Pretties

Criminal

Getting dressed was always the hardest part of the afternoon.

The invitation to Valentino Mansion said semiformal, but it was the semi part that was tricky. Like a night without a party, "semi" opened up too many possibilities. Bad enough for boys, for whom it could mean jacket and tie (skipping the tie with certain kinds of collars), or all white and shirtsleeves (but only on summer afternoons), or any number of longcoats, waistcoats, tailcoats, kilts, or really nice sweaters. For girls, though, the definition simply exploded, as definitions usually did here in New Pretty Town.

Tally almost preferred formal white-tie or black-tie parties. The clothes were less comfortable and the parties no fun until everyone got drunk, but at least you didn't have to think so hard about getting dressed.

"Semiformal, semiformal," she said, her eyes drifting over the expanse of her open closet, the carousel stuttering back and forth as it tried to keep up with Tally's random eyemouse clicks, setting clothes swaying on their hangers. Yes, "semi" was definitely a bogus word.

"Is it even a word?" Tally asked aloud. '"Semi?" It felt strange in her mouth, which was dry as cotton because of last night.

"Only half of one," the room said, probably thinking it was clever.

"Figures," Tally muttered.

She collapsed back onto her bed and stared up at the ceiling, feeling the room threaten to spin a little. It didn't seem fair, having to get worked up over half a word. "Make it go away," she said.

The room misunderstood, and slid shut the wall over her closet. Tally didn't have the strength to explain that she'd really meant her hangover, which was sprawled in her head like an overweight cat, sullen and squishy and disinclined to budge.

Last night, she and Peris had gone skating with a bunch of other Crims, trying out the new rink hovering over Nefertiti Stadium. The sheet of ice, held aloft by a grid of lifters, was thin enough to see through, and was kept transparent by a horde of little Zambonies darting among the skaters like nervous water bugs. The fireworks exploding in the stadium below made it glow like some kind of schizoid stained glass that changed colors every few seconds.

They all had to wear bungee jackets in case anyone broke through. No one ever did, of course, but the thought that at any moment the world could fall away with a sudden crack kept Tally drinking plenty of champagne.

Zane, who was pretty much the leader of the Crims, got bored and tipped a whole bottle onto the ice. He said that alcohol had a lower freezing point than water, so it might send someone tumbling down into the fireworks. But he hadn't poured out enough to save Tally's head this morning.

The room made the special sound that meant another Crim was calling.

"Hey."

"Hey, Tally."

"Shay-la!" Tally struggled up onto one elbow. "I need help!”

"The party? I know."

"What's the deal with semiformal, anyway?"

Shay laughed. "Tally-wa, you are so missing. Didn't you get the ping?"

"What ping?"

"It went out hours ago."

Tally glanced at her interface ring, still on her bedside table. She never wore it at night, an old habit from when she'd been an ugly, sneaking out all the time. It sat there softly pulsing, still muted for sleeptime. "Oh. Just woke up."

"Well forget semi anything. They changed the bash to fancy dress. We have to come up with costumes!"

Tally checked the time: just before five in the afternoon. "What, in three hours?"

"Yeah, I know. I'm all over the place with mine. It's so shaming. Can I come down?"

"Please."

"In five?"

"Sure. Bring breakfast. Bye."

Tally let her head fall back onto the pillow. The bed was spinning like a hoverboard now, the day just starting and already wiping out.

She slipped on her interface ring and listened angrily as the ping played, saying that no one would be admitted tonight without a really bubbly costume. Three hours to come up with something decent, and everyone else had a huge head start.

Sometimes, it felt like being a real criminal had been much, much simpler.

Shay had breakfast in tow: lobster omelettes, toast, hash browns, corn fritters, grapes, chocolate muffins, and Bloodies — more food than a whole packet of calorie purgers could erase. The overburdened tray shivered in the air, its lifters trembling like a littlie arriving at school, first day ever. "Um, Shay? Are we going as blimps or something?" Shay giggled. "No, but you sounded bad. And you have to be bubbly tonight. All the Crims are coming to vote you in."

"Great, bubbly" Tally sighed, relieving the tray of a Bloody Mary. She frowned at the first sip. "Not salty enough."

"No problem," Shay said, scraping off the caviar decorating an omelette and stirring it in.

"Ew, fishy!"

"Caviar is good with anything." Shay took another spoonful and put it straight into her mouth, closing her eyes to chew the little fish eggs. She twisted her ring to start some music.

Tally swallowed and drank more Bloody, which at least stopped the room from spinning. The chocolate muffins were starting to smell good. Then she'd move on to the hash browns. Then the omelette; she might even try the caviar. Breakfast was the meal when Tally most felt like she had to make up for the time she'd lost out in the wild. A good breakfast binge made her feel in control, as if a storm of city-made tastes could erase the months of stews and SpagBol.

The music was new and made her heart beat faster. "Thanks, Shay-la. You are totally life-saving."

"No problem, Tally-wa."

"So where were you last night, anyway?"

Shay just smiled, like she'd done something bad.

"What? New boy?"

Shay shook her head. Batted her eyes.

"You didn't surge again, did you?" Tally asked, and Shay giggled. "You did. You're not supposed to more than once a week. Could you be any more missing?"

