The Dazzling Heights

She waited until the gentleman from the front desk was pointedly clearing his throat, making it awkward for everyone, before turning to Avery. She knew her cheeks were bright pink with embarrassment—she’d long ago learned to blush on command—and her eyes were gleaming with a silent entreaty. But none of the girls made any offer to help.

A boy would have paid by now; though out of self-interest, not chivalry. This was precisely why Calliope preferred lust to friendship. Fine, she thought in irritation; she would just have to do this the direct way.

“Avery?” she asked, with what she hoped was the right amount of self-consciousness. “Would you mind covering my facial, just till I figure out what’s going on with my account?”

“Oh. Sure.” Avery nodded good-naturedly and leaned forward, blinking a second time into the retinal scanner to cover the exorbitant cost of Calliope’s facial. Just as Calliope expected, she didn’t even seem to register the long list of add-ons. She probably had no idea how much her own facial had cost.

“Thank you,” Calliope began, but Avery waved away the gratitude.

“Don’t worry about it. Besides, the Nuage is one of my favorite places. I know where to find you,” Avery said lightly.

If only you knew. By the time Avery got around to collecting—if she ever even remembered to—Calliope and her mom would be long gone, living on a different continent under new names, no trace left of them in New York at all.

The many boys and girls who’d known Calliope these past few years, whose hearts she’d left carelessly strewn throughout the world, would have recognized her smirk. She felt sorry for Avery and Risha and Jess. They were headed back to their boring, routine lives, while Calliope’s existence was anything but boring.

She followed the other girls out the door, dropping the jar of cleanser into her bag—the special-edition Senreve bag in bold fuchsia, of course—with a satisfying clunk.

RYLIN (#ulink_9c56bdcd-927d-57af-82e4-1cff052da247)

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, Rylin stood before the grandiose carved entrance to the Berkeley School, immobile with shock. This couldn’t be her, Rylin Myers, wearing a collared shirt and pleated skirt, about to start at a preppy highlier private school. It felt like it was happening to another person, a bizarre series of images that someone else had dreamed.

She adjusted the strap of her tote bag over one shoulder, shifting her weight uncertainly. The world was brightening around her as the timed bulbs subtly adjusted their luminosity to indicate the lateness of the morning. Rylin had forgotten how much she loved the effect; one time she’d sat on Cord’s doorstep as the sun rose outside, just watching the slow shift of the overhead lights. Down on the 32nd floor, the lights never shifted from their single fluorescent setting, unless one of the kids on her block threw something to smash out a bulb.

Well, it was now or never. She started toward the main office, following the highlighted yellow arrows on the school-issued official tablet she’d picked up last week. Unlike her normal MacBash tablet, this one worked within the boundaries of the tech-net that surrounded the school, though it could only carry out basic approved tasks, like checking her academic e-mail account or taking notes. And the tablets all shut down during exams, to prevent cheating. There was no hacking the tech-net, Rylin knew; though plenty of kids through the years had tried.

She tried not to stare as she moved through the hallways. This place looked the way she’d always imagined college campuses, with its wide, light-filled corridors and stone colonnades. Directional holos popped up each time she turned a corner. In a courtyard down the hall, palm trees waved in a simulated breeze. A few kids passed, all wearing the same uniform.

Of course, Rylin had seen the uniform before—in the laundry, back when she worked for Cord Anderton.

She had no idea what she would say when she saw him. Maybe she wouldn’t see him, she thought with a dubious hope; maybe this was a big enough campus that she could avoid him for the next three semesters. But she had a feeling she wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Rylin Myers. I’m here to meet with an academic adviser,” she told the young man behind the desk, when she’d finally reached the main office. She still couldn’t believe that this school even had a human academic adviser. DownTower, things like college recommendations and course assignments were distributed by an algorithm. These people must feel pretty full of themselves if they thought they could do a better job than a computer.

The man typed on a tablet. “Of course. The new scholarship student.” He glanced up at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “You know that Eris Dodd-Radson was very beloved here at Berkeley. We all miss her.”

It was an odd welcome, to bring up the person whose death had made her very presence here possible. Rylin wasn’t sure how to reply, but the man didn’t seem to expect an answer. “Have a seat. The adviser will see you in a minute.”

Rylin sank onto a couch and glanced around the room, its beige walls decorated with framed teaching awards and motivational holos. She wondered suddenly what her friends were doing—her real friends, downTower. Lux, Andrés, Bronwyn, even Indigo. She knew a few people at Berkeley, but they all already hated her.

And just like that, as if she’d summoned him with her thoughts, Cord Anderton walked into the office.

She’d told herself over and over these past weeks that she didn’t miss him, that she was doing perfectly fine without him. But it nearly undid her, seeing Cord now; his oxford shirt untucked, his dark hair a little unkempt. So familiar, and so achingly off-limits.

