Pretties

  Tally sighed, not really wanting to get into it. It was totally shaming to be the cause of the uglies’ party-crashing. But it was middle pretties asking, and you couldn’t blow them off. They always knew what they were doing, and it would be bogus to tell a lie straight to their calm, authoritative faces.

  “Yeah. I kind of remembered one of them. Croy.”

  “He was from the Smoke, wasn’t he, Tally?”

  She nodded, feeling stupid wearing the Smokey sweater with dirt and blood all over it. It was all Valentino Mansion’s fault for switching the dress code: There was nothing more bogus than still being in a costume after you’d left a party.

  “Do you know what he wanted, Tally? Why he was here?”

  She looked at Peris for help. He was hanging on every word, his luminous eyes bugging wide. It made her feel important.

  She shrugged. “Just ugly tricks, that’s all. Showing off in front of his friends, probably.” Which sounded bogus. Croy didn’t live in Uglyville, after all. He was a Smokey, from out in the wild between cities. The two with him might have been city kids just tricking, but Croy had definitely had a plan.

  But the wardens only smiled and nodded, believing her. “Don’t worry, it won’t happen again. We’ll be keeping an eye on you to make sure it doesn’t.”

  She smiled back at them, and they took her home.

  • • •

  When Tally made it to her room, there was a ping from Peris, who’d gone back to the party.

  “Guess what?” he yelled. Crowd sounds and music bled in around the words, making Tally wish she’d gone back to the bash, even with sprayed-on skin all over her forehead.

  She frowned and flopped onto her bed as the message continued: “When I got back, the Crims had already voted! They thought it was totally bubbly that real-life Specials were at the party, and our dive off the tower got six hundred milli-Helens from Zane! You are so Crim! See you tomorrow. Oh yeah, and don’t get that scar erased until everyone’s seen it. Best friends forever!”

  As the message ended, Tally felt the bed spin a little. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow sigh of relief. Finally, she was a full-fledged Crim. Everything she’d ever wanted had come to her at last. She was beautiful, and she lived in New Pretty Town with Peris and Shay and tons of new friends. All the disasters and terrors of the last year—running away to the Smoke, living there in pre-Rusty squalor, traveling back to the city through the wilds—somehow all of it had worked out.

  It was so wonderful, and Tally was so exhausted, that belief took a while to settle over her. She replayed Peris’s message a few times, then pulled off the smelly Smokey sweater with shaking hands and threw it into the corner. Tomorrow, she would make the hole in the wall recycle it.

  Tally lay back and stared at the ceiling for a while. A ping from Shay came, but she ignored it, setting her interface ring to sleep-time. With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future. The bed beneath her, Komachi Mansion, and even the city around her—all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

  It was probably just the knock to her head causing the weird missingness that underlay her joy. She only needed a good night’s sleep—and hopefully no hangover tomorrow—and everything would feel solid again, as perfect as it really was.

  Tally fell asleep a few minutes later, happy to be a Crim at last.

  But her dreams were totally bogus.

  ZANE

  So, there was this beautiful princess.

  She was locked in a high tower, one with stone walls and cold, empty rooms that couldn’t talk. There was no elevator or even fire stairs, so Tally wondered how the princess had gotten up there.

  But there she was, at the top. No bungee jacket and fast asleep.

  The tower was guarded by a dragon. It had jeweled eyes and hungry, cruel features, and moved with a brutal suddenness that made Tally’s stomach churn. Even dreaming, she recognized exactly what the dragon was. It was a cruel pretty, an agent of Special Circumstances, or maybe a bunch of them all rolled up into one gray and silk-scaled serpent.

  And you couldn’t have this dream without a prince.

  He made it past the dragon, not so much slaying as creeping, finding chinks in the ancient stone wall to slip his fingers into, because it was old and crumbling. He climbed the tower’s daunting height easily, sparing only an amused look down at the dragon, which had been distracted by a host of playful rats scurrying through its claws.

