon. Each new angle seemed to surprise her. She made a deliberate effort to memorize it, head cocked, eyes wide.

A wave broke closer than the rest, sending a chilly spray up the slope and soaking the sand around their toes. Katherine stepped back, startled, but didn’t run—she just lifted one foot, then the other, and looked down as the water retreated. When the next wash came, she planted her feet and let it cover her ankles. The cold shocked her, she laughed in delight and turned to Chloe, who smiled back, hands jammed in her cardigan pockets.

“Feels weird, right?” Chloe said, rocking on her heels. “First it’s cold, but then it’s, like… fine? I still hate it, though. I was always more a grass kind of girl.”

Katherine waded forward, then reached down and picked up a piece of red glass, worn smooth by time. She held it up, squinting at how the sun shone through it, then offered it to Chloe.

Chloe accepted it like a rare coin. “Thanks,” she said, “I collect them, you know? I have, like, a million already, but this’ll be my favorite.”

Katherine looked pleased. She turned back toward Riley, then at the gull, which had moved closer, emboldened by their lack of reaction. Katherine pointed again, then held her hand flat, waggling it in a so-so gesture.

Riley rolled her eyes. “I have more range than a seagull, thanks. Also, it’s probably a male.”

Chloe laughed. “Ooh, you hear that? You’re being gendered, buddy.”

The gull made a noise that sounded like a dry cough. Katherine mimed the gull’s beak, then turned to Chloe with a perfectly deadpan expression.

“She thinks it’s hungry,” Chloe said.

Katherine nodded solemnly, then pantomimed eating—fork to mouth, fork to mouth, fork to mouth—then leaned back and patted her stomach with both hands, eyes wide, expression somewhere between bliss and mild regret.

Chloe laughed. “She had a big breakfast.”

Riley, who had been watching the show with arms crossed, said, “How big?”

Katherine held her hands apart. Then wider. Then wider still.

“That big,” Chloe confirmed.

Katherine pressed a fist to her mouth, cheeks puffed, and pointed at the gull with her free hand as if to say: you and me both, buddy.

The three of them walked on, sticking to the waterline, with the sun drawing high and the world almost too bright to look at without squinting. Riley eventually ditched her boots entirely, flinging them up the slope where they landed in a drift of beach grass.

Chloe stopped to examine a smooth, palm-sized stone with a perfect hole in the middle. She handed it to Katherine, who turned it over in her hands, then held it up to her eye and looked through, as if testing whether it worked as a lens. She offered it to Riley, who took it, then flipped it like a poker chip.

After a while, they reached the end of the cove—a snarl of dark rocks where the sand got coarser and the tide made little inroads. Chloe picked her way along the edge, hopping from stone to stone, and Riley followed, with more of a stomp than a skip. Katherine watched them for a moment, then simply walked through the shallows, picking her way with a balance that made the water seem less wet than air. She closed her eyes for a moment, arms outstretched, and laughed.

Chloe glanced back and watched Katherine, and for a moment her face went distant. “You know,” she said, “I remember reading about birds that are born in captivity, and when they’re released, the first time they fly they get this, like, look. Like they don’t really trust it, but also it’s the best thing in the world.”

Riley nodded. “I’ve seen that look. On people, too.”

Chloe considered that. “I bet it feels weird, being new to everything. Every little thing is special.”

Riley said, “It’s better than being old to everything.”

At that, Chloe just smiled, and for a minute they stood in the sun, all three of them, each with their own shadow stretched behind them like a memory.

Chloe saw a glint in the sand, knelt and brushed some off a piece of green glass, so bright it looked like an emerald. She smiled, picked it up, and offered it to Katherine. “As a welcome.”

Katherine's smile was blinding.

By the time they turned back, their feet were cold and their arms were full of treasures: Chloe had four shells and a piece of driftwood shaped like a letter J; Riley carried the hole-stone and one of her own boots, having failed to find the other; and Katherine had her fingers wrapped around the piece of sea glass, which she kept turning over and over, marveling at how different it looked from every direction.

