CANTINA WAS THE same as always, slick and intimidating, its blazing white surfaces so pristine that Leda almost felt nervous to touch them. She remembered how wide-eyed she’d been the first time she came here, in eighth grade, with Avery and her parents. Everyone was so thin and expensively dressed that to Leda’s thirteen-year-old mind they’d all looked like models. Then again, some of them actually were.
Now she and Avery walked up the bold white staircase with spiky blue agave plants lining each step and settled into a cozy two-person booth upstairs. They’d both showered and used the stylers at Altitude before coming here; and now that they were no longer in the surreal quiet of the aqua studio—now that they looked like their normal, immaculate selves—Leda was questioning whether this was a good idea.
Avery saved her by speaking first. “How are you, Leda?” she asked, and for some reason the absurd formality of the question made Leda want to burst out laughing. All the countless hours they’d spent together at this very restaurant, and yet here they were, acting like a couple on the worst first date of all time. Suddenly she knew exactly what to say.
“I’m sorry,” she began, the words coming out awkwardly; she’d never been very good at apologies. “For everything I did, and said, that night on the roof. You know I didn’t mean for it to happen.” No need to clarify what it was; they both knew. “I swear it was an accident. I would never—”
“I know,” Avery said tersely, her hands clenching just a little under the table. “But you didn’t need to act all wild and threatening about it afterward, Leda. It would have been all right, if you’d come forward and told the truth.”
Leda stared at her blankly. Sometimes it shocked her how delusional Avery was. Sure, if it had been Avery Fuller who pushed Eris off the Tower, no one would give her more than a slap on the wrist. But Leda’s family was nowhere near as powerful or established as the Fullers, even though they did have money now. If Leda came forward, there would have been an investigation, probably even a trial. And Leda knew how the evidence looked.
A jury would have very happily convicted Leda for manslaughter. Unlike Avery, who was inherently unpunishable. No one would ever even consider sending her to prison. She was simply too beautiful for it.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously, hoping that would be enough. “I’m sorry for that too, though. I’m sorry for everything I said that night.”
Avery nodded, slowly, but didn’t answer.
Leda swallowed. “Eris did some stuff that really hurt me, some seriously messed-up stuff. I didn’t even want to talk to her, but she kept coming at me, even though I told her to back off—but still, I never meant—”
“What did Eris do?” Avery asked.
Leda nervously tucked her hair behind her ears. “She was sleeping with my dad,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I saw them together—I saw them kissing!” Leda’s voice pitched wildly, she was so desperate to be believed. She took a deep breath and began the whole sordid story: How her dad had been acting funny, as if he was hiding something. The Calvadour scarf that Leda had found, which she then saw her dad give to Eris. How he’d lied and said he was at a client dinner, but instead she’d found him at dinner with Eris, holding hands and kissing across the table.
Avery was silent with shock. “Are you sure?” she asked finally.
“I know. I didn’t want to believe it of Eris either. Let alone my dad.” Leda couldn’t even look at Avery’s face right now, couldn’t face the shock, the disgust, that was surely written there, or she might burst into tears. She busied herself tapping on the surface of the table to place their order. “Medium or spicy guacamole?”
“Spicy. Plus queso,” Avery added. “God, Leda … I’m so sorry. Does your mom know?”
Leda shook her head. “I never told her.” Avery of all people would understand how painful it had been, keeping something that big from her family—how Leda had felt stretched thin by the secret, which pressed slowly and inexorably down on her, never relenting even for a minute.
“I’m sorry. That’s terrible.” Avery traced a circle on the pristine table. She didn’t seem able to make eye contact either. “How can I help?” she asked finally, looking up. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
Typical Avery, thinking she could take on all the problems of the world. “You can’t solve everything, you know,” Leda said, as a hovertray whirled over to deposit the guacamole on their table. It was chunky and fresh, made with real avocados, not the infused algae-protein cubes that they mashed up in midTower and called guacamole.
“I know. That was always your job.” Avery wiped at her eyes and sighed. “God. I wish we’d never fought in the first place.”
“Me neither!” Leda agreed. “Atlas wasn’t worth it. I mean, not to me, he wasn’t,” she fumbled to explain.
Across the table, Avery’s eyes were very blue and very serious.
