The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

said Pop. He clutched a small can of Mace but seemed ill-fit to use it, his arm trembling, barely aiming it in my direction.

I stepped back with my hands held high.

“It says you killed a man.” Mom leaned close to the screen. “A pastor. A father of three.”

“It’s an exaggeration,” I said. “Clickbait. Do you know what that is?”

“I sensed something evil about you,” said Pop.

“I’m calling the cops,” said Mom.

I slapped the phone out of her hands. Pop didn’t point the Mace at me but geysered it straight up into the air. Through coughing and tears, I swept Dyson’s credit card and the clothing into my arms, raced to the car. They followed as far as the sidewalk. “Thief!” they shouted. Muscled cross-fitters in tank tops and formfitting sweatpants darted across the parking lot. I pulled onto the road before they could reach me, but they gave chase down the sidewalk and caught up at the first red light. They spread out along the driver’s side and squatted, gripped the frame of the car. “One,” said the men. “Two!”

The cross street’s light ascended to yellow, to red.

I gassed the engine at “Three.” Behind me, the men shook the hurt out of their hands.

ten

THE NIGHT BEFORE Lucas Devry’s death, Cassandra and I went out for dinner at a trendy Iberian restaurant in Dumbo. She knew every chef in the city by name—the ones who mattered, the ones who would matter—and had gotten us a table despite the restaurant’s three-month wait. We sat beneath a blunted red lantern that added blush to Cassandra’s natural pallor. She wore black high-waisted pants and a denim jacket and smelled faintly of berries.

We were there to celebrate the first major break in my—our, according to Cassandra—career. Earlier that day, I had booked an appearance on a network morning show to discuss ABANDON. The production assistant was shocked that her email had gone directly to me instead of a manager. We’re booking you as a favor to Kandace’s daughter, she told me. Kandace Heather cohosted the show. Her daughter was a client of mine, and she had demanded that her mother share my program with the world.

“We’re going to be on tee-vee,” Cassandra kept saying, dragging out the letters as if they were separate words. She lifted a flute of champagne to clink against mine.

Cassandra wasn’t actually scheduled to appear alongside me. But she spoke with such joy and presumption that I couldn’t bear to tell her as much. It would ruin the night. A half bottle of champagne made me swimmy, giggly, but Cassandra ordered another and topped off my glass. ABANDON demanded sobriety, so I rarely drank, in public. But tonight was a special occasion.

Cassandra lifted her flute. “A toast to the launch of our lives. Our real lives. To the futures we deserve. Next Tuesday we’ll be on TV and by Wednesday we’ll be everywhere—not just in our bubbles online but bursting, spreading, expanding.”

“Infecting,” I joked.

“There’ll be profiles about us. Photo shoots. Sasha, they’ll say, we need more fire in your eyes. Flip your hair up.…Cassandra, cradle this tiger.”

“I want the tiger,” I said.

“Then I get the python.” She mimed draping it over her shoulders, made a biting gesture with her free hand. “We’ll march our animals through the High Line.”

“Times Square,” I said.

“Oh, it’s so tacky I love it.”

I blushed.

“There will be books,” she said.

“Self-help is for hacks.”

She gagged in disgust. “Hack is too generous. I’m talking memoirs, empowering stories of triumph, ghostwritten by middling out-of-work novelists. These ghostwriters, they talk to you, they listen, they expand, and the books just appear. It’s all your ideas and your thoughts, but you don’t do the typing—and you shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. Because the book is just the beginning. The book will evolve into a lifestyle, and that lifestyle will become a phenomenon. And what comes after a phenomenon?”

“World domination,” I said.

She cackled so hard her glass slipped out of her hand. It shattered. The servers’ heads swiveled, their eyes hunting for someone to blame. “It’s only glass!” she shouted. “It won’t cut you unless you take off your shoes.”

I leaned over the table in laughter. She didn’t usually act like this, so vocal, so dramatic: so drunk. “People are staring,” I said.

“Of course they’re staring. We’re stars.” It occurred to me, then, that Cassandra depended on fame to give her life meaning. Anything less would not have met the expectations imposed on her by family, by birth. She was the only child of a glossy magazine editor and a museum curator; her maternal grandparents had both been in the movies. It was assumed she would succeed, that people would not only see her but look to her as a model of how to exist. No one in my family expected much from me. If I flamed out, anonymity would rock me to sleep in its arms. But Cassandra feared irrelevance the way tourists fear strangers in alleys. For the first time, I pitied her. I incubated this feeling; I longed for it to survive.

A waiter brushed the shards into a dustpan.

Cassandra said, “Close your eyes.” She asked me to imagine a future of plenty and ease: summers on Mediterranean islands, loose gowns billowing in the breeze, lounging on hulking white yachts, how our faces would draw glances on Manhattan sidewalks, the way our words would wind through the minds of strangers, steady them in times of crisis. Vacation homes in the Alps, photo shoots in Chilean vineyards, luncheons with diplomats, and consultations for Austrian monarchs. She stretched for my hands. “You’ll be everywhere,” she said. “Complete and total ubiquity.”

She made it sound like a good thing.

That night, I followed her through the city, weak-kneed with champagne and wonder. I had work the next day, but Cassandra demanded I fling away all responsibilities. “You’ll call in sick,” she assured me. “This is far more important than your little day job—your temporary job.”

It was impossible not to feel important around her. She