They walked back up the shore, this time in a tighter group, sharing a little of the warmth from each other. The gull followed at a cautious distance, as if it had appointed itself guardian of their progress.

When they reached the spot where the path rejoined the beach, Chloe paused, and so did the others.

“Did you want to go back now, or—” Chloe started, but Katherine shook her head, then gestured at the water with both hands, wide and sweeping, as if to say: not done yet.

Riley said, “She wants to stay a while.”

Chloe nodded. “I get it.”

They stayed there, three women and a bird, watching the tide come and go, listening to the sound of the world reshuffling itself.

---

The Sunroom was quiet, and Claire liked it best in the morning, when the warmth came slantwise through the glass and the Inner Gardens were still blue with shadow. She had consciously chosen to stay here, rather than to withdraw to the Sky Archive, because Andy had been right: she had been too secluded, the previous round. So she had claimed one of the broad wicker couches for herself, an unread book open across her lap, and let her feet rest on a coffee table that still bore the faint ghost of some ancient citrus polish. There was no noise but the faint brush of wind in the leaves and the soft, white rush of the HVAC.

She was halfway through a sentence—something about gardens in Kyoto, a line she had already re-read three times—when it hit her. The spike. It was not a gentle tug or a fuzzy ping at the edge of the bond she shared with Andy; it was a sharp, cold wave that splashed through her, pinning her breath to her ribs. She closed the book, pressing it flat with both hands, and pressed her palm to her sternum as if the right pressure might blunt the edge of it. She had only felt this kind of intensity during the last moments in the Garden of Glass, when Andy had been made to watch Laura be swept away by the river.

For a long second, she just sat, hunched forward, waiting for the feeling to recede. It didn’t. Instead, a second spike followed, less like a wave and more like the sudden plunge when an elevator drops too fast. Her notebook and pen were at her side, but she had to concentrate to pick them up; her fingers felt clumsy, her wrists made of glass.

She did not have to wait long for Sam to appear. The sunroom’s glass doors were set just off the main lobby, and Sam always passed this way on her way to the gym, or the pool, or whatever other routine she’d adopted for the day. She was dressed for movement—leggings, a Blue Bean t-shirt, and a towel slung across her shoulder. She saw Claire’s posture, the bracing of the hands, and detoured without a word.

Sam didn’t waste time with questions. She came straight in, and took the seat at Claire’s side—close enough that their knees almost touched, but not so close as to crowd her. She didn’t reach out, but left her hands open on her own lap, patient.

The first words were quiet, pitched not to startle. “You feel it, too?”

Claire nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to look at Sam just yet. She pressed her palm flat to the center of her chest, waited for the echo to fade, and only then reached for her notebook. Her hand shook a little as she wrote.

Sam watched the process, gaze steady. She wasn’t one to interrupt, or even to read upside-down—she waited, letting the silence grow into something companionable.

Claire wrote: Andy. He’s distressed.

She held up the page. Sam read it, and nodded. “Yeah. He told me this morning he’d go. Didn’t want backup, just an anchor up here. Laura went with him, and I can sense she’s distressed. A lot. Something’s happening down there. The big lug said it wasn’t going to be dangerous, but…” She trailed off, then added, “You know how he is. Always downplaying.” Her eyes sharpened. “Is he in pain?” She cracked her knuckles with the look of a woman ready to punch through the Elevator to drop down to the Hollow Garden and give Arabella a piece of her mind, if Andy or Laura were hurt.

Claire shook her head and continued scribbling, the white of her knuckles standing out against the paper. It feels— she tapped her chest, then made a gesture, hands splaying out as if a current of water had just gone through her. Cold, she wrote, after a moment. Not fear. Not pain. Just cold realization.

Sam said, “That rules out physical danger, at least,” exhaling and relaxing slightly.

They didn’t speak again for a while.

For a few minutes, they just sat. The morning light slanted down, slow and syrupy, across the woven backs of the chairs. The only sound was the faint tick of the lobby’s clock and, outside, the hiss of an unseen leaf blower on the far side of the gardens.