  The prince made it in through the high stone window and swept the princess into a kiss, which woke her up, and that was the whole story. Getting back down and past the dragon didn’t turn out to be an issue, because this was a dream and not a movie or even a fairy tale, and it was all over with one big kiss, a classic happy ending.

  Except for one thing.

  The prince was totally ugly.

  • • •

  Tally woke up with a throbbing head.

  Catching her reflection in the mirror wall, she remembered that the headache wasn’t just a hangover. And discovered that getting kicked in the head was not pretty-making. As the wardens last night had warned might happen, the sprayed-on skin above her eye had turned an angry red. She’d have to go to a surge office to get the scar completely erased.

  But Tally decided not to fix it yet. Like Peris had said, it did look really criminal. She smiled, remembering her new status. The scar was perfect.

  There was a mountain of pings from other Crims, drunken congratulations and reports of more wild behavior as the party had gone on (though nothing as bubbly as her dive off the tower with Peris). Tally listened to the messages with eyes closed, sinking into the crowd noises in the background, loving how connected she was to the others even though she’d come home early. That’s what being voted into a clique meant: knowing you had friends whatever you did.

  Zane had left three messages in all, the last one asking if Tally wanted to have breakfast this morning. He didn’t sound as drunk as the rest of them, so maybe he was already awake.

  When she pinged him, he answered. “How are you?”

  “Face-missing,” she said. “Did Peris tell you how my head got bonked?”

  “Yeah. You were actually bleeding?”

  “Very.”

  “Whoa.” Zane’s voice was breathy in her ear, his usual cool overwhelmed. “Nice dive, though. Glad you didn’t . . . you know, die.”

  Tally smiled. “Thanks.”

  “So, did you read the weirdness about the party?”

  There’d been a news-ping among Tally’s messages, but she hadn’t felt up to reading. “What weirdness?”

  “Someone hacked the mail yesterday and sent out that new invitation, the one that changed the dress code to costumes. Everyone on the Valentino Bash Committee thought it was someone else who’d done it, so they all just went along. But nobody knows who actually wrote it. Dizzying, huh?”

  Tally blinked, the room suddenly out of focus. Dizzying was right. The world seemed to turn around her, as if she were inside the stomach of something big and out of control. Only uglies did stuff like hack mail. And she could only think of one person who would want the Valentino party turned into a costume bash: Croy with his cruel-pretty mask and weird offers.

  Which meant it all had to do with Tally Youngblood.

  “That is deeply bogus, Zane.”

  “Totally. You hungry?”

  She nodded, feeling her head begin to throb again. Out the window, the Garbo Mansion party towers rose up, tall and spindly. Tally stared at them, as if fixing her gaze could make the world less spinning. She had to be overreacting; everything wasn’t about her, after all. It could have just been pointlessly tricking uglies, or someone on the Valentino Bash Committee going brain-missing.

  But even if it had been simply a mistake, Croy had to have been ready with that costume. In the Rusty Ruins and wilderness where Smokies hid, there weren’t any holes in the wall;
you had to make your own things, which took time and effort. And Croy hadn’t chosen just any costume. . . . Tally remembered the cold, jeweled eyes and felt faint.

  Maybe food would fix her.

  “Yeah, deeply hungry. Let’s have breakfast.”

  • • •

  They met in Denzel Park, a pleasure garden that snaked from the center of New Pretty Town down to Valentino Mansion. The mansion itself was hidden by trees, but the transmission tower on top was visible, the old-fashioned Valentino flag whipping in the cold wind. In the garden, the damage from the night before was mostly cleared up, except for a few blackened patches left by the Bashers’ bonfires. A maintenance robot hovered above one circle of ashes, turning the soil over with careful movements of its claws, spraying seeds into the scorched earth.

  Zane’s suggestion of a picnic had raised Tally’s eyebrows (a motion that was totally ouch), but walking down in the fresh air did help clear her head. The pills the wardens had given her muted the pain of her wound, but had no effect on her general fuzziness. The rumor in New Pretty Town was that doctors knew how to fix hangovers, but kept the cure a secret on principle.

