Pretties

  She let out a slow breath, telling herself to calm down. Last summer might have been a nightmare, but it was also why she was a Crim now, and not just some boring brand-new pretty trying to get into a lame non-bubbly clique. Maybe it had been worth it all to wind up here, pretty and popular.

  She looked at Zane, his beautiful eyes still staring into the dregs of his coffee, and felt herself relax. She smiled. He looked so tragic sitting there, dark eyebrows arched in despair, still regretting that he’d bailed on running away to the Smoke. She reached out to take his hand.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal. It wasn’t that great out there. Mostly it was getting sunburned and bitten by bugs.”

  His eyes rose to meet hers. “At least you took the chance, Tally. You were brave enough to find out for yourself.”

  “I didn’t have a choice, really. I had to go find Shay.” She shivered, pulling her hand away. “I’m just lucky I made it back.”

  Zane moved closer and reached out, his delicate fingers tracing the sprayed-on skin over her scar, his golden eyes wide. “I’m glad you did.”

  She smiled, touching the back of his hand. “Me too.”

  Zane’s fingers slid into her hair, and he gently pulled her closer. She closed her eyes, letting his lips press against hers, reaching up to feel the smooth, flawless skin of his cheek.

  Tally’s heart was beating hard again, her mind racing even as her lips parted. Reality was shifting around her once more, but this time she liked the feeling.

  When she’d arrived in New Pretty Town, Peris had warned Tally about sex. Getting too close to other pretties could be overwhelming when you were brand-new. It took time to get used to all the gorgeous faces, the perfect bodies, the luminous eyes. When everyone was beautiful, you could wind up falling in love with the first pretty you kissed.

  But maybe it was time. She had been here a month, and Zane was special. Not just because he led the Crims and looked different from everyone else, but the way he tried to stay bubbly, to bend the rules. It made him even prettier than the others, somehow.

  And of all the unexpected turns in the last twenty-four hours, this was the nicest. Kissing Zane was dizzy-making, but not like she was falling into darkness. His lips were warm and soft and perfect, and she felt safe.

  After a long moment, the two pulled a little apart, Tally’s eyes still closed. She felt his breath against her, his hand warm and soft on the back of her neck. “David,” she whispered.

  BUBBLY-MAKING

  Zane pulled back, his eyes narrowing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Tally sputtered. “I don’t know what . . .”

  As she trailed off, Zane nodded slowly. “No, that’s okay.”

  “I didn’t mean to . . . ,” Tally started again, but Zane waved her silent, a thoughtful look spreading across his beautiful features. He stared at the ground, pulling up blades of grass between two fingers.

  “I remember now,” he said.

  “Remember what?”

  “That was his name.”

  “Whose name?”

  Zane spoke in quiet, even tones, as if trying not to wake someone sleeping nearby. “He was the one who was supposed to take us to the Smoke. David.”

  Tally heard herself gasp softly. Her eyes were squinting, as if the sun had been turned up a notch. She could still feel the ghost of Zane’s lips on hers, the warmth where his hands had touched her, but suddenly she was shivering.

  She took Zane’s hand. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I know. But things come back sometimes.” He looked up from the grass, his golden eyes flashing. “Tell me about David.”

  Tally swallowed and turned away.

  David. She could see him now, his funny big nose and high forehead. The handmade shoes he wore, and a jacket made out of dead animal skins sewn together. David had grown up out in the Smoke, had never set foot in a city his whole life. His face was ugly from top to bottom, tanned imperfectly by the sun, with a scar that went through his eyebrow . . . but remembering him sparked something inside Tally.

  She shook her head, amazed. Somehow, she’d forgotten David.

  “You met him in the Rusty Ruins, right?” Zane pressed her.

  “No,” she said. “I’d heard about him from Shay, and she tried to signal him once. But he never showed up. He was the one who took Shay to the Smoke, though.”

