The Dazzling Heights

Across the way, Calliope was leaning forward to whisper something, her gown so thin it was almost nonexistent. Avery felt a darkness rising up in her—a vast empty blackness, like a pool with no bottom. She reached down to feel along the uneven hem of her gown. For some reason its frayed, flawed imperfection was reassuring.

“If your mom lent her those earrings, then she and Atlas must be getting serious,” Risha pointed out.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” Avery realized she was grinding her back teeth, sending a dull ache throughout her jaw, and forced a tight smile. “I’m going to get a drink.”

She turned around abruptly, not inviting Risha to join her, and tried to push her way toward the bar. But of course, Avery Fuller didn’t need to elbow through the crowds like a normal person. They fell back instinctively, as if she had a spotlight trained on her, just like always.

It was all the same, wasn’t it? The same women moving across the terraces in a familiar click of heels, the same men murmuring to one another in low tones about the same things they always discussed, their eyebrows drawn together in the same clichéd expression of concern. It all struck Avery as futile, and purposeless. Here they were, halfway around the world, and yet everyone was stuck in their little loops—engaging in the old tired flirtations, doomed to the same disappointments.

“Avery! I’ve been looking all over for you!” Leda hurried toward her. Her face was flushed, her eyes shining fierce with determination.

“Here I am,” Avery said uselessly. She searched within herself for the best smile she could find, but it came out shaky. Leda saw, and narrowed her gaze at Avery; a sort of knowing, you-didn’t-fool-me expression.

“We need to talk. In private,” Leda insisted.

She led Avery backward through the party, through the enormous gilded arch that opened into a luxury housing development within the dark tower. A few partygoers were here, milling about the empty space; everything too pristine and perfect, with that un-lived-in construction glow. Avery had been in plenty of her father’s towers while they were still unoccupied, and each time she found it a little unnerving. Empty windows gazed out from the apartments’ front hallways like soulless eyes.

“What’s going on?” she asked when Leda finally came to a halt. They stepped too close to one of the for-sale apartments, and little ads popped up on both their contacts. They quickly edged closer to the middle of the street.

“I have news, about Calliope.” Leda took a deep breath and lowered her voice dramatically. “She’s a con artist.”

“What?”

Leda gave a pitiless, dangerous smile as she explained.

The story she told sounded more like fiction than reality. It was a story of two women, mother and daughter, who worked together, skimming a cheated, stolen existence off the surface of the world. She told Avery how they tricked their way into expensive hotels—and meals, and clothes—always managing to vanish into thin air before actually paying. How Calliope’s mom had been married over a dozen times, only to clean out the joint bank account after each wedding and disappear. How she and her daughter moved constantly from place to place, always changing their names and their fingerprints and their retinas, always finding new people to take advantage of.

“You can’t be serious,” Avery croaked when Leda was finally done talking.

Leda pulled out her tablet and showed Avery photographic evidence. Calliope, in dozens of school photos under different aliases. Her mother being arrested for fraud in Marrakech, then breaking out of prison under unusual circumstances. The marital records of Calliope’s mom, with signed marriage certificates under all the fake names.

“I told you something was off about that girl!” Leda exclaimed, sounding decidedly proud of herself for having figured it out. “Don’t you see? Atlas is her next target!”

Avery took a step back, her red heels fumbling beneath her, and the stupid real estate ads scrolled across her vision again. She shook her head angrily to dispel them. “How did you learn all this, if they’re always getting their retinas replaced?” She still couldn’t quite believe Leda’s story. It felt too outlandish, too impossible.

“Facial recognition. It doesn’t matter.” Leda gave a little wave to dismiss Avery’s concerns. “Don’t you see? This whole thing isn’t Atlas’s fault—he’s being played by a high-rolling professional con artist.”

A small part of Avery marveled at the fact that Leda, of all people, was encouraging her to forgive Atlas. “You don’t understand. We ended things for good.”

“Why?” Leda asked baldly.

Avery scuffed her shoe back and forth on the shining new carbonite street in the perfect new community her dad had built. “I wouldn’t run away with him. We went home with other people from the underwater party. It all just felt impossible. I don’t know.” She sighed. “I’m not sure if we even have a chance anymore.”

“Well, you’ll never know if you don’t at least try,” Leda pointed out with ruthless pragmatism. She gave Avery a curious look. “Besides, even if nothing happens between you and Atlas, you aren’t really going to let that girl get away with trying to seduce him and steal from him, are you? We have to get rid of her!”

Avery bit her lip, a spectrum of emotions tumbling confusedly through her mind. “It’s just so … unbelievable.”

“I know.” Outside, they heard the sound of a lone violin playing itself. “What are you going to do?” Leda asked after a moment.

“Rip my mom’s earrings from her earlobes,” Avery said, to which Leda responded with a strangled, choked laugh. “After that, I’m not sure.”

“Whatever you’re planning, let me know if I can help.” Leda gave a small smile, and suddenly they’d traveled back in time, and it was just the two of them again in seventh grade; promising that they would always have each other’s backs. Plotting to take over the world.

Avery pulled Leda into a brusque hug. “Thank you. I don’t know how you do it, but thank you,” she murmured.

“Anything for you, Avery. Always.” Seeming to sense that her friend needed some time alone, Leda retreated.

Avery stayed awhile, walking slowly through the overpriced ghost town, with its expensive finishes and soaring ceilings and private gated entrances to each townhouse. She needed to make sense of everything in her bruised, disoriented mind.

Calliope was a fraud. She’d been targeting Atlas since the beginning, probably since Africa.

Avery thought back to her conversation with Atlas after the Under the Sea party—when in the cold light of day, they’d decided that it was too hard, that they should take a step back. She tried to remember which of them had been the one to say it first. She had a sinking, sticky feeling that it had been her.

And anyway, hadn’t she put the initial strain on their relationship, by telling Atlas they couldn’t run away together but refusing to explain why? Looking back, Avery felt like she’d leaned unfairly on Atlas in the wake of Eris’s death; that she’d taken and taken from him, without ever stopping to ask how he was feeling. Between that and the secrecy—the fact that they were constantly on edge, living in fear that their parents might catch them—it was more than any relationship could bear.

Then Calliope—or whatever the hell that girl’s real name was—had come along, with her empty smile and empty words, and set her sights on Atlas. Did she actually think she could just stroll into their lives, take what she wanted, then breeze out of town again? That bitch had another thing coming.

Avery missed Atlas so fiercely that the force of it clawed at her chest. She reached up roughly to wipe at her tears. She hadn’t even realized she was crying.

The day Atlas told her he loved her had been the happiest day of Avery’s life. It was the first day she’d felt truly alive. As if the world up till that moment had existed only in shades of black and white, like this ridiculous party, then exploded into Technicolor.

She loved Atlas and she always would. Loving him wasn’t even a choice. It was hardwired into her very DNA; and Avery knew, deep down, that it was the only love her heart would ever be capable of, for all the days of her life.