  Zane arrived on time, breakfast bobbing softly behind him in the cool breeze. As he grew near, his eyes widened at the scar on her forehead. One of his hands reached out, almost as if he wanted to touch it.

  “Pretty bogus, huh?” she said.

  “Totally criminal-looking,” he said, still wide-eyed.

  “Not so many milli-Helens, though, is it?”

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I wouldn’t measure it in Helens. I’m not quite sure what I’d use instead, though. Something bubblier.”

  Tally smiled: Peris had been right about not fixing her face right away. In his fascination with the scar, Zane was extra beautiful, and his expression gave her a tingly feeling—like being at the center of everything, but without the spinning.

  Zane’s costume surge had worn off; his lips returned to normal pretty fullness. Still, he always looked extreme in daylight. His face was all contrasts, his chin and cheekbones sharp, his forehead high. His skin was the same olive as everyone’s, but in the sun, against his dark hair, it somehow looked pale. The operation guidelines wouldn’t let you have jet-black hair, which the Committee thought was too extreme, but Zane dyed his with calligraphy ink. On top of that, he didn’t eat much, keeping his face gaunt, his stare intense. Of all the pretties Tally had met since her operation, he was the only one whose looks really stood out.

  Maybe that was why he was the head Crim—you had to be different from everyone else to really be a criminal. His gold eyes flickered as they searched for a spot, coming to rest in the dappled shadow of a broad oak tree.

  They sat down on the grass and leaves, and Tally breathed in the scent of dew and earth. Breakfast settled between them, giving off warmth from the glowing elements that kept the scrambled eggs and hash browns from going cold and slimy.

  Tally piled up a heated plate with eggs and cheese and slices of avocado, and shoved half a muffin into her mouth. Looking up at Zane, she saw that he held nothing but a cup of coffee, and she wondered if eating like a greedy pig was a bogus move.

  But what did it matter? She was a Crim now, she reminded herself, all voted on and full-fledged. And Zane had asked her here, after all, wanting to hang out. It was time to stop worrying about being accepted and start enjoying herself. There were worse things than sitting in a perfect park, being closely watched by a beautiful boy.

  Tally consumed the rest of the muffin, which was totally steaming inside and marbled with half-melted chocolate, and picked up her fork to attack the eggs. She hoped that the breakfast had some calorie-purgers packed with it. They worked better if you took them right after eating, and she was going to eat a lot. Maybe losing blood made you starving.

  “So last night, who was that guy?” Zane asked.

  Still chewing, Tally only shrugged, but he waited patiently for her to swallow.

  “Just some crashing ugly,” she finally said.

  “Figured that. Who else would Specials be chasing? I mean, was he someone you knew?”

  Tally looked away. It was embarrassing to have your ugly life follow you across the river, at least in person. But Peris had heard her telling the wardens about it last night, so lying to Zane would be bogus. “Yeah, I guess I knew him. From the Smoke. This guy called Croy.”

  An odd look passed over Zane’s face. His gold eyes stared into the distance, searching for something. A moment later, he nodded. “I knew him too.”

  Tally froze, her fork halfway to her mouth. “You’re kidding.”

  Zane shook his head.

  “But I thought you never ran away,” Tally said.

  “No, I didn’t.” He pulled up his legs and hugged his knees with one long arm, taking a sip of coffee. “Not any farther than the Rusty Ruins, anyway. But Croy and I were friends back when we were littlies, and we lived in the same ugly dorm.”

  “That’s . . . funny.” Tally finally took the bite of eggs, chewing them slowly. The city had a million people in it, and Zane had known Croy. “What are the odds of that?” she said softly.

  Zane shook his head again. “Not a coincidence, Tally-wa.”

  Tally stopped chewing, the eggs tasting funny in her mouth, like everything was going to get all spinning again. The world had gone totally missing on coincidences lately.

  “How do you mean?”