  “He was supposed to take me, too.” Zane sighed. “But you went to the Smoke on your own, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. But when I got there, he and I . . .” Tally remembered now. It all seemed a million years ago, but she could see herself—her ugly self—kissing David, traveling with him across the wilderness for weeks alone. A weird ping of memory moved through her, how strong and never-ending being with him had felt back then.

  And then, somehow, he’d disappeared.

  “Where is he now?” Zane asked. “Did the Specials catch him when they took down the Smoke?”

  She shook her head. Her other memories of David were tricky and faded, but the moment when they had parted was simply . . . gone. “I don’t know.”

  Tally felt faint, the world growing unsteady for the hundredth time that day. She reached out toward the breakfast tray, but Zane took her hand. “No, don’t eat.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t eat anything else, Tally. In fact, take a couple of these.” He pulled a packet of calorie-purgers from his pocket—four had already been punched out.

  “It helps if your heart’s beating faster.” He punched out two more, and bolted them down with a drink of coffee.

  “Helps what?” she asked.

  Zane pointed at his head. “Thinking. Hunger focuses your mind. Any kind of excitement works, actually.” He grinned, and pressed the packet into her hand. “Like kissing someone new. That works really well.”

  Tally gazed down at the calorie-purgers, uncomprehending. The shiny foil glimmered painfully in the sun, and the packet’s edges felt sharp as razors.

  “But I’ve eaten hardly anything. Not enough to gain weight.”

  “It’s not about losing weight. I need to talk to you, Tally. I need you with me for another minute. I’ve been waiting for someone like you for a long time. I need you . . . bubbly.”

  “Purgers are supposed to make me bubbly?”

  “They help. I’ll explain later. Just trust me, Tally-wa.” His gaze remained on her, almost crazily intense, like when he explained some new trick idea to the Crims. It could be hard to resist Zane when he was like this, even if he wasn’t making any sense.

  “Okay, I guess.” With clumsy fingers, she punched out two purgers and brought them to her mouth, but hesitated. You weren’t supposed to take them if you hadn’t eaten. It was dangerous. Back in the Rusty days—before the operation, when everyone had been ugly—there had been a disease where people deliberately didn’t eat. They were so afraid of getting fat that they got way too skinny, sometimes even starving themselves to death in a world full of food. It was one of the scary things the operation had gotten rid of.

  But a couple of purgers wouldn’t kill her. When Zane handed Tally his coffee, she washed them down, then grimaced at the acid taste.

  “Strong coffee, huh?” he said, grinning.

  After a moment, her heart started beating fast, her metabolism kicking up. Her vision stayed sharp. Like the night before, she felt as if a thin film of plastic between her and the rest of the world were being peeled away. She squinted harder in the bright sunlight.

  “Okay,” Zane said. “What’s the last thing you remember about David?”

  Tally tried to steady her shaking hands, ransacking her brain to fight through the fog around her ugly memories. “We were all out in the ruins,” she said. “You remember Shay’s story about how we kidnapped her?”

  Zane nodded, though Shay had more than one way of telling that story. In some versions, Shay had been kidnapped by Tally and the Smokies right from Special Circumstances headquarters. In other versions, she left the city
to rescue Tally from the Smokies, and the two of them escaped back to the city together. Of course, Shay’s weren’t the only stories that changed sometimes. Crims always exaggerated stuff about the old days, because making it bubbly was the point. But Tally had a feeling that Zane wanted the truth.

  “The Specials had destroyed the Smoke,” she continued. “But there were a few of us still hiding out in the ruins.”

  “The New Smoke. That’s what the uglies were calling you.”

  “That’s right. But how did you know about that? Weren’t you pretty by then?”

  Zane grinned. “You think you’re the only brand-new pretty I ever got to tell me stories, Tally-wa?”

  “Oh.” Remembering the kiss of a moment before, Tally wondered exactly how Zane had gotten the others to remember their ugly days.

  “But why did you come back to the city?” he asked. “Don’t tell me Shay actually rescued you.”

