Page 34 of The Dazzling Heights
I’m just curious, how many scenarios did you run for this? What likelihood of success did you calculate?
“My calculations are incomplete, given how much I’m lacking on the input variables.”
So, basically null.
“Watt! I can’t believe you agreed to come with me.” Cynthia turned the corner with a smile.
“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it,” Watt said quickly.
Cynthia shot him a sidelong glance. “Really. You’re telling me you’re as excited as I am for the Whitney’s new exhibit on postmodern sound-wave art?”
“To be honest, I’m just here because you wanted to go,” Watt admitted, which elicited an even broader smile. Cynthia had been asking Watt and Derrick to come to this art thing with her for weeks—and now that Watt wanted to butter her up and ask a favor, he’d finally agreed.
That part had been Nadia’s idea. Actually, Nadia was the one who’d suggested he ask for Cynthia’s help in the first place.
Ever since Leda came over, Watt had been thinking about Nadia’s idea. If Leda trusted him—if she thought that he was her friend, that he wason her side—maybe, just maybe, she would say the truth aloud. All Watt needed was one mention, one reference to that night, to get out from under her thumb.
He’d kept asking Nadia how to approach Leda, but she’d referred him to Cynthia.There are some human behaviors that are impossible to predict, she’d said frankly.Studies have proven that asking a friend for advice is the most effective way to tackle trust-related issues in interpersonal dynamics.
Sometimes I think you make these so-called studies up, Watt had replied, skeptical. Nadia sent him thousands of pages of research in silent response.
He and Cynthia headed through the museum’s automatic doors into a stark, austere lobby. Watt nodded twice as he passed the payment machine, which scanned his retinas and charged him for the two tickets. “You didn’t need to get mine,” Cynthia said, sounding confused.
Watt cleared his throat. “Actually, I did,” he said slowly. “To tell you the truth, I have an ulterior motive for coming here today.”
“Yeah?” Cynthia asked. Watt wondered why Nadia was uncharacteristically silent, but then, she often shut up when he was talking to Cynthia.
“I need advice,” he said bluntly.
“Oh. Okay,” Cynthia breathed as they turned into the start of the exhibit, and fell silent.
It was a vast, dimly lit space filled entirely with metal pipes—the kind that still carried water and sewage throughout the Tower, like the ones that Watt’s dad worked with as a mechanic. But the artist had painted them in a spectrum of discordantly cheerful colors, yellow and candy-apple green and watermelon pink. As they progressed through the space, lines of music whispered into Watt’s ear before quickly changing to a new song, a new refrain. Watt realized the pipes were just for show. Miniature speakers were projecting the sound waves toward him in rapid iteration.
“What kind of advice?”
Cynthia’s words echoed strangely over the sounds in the exhibit, as if coming from very far away. Watt shook his head, disoriented, and grabbed her wrist to pull her back into the hallway. Lost-sounding snatches of music drifted through the open door toward him, echoing strangely in his mind, or maybe the thought of Leda was literally driving him insane.
“I’m completely stuck. This girl—” He shook his head, immediately regretting the choice of wording; that made it sound like helikedLeda. Although maybe it wasn’t the worst thing, he realized, if Cynthia thought he needed romantic advice. It was better than letting her guess the truth.
Cynthia stared at him in that piercing way of hers. For some reason Watt held his breath, trying not to even blink.
“Who is this girl?” she asked at last.
“Her name is Leda Cole.” Watt tried not to let his irritation creep through, but he could hear it in his own voice.
“And your typical … techniques aren’t working with her?”
Don’t lie, Nadia urged him. “She’s not a typical girl.” That definitely wasn’t a lie.
Cynthia turned back toward the stairs. “Come on,” she said, sounding resigned.
“Wait, but your exhibit—don’t you want to go through it first?”
“I’ll come back another time, without you. Your life sounds like a mess,” Cynthia proclaimed. Watt didn’t argue, because she was right.
A few minutes later they were seated on one of the rotating hexagonal benches in the sculpture garden outside. “Okay. Tell me about Leda. What’s she like?” Cynthia commanded.
“She lives upTower, goes to a highlier school. She has one brother. She plays field hockey, I think, and—”
