Page 72 of The Dazzling Heights
“I had a feeling that was you. On bike seven?” Leda was standing at the slatted wooden bench that lined the room, hands on her narrow hips.
“You were bike eighteen?”Of course it was Leda,Avery thought, somehow unsurprised.
Leda nodded.
They both stood there, immobile as statues, as the rest of the class streamed past into the golden light of the hallway. Neither of them seemed willing to make the first move. Leda wrapped a towel around her waist, tucking its corner into a makeshift sarong, and suddenly Avery registered the bright blue print along the edge of the towel. “That’s from Maine,” she heard herself say.
Leda looked down and shrugged. “I guess it is.” She traced the pattern for a moment before looking up at Avery, her eyes glinting in the dim light. “Remember that time we went hunting for colored sea glass because we thought we could give it to your grandmother? And that huge wave knocked me over?”
“I ran in after you,” Avery recalled.
“Wearing your new white sundress.” Leda exhaled a breath that was almost a laugh. “Your mom was so pissed.”
Avery nodded, torn between confusion and a mingled pang of gratefulness for the memory. She’d lost so many people in her life lately—Eris, Leda, now Atlas. Suddenly, all she wanted was for the cycle to end.
“Any chance you want to get a smoothie?” Leda asked, very quietly, as if reading her mind.
The silence in the aqua studio was suddenly deafening. Everyone had gone, leaving nothing but the quiet lapping of the saltwater pool, the intermittent flashing of the fairy lights. The holo on the brick wall before them flickered out.
“Can we make it tacos instead?” Avery’s blood was still pounding from class, her face flushed with exertion. She realized that for the first time in a week, she felt something other than howling grief—or worse, that terrible aching numbness. She wanted desperately to preserve this fragile sense of warmth before she clattered inevitably back to reality.
Leda smiled in response. “Cantina?”
“Where else?”
Avery wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea. She wasn’t sure how to treat Leda anymore, given everything that had happened between them. Were they best friends, or enemies, or strangers?
She slid her feet into her flower-printed sandals, determined to find out.
LEDA
CANTINA WAS THEsame as always, slick and intimidating, its blazing white surfaces so pristine that Leda almost felt nervous to touch them. She remembered how wide-eyed she’d been the first time she came here, in eighth grade, with Avery and her parents. Everyone was so thin and expensively dressed that to Leda’s thirteen-year-old mind they’d all looked like models. Then again, some of them actually were.
Now she and Avery walked up the bold white staircase with spiky blue agave plants lining each step and settled into a cozy two-person booth upstairs. They’d both showered and used the stylers at Altitude before coming here; and now that they were no longer in the surreal quiet of the aqua studio—now that they looked like their normal, immaculate selves—Leda was questioning whether this was a good idea.
Avery saved her by speaking first. “How are you, Leda?” she asked, and for some reason the absurd formality of the question made Leda want to burst out laughing. All the countless hours they’d spent together at this very restaurant, and yet here they were, acting like a couple on the worst first date of all time. Suddenly she knew exactly what to say.
“I’m sorry,” she began, the words coming out awkwardly; she’d never been very good at apologies. “For everything I did, and said, that night on the roof. You know I didn’t mean for it to happen.” No need to clarify whatitwas; they both knew. “I swear it was an accident. I would never—”
“I know,” Avery said tersely, her hands clenching just a little under the table. “But you didn’t need to act all wild and threatening about it afterward, Leda. It would have been all right, if you’d come forward and told the truth.”
Leda stared at her blankly. Sometimes it shocked her how delusional Avery was. Sure, if it had been Avery Fuller who pushed Eris off the Tower, no one would give her more than a slap on the wrist. But Leda’s family was nowhere near as powerful or established as the Fullers, even though they did have money now. If Leda came forward, there would have been an investigation, probably even a trial. And Leda knew how the evidence looked.
A jury would have very happily convicted Leda for manslaughter. Unlike Avery, who was inherently unpunishable. No one would ever even consider sending her to prison. She was simply too beautiful for it.
“Maybe,” she said cautiously, hoping that would be enough. “I’m sorry for that too, though. I’m sorry for everything I said that night.”
Avery nodded, slowly, but didn’t answer.
Leda swallowed. “Eris did some stuff that really hurt me, some seriously messed-up stuff. I didn’t even want totalkto her, but she kept coming at me, even though I told her to back off—but still, I never meant—”
“What did Eris do?” Avery asked.
Leda nervously tucked her hair behind her ears. “She was sleeping with my dad,” she whispered.
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but I saw them together—I saw themkissing!” Leda’s voice pitched wildly, she was so desperate to be believed. She took a deep breath and began the whole sordid story: How her dad had been acting funny, as if he was hiding something. The Calvadour scarf that Leda had found, which she then saw her dad give to Eris. How he’d lied and said he was at a client dinner, but instead she’d found him at dinner with Eris, holding hands and kissing across the table.