"It's okay, Tally-wa. Just local."

"Where?" Shay's face didn't look any different. Was the surgery hidden under her pajamas?

"Look closer." Shay's long lashes fluttered again.

Tally leaned forward, staring into the perfect copper eyes, wide and speckled with jewel dust, and her heart beat still faster. A month after coming to New Pretty Town, Tally was still awestruck by other pretties' eyes. They were so huge and welcoming, bright with interest. Shay's lush pupils seemed to murmur, I'm listening to you. You fascinate me. They narrowed down the world to only Tally, all alone in the radiance of Shay's attention.

It was even weirder with Shay, because Tally had known her back in ugly days, before the operation had made her this way.

"Closer."

Tally took a steadying breath, the room spinning again, but in a good way. She gestured for the windows to transpare a little more, and in the sunlight she saw the new additions. "Ooh, pretty-making."

Bolder than all the other implanted glitter, twelve tiny rubies ringed each of Shay's pupils, glowing softly red against emerald irises.

"Bubbly, huh?"

"Yeah. But hang on … are the bottom-left ones different?" Tally squinted harder. One jewel in each eye seemed to be flickering, a tiny white candle in the coppery depths.

"It's five o'clock!" Shay said. "Get it?"

It took Tally a second to remember how to read the big clock tower in the center of town. "Um, but that's seven. Wouldn't bottom-right be five o'clock?"

Shay snorted. "They run counterclockwise, silly. I mean, so boring otherwise."

A laugh bubbled up in Tally. "So wait. You have jewels in your eyes? And they tell time? And they go backward! Isn't that maybe one thing too many, Shay?"

Tally immediately regretted what she'd said. The expression that clouded Shay's face was tragic, sucking away the radiance of a moment before. She looked about to cry, except without puffy eyes or a red nose. New surge was always a delicate topic, like a new hairstyle, almost.

"You hate them," Shay softly accused.

"Of course I don't. Like I said: totally pretty-making."

"Really?"

"Very. And it's good they go backward."

Shay's smile returned, and Tally breathed a sigh of relief, still not believing herself. It was the kind of mistake only brand-new pretties made, and she'd had the operation over a month ago. Why was she still saying bogus things? If she made a comment like that tonight, one of the Crims might vote against her. It only took one veto to shut you out.

And then she'd be alone, almost like running away again.

Shay said, "Maybe we should go as clock towers tonight, in honor of my new eyeballs."

Tally laughed, knowing the lame joke meant she was forgiven. She and Shay had been through a lot together, after all. "Have you talked to Peris and Fausto?"

Shay nodded. "They said we're all supposed to dress criminal. They've got an idea already, but it's secret."

"That's so bogus. Like they were such bad boys. All they ever did in the ugly days was sneak out and maybe cross the river a few times. They never even made it to the Smoke."

The song ended just then, and Tally's last word fell into sudden silence. She tried to think of what to say, but the conversation just faded out, like fireworks in a dark sky. The next song seemed to take a long time to start.

When it did, she was relieved and said, "Crim costumes should be easy, Shay-la. We're the two biggest criminals in town."

Shay and Tally tried for two hours, making the hole in the wall spit out costumes and trying them on. They thought of bandits, but didn't really know what one looked like — in all the old bandit movies in the wallscreen, the bad guys didn't look Crim, just retarded. Pirates were much better dressing, but Shay didn't want to wear a patch over one of her new eyeballs. Going as hunters was another idea, but the hole in the wall had this thing about guns, even fake ones. Tally thought of famous dictators from history, but most of them turned out to be men and fashion-missing.

"Maybe we should be Rusties!" Shay said. "In school, they were always the bad guys."

"But they mostly looked like us, I thought. Except ugly."

"I don't know, we could cut down trees or burn oil or something."

Tally laughed. "This is a costume, Shay-la, not a lifestyle."

Shay spread her arms and said more things, trying to be bubbly. "We could smoke tobacco? Or drive cars?"

But the hole in the wall wouldn't give them cigarettes or cars.

It was fun, though, hanging out with Shay and trying things on, then snorting and giggling and tossing the costumes back into the recycler. Tally loved seeing how she looked in new clothes, even silly ones. Part of her could still remember back before, when looking in the mirror had been painful, her eyes too close together and nose too small, hair frizzy all the time. Now it was like someone gorgeous stood across from Tally, following her every move— someone whose face was in perfect balance, whose skin glowed even with a total hangover, whose body was beautifully proportioned and muscled. Someone whose silvery eyes matched anything she wore.

But someone with bogus taste in costumes.

After two hours they were lying on the bed, which was spinning again.

"Everything sucks, Shay-la. Why does everything suck? They'll never vote me in if I can't even come up with a non-bogus costume."

Shay took her hand. "Don't worry, Tally-wa. You're already famous. There's no reason to be nervous."

"That's easy for you to say." Even though they'd been born on the same day, Shay had become pretty weeks and weeks before Tally. She'd been a full-fledged Crim for almost a month now.

"It's not going to be a problem," Shay said. "Anyone who used to hang out with Special Circumstances is a natural Crim."

