Pretties

  “It’s okay, Tally,” Zane whispered. “Just let yourself be bubbly.”

  Tally realized how bogus that was, having to be told to stay bubbly. But even through his costume surge, Zane’s gaze had softened, as if he really did want her to relax.

  She turned away from the drop into emptiness, gripping the guardrail with both hands behind her. Shay and Peris were also out on the balcony now; she was surrounded by all her new Crim friends, protected and part of the group. But they were watching her carefully too. Maybe everyone was expecting something special from her tonight.

  “I never saw anyone out there,” Tally said. “Someone was supposed to come, but never did.”

  She didn’t hear Zane’s response.

  The lurker had appeared again—across the crowded spire, standing still and staring straight at her. The mask’s flashing eyes seemed to acknowledge her gaze for a moment, then the figure turned and slipped among the white coats of the costumed Pretty Committee, disappearing behind their giant facegraphs of every major pretty type. And even though Tally realized it was a bogus thing to do, she pushed away from Zane and through the crowd, because there was no way she could pull herself together tonight until she found out who this person was, Crim or Special or random new pretty. She had to know why someone was throwing Special Circumstances in her face.

  Tally dodged between white coats and bounced like a pinball through a clique all dressed in fat-suits, their softly padded bellies spinning her in circles. She bowled over most of a hockey team, who wobbled on their slippy hoverskates like littlies. Glimpses of gray silk teased Tally from just ahead as she ran, but the crowd was thick and in frantic motion, and by the time she reached the central column of the spire, the figure had disappeared.

  Glancing at the lights above the elevator door, she saw that it was on its way up, not down. The fake Special was still around, somewhere in the spire.

  Then Tally noticed the door to the emergency stairs, bright red and plastered with warnings that an alarm would sound if you opened it. She looked around again—still no gray figure. Whoever it was had to have escaped down the stairs. Alarms could be switched off; she’d pulled that trick herself a million times as an ugly.

  Tally reached out toward the door, her hand shaking. If a siren started blaring, everyone would be staring at her and whispering as the wardens arrived and evacuated the tower. It would be a really bubbly end to her career as a Crim.

  Some Crim, she thought. She’d be a pretty bogus criminal if she couldn’t set off an alarm every once in a while.

  She pushed the door open. It didn’t make a sound.

  • • •

  Tally stepped into the stairwell. The door closed behind her, muffling the tumult of the party. In the sudden quiet, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear her own breath, still ragged from the chase. The beat of the music seemed to leak under the door, making the concrete floor shudder.

  The figure sat on the stairs, a few steps up. “You made it.” It was a boy’s voice, indistinct behind the mask.

  “Made it where? This party?”

  “No, Tally. Through the door.”

  “It wasn’t exactly locked.” She tried to stare her way through the jeweled eyes of the mask. “Who are you?”

  “You don’t recognize me?” He sounded genuinely puzzled, as if he were an old friend, someone who wore a mask all the time. “What do I look like?”

  Tally swallowed and said softly, “Special Circumstances.”

  “Good. You remember.” Tally could hear the smile in his voice. He was talking slowly and carefully, as if she were some kind of idiot.

  “Of course I remember. Are you one of them? Do I know you?” Tally couldn’t recall any individual Specials; in her memory, their faces all ran together into one cruel and pretty blur.

  “Why don’t you take a look?” The figure didn’t move to take off his mask. “Go ahead, Tally.”

  Suddenly, she realized what was going on here. Recognizing what the costume meant, chasing him across the party, braving the alarmed door—all of it had been a test. Some kind of recruitment. He was sitting there wondering if she would dare pull off his mask.

  Tally was sick of tests. “Just stay away from me,” she said.

  “Tally—”

  “I don’t want to work for Special Circumstances. I just want to live here in New Pretty Town.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Leave me alone!” she shouted, clenching her fists. The cry echoed off the concrete walls, leaving a moment of silence, as if it had surprised them both. The music from the party drifted through the stairwell, muffled and timid.

