The Dazzling Heights

“Miss Fuller,” said the store manager, snapping to instant attention. Calliope studied the other girl with markedly more interest. So, she was the type of person who got recognized at places like this. Was it for her beauty, or her money, or both? “I didn’t realize you were a party of four today. I’ll add another facialette station to your cluster.”

He began to usher them all forward just as another girl walked out of the inner lounge and froze at the sight of Avery.

“Hi, Leda.” Avery’s voice was distinctly chilly.

The new arrival—a thin black girl with wide eyes and darting, nervous gestures—pulled herself up to her full height. It wasn’t very tall. “Avery. Jess, Risha.” Her eyes lit on Calliope, but she apparently decided it wasn’t worth introducing herself. “Enjoy your facial,” she said on her way out, managing to turn the innocuous phrase into something almost vindictive.

“Thanks, we will!” Calliope said cheerfully, delighting at the three horrified expressions that whirled toward her. But she didn’t give a damn about these girls’ intra-clique drama. She was here for a free facial, thank you very much.

Soon the four of them were seated at the gleaming white facial bar, clutching glasses of chilled grapefruit water. A bot wheeled over and handed them each a pink-and-white-stitched apron. “To keep the facial products from splattering onto your clothes,” the facial attendant explained, in answer to Calliope’s curious look.

“Oh, right. We wouldn’t want the girls to ruin their fabulous uniforms,” Calliope deadpanned, and was gratified to hear Avery laugh.

A row of lasers on the opposite wall turned on, aiming beams of focused photons toward the girls’ faces. Calliope instinctively shut her eyes, though she knew the lasers were too precise to hurt her. She felt nothing but a slight tickle across her nerves as the laser skimmed over the surface of her skin, collecting data on her oil levels and pH balance and chemical composition.

“So,” she asked Avery, who was sitting to her left, “what’s the deal with that Leda girl?”

Avery seemed startled by the question. “She’s a friend of ours,” she said quickly.

“She didn’t seem that friendly.” The lasers began to flash more quickly, signaling that they were almost finished with their dermatological analysis.

“Well, she was a close friend of mine until recently,” Avery amended.

“What happened? Was it about a boy?” It usually was, with girls like this.

Avery stiffened, though her face remained immobile as the laser traced across her poreless porcelain skin. Calliope wondered what they would even give her; she was so obviously already perfect.

“It’s a long story,” Avery answered, which was proof enough to Calliope that she was right. She felt a momentary stab of sympathy for Leda. That must suck, being the girl who had to compete with Avery.

A holographic menu popped up at Calliope’s eye level, with treatment recommendations. Next to her, she heard the other girls chatting in low voices as they debated which add-ons to select: a soothing cucumber mask, a hydrogen infusion, a crushed-ruby scrub. Calliope checked the boxes for everything.

A steaming cocoon dropped down from the ceiling before each of them, and the girls leaned forward and closed their eyes.

“Avery,” said the brunette girl—Jess, Calliope remembered. “Your parents’ holiday party is still happening this year, right?”

Calliope’s ears perked up a little at the mention of a party. She turned her head just slightly to the left, letting more of the steam hit the right side of her face, so that she could listen.

“Didn’t you get the invitation?” Avery asked.

Jess seemed to quickly back down. “Yes, but I just thought, after everything that happened … Never mind.”

Avery sighed, but she didn’t sound angry, only regretful. “There’s no way my dad would cancel. During the party, he’s going to announce the completion of The Mirrors—that’s what he named the Dubai Tower, since it has two sides that are mirror images.”

Dubai Tower? Suddenly Calliope remembered what the sales associate had called Avery when they walked in, and the puzzle pieces clicked into place.

Fuller Investments was the company that had patented all the structural innovations needed to build towers this tall: the ultra-compounded steel supports, the earthquake shock protectors stuffed between every floor, the oxygenated air that was pumped throughout the higher floors to prevent altitude sickness. They had built the New York Tower, the first global supertower, almost twenty years ago.

Which meant that Avery Fuller was very wealthy indeed.

“That sounds like fun,” Calliope chimed in. In her lap, she clenched one hand atop the other, then flipped them over again. She’d been to parties far more exclusive and incredible than this, she tried to remind herself: like the one at that club in Mumbai with the champagne bottle as big as a small car, or the mountainside lodge in Tibet where they’d grown hallucinogenic tea. But all those parties faded in her memory—as they always did—when confronted by the specter of some other future party that Calliope wasn’t invited to.

A puff of steam rose from the top of Avery’s cocoon as she gave the answer Calliope had been hoping for. “If you’re not busy, you should come.”

“I’d love to,” Calliope said, unable to keep the excitement from her voice. She heard Avery mutter under her breath, and an instant later the envelope icon in the top of her vision lit up as her contacts received the message. Calliope bit her lip to keep from smiling as she opened it.

Fuller Investments Annual Holiday Party, read the scrolling gold calligraphy, against a black starry background. 12/12/18. The Thousandth Floor.

It was kind of badass, Calliope admitted to herself, that the only address they needed to write was their floor. Clearly they owned the whole thing.

The girls’ chatter moved on, to something about a school assignment, then a boy that Jess was dating. Calliope let her eyes flutter shut. She did love rich things, she thought with unadulterated pleasure, now that she got them for real—and usually on someone else’s dime.

It hadn’t always been like this. When she was younger, Calliope had known about these sorts of things, but never actually experienced them. She could look, but never touch. It was a particularly excruciating sort of torture.

It felt like a long time ago, now.

She’d grown up in a tiny flat in one of the older, quieter neighborhoods of London, where none of the buildings stretched higher than thirty floors and people still grew real plants out on their balconies. Calliope never asked who her father was, because she honestly didn’t care. It had always been Calliope and her mom, and she was fine with that.

Elise—she’d had a different name back then, her real name—had been the personal assistant to Mrs. Houghton, a stuffy rich woman with a pinched nose and watery eyes. She insisted on being called “Lady Houghton,” claiming that she descended from an obscure branch of the now defunct royal family. Elise managed Mrs. Houghton’s calendar, her correspondence, her closet: all the myriad details of her useless, gilded life.

Elise and Calliope’s life felt so dull in contrast. Not that they could complain: their apartment should have been adequate, with its self-filling refrigerator and cleaning bots and a subscription to all the major holo channels. They even had windows in both bedrooms, and a decent closet. Yet Calliope quickly learned to see their life as something unforgivably drab, illuminated only by the occasional touches of glamour that her mom brought home from the Houghtons’.

“Look what I have,” Elise would proclaim, her voice taut with excitement, each time she walked in the door with something new.

Calliope always hurried over, holding her breath as her mom unwrapped the package, wondering what it contained this time. An embroidered silk ball gown with sequins missing, which Mrs. Houghton had asked Elise to take back for repairs. Or a handpainted china plate that was one of a kind, and could Elise please track down the artist and have her make another? Even jewelry, on occasion: a sapphire ring or a diamond choker that needed to be professionally cleaned.

Reverently, Calliope would reach out to touch the sumptuous fur shrug, or crystal wine decanter, or her absolute favorite, the supple Senreve shoulder bag in a shocking bright pink. She would look up into mother’s eyes and see her own childlike longing reflected there, like a candle.