A feeling went through Tally when Shay said that, like a ping, but hurting. "Still. I hate not being bubbly" "It's Peris's and Fausto's fault for not telling us what they're wearing."

"Let's just wait till they get here. And copy them."

"They deserve it," Shay agreed. "Want a drink?"

"I think so."

Tally was too spinning to go anywhere, so Shay told the breakfast tray to go and get some champagne.

When Peris and Fausto came in, they were on fire.

It was really just sparklers wound into their hair and stuck onto their clothes, making safety flames flicker all over them. Fausto kept laughing because it tickled. They were both wearing bungee jackets — their costume was that they'd just jumped from the roof of a burning building.

"Fantastic!" Shay said.

"Hysterical," Tally agreed, but then asked, "but how is that Crim?"

"Don't you remember?" Peris said. "When you crashed a party last summer, and got away by stealing a bungee jacket and jumping off the roof? Best ugly trick in history!"

"Sure…but why are you on fire?" Tally asked. "I mean, it's not Crim if the building's really on fire."

Shay was giving Tally a look like she was saying something bogus again.

"We couldn't just wear bungee jackets," Fausto said. "Being on fire is much bubblier."

"Yeah," Peris said, but Tally could tell he saw what she meant, and was sad now. She wished she hadn't mentioned it. Stupid Tally. The costumes really were bubbly.

They put the sparklers out to save them for the party, and Shay told the hole in the wall to make two more jackets.

"Hey, that's copying!" Fausto complained, but it turned out not to matter. The hole wouldn't do costume bungee jackets, in case someone forgot and jumped off something and splatted. It couldn't make a real jacket; you had to ask Requisition for anything complicated or permanent. And Requisition wouldn't send any up because there wasn't a fire.

Shay snorted. "The mansion is being totally bogus today."

"So where'd you get those?" Tally asked.

"They're real." Peris smiled, fingering his jacket. "We stole them from the roof."

"So they are Crim," Tally said, and jumped off the bed to hug him.

With Peris in her arms, it didn't feel like the party was going to suck, or that anyone was going to vote against her. His big brown eyes beamed down into hers, and he lifted her up and squeezed her hard. She'd always felt this close to Peris back in ugly days, playing tricks and growing up together. It was bubbly to feel this way right now.

All those weeks that Tally had been lost in the wild, all she'd ever wanted was to be back here with Peris, pretty in New Pretty Town. It was totally stupid being unhappy today, or any day. Probably just too much champagne. "Best friends forever," she whispered to him, as he set her down.

"Hey, what's this thing?" Shay said. She was deep in Tally's closet, poking around for ideas. She held up a shapeless mass of wool.

"Oh, that." Tally let her arms fall from around Peris. "That's my sweater from the Smoke, remember?" The sweater looked strange, not like she remembered. It was messy, and you could see where human hands had knitted the different pieces together. People in the Smoke didn't have holes in the wall — they had to make their own things, and people, it turned out, weren't very good at making things.

"You didn't recycle it?"

"No. I think it's made of weird stuff. Like, the hole can't use it. "

Shay held the sweater to her nose and inhaled. "Wow. It still smells like the Smoke. Campfires and that stew we always ate. Remember?"

Peris and Fausto went over to smell it. They'd never been out of the city, except for school trips to the Rusty Ruins. They certainly hadn't gotten as far as the Smoke, where everyone had to work all day making stuff, and growing (or even killing) their own food, and everyone stayed ugly after their sixteenth birthday. Ugly until they died, even.

Of course, the Smoke didn't exist anymore, thanks to Tally and Special Circumstances.

"Hey, I know, Tally!" Shay said. "Let's go as Smokies tonight!"

"That would be totally criminal!" Fausto said, his eyes full of admiration.

The three looked at Tally, all of them thrilled with the idea, and even though another nasty ping went through her, she knew it would be bogus not to agree. And that with a totally bubbly costume like a real-life Smokey sweater to wear, there was no way anyone would vote against her, because Tally Youngblood was a natural Crim.

Bash

The bash was in Valentino Mansion, the oldest building in New Pretty Town. It sprawled along the river only a few stories high, but was topped by a transmission tower visible halfway across the island. Inside, the walls were made of real stone, so the rooms couldn't talk, but the mansion had a long history of giant and fabulous bashes. The wait to become a Valentino resident was at least forever.

Peris, Fausto, Shay, and Tally walked down through the pleasure gardens, which were already bubbling with people headed to the bash. Tally saw an angel with beautiful feathered wings that must have been requisitioned months ago, which was so cheating, and a bunch of new pretties wearing fat-suits and masks that gave them triple chins. A mostly naked clique of Bashers were pretending to be pre-Rusties, building bonfires and drumming, establishing their own little satellite party, which was what Bashers always did.

Peris and Fausto kept arguing about exactly when to light themselves on fire again. They wanted to make an entrance but also save their sparklers for the other Crims. As they got closer to the mansion's noise and glimmer, Tally's nerves started to jump. The Smokey costumes didn't look like much. Tally wore her old sweater and Shay a copy, along with rough pants, knapsacks, and handmade-looking shoes that Tally had described to the hole in the wall, remembering someone wearing them in the Smoke. For unbathed authenticity they had rubbed dirt into their clothes and faces, which had seemed bubbly during the walk down, but now just felt dirty.