The next spike, when it came, was worse. Not just a jolt but a real, physical plunge: Claire felt it start behind her breastbone and run up through her throat, almost like a hard swallow gone wrong. She braced, notebook forgotten. Her nails dug into her knees.

Sam noticed the change, and shifted—still not touching, but now leaning in, voice as soft as a blanket. “That one was big,” she said. “Can you tell if he’s hurt?”

Claire shook her head, furiously, then scratched out on the page: Not hurt. Something else. Meeting someone? She wasn’t sure why that felt true, but it did. She remembered reading about empathy, the way you could feel the shape of someone else’s experience without ever knowing the details. That was what this was: not the event, but the shape of the feeling.

Sam considered, then said, “The Hollow Garden is where Arabella keeps the ones who don’t make it. Maybe he found someone.” She kept her tone casual, but the way she watched Claire said she was as invested as anyone.

Claire flexed her hands open, **** herself to breathe evenly. The spike faded, replaced by a low, humming dread, like the feeling before a storm. She wanted to write something, to ask Sam for specifics—what did she know about the Hollow Garden, had she ever been there—but her brain was busy holding itself together.

After a while, Sam leaned back and draped her arm along the couch’s backrest, palm open but not quite touching Claire’s shoulder. “You know,” she said, “you’re allowed to be worried. Even if he told you not to.”

Claire managed a tiny nod, then wrote, Always worried. Just not like this before.

Sam said, “Yeah. Me too.” She looked at the window, then added, “You want me to stay?”

Claire nodded, grateful beyond words. She didn’t want company, exactly, but she also didn’t want to be left alone with the noise inside her skull. Sam’s presence was a comfort, the way a well-built chair was: solid, supportive, no expectations.

The final spike, when it came, was quieter but longer. Instead of a hit, it was a long, sustained pull—like someone drawing up water from a deep well. Claire hunched over, forehead almost to her knees, and let it pass through her, counting slow until it receded.

When it was over, she wrote: I think it’s done.

Sam said, “You don’t believe that.”

Claire shrugged. She liked that Sam didn’t expect her to fake anything. She wrote: I hope so.

Sam let the silence settle again, but this time it was less sharp, more like a shared blanket. She didn’t get up or even look at her phone. She just sat, breathing slow and regular, every so often letting a soft “hmm” or a “that’s okay” fill the space.

When the next wave didn’t come, Claire eased up, sitting back against the sun-warmed wicker. She opened her book, eyes skimming the same line she’d been stuck on, and tried to pretend she was reading. Sam closed her eyes, arms crossed, not asleep but clearly in standby mode.

They stayed like that for a long time. Claire pretended to read; Sam pretended not to be watching the shadow of distress flicker across Claire’s face. Both of them kept one ear turned inward, listening for the next sign from Andy, but neither said so out loud.

When it finally faded to nothing—a kind of numb peace, the aftermath of weather—Claire wrote: I think he’s okay. Not good, but okay. I feel he’s closer now. He must have come back.

Sam read it, then reached over and squeezed her shoulder, brief but real. “That’s all any of us can ask for,” she said, and this time she let her hand linger for a while before letting go.

The morning went on, quiet and solid, and the two of them held the thread together, just in case it needed picking up again.

---

Late morning found Marissa in the only place she could stomach: the far corner of the garden terrace, at a table ringed in lemon balm and bougainvillea, with a notepad that refused to fill and a coffee that had been cold for at least an hour. She watched condensation pool around the mug, absently tapping her pen against her thigh. The page before her was empty, not for lack of trying. She’d already shredded two other sheets, rolled them tight, and tucked them deep in her bag. You could only start so many letters home to a sister before realizing you had nothing real to say.

A soft click of the chair across from her. Emi, today in a pale blue sun dress that managed to look accidental even though every pleat was obviously chosen, slid into the seat and set her own mug on the table with a near-silent clink. She didn’t say hello or apologize for invading the solitude. That was the thing about Emi: she always knew which kinds of silence needed breaking, and which didn’t.