  Finally, a sigh came through the mask, and he held up a crude leather pouch. “I have something for you. If you’re ready for it. Do you want it, Tally?”

  “I don’t want anything from . . .” Tally’s voice trailed off. Soft shuffling sounds came from below them. Not the party. Someone was coming up the stairs.

  The two of them moved at the same time, peering over the handrail down the narrow stairwell shaft. A long way down, Tally saw flashes of gray silk and hands grasping the rails, half a dozen people climbing the stairs incredibly fast, their footsteps barely audible over the muffled music.

  “See you later,” the figure said, standing.

  Tally blinked. He pushed her aside, spooked by the sight of real Specials. So who was he? Before his fingers reached the doorknob, Tally snatched the mask from his face.

  He was an ugly. A real ugly.

  His face was nothing like the costumed fatties done up for the bash, with their big noses or squinty eyes. It wasn’t just exaggerated features that made him different; it was everything, as if he were made of some utterly different substance. In those seconds, Tally’s pretty-perfect eyesight caught every gaping pore, the random tangles in his hair, the crude imbalance of his disjointed face. Her skin crawled at his imperfections, the tufts of teenage beard, his unsurged teeth, the eruptions on his forehead screaming out disease. She wanted to pull away, to put distance between herself and his unlucky, unclean, unhealthy ugliness.

  But somehow she knew his name. . . .

  “Croy?” she said.

  FALL

  “Later, Tally,” Croy said, snatching back his mask. He yanked open the door, and the noise of the party rushed into the stairwell as he darted through, the gray silk of his costume disappearing into the crowd.

  Tally just stood there as the door swung closed again, too stunned to move. Like her old sweater, she’d remembered ugliness all wrong: Croy’s face was much worse than her mental image of the Smokies. His crooked smile, his dull eyes, the way his sweating skin carried angry red marks where the mask had pressed against it . . .

  But then the door slammed itself shut, and among the echoes Tally heard the footsteps still climbing toward her, real Specials on their way up, and for the first time all day, a clear thought went through her head.

  Run.

  She pulled open the door and plunged into the crowd.

  The elevator was just spilling open, and Tally stumbled into a clique of Naturals plastered with brittle leaves, walking last days of autumn who shed yellows and reds as she shoved through them. She managed to keep her footing—the floor was sticky with spilled champagne—and caught another glimpse of the gray silk.

  Croy was headed toward the balcony and the Crims.

  She tore after him. Tally didn’t want anyone lurking her, panicking her at parties, tangling her memories when she needed to be bubbly. She had to catch Croy and tell him never to follow her again.

  This wasn’t Uglyville or the Smoke—he had no right to be here. He had no business stepping out of her ugly past.

  And there was another reason she was running: the Specials. It had only taken a glimpse of them to put every cell in her body on high alert. Their inhuman speed repelled her, like watching a cockroach skitter across a plate. Croy’s movements might have seemed unusual, his Smokey confidence standing out in a party f
ull of new pretties, but the Specials were another species altogether.

  Tally burst out onto the balcony just in time to see Croy leap up onto the rail, waving his arms for a precarious moment. Then he got his balance, bent his knees, and pushed off into the night.

  She ran to the spot and leaned over. Croy was tumbling downward out of sight, his form swallowed by the darkness below. After a sickening moment he reappeared, head over heels, gray silk catching the light of fireworks as he hoverbounced toward the river.

  Zane stood beside her, looking down. “Hmm, the invitation didn’t say ‘bungee jackets required,’” he murmured. “Who was that, Tally?”

  She opened her mouth, but an alarm began to howl.

  Tally spun around and saw the crowd parting. The group of Specials were pouring through the stairwell door, slicing their way through confused new pretties. Their cruel faces weren’t costumes any more than Croy’s ugliness had been, and they were just as shocking to look at. The wolflike eyes sent a chill through Tally, and their advance, as purposeful and dangerous as a hunting cat’s, made her body scream to keep running.

