The Dazzling Heights

“Atlas. Do you even want to go to Dubai?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Does anyone ever really know what they want? Do you?”

“Yes,” Calliope said automatically.

Atlas’s eyes were sharp on hers. “What?”

She opened her mouth to give another empty, flippant answer—something like, how could I want for anything, my life is perfect—but found that the words crumbled to ash in her mouth. She was tired of telling people exactly what she thought they needed to hear. “To be loved,” she said simply. They might have been the truest words she’d ever spoken aloud.

“You are loved.”

Calliope let out a breath. “By my mom, sure.”

“And all your friends, back home,” Atlas said urgently.

Calliope thought again of Daera, the only real friend she’d ever had, whom she’d left without even saying good-bye. “I don’t actually have that many friends,” she confessed. “I just … I don’t make friends easily, I guess.”

“You have me.” Atlas flipped his palm over so that it was touching hers, their fingers interlaced. His hand felt very warm and steady.

Calliope looked over at him, but Atlas was staring at the window, to where the sun was setting below the jagged horizon of rooftops and spires, a blaze of crimson and fire. Friends, he’d said, but friends that held hands.

He felt her gaze and turned to her, his face lifting into a smile. It was good enough for now, Calliope thought, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

AVERY

AVERY LEANED AGAINST her heavy bedroom door, bracing herself for the walk down the hallway. Over the past week, that walk—sixteen steps; she’d counted them the other day—had become its own distinct sort of agony. Here in her room she was safe, but the moment she opened that door, she risked seeing Atlas.

Losing someone you loved was harrowing enough already, Avery reflected, without the added cruelty of constantly running into that person.

Part of her still refused to believe that this wasn’t all some terrible dream, that she wouldn’t wake up and everything would be normal again, Eris still alive and Atlas still hers and Calliope Brown off in Africa where she belonged. She would have given anything to go back to that awful night, except this time she would keep the trapdoor to the roof firmly shut.

But that wasn’t the world she lived in, and Avery could ignore the real world for only so long. Slinging her red gym bag over one shoulder, she stepped out into the hallway—just as Atlas turned the corner from his room, headed the same direction, several boxes rolling along behind him.

It seemed that Avery’s body was suddenly frozen in nitrocryo. She couldn’t move a single cell, couldn’t even breathe.

“You’re leaving,” she said into the fractured silence. For some reason she hadn’t thought that Atlas would be leaving yet, at least not until next weekend’s party. The sight of him standing in the entry hall—surrounded by all his things, his eyes shadowed, wearing the soft brown sweater she’d always loved—struck Avery with a terrible finality. This was really it, she thought dazedly. Atlas was leaving, and he hadn’t even been planning to tell her good-bye.

“Actually, this is just stuff I’m sending ahead,” Atlas explained, and the panic in her chest relaxed a little. “Dad let me pick out an apartment in the new tower. I wanted to have some of my things waiting for me, you know?” His voice was stiff and mechanical.

“That makes sense.” She didn’t know what else to say. When would it stop hurting, seeing Atlas? Maybe it never would. She would become like those amputees from before they could regrow body parts; her relationship with Atlas like a ghost limb that she kept trying to use, even though it was no longer there.

Whether it was tomorrow or a month from now, he was still ultimately leaving. Avery stood there looking at him, thinking of all the things they had been to each other—all the jokes they’d shared as children, the secrets exchanged; the way Atlas had been the cool older brother, helping her navigate high school. And then, of course, all the secret kisses and whispered I love yous of the past year.

Now here they were, with nothing left to say to each other.

“Sorry, I’m late to aquaspin.” Avery hiked her bag higher up on her shoulder and moved to the elevator. The tension in the air was so thick she imagined she could see it, like water droplets hanging there, distorting her vision.

When she finally got to the aquaspin studio at Altitude, she peeled off her clothes with an audible sigh of relief. Wearing her old one-piece from swim team, she quickly slid into the pool, which was full of freshly imported Himalayan salt water.

It looked like an almost-full class today, though there was still an empty bike in the corner of the front row. Avery waded through the waist-deep water toward it, then lifted the seat to fit her long legs. Her eyes were adjusting to the dimness of the studio, which was illuminated by nothing except the floating fairy lights that danced above the water’s surface. Serene spa-like music emanated from all the speakers, creating the feel that they were in a mermaid’s cave.

None of it could relax Avery today. She kept mentally replaying her conversation with Atlas, wishing she’d said something more to him than “that makes sense.” She almost wished that she’d screamed at him instead, or punched him—anything to relieve the press of emotions roiling through her. It felt like her blood had turned to jet fuel and was bubbling hot near the surface of her skin, burning her from the inside.

A gong sounded to indicate the start of class, and a holo of a thin, tanned woman on a bike appeared on the opposite brick wall. A few of the surrounding men and women in class muttered to their contacts as they logged into the competition board. Avery had never done it before, but why not? “Pedal Board,” she said aloud. A silver icon labeled with her bike number immediately appeared on the wall next to the dozen other bikes, all of them moving in a holographic race to the finish line. The studio echoed with a deep electronic beat.

Avery picked up speed, her legs sloshing the pedals as she pushed endlessly against the heavy resistance of the salt water. She tried to lose herself in the movement, to work so hard that she would cut off the oxygen to her damn brain, so that for at least a few blissful minutes she wouldn’t torture herself with thoughts of Atlas.

Sweat poured down her back. Calluses were forming on her hands where they gripped the handlebars. Avery realized that she was neck and neck for first place with someone on bike eighteen, in the back row. She didn’t know who it was and it wouldn’t have mattered if she did; she just felt a sudden, primal resolve to win. It was as if all the mistakes and problems in her life had crystallized into this single race, and if she didn’t win, Avery was doomed to be this miserable forever. She raced as if the act of doing so could change things—as if happiness was right there ahead of her, and if she went fast enough, she might be able to catch it. She tasted salt, and wasn’t sure whether it was the water, or her sweat, or maybe her tears.

And then it was over and she looked up and almost cried from relief because she’d won; she’d beaten bike eighteen, just barely. She slipped off her bike and ducked her head under the water, not caring that her hair would get crunchy from the salt. She felt a strange and bizarre urge to weep. I’m a mess, she thought bleakly, and finally pushed herself out of the pool.

“I had a feeling that was you. On bike seven?” Leda was standing at the slatted wooden bench that lined the room, hands on her narrow hips.

“You were bike eighteen?” Of course it was Leda, Avery thought, somehow unsurprised.

Leda nodded.

They both stood there, immobile as statues, as the rest of the class streamed past into the golden light of the hallway. Neither of them seemed willing to make the first move. Leda wrapped a towel around her waist, tucking its corner into a makeshift sarong, and suddenly Avery registered the bright blue print along the edge of the towel. “That’s from Maine,” she heard herself say.

Leda looked down and shrugged. “I guess it is.” She traced the pattern for a moment before looking up at Avery, her eyes glinting in the dim light. “Remember that time we went hunting for colored sea glass because we thought we could give it to your grandmother? And that huge wave knocked me over?”