The Dazzling Heights

“Watt? I messaged you to meet me at the party.”

He bit back a sarcastic reply. “I wanted to pick you up,” he said, with as genuine a smile as he could manage.

The flowers, Watt! Nadia prodded.

“Oh, um, these are for you,” he added, awkwardly thrusting out his arm to hand Leda the bouquet.

“Whatever. Let’s just go.” She tossed the flowers on an entry hall table, where they would no doubt be scooped up and deposited in a vase somewhere, and pulled Watt forcefully forward.

Conversation has been known to ease social awkwardness, Nadia reminded him as they settled stiffly into the hover’s interior. Watt would have laughed if this weren’t already such a disaster.

“So, who’s throwing this Hudson Conservancy party anyway?” he attempted.

Leda shot him an irritated glance. “The Hudson River Conservancy,” she said curtly.

“No, really?”

They spent the rest of the ride downTower in silence.

But when they got off on the ground floor and walked out onto Pier Four, Watt couldn’t hide his surprise. The entire space—normally crowded with children clutching snack-pops, or tourists watching the trained schools of flying fish—was empty. Nadia, where’s the party?

Down there. She directed his gaze to a set of stairs that led straight into the water.

“Wait a minute,” Watt said aloud. “Is this is an Under the Sea–themed party that’s actually under the sea?”

“And here I thought you knew everything,” Leda snapped, and let out a breath. “Yes, the party is at the bottom of the Hudson. Haven’t you heard they’re growing crops down there?”

Watt knew that. Apparently all the junk that people had tossed into the river for centuries somehow made the soil on the river’s floor incredibly fertile. The New York Department of Urban Affairs had started farming potatoes down there, illuminated by tiny solar-lamp submarines that floated back and forth over the rows of crops. But Watt had never thought that people would actually go down there—certainly not for a party.

Then again, he’d spent enough time watching the upper floors that he shouldn’t be surprised by anything they did anymore.

The murky river water lapped around the covered staircase, protected by a cylindrical tunnel made of some elastic hydrocarbon. Watt ran his hand lightly along the wall as he walked down the stairs; the material gave way easily, leaving an indentation where he’d traced his fingers as if it were iridescent cake frosting. The steps shimmered and changed color beneath his dress shoes, like something out of that old Disney holo about the mermaid.

Then they reached the bottom and Watt saw the party, right there on the floor of the river, eighty meters below the surface.

The ceiling arced overhead like an enormous crystal fishbowl. Instead of its usual muddy brown, the water outside looked a deep marine blue. Watt wondered if they’d tinted the flexiglass to give it that color. Clusters of well-dressed men and women swirled around in effortlessly coordinated motions, like groupings of tropical fish.

Leda started instantly toward the bar, which was draped in silk-spun netting, nodding at a few other guests as she passed. Watt trotted to keep up. “Are you planning on talking to me at all tonight, or am I just here as arm candy?” His campaign to make her like him was hardly off to a great start.

Leda flashed him a look. “‘Arm candy’ would imply that you’re a male model. I believe the term you’re looking for is ‘meat puppet.’”

He started to protest, then realized that a smile curled at the edges of her lips. So, Leda Cole had a sense of humor, and a bit of a dark one at that. Maybe he would manage to have some fun tonight after all.

They had paused near an array of oversized fake seashells, a strip of sand along one side to approximate a beach. Nadia projected the script that he and Cynthia had rehearsed onto his contacts, but Watt figured he should go with a compliment first. “You look beautiful tonight, Leda,” he said, gaining confidence as he spoke the familiar line.

She rolled her eyes. “Cut the crap, Watt.”

This is why I gave you the script, so that you could read it, Nadia chided him.

Watt shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I just …”

She cursed. You should too, according to psychological studies about mirroring, Nadia offered.

“Why the hell did you bring me here?” he said abruptly.

Not quite what I had in mind.

Leda tossed her head in that careful way of hers, as if the motion were practiced. Which, Watt realized, it probably was. “Because when you aren’t being stupid, Watt, you’re quite useful. I was thinking that you and Nadia could help me keep an eye on people. If you’re able to communicate with her remotely, that is.”

If only you knew. “What people?” he asked, deliberately avoiding the question about Nadia.

“Just anyone who could cause me trouble,” Leda declared. “Mainly Avery and Rylin. And you, of course,” she added, with some amusement.

In other words, everyone who knew her darkest secret. Something about Leda’s flippant nervousness made Watt almost sad. He might have pitied her, if he didn’t resent her so much.

“Leda, everyone isn’t always out to get you,” he said, not really expecting her to respond.

“Of course they are. This is all a zero-sum game.”

Nadia had to translate that one for Watt. It meant a competition, where there was only one clear prize and one clear winner. He lifted his eyes to Leda in evident shock. “This is a party,” he said slowly, as if he were speaking another language and she needed time for her contacts to translate. “Not a fight to the death.”

“No, that’s exactly what it is. And I refuse to lose just because I didn’t grow up like the rest of them.” Leda’s voice was like steel. “You wouldn’t understand, Watt, but it’s a shitty feeling, always worrying that you’re not good enough.”

He tensed in sudden anger. “Leda, my parents moved here from Iran and took underpaid jobs wiping old people’s asses, for my sake. If I don’t get into MIT, it will crush them. And did I mention that MIT takes at most one student a year from my high school, and I’m up against my best friends?” He leaned toward her, his heartbeat surprisingly erratic. “So I would say that I know exactly how shitty it feels, worrying that you’re not good enough.”

The space between them pulsed with anger and something else that Watt couldn’t identify. “I don’t care what you think of me,” she said at last. “But I’m done letting other people use me. Especially the ones I care about.”

Watt knew she was thinking of Atlas, who had halfheartedly attempted to date Leda earlier this year in an attempt to hide—or overcome—his feelings for Avery.

“Come on.” He held out a hand. “We’re at a party. I refuse to let you sulk like this.”

“I’m not sulking,” Leda argued, but she moved toward the dance floor with more alacrity than he would have guessed.

They swayed there for a while, neither of them speaking. Watt was surprised at how little resistance Leda offered as he led her through the dance, how easily she fit into his arms. It felt like the tension was seeping slowly from her like poison from a wound. She curled her arms around his back and leaned her head on his chest, closing her eyes as if to momentarily shut out the world.

Watt wondered how many of Leda’s issues were a direct result of everything that had happened with the Fullers—the combined pain of losing her best friend, and of finding out that Atlas had never actually cared about her—and how much was her own innate restlessness. Clearly, she’d suffered a lot, and at the hands of people she trusted. Yet Watt suspected that no matter how perfect her life was, part of Leda would always be stirring up trouble, searching for something without quite knowing what it was.

He had a terrifying suspicion that if it weren’t for Nadia’s voice in his head, he might be the same.

“There are other schools besides MIT, you know,” Leda said after a moment, interrupting his thoughts.

“Not for what I want to study.”

Leda tipped her face up to his, her hands clasped behind his head. “I’m shocked at your lack of confidence in yourself. You can build Nadia, yet you’re worried about something as prosaic as college applications?”