At the door were two Valentinos dressed up as wardens, making sure no one got inside without a costume. They stopped Fausto and Peris at first, but laughed when the two set themselves on fire, waving them through. They just shrugged at Shay and Tally, but let them in.

"Wait till the other Crims see us," Shay said. "They'll get it."

The four pushed through the crowds and into a total confusion of costumes. Tally saw snowmen, soldiers, thumb-game characters, and a whole Pretty Committee of scientists carrying facegraphs. Historical figures were everywhere in crazy clothes from all over the world, which reminded Tally how different from one another everyone used to look back when there were way too many people. A lot of the older new pretties were dressed in modern costumes: doctors, wardens, builders, or politicians — whatever they hoped to become after having the middle-pretty operation. A bunch of firefighters laughingly tried to extinguish Peris's and Fausto's flames, but only succeeded in annoying them.

"Where are they?" Shay kept asking, but the stone walls didn't answer. "This is so missing. How do people live here?"

"I think they carry handphones all the time," Fausto said. "We should have requed one."

The problem was that in Valentino Mansion you couldn't just call people by asking — the rooms were old and dumb, so it was like being outside. Tally placed one palm against the wall as they walked, liking how cool the ancient stones felt. For a moment, they reminded her of things out in the wild, rough and silent and unchanging. She wasn't really dying to find the other Crims; they'd all be looking at her and wondering how to vote.

They wandered the crowded hallways, peeking into rooms full of old-timey astronauts and explorers. Tally counted five Cleopatras and two Lillian Russells. There were even a few Rudolph Valentinos; it turned out the mansion was named after a natural pretty from back in the Rusty days.

Other cliques had organized theme costumes — teams of Jocks carrying hockey sticks and wobbly on hoverskates, Twisters as sick puppies wearing big cone-shaped plastic collars. And of course the Swarm was everywhere, all jabbering to one another on their interface rings. Swarmers had skintennas surged into them so they could call one another from anywhere, even inside Valentino Mansion's dumb walls. The other cliques always made fun of the Swarm, who were afraid to go anywhere except in giant groups. They were all dressed as houseflies with big bug eyes, which at least was sense-making.

No other Crims appeared among the tumult of costumes, and Tally began to wonder if they'd all ditched the party rather than vote for her. Paranoid thoughts began to plague her, and she kept catching glimpses of someone lurking in the shadows, half-hidden by the crowds, but always there. Every time she turned around, though, the gray silk costume slipped out of sight.

Tally couldn't tell whether it was a boy or a girl. The figure wore a mask, scary but also beautiful, its cruel wolf eyes glinting in the low, flickering party lights. The plastic face jarred something in Tally, a painful memory that took a moment to gel.

Then she realized what the costume was supposed to be: an agent of Special Circumstances.

Tally leaned back against one of the cool stone walls, remembering the gray silk coveralls that Specials wore and the cruel pretty faces they were given. The sight made her head spin, which was the way Tally always felt when she thought back to her days in the wild.

Seeing the costume here in New Pretty Town didn't make any sense. Besides herself and Shay, hardly anyone had ever seen a Special. To most people they were just rumors and urban legends, blamed whenever anything weird happened. Specials kept themselves well hidden. Their job was to protect the city from outside threats, like soldiers and spies back in the days of the Rusties, but only total criminals like Tally Youngblood ever met them in person.

Still, someone had done a pretty good job on the costume. He or she must have seen a real Special at some point. But why was the figure following her? Every time Tally turned, it was there, moving with the terrible and predatory grace she remembered from being hunted through the ruins of the Smoke on that awful day when they had come to take her back to the city.

She shook her head. Thinking of those days always brought up bogus memories that didn't fit together. The Specials hadn't hunted Tally, of course. Why would they? They'd rescued her, bringing her home after she'd left the city to track down Shay. The thought of Specials always left her spinning, but that was just because their cruel faces were designed to freak you out, the same way that looking at regular pretties made you feel good.

Maybe the figure wasn't following her at all; maybe it was more than one person, some clique all dressed the same and spread out across the party, which made it feel like one of them was lurking her. That idea was a lot less crazy-making.

She caught up with the others, and joked with them as they searched for the rest of the Crims. But as Tally kept one eye out for figures in the shadows, she slowly became sure that it wasn't a clique. There was always exactly one, not talking to anybody, totally lurking. And the way the figure moved, so gracefully…

Tally told herself to calm down. Special Circumstances had no reason to follow her. And it made no sense for a Special to come to a costume party dressed as a Special.

She forced a laugh from herself. It was probably one of the other Crims playing a joke on her, one who'd heard Shay's and Tally's stories a hundred times and knew all about Special Circumstances. If so, it would be totally bogus to go all brain-missing in front of everyone. Better to ignore the fake Special altogether.

Tally looked down at her own costume, and wondered if the Smokey clothes were helping to freak her out. Shay had been right: The smell of the old, handmade sweater brought back their time outside the city, days of back-breaking work and nights staying warm by the camp fire, mingled with memories of the aging ugly faces that still brought her awake screaming sometimes.

Living in the Smoke had totally done a job on Tally's head.

