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“Papa, please.” Akeisha begged. “I just want to see the stars one time. One chance to get above the eversmog.”

She knew she was pushing her luck. If her mother were still alive, maybe things might’ve been different, but that was like wishing for clean, unfiltered air. Some things were just never going to be.

Papa slammed the sanitizer’s lid down harder than he should. “I’ve told you no. Your nana should never have suggested it. She knows how I feel about the rooftops. You fall off a skyspear, sure and you’re going to paint the ground.”

He glared over Akeisha’s head to where Nana stood near the front entry, her uniform jacket dangling from one hand. “She’s twelve,” Papa went on. “Just a kid. She should be thinking about math class, not stars.”

“Same age I was when my dad brought me sky-side,” Nana replied, hanging the jacket on an empty hook by the door. “Not a lot of perks to custodial work, but the key card — well, that’s a big one.”

“No,” Papa said. “That’s final.”

Four hours later, Akeisha closed the cover of her math textbook and rubbed her eyes. Equations played against the back of her lids in purple afterimages. If she wasn’t ready for the test by now, more studying wasn’t going to help.

Papa, Nana, and Akeisha’s little brother, Tyson, were all snoring. Akeisha pressed her face to the window, staring up at the curdled green-yellow eversmog between their skyspear and the next. She’d never seen a different sky — never thought she’d have the chance — but then Nana had invited her sky-side.

“Come up top with me,” Nana had said. Such a simple phrase, but it had rekindled a longing Akeisha had suppressed long ago. There was a whole universe up there, if she had the courage to chase it.

Stuffing her feet into her lace-ups, Akeisha tiptoed out of her room, picked up Nana’s uniform jacket, and slipped her arms inside. It was two sizes too big, but it smelled of Nana’s perfume and, more important, the key card hung from its clip in the front pocket.

Before Akeisha could take time to think about what she was doing and what would happen if Papa found out, she slipped out her front door and sprinted down the long hallway to the entrance to the service stairway. She hesitated outside it for a moment. How high was the climb? Nana only worked the floors between forty and sixty — respectable middle-low level. The skyspear soared far, far higher.

It didn’t matter. Akeisha was young and fit and she might not get this chance again. She unlocked the stairway and started up.

By the time she reached the spot where the stairway ended at an institutional metal door, Akeisha was drenched in sweat, dizzy from perpetually turning left, and wheezing. But she’d made it. The sky was out there. All she had to do was open the forbidden door.

Akeisha forced herself not to consider how long it would take her to fall if something went wrong. She wouldn’t let her father’s fear rule her.

Her hand trembled as she pressed the key card to the sensor. A soft snick sounded, and the lock released. The door slid open.

A sweet breeze gusted through. Akeisha drew in a deep breath. The air tasted smooth, without a hint of grit. Her fingers tingled.

“Go on,” she whispered to herself. She stepped out of the skyspear’s cocooning walls and onto the roof. A greenish glow rose up from below, but Akeisha’s gaze lifted skyward. Stars spread across the firmament like spilled salt. Sparkling. Alive.

The wind tugged at Nana’s jacket, dragging Akeisha forward.

She dropped to her knees, tipped back her head, and stretched her hands as if she could touch the impossible stars. Their pale light bathed her exposed skin. She didn’t know how long she stayed there, arms open to the sky, before a voice behind her said, “Look at your hands, sweetling.”

Akeisha startled and looked back over her shoulder. “Nana?”

Nana stood just outside the doorway, her bright crescent smile gleaming softly against her dark skin, damp with perspiration from the climb. “Your hands,” she repeated. “Look at them.”

Reluctantly, Akeisha drew her hands back down and held them out, palms up. Tiny, glimmering motes sparkled just beneath her skin.

Nana closed the distance between them, bent down on one knee, and held out her own hand next to Akeisha’s.

Akeisha stared at them — hers small and smooth, Nana’s callused and bent with arthritis — both painted with stars. “That’s impossible.”

“I was sure the stars would come to you,” Nana said. “They marked my dad. They marked me. Same constellation on all of us. See that bright star there on your right hand, at the end of your lifeline?”

Akeisha nodded.

“It’s going to call you, sweetling. All your life.”

Akeisha drew her hand close, twisting and turning it in front of her eyes. The stars didn’t hurt—just radiated a soft warmth like Mrs. Anderson’s old tabby.

“How come I’ve never seen your stars before?”

“They only kindle in the starlight, though you’ll feel them even when you can’t see them.”

Akeisha peered at the sky, seeking out the constellation that matched her own. It hung just over the top of the nearest skyspear. The star that matched the end of her lifeline glinted like the spark of humor that sometimes shone in Nana’s eyes.

“You think we’re supposed to go there?” Akeisha asked.

“Humanity can’t stay here forever. Skyspears will only stretch so high, and food’s already scarce.”

They sat there in silence a little longer, before Akeisha spoke again. “Do you think there are more folks like us?”

“I have to believe it. And I hope they’re as driven as you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You had a goal and you chased it. I knew your papa wouldn’t give you permission. He’s a good man, but he’s never been brave. So I laid the breadcrumbs, but you had to choose to follow them.”

Nana wrapped her hand around Akeisha’s. The points where the stars touched flared with heat. “What do you plan to do next?”

Akeisha paused, listening to the wind rushing past her ears and the small, insistent pulse at the end of her lifeline that seemed to beat in time with her heart.

She looked up at the sky one more time. “I want to chase that star, Nana. All that sky up there, it should be for everybody.”

Nana squeezed Akeisha’s hand gently. “Then you do it. I didn’t have that chance, and neither did my dad, but your papa, he’s done all he can to be sure you’ve got opportunities.”

Akeisha gave a rueful laugh. “You’re right, and school comes early. I know I’m not going to reach the stars if I don’t pass math class. I just don’t want to leave all this behind.”

“You hold the stars in your hand, sweetling,” Nana said, rising and pulling Akeisha to her feet. “You’ll never leave them behind.”

Nana gave her a swift hug and kiss on the top of her head, then led them back inside, to the concrete and steel, back down the never-ending stairs, back beneath the eversmog, into a world that would never be the same again.