Katharine McGee - The Dazzling Heights

The Observatory was one of the few places in the Tower that protruded out past the floor below it. Leda had never understood how the school had gotten the zoning permits for it, but she was glad now that they had, because it meant they could build the Oval Eye: a concave oval in the floor, about three meters long and two meters wide, made of triple-reinforced flexiglass. A glimpse of how high they really were, up here near the top of the Tower.

Leda edged closer to the Oval Eye. It was dark down there, nothing but shadows, and a few stray lights bobbing in what she thought were the public gardens on the fiftieth floor. What the hell , she thought wildly, and stepped out onto the flexiglass.

This sort of behavior was definitely off-limits, but Leda knew the structure would support her. She glanced down. Between her ballet flats was nothing but empty air, the impossible, endless space between her and the laminous darkness far below. This is what Eris saw when I pushed her , Leda thought, and despised herself.

She sank down, not caring that there was nothing protecting her from a two-mile fall except a few layers of fused carbon. Pulling her knees to her chest, she lowered her forehead and closed her eyes.

A shaft of light sliced into the room. Leda’s head shot up in panic. No one else had access to the Observatory except the rest of the student council, and the astronomy professors. What would she say to explain herself?

“Leda?”

Her heart sank as she realized who it was. “What are you doing here, Avery?”

“Same thing as you, I guess.”

Leda felt caught off guard. She hadn’t been alone with Avery since that night—when Leda confronted Avery about being with Atlas, and Avery led her up onto the roof, and everything spun violently out of control. She wanted desperately to say something, but her mind had strangely frozen. What could she say, with all the secrets she and Avery had made together, buried together?

After a moment, Leda was shocked to hear footsteps approaching, as Avery walked over to sit on the opposite edge of the Oval.

“How did you get in?” she couldn’t help asking. She wondered if Avery was still talking to Watt, the lower-floor hacker who’d helped Leda find out Avery’s secret in the first place—Leda hadn’t spoken to him since that night, either. But with the quantum computer he was hiding, Watt could hack basically anything.

Avery shrugged. “I asked the principal if I could have access to this room. It helps me, being here.”

Of course , Leda thought bitterly, she should have known it was as simple as that. Nothing was off-limits to the perfect Avery Fuller.

“I miss her too, you know,” Avery said quietly.

Leda looked down into the silent vastness of the night, to protect herself from what she saw in Avery’s eyes.

“What happened that night, Leda?” Avery whispered. “What were you on ?”

Leda thought of all the various pills she’d popped that day, as she’d sunk ever deeper into a hot, angry maelstrom of regret. “It was a rough day for me. I learned the truth about a lot of people that day—people I had trusted. People who used me,” she said at last, and was perversely pleased to see Avery wince.

“I’m sorry,” Avery told her. “But, Leda, please. Talk to me.”

More than anything, Leda wanted to tell Avery all of it: how Leda had caught her cheating scumbag of a father having an affair with Eris; and how awful she’d felt, realizing that Atlas had only ever slept with her in a fucked-up attempt to forget Avery. How she’d had to drug Watt to uncover that particular grain of truth.

But the thing about the truth was that once you learned it, it became impossible to unlearn. No matter how many pills Leda popped, it was still there, lurking in the corners of her mind like an unwanted guest. There weren’t enough pills in the world to make it go away. So Leda had confronted Avery—screamed at her atop the roof, without fully knowing what she was saying; feeling disoriented and dizzy in the oxygen-thin air. Then Eris had come up the stairs, and told Leda she was sorry , as if a fucking apology would fix the damage she’d done to Leda’s family. Why had Eris kept walking toward her even when Leda told her to stop? It wasn’t Leda’s fault that she’d tried to push Eris away.

She had just pushed too hard.

All Leda wanted now was to confess everything to her best friend, to let herself cry about it like a child.

But stubborn, sticky pride muffled the words in her throat, kept her eyes narrowed and her head held high. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said wearily. What did it matter anyway? Eris was already gone.

“Then help me understand. We don’t have to be this way, Leda—threatening each other like this. Why won’t you just tell everyone it was an accident? I know you never meant to hurt her.”

They were the same words she’d thought to herself so many times, yet hearing them spoken by Avery wakened a cold panic that grasped at Leda like a fist.

Avery didn’t get it, because everything came so easily to her. But Leda knew what would happen if she tried to tell the truth. There would probably be an investigation, and a trial, all made worse by the fact that Leda had tried to cover it up—and the fact that Eris had been sleeping with Leda’s dad would inevitably come to light. It would put Leda’s family, her mom , through hell; and Leda wasn’t stupid. She knew that looked like a damned convincing motive for pushing Eris to her death.

What right did Avery think she had, anyway, gliding in here and granting absolution like some kind of goddess?

“Don’t you dare tell anyone. If you tell, I swear you’ll be sorry.” The threat fell angrily into the silence. It seemed to Leda that the room had grown several degrees colder.

She scrambled to her feet, suddenly desperate to leave. As she stepped from the Oval Eye onto the carpet, Leda felt something fall out of her bag. The two bright pink sleeping pills.

“Glad to see some things haven’t changed.” Avery’s voice was utterly flat.

Leda didn’t bother telling her how wrong she was. Avery would always see the world the way she wanted to.

At the doorway she paused to glance back. Avery had slid to kneel in the middle of the Oval Eye, her hands pressed against the flexiglass surface, her gaze focused on some point far below. There was something morbid and futile about it, as if she were kneeling there in prayer, trying to bring Eris back to life.

It took Leda a moment to realize that Avery was crying. She had to be the only girl in the world who somehow became more beautiful when she cried; her eyes turning an even brighter blue, the tears on her cheeks magnifying the startling perfection of her face. And just like that, Leda remembered all the reasons she resented Avery.

She turned away, leaving her former best friend to weep alone on a tiny fragment of sky.

THE GIRL STUDIEDher reflection in the floor-length smart-mirrors that lined the walls, lifting her mouth in a narrow red smile of approval. She wore a navy romper that was at least three years out of fashion, but deliberately so; she loved watching the other women in the hotel shoot envious glances toward her long, tanned legs. The girl tossed her hair, knowing the warm gold of her earrings brought out her caramel highlights, and fluttered her false lashes—not the implanted kind, but real organic ones; grown from her own eyelids after a long, and painful, genetic repair procedure in Switzerland.

It all exuded a tousled, effortless, glamorous sort of sexiness. Very Calliope Brown , the girl thought, with a frisson of pleasure.