No one else mentioned the figure. Were they all in on the joke? Fausto kept worrying that his sparklers were going to run out before any of the other Crims saw them. "Let's see if they're in one of the spires," he said.

"At least we can call them from a real building," Peris agreed.

Shay snorted and headed toward the nearest door. "Anything to get out of this bogus pile of rocks."

The party was spilling outside, anyway, expanding beyond the ancient stone walls. Shay led them toward a party spire at random, through a cluster of Hairdos with beehive wigs, each with its own swarm of bumblebees, which were really micro-lifters painted yellow and black in holding patterns around their heads.

"They didn't get the buzzing sound right," Fausto said, but Tally could tell he was impressed by the costumes. The sparklers in his hair were sputtering out, and people were looking at him like, huh?

From inside the party tower, Peris called Zane, who said the Crims were all right upstairs. "Good guess, Shay."

The four of them crammed into the elevator with a surgeon, a trilobite, and two drunken hockey players struggling to stay upright on hoverskates.

"Get that nervous look off your face, Tally-wa," said Shay, squeezing her shoulder. "You'll be in, no problem. Zane likes you."

Tally managed a smile, wondering if that was really true. Zane was always asking her about ugly days, but he did that with everyone, sucking up the Crims' stories with his gold-flecked eyes. Did he really think that Tally Youngblood was anything special?

It was clear that someone did — as the elevator doors closed, Tally glimpsed gray silk slipping gracefully through the crowd.

Lurker

Most of the other Crims had come as lumberjacks, dressed in plaid and grotesquely muscle-padded, holding big fake chainsaws and glasses of champagne. There were also butchers, a few smokers who'd made their own fake cigarettes, and a hangman with a long noose draped over her shoulder. Zane, who knew a lot about history, had come as some dictator's assistant who wasn't totally fashion-missing, all in tight black with a bubbly red armband. He'd done costume surge to make his lips thin and cheeks sunken, which made him look kind of like a Special.

They all laughed at Peris's costume, and tried to relight Fausto, but only managed to burn a few wisps of his hair, which was totally bogus-smelling. It took an anxious moment for them to figure out Tally's and Shay's costumes, but soon the other Crims were crowding in to touch the rough fibers of the handmade sweater and asking if it was itchy. (It was, but Tally shook her head.)

Shay stood close to Zane and got him to notice her new eye surge.

"Think they're pretty-making?" she asked.

"I give them fifty milli-Helens," he said.

This went totally missing on everyone.

"A milli-Helen is enough beauty to launch exactly one ship," Zane explained, and the older Crims all laughed. "Fifty's pretty good."

Shay smiled, Zane's praise lighting her face up like champagne.

Tally tried to be bubbly, but the thought of the costumed Special lurking her was too dizzy-making. After a few minutes, she escaped onto the party spire's balcony to fill her lungs with cold, fresh air.

A few hot-air balloons were tethered to the spire, hovering like huge black moons in the sky. The Hot-airs riding in one gondola were shooting roman candles at the others, laughing as the safety flames roared across the darkness. Then one of the balloons began to rise, the roar of its burner audible above the party noise, its tether dropping to slap against the spire. It lifted on a tiny finger of flame, finally disappearing into the distance. If Shay hadn't introduced her to the Crims, Tally figured she would have been a Hot-air. They were always drifting off into the night and landing at random places, calling a hovercar to pick them up from some distant suburb or even past the city limits.

Staring out over the river toward the darkness of Uglyville made Tally's brain much less spinning. It was strange. Her time in the wild was so fuzzy, but Tally could perfectly remember being a young ugly watching the lights of New Pretty Town from her dorm window and dying to turn sixteen. She had always imagined herself here on this side, in some high tower, with fireworks going off around her, surrounded by pretties and pretty herself.

Of course, the Tally of those fantasies had usually been wearing a ball gown — not a woolen sweater and work pants, her face smeared with dirt. She fingered a thread working its way free of the weave, wishing that Shay hadn't found the sweater tonight. Tally wanted to leave the Smoke behind, to escape all the tangled memories of running and hiding and feeling like a betrayer. She hated glancing every minute at the elevator door, wondering if the costumed Special had followed her up here. She wanted to feel totally belonging somewhere, not waiting for the next disaster to strike.

Maybe what Shay kept saying was right, and tonight's vote would fix all that. The Crims were one of the tightest cliques in New Pretty Town. You had to be voted in, and once you were a Crim, you could always depend on friends and parties and bubbly conversation. No more running for Tally.

The only catch was, no one could join who hadn't been totally tricky in their ugly days, with good stories to tell about sneaking out and hoverboarding all night and running away. Crims were pretties who hadn't forgotten being uglies, who still enjoyed the practical jokes and criminal tricks that made Uglyville, in its own way, bubbly.

"What would you give the view?" It was Zane, suddenly next to her, looking all of his two-meter maximum pretty height in the ancient black uniform.

"Give it?"

"A hundred milli-Helens? Five hundred? Maybe a whole Helen?"

Tally took a steadying breath, looking down at the dark river. "I'd give it none. It's Uglyville, after all."

Zane chuckled. "Now, Tally-wa, there's no reason to be nasty about our ugly little brothers and sisters. It's not their fault they aren't as pretty as you." He pushed a stray lock of Tally's hair back around her ear.