  Tally shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Did the Specials catch you? Did they get David, too?”

  “No.” The word reached her lips without hesitation. However fuzzy her memories were, David was still out there somewhere, she knew. In her mind she could see him clearly now, hiding in the ruins.

  “Tell me, Tally, why did you come back here and give yourself up?”

  Zane still held her hand, was squeezing it hard as he waited for an answer. His face was close again, gold eyes luminous in the dappled shade, drinking in everything she said. But somehow, the memories wouldn’t come. Thinking about those times was like banging her head against a wall.

  She chewed her lip. “How come I can’t remember? What’s wrong with me, Zane?”

  “That’s a good question. But whatever it is, it’s wrong with all of us.”

  “Who? The Crims?”

  He shook his head, glancing up at the party spires that loomed over them. “Not just us. Everyone. At least, everyone here in New Pretty Town. Most people won’t even talk about when they were uglies. They say they don’t want to discuss boring kid stuff.”

  Tally nodded. She had figured that out pretty quickly about New Pretty Town—outside the Crims, talking about ugly days was totally fashion-missing.

  “But when you push them,” Zane continued, “it turns out most of them can’t remember.”

  Tally frowned. “But us Crims always talk about the old days.”

  “We were all troublemakers,” Zane said. “So we have exciting stuff stored in our heads. But you have to keep telling those stories, listening to one another, and breaking the rules. You have to stay bubbly, or you’ll gradually forget everything from back then. Permanently.”

  Returning his powerful gaze, she suddenly realized something. “That’s what the Crims are for, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “That’s right, Tally—to keep from forgetting, and to help me figure out what’s wrong with us.”

  “How did you . . . what makes you so different?”

  “Another good question. Maybe I was just born this way, or maybe it’s because I made myself a promise after I chickened out that night last spring: One day I’m going to leave the city, pretty or not.” Zane’s voice faded on the last words, and he breathed out through his teeth. “It just turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Things were getting seriously boring there for a while, and I was starting to forget.” He brightened. “But then you showed up, with your screwy stories that don’t make sense. Things are definitely bubbly now.”

  “I guess they are.” Tally looked down at her hand in his. “One more question, Zane-la?”

  “Sure.” He smiled. “I like your questions.”

  Tally looked away, a little embarrassed. “When you kissed me just then, was that to help you stay bubbly and to make me remember better? Or was it . . .” She trailed off, looking nervously into his eyes.

  Zane grinned. “What do you think?” But he didn’t give her a chance to answer. He took her shoulders and pulled her close again, and kissed her deeper this time, the warmth of his lips mixing with the strength of his hands on her, the taste of coffee and the smell of his hair.

  When it was done, Tally leaned back, breathing hard because the kiss had been totally oxygen-missing. But it had made her bubbly, more than the calorie-purging pills or even jumping off the party spire the night before. And she remembered another thing that should have been totally obvious to mention before now, but somehow hadn’t been.

  And it was going to make Zane totally happy.

  “Last night,” Tally said, “Croy told me they had something for me, but he didn’t say what. He was going to leave it here in New Pretty Town, hidden so the wardens wouldn’t find it.”

  “Something from the New Smoke?” His eyes grew wide. “Where?”

  “Valentino 317.”

  VALENTINO 317

  “Wait a second,” Zane said. He pulled off her interface ring and then his own, and led her deeper into the pleasure garden. “Better lose these,” he said. “Don’t want them following.”

  “Oh, right.” Tally remembered ugly days, how easy it was to trick the dorm minders. “The wardens last night—they said they were going to keep an eye on me.”

  Zane chuckled. “They’re always keeping an eye on me.”

  He threaded the rings onto two tall reeds, which bowed under the weight of the metal bands. “The wind will move them every now and then,” he explained. “That way, it won’t look like we took them off.”

  “But won’t it look weird? Us staying in one place for so long?”

  “It is a pleasure garden.” Zane laughed. “I’ve spent my share of time in here.”

