The Dazzling Heights

Like always, the thought of that night—of Eris—made Leda feel cold all over. It’s not my fault, she reminded herself, but she knew deep down that the words were a lie. It was her fault. She’d pushed Eris; and now she was at a party, alone and unwanted, and maybe that was what she deserved anyway.

“There you are,” she exclaimed. Watt was standing alone, hands behind his back as he studied one of the weird modern art installations near the exit.

“You told me to back the hell off. So I did,” Watt pointed out logically.

Leda bristled a little at the reminder of her earlier words. “I noticed you didn’t leave Avery alone,” she said snidely.

The dig didn’t elicit the reaction she’d hoped for. Watt just shrugged and offered her his arm, not angry at all. “Can I take you home?”

Leda glanced around. The party was beginning to slow down: most people still here were either too old or too young for Leda to care about, including several freshmen from school who were clearly thrilled to be at a bar without an age-scanner. Her parents and Jamie had left over an hour ago. Leda tilted her head at Watt, still inexplicably determined to piss him off.

“You can take me home. But don’t get any ideas,” she warned.

Watt chuckled, not answering.

When they finally pulled up to her apartment, he walked around the hover and chivalrously opened the door for her. Leda brushed past him and stormed up the stairs without a backward glance. She felt like the flexiglass from that damned fishbowl they’d been partying in, holding back an endless muddy torrent and about to burst from the pressure.

“Good night, Leda.” Watt started toward the hover. Before she’d even thought about it, Leda was calling him back.

“I’m sorry, where do you think you’re going?”

Watt turned around. “Home?” he asked, as if it was a trick question.

“You don’t leave until I say you can leave.”

She watched in delight as the last vestiges of Watt’s self-control snapped and he stormed up the steps to her, his hands clenched in anger. “Seriously, Leda, you need to stop. What more do you want from me?”

What she wanted was an outburst, a reaction—something that she could push against. Watt was the only person in the world who knew what she’d done and would actually call her out on it, and she was sick of him playing nice when they both knew he would rather play dirty. She put her hands on his shoulders and shoved him.

Watt stumbled backward, clearly shocked by the physical contact. Finally. It felt good to do something.

The silence roared in her ears. Watt stared at her without blinking. “You’re despicable, you know that, right?” he said slowly.

Leda didn’t care. She was suddenly so sick of pretending, of making her whole life one massive charade where she went to school and to parties as if nothing at all was wrong. No one even knew her anymore.

Except Watt. He knew the unfathomable things she’d done, had seen the gaping black hole inside her, and for some reason that knowledge didn’t bother her.

“Congratulations, Watt, you know all my deepest, darkest secrets.” Her voice was low and throaty. “But guess what? I know yours too. Because we’re the same, Watt, you and me.”

“You and I are nothing alike.” He stepped close, his face right up next to hers, his breath ragged. “Go to hell, Leda.”

The entire world was spinning, and then it was still; and without Leda knowing how it had happened, Watt’s lips were on hers.

She pulled him forward, his hands tangled in her hair. Leda felt like her whole body was one exposed nerve ending. She tried not to make any noise as they stumbled into the hallway, but it didn’t matter; her parents’ master was on the third floor, and they wouldn’t expect her to bring home a boy anyway. She’d never done it before.

When they fell backward onto her bed, Watt hesitated. “I still can’t stand you,” he told her. His dark eyes danced with something she couldn’t read. She reached behind her back to unfasten her dress, feeling like a primordial, vengeful goddess.

“Like I said before, I can’t stand you, either. Now shut up,” she told him, and put her mouth over his.

Watt’s skin felt warm and oddly reassuring against hers. Leda clung wordlessly to him. It was glorious and dangerous and utterly without compassion. Watt could never find out how much she needed him right now, she promised herself: the strong clean lines of his body, the strong solidity of him, the bitter press of his anger pulling her back from the edge of the vortex. Holding her demons at bay, for just a little longer.

AVERY

AVERY STOOD AT the center of a group of people—Risha and Ming and a few others, their faces all seeming to float against the raucous backdrop of the dance floor. The world seemed to be tilting violently, as if the planet had spun wildly off course, and the sky was beneath her feet.

She had no idea how late it was. She’d been so studiously determined to ignore Atlas that she hadn’t seen him leave. Instead she’d focused all her energies on laughing and flirting, and drinking. She’d had so much to drink that her laughter eventually stopped feeling forced, and started feeling genuine.

“Hey there.” Cord’s hands were on her shoulders. Avery closed her eyes against the dizzying riot of color. “I think it’s time we got you home,” Cord said, and Avery managed an abbreviated nod.

Somehow she walked with him through the tattered remnants of the party, a smile fixed on her face. Cord held tight to her forearm as they went all the way up those steps and across the pier—whose stupid idea had it been to have an underwater party, anyway?—and back into the Tower, where Cord helped her into a waiting hover.

“Here.” He shrugged off the jacket of his tux and quickly placed it over her shoulders. Avery leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She listened to the familiar tapping as Cord entered an address on the hover’s internal view screen.

A frantic instinct forced her eyes open, and sure enough, there was her address on the thousandth floor, illuminated in bright white letters as their destination. “No,” she said automatically. “I don’t want to go home.”

Cord nodded, as if it were the most normal thing in the world for Avery to refuse to go back to her own apartment. He didn’t ask another question, and Avery didn’t answer. She just pulled his jacket tighter around her shoulders. She felt like she might vomit.

When they reached the 969th floor, Avery followed Cord into his massive living room. Her whole body was still shaking with shock, or maybe regret. Her skin felt hot and stretched tight over her body, as if her very flesh were expanding. She sank wordlessly onto the couch, her head in her hands.

“Do you want a T-shirt or anything?” Cord asked, with a nod toward her heavy dress.

His words broke through the stupor suffocating Avery, and she glanced around, truly seeing her surroundings for the first time. What was she doing at Cord’s apartment late at night? She stood up abruptly. “I’m sorry, I should go,” she said—only to stop in defeat.

There was a reason she hadn’t gone home. She didn’t want to see Atlas. She couldn’t face him, not yet.

Cord stood there watching it all. “Avery. What’s going on?” he asked carefully.

“I can’t go home. It’s—I’m—” she fumbled to speak, but there were no words to express her feelings. “I just can’t,” she finished, helplessly.

Cord was too understanding, or too polite, to press her. “Do you want to stay here?” he offered. “You know we have plenty of guest rooms.”

“Actually, yeah.” Avery was surprised to hear her voice crack. She swallowed anxiously and rubbed her hands over her arms. “And I’d love a T-shirt, if the offer still stands.”

“Of course.” Cord disappeared down the hallway.

Avery glanced curiously around the living room. She hadn’t been to Cord’s in a while, except for parties, when the space was packed with people. Of course, there was a time when she and Eris and Leda had been here constantly, with Cord and his friends—it was easiest here, with no adults to watch over them. Except for Brice, she supposed, but he didn’t really count. She remembered all the stupid things they’d done: like the time Cord pulled their gelatin shots from the rapid-freezer too early, and one of them exploded up onto the ceiling in a firework of gloppy green. Or the time that they’d set up a slip-and-slide down Cord’s enormous staircase, and they all ricocheted down from the second floor screaming and laughing. That had been Eris’s idea, Avery remembered; she’d seen it on some holo and wanted to re-create it, and of course they all joined in, caught up in her ineffable enthusiasm.