“I never loved him. I realize that now,” Leda went on, bravely. She knew this wasn’t what Avery wanted to talk about—that it would be safer to avoid it altogether. But talking was the only way to make things right. Leda imagined her words spanning the space between her and Avery, like the etherium bridges that built themselves molecule by painstaking molecule.
“I thought I loved him, but it was just … infatuation. I loved the idea of him. Or maybe I should say that I wanted to love him, but I never succeeded in it.” That night in the Andes felt so long ago now, when Leda thought she’d fallen hopelessly for Atlas. But all it had really been was hormones and excitement.
Like what you feel for Watt? a voice in her whispered, a voice she tried desperately to silence. She hadn’t told anyone that she and Watt were hooking up. God, she and Watt didn’t even speak about it. But in the few days since they’d come back from Nevada, he’d come over to her place every night. She never even asked him—he just showed up the first evening and she let him wordlessly in the back door, and then they collapsed together onto her bed in a tangle of silent, crushing need.
Still, Leda hadn’t let Watt get too far. She’d learned that lesson the hard way. She kept holding something back, out of self-preservation.
Because she was developing feelings for him, and that was the one outcome she had never expected.
Next to Watt, what she’d felt for Atlas felt long-ago, and childish. She realized that she no longer even cared whether Avery dated him. Hell, why not? It wasn’t any more fucked-up than anything else in this crazy, fucked-up world.
“You love him, though, don’t you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“Yes,” Avery said, with more pause than Leda had expected. She let out a great breath. “But he’s really hurt me.”
“By hooking up with me?” Leda demanded, and immediately winced at the baldness of her words. “That was so long ago, it’s ancient history,” she added, more tactfully.
Avery seemed almost not to have registered her outburst. “No, it’s not that … he’s been with someone else. More recently.” Her eyes flicked downward. “I’m pretty sure we’re over, for good.”
“You don’t mean that girl from the gala, with the tacky dress and the British accent? What was her name, Catastrophe?”
“Calliope,” Avery corrected, with a ghost of a smile. “They met while Atlas was traveling, in Africa. She and her mom just moved here.”
“Really. She met Atlas halfway across the world and now she’s in New York. How awfully convenient.” Leda’s instincts pricked to life. “What’s this girl’s story? Where is she from?”
“I don’t know. She went to boarding school in England, I think.”
“What does her page on the feeds say?”
“I haven’t really looked at it,” Avery said reflexively. Leda knew what that meant: Avery didn’t want to look at it, because the moment she did, Calliope became real.
Thank god Avery was so pretty, Leda thought, because otherwise this world would destroy her with its unforgiving ruthlessness. And thank god that Avery had Leda, to protect her. “Here, I’ll look her up,” she offered, and muttered to her contacts. “Calliope Brown, feeds search.” When she found the right account, way down the page, she gasped.
“What is it?” Avery asked.
“Send link to Avery,” Leda said, and watched as the page appeared on Avery’s contacts too.
Calliope’s page only dated back a couple of months. There were pictures of New York, a few from Africa, and before that—nothing.
“Maybe she’s new to the whole feeds thing,” Avery said, but even she sounded dubious.
Leda rolled her eyes. “Every ten-year-old on the planet has an account. This is seriously bizarre. It’s like she never existed at all until she met Atlas this summer.”
No way was this a coincidence. Something was going on, and whatever it was, Leda was determined to find out.
The decision sent a wave of energy snapping through her, a renewal of confidence in herself—and a fierce determination to fix this for Avery. They were friends again, and therefore any enemy of Avery’s was now an enemy of hers. She was still Leda Cole, damn it, and no one hurt the people she cared about.
Avery’s voice was shaky. “Can we talk about something else, please?”
Leda nodded, temporarily setting aside her quest for retribution. “Like what?”
“Like what’s made you all happy and easygoing. Is it a boy?”
“Maybe.” Leda’s face flushed at the thought of Watt.
Their queso arrived, a skillet of melted cheese topped with shaved green onions, and Leda used the opportunity to change the subject. “You go first, though. What else have I missed?”
Avery scooped queso onto her plate with a quinoa chip. “Everything. This Dubai party is kind of a mess, to be honest. You should see how worked up my mom has gotten …”
Leda sat there, listening as Avery poured her heart out, feeling like her own heart was expanding within her chest. She had her best friend back. And there was a new boy in her life—a confusing, dangerously addictive one.
Everything was finally starting to right itself in her world.