"Not them, the place. Uglyville is a prison." The words felt wrong in her mouth, too serious for a bash.

But Zane didn't seem to mind. "You escaped, didn't you?" He stroked the sweater's strange fibers, like the rest of them kept doing. "Was the Smoke any better?"

Tally wondered if he wanted a real answer. She was nervous about saying something bogus. If Zane thought Tally was missing, vetoes would rain down no matter what Shay and Peris had promised.

She looked up into his eyes. They were a shimmering metallic gold, reflecting the fireworks like tiny mirrors, and something behind them seemed to pull at Tally. Not just the usual pretty magic, but something that felt serious, as if the bash around them had disappeared. Zane always listened raptly to her Smoke stories. He'd heard them all by now, but maybe there was something more he wanted to know.

"I left the night before my sixteenth birthday," she said. "So I wasn't exactly escaping Uglyville."

"That's right." Zane released her from his gaze and looked out across the river. "You were running from the operation."

"I was following Shay. I had to stay ugly to find her."

"To rescue her," he said, then trained his golden eyes on her again. "Was that really it?"

Tally nodded carefully, last night's champagne spinning her head. Or maybe tonight's. She looked at the empty glass in her hand and wondered how many she'd had.

"It was just a thing I had to do." As she said the words, Tally knew that they sounded bogus.

"A special circumstance?" Zane asked, his smile wry.

Tally's eyebrows lifted. She wondered what tricks Zane had pulled back when he was an ugly. He didn't tell that many stories himself. Though he wasn't that much older than her, Zane never seemed to have to prove that he was a real Crim, he just was.

Even with his lips thinned by costume surge, he was beautiful. His face had been sculpted into more extreme shapes than most, as if the doctors had wanted to push the Pretty Committee's specs to the limit. His cheekbones were as sharp as arrowheads underneath his flesh, and his eyebrows arched absurdly high when he was amused. Tally saw with sudden clarity that if any of his features were shifted a few millimeters he would look terrible, and yet at the same time it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been an ugly "Did you ever go to the Rusty Ruins?" she asked. "Back when you were…young?"

"Almost every night, last winter."

"In winter?"

"I love the ruins covered with snow," he said. "It makes the edges softer, adding mega-Helens to the view."

"Oh." Tally remembered traveling across the wild in early autumn, how cold it had been. "Sounds totally…freezing."

"I could never get anyone else to come with me." His eyes narrowed. "When you talk about the ruins, you never mention meeting anyone there."

"Meeting someone?" Tally closed her eyes, finding herself suddenly balance-missing. She leaned against the balcony rail and took a deep breath.

"Yeah," he said. "Did you ever?"

The empty champagne glass slipped from her hand and tumbled into the blackness.

"Look out below," Zane murmured, a smile on his lips.

A tinkling crash rose up from the darkness, surprised laughter spreading from it like ripples from a stone in water. It sounded a thousand kilometers away.

Tally took in more breaths of the cold night air, trying to regain her composure. Her stomach was doing flip-flops. It was so shaming to be like this, about to throw breakfast after a few lousy glasses of champagne.

"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: Cray'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 full 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 hover-bounced 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 Cray'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 Cray'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. Cray'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 when 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?"

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 Rums?"

"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.

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 party 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.

"This is a bubbly puzzle," Zane said, chuckling to himself.

Tally sighed. "Maybe it was all a joke."

"You think the New Smokies would hack a citywide invitation, sneak across the river, and crash a party just to waste our time?"

"Probably not," Tally admitted, but she felt something in her starting to fade. She found herself wondering if this whole expedition was kind of lame, looking for some big secret that uglies had left behind. Sneaking around in someone else's mansion was pretty bogus, after all. "You think breakfast is still warm?" she asked.

"Tally …" Zane turned his intense gaze on her. With trembling hands, he pushed her hair behind her ears. "Stay with me."

"I'm right here," she said.

He drew closer, until his lips almost brushed hers. "I mean, stay bubbly."

Tally kissed him, and with the pressure of his lips the world sharpened again. She pushed the hunger out of her mind and said, "Okay. What about the elevator?"

"Which one?"

She led him back to the space between Valentino 315 and 319. The long expanse of stone wall was interrupted by an elevator door.

"There used to be a room here," she said.

"But they got rid of it when they put in the elevator." Zane laughed. "Lazy pretties. Can't climb two flights of stairs."

"So maybe 317 is the elevator now."

"Well, that's bogus," Zane said. "We can't make it come without our rings."

"We could wait around until someone else calls the elevator, and slip in."

Zane looked up and down the empty hallway, piled with plastic cups and torn paper decorations. "Hours from now," he said, sighing. "When we won't be bubbly anymore."

"Yeah. Not bubbly." A layer of fuzziness was starting to sink across Tally's vision again, and her stomach growled in a food-missing way, which called up the mental image of a warm chocolate muffin. She shook her head to clear it, visualizing a Special Circumstances uniform instead. Last night the sight of gray silk had focused her mind, had propelled her after Croy and into the fire stairwell. The whole thing had been a test to see how well her brain was working. Maybe this was another test. A bubbly puzzle, as Zane had said.