The only thing she unpacked was a small, square of white paper, which she immediately began folding into a shape Marissa couldn’t guess. A moment later, it resolved into a little bird, then another, then a third. She set them out in a row facing Marissa, their beaks all cocked at slightly different angles, as if watching her with friendly suspicion.

Marissa’s lips twitched. “Planning a flock?” she asked, amused.

Emi smiled, but not at her. “Just keeping my hands busy.” She didn’t look up as she pinched the tail of the next bird.

For a while, that was it. The warmth of the day pressed down, the air thick with sweet lemon and the wet green smell of the Inner Gardens beyond. Somewhere to their right, a Mildred pruned a topiary with soundless precision, every leaf falling perfectly onto the mulch below. The only other human in sight was a Mildred gathering nonexistent refuse with a claw tool that somehow hurt to look at.

Emi finished her row of birds and set her hands in her lap, fingers laced. “You’re not writing,” she said, almost as if she were remarking on the weather.

“Correct,” said Marissa. She set her pen down. “I don’t have anything worth writing.”

Emi nodded like she’d been expecting that answer. She leaned in, gaze soft but intent. “May I ask what you would have written, if you had?”

Marissa considered lying, but it seemed both pointless and exhausting. “I was going to write my sister,” she said. “About what’s next. In the real world. I know it’s probably only been a day or two for her, but… I figured it would help me clear my head.”

Emi’s eyes lit, just a fraction. “Do you know what’s next for you?” she asked, not pushing, but curious.

Marissa looked past the birds, out at the garden. “No. That’s the problem. I thought I did, but what happened with Laura last round made me realize maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought I did. And the song… It made me think of this, too, of who I want to be when we leave.” She sighed. “I’ve been watching the others.” She hesitated, thumb worrying at the spine of the notepad. “Erin, Claire, Dawn, you, Sam, Liesa—most of you know what you want, or at least you say you do. I envy that.”

Emi considered this, then picked up the leftmost origami bird and turned it over in her palm. “So you don’t know what you want.”

Marissa let Emi’s question hang there, suspended above the table, as if some piece of early sunlight had caught in the branches overhead and refused to drop. It would have been simple, once, to say what she wanted: for her sister to be safe, for her mother’s memory to last a little longer, for her own life to not be a series of staged performances and damage control. She’d always defined her ambitions in the negative, in what she didn’t want—no more emergencies, no more giving pieces of herself away until there was nothing left but the scaffolding. Even here, in The HH, with nothing to do but exist and compete and care for each other, she’d made it through by subtraction: Want less. Expect nothing. Survive.

When she’d spoken with Andy, what now felt like a hundred years ago, during the Fourth Round, she’d told him she wanted nothing, really, just to be with him was enough. That had been true, or at least true enough to function. But lately, watching the others—Erin with her sharp, impossible loyalty; Claire, who wore her devotion like a second skin; even Norah, who’d finally let herself be wanted—Marissa had started to question the entire premise. She wondered, with a quiet horror that caught her off guard, whether there was something beyond survival. Something she was missing but had never thought to name.

“I thought I did,” she said, finally, her voice so level it might have been a recitation. “But lately, I’m not sure.” She didn’t say the word marriage, but it hovered between them like a scent, as clear as the smell of cut grass or the haze of salt off the sea.

Emi studied her, face open, not the least bit predatory. “May I ask you a question?” she said, softer now, almost private.

Marissa shrugged, a flicker of old impatience showing through. “You always do.”

Emi’s mouth quirked, but she didn’t back off. “Are you afraid,” she said, “that if you asked for something, you’d find out you wanted it more than you thought?”

The question struck harder than Marissa expected. Not because it was new, but because it was exactly the thing she’d spent years trying not to look at. She dropped her gaze to the origami birds, then out at the endless, exuberant sprawl of the garden. There were so many ways to be fragile, and she’d spent so long learning all of them that she no longer believed in any alternative.