  At the other end of the balcony she saw Peris, standing frozen next to the rail, awestruck by the spectacle. His safety sparklers were sputtering out at last, but the light on his bungee jacket collar glowed bright green.

  Tally pushed toward him through the other Crims, judging the angles, knowing exactly when to jump. For a moment, the world became strangely clear, as if the sight of Croy’s ugliness and the cruel-pretty Specials had removed some barrier between her and the world. Everything was bright and harsh, the details so sharp that Tally squinted as if dashing into a freezing wind.

  She hit Peris just right, her arms wrapping around his shoulders, her momentum lifting both of them up and over the balcony railing. They tumbled out of the light and into blackness, Peris’s costume flaring up one last time in the wind of their descent, the safety sparks bouncing from her face as cool as snowflakes.

  He was half-screaming and half-laughing, as if enduring an annoying but invigorating practical joke—cold water over the head.

  Halfway down it occurred to Tally that the bungee jacket might not catch them both.

  She squeezed harder, and heard Peris grunt as the lifters kicked in. The jacket pulled him upright, almost wrenching Tally’s shoulders from their sockets. Her muscles were still powerful from their weeks of manual labor in the Smoke—if anything, the operation had tuned them up—but she barely kept her grip as the jacket absorbed the velocity of their fall. Her arms slipped farther down until they were wrapped around Peris’s waist, her fingers painfully entangled in the jacket’s straps.

  As they came to a shuddering halt, Tally’s feet brushed the grass, and she let go.

  Peris shot back up into the air, his knee catching Tally’s brow and sending her staggering back into the darkness. She lost her footing, landing on a drift of fallen leaves that crunched beneath her.

  For a moment Tally lay still. The pile of leaves smelled softly of earth and rot, like something old and tired. She blinked as something trickled into one eye. Maybe it was raining.

  She looked up at the party tower and the distant hot-air balloons, blinking and catching her breath. She could make out a few figures peering down from the bright balcony ten stories above. Tally wondered if any of them were Specials.

  Peris was nowhere to be seen. She remembered bungee jumping as an ugly, how a jacket would carry you down a slope. He must have bounced down toward the river after Croy.

  Croy. She wanted to say something to him. . . .

  Tally struggled to her feet and faced the river. Her head throbbed, but the clarity that had come over her as she’d thrown herself off the balcony hadn’t faded. Her heart pounded as a burst of fireworks lit the sky, casting pink light and sudden shadows through the trees, every blade of grass in sharp relief.

  Everything felt very real: her intense revulsion at Croy’s ugly face, her fear of the Specials, the shapes and smells around her. It felt as if a thin plastic film had been peeled from her eyes, leaving the world with razored edges.

  She ran downhill, toward the mirrored band of the river and the darkness of Uglyville. “Croy!” she cried.

  The pink flower in the sky faded, and Tally tripped over the winding roots of an old tree. She stumbled to a halt.

  Something was gliding up out of the darkness.

  “Croy?” The fireworks had left green spots scattered across her vision.

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  He was on a hoverboard a meter off the ground, feet spread for balance, looking comfortable. His gray silks had been replaced with pitch-black, his cruel pretty mask discarded. Behind him, two other black-clad figures rode, younger uglies wearing dorm uniforms and nervous looks.

  “I wanted . . .” Her voice trailed off. She’d followed him to say, Go away, leave me alone, never come back. To scream it at him. But everything had become so clear and intense . . . what she wanted now was to hold on to this bright focus. Croy’s invasion of her world was a part of that, she somehow knew.

  “Croy, they’re coming,” one of the younger uglies said.

  “What did you want, Tally?” he asked calmly.

  She blinked, uncertain, worried that if she said the wrong thing, the clarity might go away—the barrier would close again.

  She remembered what he’d offered in the stairwell. “You had something to give me?”

  He smiled, and pulled the old leather pouch from his belt. “This? Yeah, I think you’re ready for it. Only one problem: You’d better not take it from me right now. Wardens are coming. Maybe Specials.”

