The Dazzling Heights. Катарина Макги
on your behalf, of course. You aren’t mad, are you?” she added, as if the thought had just now occurred to her.
“But—” A million questions rippled through Rylin’s mind. She seized on one, randomly. “How did you even find out about this scholarship?”
Rylin had known about it, of course; she’d seen it mentioned on Eris’s obituary video, which she’d watched dozens of times since that fateful night. The night her whole life turned upside down—when she went to an upTower party, way up on the thousandth floor, only to find the boy she loved with another girl. Then that girl had died in front of Rylin’s eyes, pushed off the side of the Tower by one of her drugged-out friends, who proceeded to blackmail Rylin, forcing her to keep quiet about what had really happened.
“I saw the obit video pulled up on your tablet. You watched it a lot of times,” Chrissa said, and now her voice was quiet and her eyes were searching Rylin’s. “You met Eris when you were with Cord, right? Was she a friend of yours?”
“Something like that,” Rylin said, because she didn’t know how to tell Chrissa the truth—that Eris was someone she’d scarcely known, except that Rylin had seen her die.
“I’m sorry, about what happened to her.” The timer beeped, and Chrissa scooped the pancakes into two fat stacks, handing the plates to Rylin.
“But—” Rylin still didn’t understand. “Why didn’t you apply to the scholarship for yourself?” Of the two of them, Chrissa was the one with real promise: she made straight As in her honors classes, and would probably play volleyball at the college level. She was the one who deserved a fancy upper-school scholarship. Not Rylin, who hadn’t even been in school the last few years.
“Because I don’t need it like you do,” Chrissa said intently. Rylin followed her to the table, carrying the plates of stacked pancakes. One of the legs of their table was broken clean off, causing it to wobble as she set the plates down.
“Between my grades and volleyball, I’m on track to get a college scholarship anyway. You, on the other hand, need this,” Chrissa insisted. “Don’t you see? Now you don’t have to be the girl who dropped out of school to work a dead-end job, for my sake.”
Rylin fell silent at the flicker of guilt in her sister’s explanation. She’d never really considered what Chrissa had thought, when Rylin had dropped out of school to work full-time after their mom died. She’d never imagined that Chrissa might blame herself for Rylin’s choice.
“Chrissa, you know it’s not your fault that I took the job I did.” And Rylin knew that she would do it all again in a heartbeat, to give her little sister the chance she deserved. Then she thought of another complication. “Anyway, I can’t quit work now. We need the money.”
Chrissa’s smile was contagious. “Didn’t you see what it said about a cost-of-living stipend? It’s enough to keep us going, and if we get into a tight spot, we can always figure something out.”
Rylin looked again, and saw that Chrissa was right. “But why would they pick me? I’m not even in school right now. There must have been so many applicants.” Her eyes narrowed at Chrissa as she began to think through the odds. “What did you put on my application, anyway?”
Chrissa grinned. “I found an old essay of yours about working at a summer camp, and made some tweaks to it.”
Two years before their mother died, Rylin had applied to be a junior counselor at an expensive summer camp. It was all the way in Maine—somewhere with a lake, or maybe it had been a river; the kind of place rich kids went to learn useless things like canoeing and archery and braiding friendship bracelets. For some reason, maybe because she’d seen too many holos about summer camp, Rylin had always fostered a secret desire to attend one. Of course they could never afford anything like that. But Rylin had hoped that maybe, if she worked there as a counselor, she would still have a version of the experience.
She’d gotten the job. Though it quickly became irrelevant, because her mom had gotten sick that year and nothing else mattered after that.
“I can’t believe you found that,” she said, shaking her head in amused wonder. She would never cease to be surprised by Chrissa’s resourcefulness. “Though I still don’t understand why they would pick me.”
Chrissa shrugged. “Didn’t you see the description? It’s a weird, nontraditional scholarship, for ‘creative-minded girls who would otherwise be overlooked.’”
“I’m not exactly creative-minded,” Rylin argued.
Chrissa shook her head so violently that her ponytail whipped back and forth, a dark shadow behind her head. “Of course you are. Stop selling yourself short, or you’ll never survive at that school.”
Rylin didn’t answer that. She still wasn’t sure whether or not she was going.
After a moment Chrissa sighed. “I’m not surprised you were friends with Eris. From the sound of this scholarship, she was really cool. I mean, she clearly wasn’t like the other highliers, if this is how her family chose to honor her.”
Suddenly Rylin’s mind was alit with memories of that night—of breaking up with Cord, then trying to win him back, only to find him with Eris; of seeing Eris on the roof, yelling at the other girl, Leda, then watching in horror as Eris tumbled off the side of the Tower and into the cold night air. She shivered.
“You’re going, right?” Chrissa asked, her voice hopeful.
Rylin thought of how it would feel, being at an expensive highlier school with a bunch of strangers who wouldn’t give her the time of day. Not to mention Cord. She’d promised herself she would stay away from him. And then there was school itself—how would she handle being in a classroom again, learning and studying and taking tests, surrounded by a bunch of students who were probably a lot smarter than she was?
“Mom would want you to go, you know,” Chrissa added, and just like that, Rylin’s answer was clear.
She lifted her eyes to her sister’s and smiled. “Yeah, I’ll go.” Maybe something good could finally come of that night. She owed it to herself, and to Chrissa, and her mom—hell, even to Eris—to try.
THE TWO WOMEN strode through the entrance to Bergdorf Goodman on the 880th floor, their four sharp heels making satisfying clicks on the polished marble. Neither of them paused at the sumptuously decorated lobby, its holiday-themed display holos dancing around the crystal chandeliers and jewel cases; tourists crying out whenever the reindeer swooped down toward their heads. Calliope didn’t even glance in their direction as she followed Elise up the curved staircase. It had been a long time since she was impressed by something as prosaic as a holographic sleigh.
The designer floor upstairs was scattered with clumps of furniture, each of them partitioned by an invisible privacy barrier and equipped with a body-scanner. Real gowns were draped on mannequins in various corners, for nostalgia’s sake. No one actually tried on anything here.
Elise flicked her eyes significantly at Calliope before heading toward the youngest, most junior-looking employee: Kyra Welch. They’d already preselected her online, for the simple reason that she’d worked at the store a grand total of three days.
Just a few meters away from the girl, Elise made a show of sinking onto a pale peach settee. She crossed one leg over the other and began scrolling through cocktail dresses on the screen before her. Calliope stood idly to one side and stifled a yawn. She wished she’d gotten one of those honey coffees from the hotel this morning. Or even a caffeine patch.
The salesgirl predictably hurried over. She had alabaster skin and a perky carrot-red ponytail. “Good afternoon, ladies. Did you have an appointment?”
“Where’s Alamar?” Elise demanded,