The Thousandth Floor

There was a garden up ahead with a fountain, blanketed in four-leaf clovers. Leda didn’t see anyone in either direction. She’d wait for Ross there, she decided, her ballet flats crunching on the gravel underfoot.

Then she caught sight of a familiar face, and stopped in the middle of the path.

Her dad was seated at that French restaurant, the one with the heavy glass windows that looked out over the rose garden. Strange, Leda thought; hadn’t she heard her mom say he was working late tonight? Maybe he’d gotten out early … but then, who was he with? Leda stood on tiptoe, craning her neck for a better look.

He was with a woman, and she most definitely wasn’t Leda’s mom. Not a woman, she realized, looking at the slight, pale form. A girl. Hell, she couldn’t be much older than Leda.

And then the girl tossed her hair, a gorgeous red-gold river, and Leda realized she knew that hair, even if she couldn’t see the face. It was unmistakable.

What the hell was her dad doing out with Eris?

“LipRead,” she said, focusing as closely as she could on Eris’s mouth, desperate to know what they were saying. A message flashed across her eyes: read obstructed, shorter distance necessary.

In spite of everything, Leda refused to believe the evidence in front of her. Surely there was some other explanation for what she was seeing—surely her dad wasn’t having an affair with Eris. There had to be another reason they were having dinner alone, on a Friday night, in secret.

She watched, dumbstruck, as Eris reached across the table to take something from her dad. Eris smiled. And then she stood up and leaned forward, and kissed Leda’s dad, the curtain of her hair blocking their mouths from Leda’s view.

Leda watched it all as if it were happening in slow-motion. Her feet felt rooted to the ground. She watched as Eris, still smiling, settled a scarf around her shoulders. It was the one Leda had seen in her dad’s briefcase, the ridiculously expensive one with scarlet flowers.

Leda stumbled forward blindly, wanting to scream. Or throw up. Now it all made sense: the weird way her father had been acting lately, the secrets he’d been keeping.

He was having an affair with Eris Dodd-Radson. Or Eris Dodd or whatever the hell her name was now.

“Leda?”

“About time!” she snapped, hurrying toward Ross. “What took you so long?”

“Somebody’s a little antsy.” He was young, with thick auburn hair and a face so beautiful and innocent it might have been surged onto him. His brown eyes were wide, thick lashed, with the slightly dilated pupils of someone wearing contacts—or someone constantly high. He blinked slowly, as if it were an unthinkable struggle to remain awake.

“So,” he said, “I, um, have some bad news. I’m out of xenperheidren.”

“What?” That was the whole reason Leda was meeting him, to get a pack of xenperheidren, and take them over and over until her world wasn’t ripping apart at the seams. “Are you serious?”

He winced. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“What the hell do you have?”

Ross opened his bag and began pulling things out one by one. “So I’ve got BFX, and some potshots, and relaxants, which honestly you need—”

“I’ll take it all,” Leda cut him off. She snatched the bag and began pawing through its contents.

“You know that’s enough drugs for several—”

“I told you I don’t care! I need it, okay?” she shrieked wildly. Ross didn’t say anything. “All of it but these,” she amended, grabbing the telltale black envelopes and shoving them back toward him. She knew from experience how terrible it was taking bad Spokes, and the fact that the prescription label had been tampered with was a sure sign that whoever’s those were, Leda didn’t want to get in their head.

Ross nodded and took the Spokes, his eyes still on her. “Why don’t you keep one,” he said after a beat. “Free of charge. If it’s a bad trip, no skin off your back, right?”

“It’s always the same with you, isn’t it?” Leda said, rolling her eyes, remembering when it had just been relaxants that Ross comped her. Guess I’ve graduated to the big leagues, she thought with a dark humor. But she kept the Spokes packet. It was too expensive to turn down.

She nodded to pay Ross and made a little motion that could have meant thanks or could have meant leave me alone. Ross shrugged, accepting her payment, and shoved his hands in his pockets before heading out.

Leda clutched her red leather satchel tight to her chest, the paper sack of drugs crinkling reassuringly inside. She needed to get high, so high that even the sight of Eris kissing her father was erased brutally from her mind.



AVERY



“I’M SO HAPPY Mom and Dad are gone,” Avery murmured. Her parents were at a wedding in Hawaii this weekend, not returning till Sunday.

“Me too.” Atlas lay stretched out behind her on the couch, one arm curled beneath her. Avery still had on her school uniform, but Atlas wasn’t wearing a shirt, and it was distracting her. “Mainly I’m just happy being with you, Aves,” he said, and kissed her lightly at the base of her neck.

Avery shivered. She loved when he touched her like that. She loved when he touched her any way at all, really, even if it was just brushing her foot under the table, the way he’d done at dinner all week.