  A nasty ping went through Tally, but she didn’t let it show. “What about finding them again?”

  “I know this place. Quit worrying.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  He turned to her and laughed. “Nothing to be sorry for. This is the best breakfast I’ve had in ages.”

  • • •

  They left the rings and headed down toward the river and Valentino Mansion, Tally wondering what they would discover in Room 317. In most mansions, each room had its own name—Tally’s room in Komachi was called Etcetera; Shay’s was Bluesky—but Valentino was so old that the rooms had numbers. Valentinos always made a big deal out of stuff like that, sticking to the ancient traditions of their crumbling home.

  “Tricky place to hide it,” Zane said as they approached the sprawling mansion. “Easier to keep secrets where the walls don’t talk.”

  “That’s probably why they hacked a Valentino bash and not one in some other mansion,” Tally said.

  “Except I had to go and screw everything up,” Zane said.

  Tally looked at him. “You?”

  “We started off down in the stone mansion, but when we couldn’t find you guys anywhere, I said we should go up into the new party spire so the smart walls would find you.”

  “We had the same idea,” Tally said.

  Zane shook his head. “Yeah, well, if we’d all stayed down in Valentino, the Specials wouldn’t have spotted Croy so fast. He would have had time to talk to you.”

  “So they can listen through the walls?”

  “Yeah.” Zane grinned. “Why do you think I suggested a picnic on this bogusly cold day.”

  Tally nodded, thinking it through. The city interface brought you pings, answered your questions, reminded you of appointments, even turned the lights on and off in your room. If Special Circumstances wanted to watch you, they’d know everything you did and half of what you were thinking. She remembered talking to Croy up in the spire, her interface ring on her finger, the walls catching every word. . . . “Do they watch everybody?”

  “No, they couldn’t, and most people aren’t worth watching. But some of us get special treatment. As in Special Circumstances.”

  Tally swore. The Specials had shown up so quickly last night. She’d only had a few minutes with Croy, as if they’d been waiting close by. Maybe they’d already spotted that the pa
rty had been hacked. Or maybe they were never very far away from Tally Youngblood. . . .

  She looked into the trees. Shadows shifted in the wind, and she imagined gray shapes flitting among them. “I don’t think last night was because of you, Zane. It was my fault.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It’s always my fault.”

  “That’s bogus, Tally,” Zane said softly. “There’s nothing wrong with being special.”

  His voice trailed off as they passed through the main arch of Valentino Mansion. Within the cool stone walls, it was as silent as a tomb.

  “The party was still going when we left,” Zane whispered. “They probably all just went to bed.”

  Tally nodded. There weren’t even any maintenance robots at work yet. Bits of torn costumes littered the hallways. Spilled drinks filled the air with a sickly sweet perfume, and the floor was sticky underfoot. The glamour of the party had been stripped away, like bubbliness turned into a hangover.

  Her finger felt naked without an interface ring, bringing back memories of sneaking across the river as an ugly, the terror of being caught. But fear kept her bubbly, her senses sharp enough to hear stray party rubbish shifting in the drafty corridors, to separate the raisiny scent of spilled champagne from the stale funk of beer. Besides their own footsteps, the mansion was silent.

  “Whoever lives in 317 is going to be asleep,” Tally whispered.

  “Then we’ll wake them up,” Zane said softly, eyes flashing in the semidarkness.

  The ground-floor rooms were all numbered in the one hundreds, so they looked for a way up. New elevators had been added to the mansion at some point, but without interface rings, the doors wouldn’t open for them. A set of stone stairs brought Tally and Zane to the third floor, across from 301. The numbers counted up as they walked down the hall, odds on one side and evens on the other. Zane squeezed her hand when they reached 315.

  But the next room was numbered 319.

  They retraced their steps, checking the other side of the hall, but found only doors numbered 316, 318, and 320. Searching the rest of the floor, they found more 320s and the 330s, odd and even, but no Valentino 317.