She stared at the elevator door. There had to be a way inside.

Slowly, a memory came to her. It was from back in the ugly days, but not so long ago. Tally remembered falling down a lightless shaft. It was one of the stories that Shay always liked to hear her tell, about how Tally and David had snuck into Special Circumstances headquarters…"The roof," Tally said.

"What?"

"You can climb down into an elevator shaft from the roof. I've done it."

"Really?"

Instead of answering, Tally kissed him again. She couldn't remember exactly how, but knew that if she just stayed bubbly, it would come back to her. "Follow me."

Getting up to the roof wasn't as simple as she'd expected— the stairs they had taken up stopped at the third floor. Tally frowned, frustration deadening everything again. In Komachi Mansion, getting up to the roof was easy. "This is bogus. What do they do if there's a fire?"

"Stone doesn't burn," Zane said. He pointed at a small window at the end of the hall, sunlight streaming in through its stained-glass panels. "That's the way out." He strode toward it.

"What? Climb up the outside wall?"

Zane stuck his head out and looked down, letting out a long whistle. "Nothing like heights to keep you bubbly."

Tally frowned, unsure whether or not she wanted to be that bubbly.

Zane pulled himself up onto the sill and leaned out, grasping the top of the window. He stood carefully, slowly rising until Tally could see only his boots standing on the stone ledge outside. Her heart began to race again, until she could feel it beating in her fingertips. The world became as sharp as icicles.

For a long time his feet were motionless, then they shuffled closer to the edge, until only Zane's toes rested on the stone, precariously balanced.

"What are you doing up there?"

In answer, his boots lifted slowly into the air. Then Tally heard the muffled sound of soles scrabbling on stone. She stuck her head through and peered up.

Above her, Zane dangled from the edge of the roof, his feet swinging and scraping. Then one of his boots found purchase in a crack between the stones, and he hauled himself over and out of sight.

A moment later, his face appeared, grinning from ear to ear. "Come on up!"

Tally pulled her head in and took a deep breath, placing her hands on the ledge. The stone was rough and cold. The wind whistling through the window made the tiny hairs on her arms stand up.

"Stay bubbly," Tally said softly. She pulled herself up to sit in the window, the stone cold against her thighs, and took a quick glance at the ground. It was a long way down to the scattered leaves and tree roots that would break her fall. The wind picked up, making nearby branches wave, and Tally could see every twig. The smell of pine tree sharpened in her nostrils. Bubbly was not going to be a problem.

She slid one foot out onto the ledge, then the other.

Standing up was the scariest part. Tally clutched the window frame with one hand as she rose, the other feeling for a handhold on the outside wall. She didn't dare let herself look down again. The cool stone was pocked with holes and cracks, but none seemed large enough for more than fingertips.

When her legs had straightened all the way, Tally found herself paralyzed for a moment. She swayed slightly in the breeze, like an unsupported tower built too tall.

"Pretty bubbly-making, huh?" Zane's voice came from above. "Just grab the ledge."

She tore her gaze from the wall in front of her and looked up. The edge of the roof was just out of reach. "Hey, this isn't fair. You're taller than me."

"No problem." He lowered one hand.

"Are you sure you can hold me?"

"Come on, Tally-wa. What's the point of having all those new pretty muscles if you don't use them for anything."

"Like getting killed?" she said under her breath, but reached up to take his hand.

Her new muscles were stronger than she'd thought, though. With her fingers locked around Zane's wrist, Tally pulled herself easily up from the window ledge. Her free hand grasped the roof's edge, and one toe managed to get purchase in a crack in the mansion wall. With a grunt, Tally was up, rolling over the ledge and onto the roof. She sprawled on the reassuringly solid stone, giggling with the rush of relief that swept through her.

Zane grinned. "It's true, what I said before."

She looked up at him questioningly.

"I've been waiting for someone like you."

Pretties didn't blush — not in an ugly-making way, at least — but Tally rolled to her feet to hide her reaction. The bubbliness of their death-defying climb had made Zane's gaze too intense. She stood to take in the view.

From the roof, Tally could see the spires of New Pretty Town still towering over them, the green trails of pleasure gardens snaking up the central hill. Across the river, Uglyville was already awake. A soccer field full of just-turned-uglies swarmed around a black-and-white ball, and the wind carried to her ears the sound of a whistle being furiously blown. The view seemed terribly close and in focus, her nervous system still ringing, echoing from the moments she'd swung from Zane's hand.

The stone roof was flat, marked only by the spinning heads of three air vents, the towering transmission mast, and a metal shack no bigger than an ugly's closet. Tally pointed at the latter. "That's right above the elevator."

They crossed the roof. In the shack's ancient door, a rust-covered sheet of metal like those that littered the ruins, letters had been painstakingly scratched: Valentino 317.

"Very non-bogus, Tally," Zane said, grinning. He yanked at the door, but a shiny chain snapped taut with a screeched complaint. "Hmm."

Tally looked at the device that kept the chain from slipping, wracking her still-spinning brain. "That's called a … padlock, I think." She felt the smooth steel object between her fingers, trying to remember how they worked. "They had them in the Smoke, to secure stuff that people might steal."