She tried to laugh it off, but the sound stuck. “Yes,” she said, after a moment. “That’s… annoyingly accurate.”

Emi didn’t smile or look smug. She just nodded, as if she’d been bracing for this exact confession. “I think it’s brave to want something real,” she said. “Not the opposite.”

Marissa almost snorted, then realized how much effort it would take to pretend she didn’t care. “I don’t think I’m brave,” she said. “I think I’m practiced. There’s a difference.”

Emi tilted her head. “Is there?” She spread her hands, as if weighing arguments on invisible scales. “Maybe the difference is you know how to protect yourself, and some of us are still figuring it out. But maybe—” she hesitated, looking down at the table, “—maybe the protection is starting to cost more than it saves.”

The words landed. Marissa found herself turning them over, unable to decide if she resented Emi for saying them or herself for needing to hear it. She looked at the little flock of birds again, pinched the beak of the center one, and set it back down in its place. “So what do you want?” she asked, not sarcastic but serious, and maybe a little hopeful.

Emi looked up, the light making her eyes seem washed of color. “To belong somewhere,” she said. “And I think I do, now, but it’s new. I wanted to stop running away from the world, and The HH has given me that. And…” She hesitated, then forged on. “I want to be with Andy. I want to be his wife, even if I’m not the only one. I actually like that. I was always lonely, growing up. Now I never need to feel that way. I wanted to matter to someone, and I found out I do. To a lot of people.” She gave a tiny, almost abashed smile. “I’m okay with that.”

Marissa nodded, slowly. She let her eyes drift past Emi’s shoulder to the garden, the way every flower **** itself up and out, the riot of color that didn’t care whether it was part of the official planting or a feral volunteer. She thought of her sister, of the last real letter she’d sent (the lie of it, the tidy narrative that omitted all the fear), and of the careful ways she’d constructed her story to be unassailable. She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d ever built a version of herself that could belong anywhere.

She looked at Emi, then back at the birds, and said, quieter than she meant to, “I might want that, too.”

Emi heard it. She set her hand on the table, palm down, not close enough to touch but there, receptive, in case Marissa wanted to bridge the gap. They sat that way for a long time, the sun creeping higher, the row of birds standing sentry. A bee nosed around the bougainvillea, found nothing, and moved on. The world didn’t require a decision; it just politely waited for them to be ready.

Somewhere behind them, a Mildred finished with a topiary, dusted her hands, and went back inside, her steps so precise they left the gravel undisturbed. The rest of the hotel might as well have been a continent away.

Marissa stared at her cold coffee, then picked it up and took a sip anyway, grimacing at the bitterness. “You know,” she said, “I always thought—” She stopped, rephrased. “I always assumed that wanting something for myself would just make it harder to do what everyone else needs. That it would take away from the account, or whatever.” She paused, then looked at Emi with a touch of curiosity. “But maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe that’s where the whole thing starts.”

Emi nodded, gentle as ever. “Maybe,” she agreed. “Or maybe it’s both. Maybe you get to want things and still be good at giving.”

Marissa let out a slow breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I’m still not convinced,” she said, but there was less fight in her voice now. “I guess I have time to find out.”

Emi arranged the birds into a small triangle, then, with a deft gesture, folded another from her square of paper. Marissa watched her fingers move, the quiet certainty of them. She wondered what it would be like to have a purpose that was just for herself, not a shield or a role but a real desire.

She tapped her pen once against the page, then closed the notepad. “Thank you,” she said, to Emi, and also to the world, maybe. “For not making it a contest.”

Emi grinned, a little sly. “We can compete on other things,” she said, “but not this.” She gestured to the two of them, to the gleaming Master’s Suite on the side of the volcano, and her voice turned wondering. “All of us. Andy. We’ll always be in each other’s lives. We’ll live together, like Chloe dreams. And none of us, and none of our children, will ever have to feel lonely and scared again.”

They let the silence fill back in. The birds watched. The sun climbed, and somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed the hour. It was late morning, and for the first time in a long time, Marissa felt like she could keep going.