  Zane leaned forward. “Tally, you know that Shay lived in my dorm, right? Back when we were uglies?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That’s how she hooked up with you guys after coming here.” Tally paused a moment, then felt a realization starting to fall slowly into place. Memories from the Smoke always came back at a brain-missing pace, like bubbles rising up through some thick, viscous liquid.

  “Out in the Smoke,” she said carefully, “Shay introduced me to Croy. They were old friends. So you three all knew one another?”

  “Yeah, we did.” Zane grimaced, as if something rotten had crawled into his coffee.

  Tally looked down at her food unhappily. As Zane continued, it was just like the night before, the whole bogus story of the past summer pushing uncomfortably back into her head.

  “There were six of us in my dorm,” he said. “We called ourselves Crims back then, too. We did all the usual ugly tricks: sneaking out at night, hacking the dorm minders, coming across the river to spy on new pretties.”

  Tally nodded, remembering Shay’s stories about before the two of them had met. “And going out to the Rusty Ruins?”

  “Yeah, after some older uglies showed us how.” He looked up the hill at the towering center of New Pretty Town. “Being out there makes you realize how big the world is. I mean, twenty million people used to live in that old Rusty city. Compared with that, this place is tiny.”

  Tally closed her eyes and put her fork onto her plate, her appetite fading. After everything that had happened last night, maybe breakfast with Zane hadn’t been such a good idea. Sometimes he seemed to think he was still an ugly, trying to stay bubbly, pushing back against the easy fun of being pretty. That was why he was great at leading the Crims, of course. But one-on-one, he could be dizzy-making.

  “Yeah, but the Rusties all died,” she said quietly. “There were too many of them, and they were totally stupid.”

  “I know, I know. They almost destroyed the world,” he recited, then sighed. “But sneaking out to the ruins was the most exciting thing I’d ever done.”

  Zane’s eyes flashed as he said this, and Tally remembered her own trips to the ruins, how the empty majesty of the ghost-city had kept every nerve in her body on high alert. The feeling that real danger might be lurking out there, unlike the harmless thrill of a hot-air ascent or a bungee jump.

  She shivered, recalling some of that old excitement as she met Zane’s stare. “I know what you mean.”

  “And I knew I’d never go there again after the operation. New pretties don’t do anything
that tricky. So when I got close to turning sixteen, I started thinking about leaving the city, going into the wilderness. At least for a while.”

  Tally nodded slowly. She remembered Shay saying the same things back when they’d met, the words that had started her down the path to the Smoke. “And you talked Shay and Croy and the rest of them into coming along?”

  “I tried.” He laughed. “At first they thought I was crazy, because you can’t live in the wild. But then we met this guy out there who—”

  “Stop,” Tally said. Suddenly her heart was beating fast, like when you took a purger and your metabolism kicked up to burn the calories. She felt a dampness on her face, the breeze suddenly cold. She felt moisture on her cheeks, but pretty faces didn’t sweat. . . .

  Tally blinked, her fists clenching until fingernails drove into her palms. The world had changed somehow. Pinpoints of sunlight cut harshly through the leaves overhead as she tried to take deep, slow breaths. She remembered now that the same thing had happened last night, when she’d seen Croy.

  “Tally?” Zane said.

  She shook her head, not wanting him to say anything. Not about meeting someone in the Rusty Ruins. She found herself speaking quickly to keep him quiet, repeating what Shay had told her. “You heard about the Smoke, right? Where people lived like pre-Rusties and were ugly for life. So you all decided to go there. But when the time came to run, most of you chickened out. Shay told me about that night: She was all packed and everything, but in the end she got too scared to go.”

  Zane nodded, looking down into his coffee.

  “So you bailed too, didn’t you?” Tally said. “You were supposed to run away that time?”

  “Yeah,” he said flatly. “I didn’t go, even though the whole thing was my idea. And I became pretty, right on schedule.”

  Tally looked away, unable to keep herself from remembering that summer. Shay’s friends had all run off to the Smoke or turned pretty, leaving her alone in Uglyville. That’s when she and Tally had met, becoming best friends. And when Shay’s second attempt at running away had succeeded, Tally had been sucked into the whole mess.