  “Yeah, in about ten seconds,” the nervous ugly complained.

  Croy ignored him. “But we’ll leave it for you at Valentino 317. Can you remember that? Valentino 317.”

  She nodded, then blinked again. Her head felt light.

  Croy frowned. “I hope so.” He spun his board around in one graceful movement, and the other two uglies followed suit. “Later. And sorry about your eye.”

  They darted away toward the river, veering off in three different directions as they disappeared into the darkness.

  “Sorry about my what?” she asked softly.

  Then Tally found herself blinking again, her vision blurring. She reached up to touch her forehead. Her fingers came away sticky, and more dark blotches dripped into her palm as she stared at it dumbfounded.

  She finally felt the pain, her head throbbing in time with her heartbeat. The collision with Peris’s knee must have opened up her forehead. Her fingers traced a line of blood that dripped around her brow and down one cheek, as hot as tears.

  Tally sat down on the grass, suddenly shaking all over.

  Fireworks lit the sky again, turning the blood on her hand bright red, each drop a little mirror reflecting the explosion overhead. There were hovercars in the sky now, lots of them.

  Tally felt something slipping away as she bled, something she’d wanted to keep hold of . . .

  “Tally!”

  Looking up, she saw Peris, chuckling as he climbed the hill.

  “Now that was not a bubbly move, Tally-wa. I almost wound up in the river!” He mimed drowning, grasping at water and slipping under.

  She found herself giggling at his performance, her weird shakiness turning bubbly now that Peris was here. “What’s the matter? Can’t you swim?”

  He laughed and sank to the grass beside her, fighting with the straps of the bungee jacket. “I’m not dressed for it.” He rubbed one shoulder. “Also . . . ow on the clinginess.”

  Tally tried to remember why jumping off the tower had seemed like such a good idea, but the sight of her own blood had left her brain-missing, and she just wanted to sleep. Everything was harsh and shiny. “Sorry.”

  “Just warn me next time.” Fireworks exploded overhead, and Peris squinted at her, his face beautifully puzzled. “What’s with the blood?”

  “Oh, yeah. Your knee whacked into me wh
en you bounced. Isn’t it bogus?”

  “Not very pretty-making.” He reached out and squeezed her arm softly. “Don’t worry, Tally. I’ll ping a warden car. There’s tons out tonight.”

  But one was already coming. It passed silently overhead, running lights casting a red tinge on the grass around them. A spotlight picked them out. Tally sighed, letting the uncomfortable shininess of everything slip away. She realized now why it had been such a bogus day. She’d been trying way too hard, worrying about how the Crims would vote and what to wear, more serious than bubbly. No wonder the party-crashers had driven her over the edge.

  She giggled. Literally over the edge.

  But everything was okay now. With the uglies and cruel pretties gone and Peris here to take care of her, a restful feeling settled over Tally. Funny how that kick to the head had left her brain-missing for a moment, actually talking to those uglies like they mattered.

  The hovercar landed nearby, and two wardens jumped out and headed over, one with a first-aid kit in hand. Maybe while they were fixing her head, Tally thought, she could get some eye surge like Shay’s. Not exactly the same, which would be bogus, but sort of matching.

  She looked up into the wardens’ middle-pretty faces, calm and wise and knowing what to do. The look of concern on their faces made the blood all over her face feel less shaming.

  They gently led her to the car and sprayed new skin onto the wound, giving her a pill to stop the swelling. When she asked about bruises, they laughed and said the operation took care of that. No more bruises ever.

  Because it was a head wound, they gave Tally a neural exam, waving a glowing red pointer back and forth while they tracked her eyemouse. The test seemed pretty retarded, but the wardens said it proved she didn’t have a concussion or brain damage. Peris told a story about when he’d walked into a glass door at Lillian Russell Mansion and had to stay awake or die, and they all laughed.

  Then the wardens asked a few questions about the tricking uglies who’d come across the river that night and caused all the trouble. “Did you know any of them?”