She sat still, letting her eyes drink him in, dreading the moment when he would notice her and she’d have to glance away. It was a cruel cosmic joke, that the very first person she ran into at her new school had to be Cord.

His gaze almost slid past her, seeing just another half-Asian girl in the uniform—and then he seemed to register who she was, and did a double take. “Rylin Myers,” he said, in the old familiar drawl; the one he used for people he didn’t know well. Rylin’s heart broke a little when she heard it. It was the way Cord had spoken the first night he met her, when she was nothing but the hired help. Before she stole from him and fell in love with him and everything spun wildly out of control.

“I’m as shocked as you are, trust me,” she told him.

Cord leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. He was smiling, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I have to admit, this is one place I hadn’t expected to see you.”

“It’s my first day. I have to meet with an adviser,” Rylin explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be here. “What about you?”

“Truancy,” Cord said carelessly. Rylin knew that he sometimes skipped school to visit his parents’ house on Long Island and drive their illegal old autocars. She thought of the day he’d taken her out there, a day that had ended on the beach in a rainstorm, and she reddened at the memory.

“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” She hadn’t planned on having this conversation with Cord, at least not today, but there was no avoiding it. She was here, in his world—or was it her world now too? It certainly didn’t feel like it.

Cord hesitated, seeming torn between his resentment toward Rylin and his curiosity about what she was doing here—and what she had to say. Apparently curiosity won out. “Follow me,” he told her.

He led Rylin out of the office and down the hallway. It was getting more crowded as the first bell approached, students gossiping in small clusters, their gold bracelets and wrist-comps flashing as they gesticulated to make a point. Rylin saw their eyes travel curiously over her—taking in her unfamiliar features, her angular beaded earrings, her close-cut blue fingernails and the scuffed flats she’d stolen from Chrissa, because she didn’t own any footwear that qualified as “simple black shoes without a heel.” She kept her head held high, daring them to challenge her, resisting the urge to look over at Cord. A few people said hi to him, but he just nodded in greeting, and certainly never introduced Rylin.

Finally he turned through a set of double doors into a pitch-dark room. Rylin was startled by the holographic label that popped up as they crossed the door. “You have a screening room at school?” she asked, because it was weird and because she desperately wanted to break the silence.

Cord messed with a control box, and after a moment, the track lighting along the stairs flickered on. It was still very dark. Cord was little more than a shadow.

“Yeah, it’s for the film class.” Cord sounded impatient. “Okay, Myers, what’s up?”

Rylin took a deep breath. “I’ve imagined this conversation at least a hundred different times, and in absolutely zero of those scenarios was I here, at your school.”

Cord’s teeth gleamed in a hollow smile. “Oh, yeah? Where did you imagine this conversation?”

In bed, but that was wishful thinking. “It doesn’t matter,” Rylin said quickly. “The point is, I owe you an apology.”

Cord stepped back, toward the top row of seats. Rylin forced herself to look directly at him as she spoke. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since that night.” She didn’t need to clarify; he would know what night she meant.

“I wanted to ping you, but I had no idea what to say. And it didn’t seem like it mattered anymore. You were up here, and I was down on thirty-two, and I figured it was just easier not to dig it all up.” And I’m a coward, she admitted to herself. I was afraid to see you again, knowing how much it would hurt.

“Anyway, now I apparently go to school with you—I mean, I’m here on scholarship—”

“The one Eris’s parents endowed,” Cord said, unnecessarily.

Rylin blinked. She hadn’t counted on the fact that so many people would talk to her about Eris. “Yes, that one. And since I’m going to keep seeing you around, I wanted to clear the air.”

“‘Clear the air,’” Cord repeated, his voice flat. “After you pretended to date me so that you could steal from me.”

“It wasn’t pretend! And I didn’t want to steal—at least, not after the first time,” Rylin protested. “Please, let me explain.”

Cord nodded but didn’t answer.

So she told him everything. She admitted the truth about her ex-boyfriend, Hiral, and about the Spokes—how she’d stolen the custom-made drugs from Cord that one time, the first week she worked for him, to keep her and Chrissa from being evicted. Rylin lifted her chin a little, trying not to falter as she explained how Hiral had blackmailed her into selling his drugs for bail money. How V threatened her, forcing her to steal from Cord again.

She told Cord everything except how his older brother, Brice, had confronted her, saying that unless she broke up with Cord—unless she acted like she’d only dated him for the money—he would send her to jail. She knew how close Cord was with his older brother and had no desire to get in the middle of that relationship. So she made it sound like Hiral did it all.

And she didn’t tell Cord how much she’d loved him. How much she still loved him.

Cord didn’t say anything until Rylin’s last words fell into the silence like stones, causing it to ripple in waves around them. By now it was well into first period; they’d both missed their meetings in the main office. Rylin didn’t care. This was more important. She wanted, desperately, to make things right with Cord. And if she was being honest with herself, she wanted so much more than that.

“Thank you for telling me all this,” he said slowly.