"Great. All this and we still need our rings."

Tally shook her head. "Smokies don't use interface rings, Zane. To open a padlock, you need a …" She searched her memory for another old word, then found it. "There must be a key somewhere."

"A key? Like a password?"

"No. This kind of key is a little metal thing. You stick it in and turn, which makes the lock pop open."

"What does it look like?"

"A flat piece of steel, about as long as your thumb, with teeth."

Zane giggled at this image, but started looking around.

Tally stared at the door. The shack was obviously much older than the chain that held it shut. She wondered what it had been used for. Leaning close to the narrow gap Zane had opened, Tally sheltered her gaze with both hands and peered into the blackness. Her eyes adjusted slowly, until she could make out dark shapes within.

There seemed to be a huge pulley and a crude mechanical engine, like the kind they used out in the Smoke. The elevator had once moved up and down on a chain. This shack was old; it must have been abandoned after lifters had been invented, which was ages ago. Modem elevators ran on the same principle as hoverboards and bungee jackets. (Which was a lot safer than dangling from a chain…Tally shivered at the thought.) When lifters had been added, the old mechanism must have been left up here on the roof to rust.

She yanked at the padlock again, but it held firm. Heavy and crude, the lock looked out of place here in the city. When wardens wanted to secure something, they stuck up a sensor that would tell you to keep out. Only New Smokies would have used a padlock made of metal.

Croy had told her to come here, so there had to be a key around somewhere.

"Another stupid test," she muttered.

"A what?" Zane asked. Looking for the key, he had climbed on top of the shack.

"Like Croy dressing up as a Special," she explained. "And making us find Valentino 317. The key has to be tricky to get hold of, because it's all a test. Their point is to make it hard to find this thing that Croy left for me. They don't want us to find it unless we're bubbly."

"Or maybe," Zane said, perching on one edge of the shack, "they want the search to make us bubbly, so we're thinking clearly when we find it."

"Whatever it is," Tally said, and sighed. She felt annoyance rising in her, along with the feeling that this test would never end, that every solution would just lead to another level of problems, like some stupid thumbgame. Maybe the smartest move would be to blow it all off and just have breakfast. Why was she trying to prove herself to the New Smokies, anyway? They didn't matter. She was beautiful and they were ugly.

But Zane's brain was still spinning. "So they'd hide the key somewhere that would be extra tricky to get to. But what would be trickier than climbing up here?"

Tally's eyes swept the roof, until they found the spindly transmission tower. At its top, twenty stories above them, the Valentino flag whipped in the wind. At the sight of it, the world grew crisp again, and she smiled.

"Climbing up there."

The High Tower

The transmission tower was the newest piece of Valentino Mansion, made of steel painted over with white polymers to keep rust at bay. It was part of the system that tracked people's interface rings, supposedly to help find anyone who got lost or injured outside a smart building.

White struts loomed over Tally and Zane, crisscrossing like a cat's cradle, shining in the sun like porcelain. The tower didn't look hard to climb, except for the fact that it was five times as tall as Valentino Mansion, even taller than a party spire. As she stared up into its heights, a low rumble sounded in Tally's stomach. She was pretty sure it wasn't hunger. "At least there's no dragon guarding it," she said.

Zane lowered his anxious gaze from the tower. "Huh?"

Tally shook her head. "Just something from a dream I had."

"You really think the key's up there?"

"I'm afraid so."

"The New Smokies climbed all that way?"

Old memories came back. "No. They could've hover-boarded up the side. Boards can go that high if they stay close enough to a big piece of metal."

"You know, we could requisition a hoverboard…," Zane said quietly.

She looked at him with surprise.

He muttered, "Of course, that wouldn't be very bubbly, would it?"

"It wouldn't. And anything that flies has a minder. Do you know how to trick a hoverboard's safety governor?"

"Used to, but I can't remember."

"Me either. Okay, then. We climb."

"Okay," he said. "But first…" He reached for Tally's hand, drew her to him, and they kissed again.

She blinked once, then felt a grin spreading on her face. "Just to keep us bubbly."

The first half was easy.

Tally and Zane stayed together, climbing opposite sides of the tower, finding ready handholds in the weave of struts and cables. The wind kicked up now and then, playfully tugging at Tally in a way that was nervous-making, but all it took was a quick glance downward to focus her mind.

Halfway up, she could already see the whole of Valentino Mansion, the pleasure gardens spread out in every direction, even the hovercar pads atop the central hospital where they did the operation. The river glittered as the sun climbed toward noon, and across the water, in Uglyville, Tally saw her old dorm hulking among the trees. On the soccer field, a few uglies were watching them and pointing, probably wondering who was climbing the tower.

Tally wondered how long it would be before someone on this side of the river noticed their ascent and pinged the wardens.

With her new muscles, the climb wasn't physically demanding. But as the two of them neared the top, the tower grew narrower, the handholds less sure. The polymer coating was slick, still wet in a few corners where the morning sun hadn't yet dried the dew. Microwave dishes and thick skeins of braided cables crowded the struts, and doubts began to creep through Tally's mind. Was the key really up here? Why would the New Smokies make her risk her life just to pass a test? As the climb grew trickier and the drop more panic-making, Tally found herself wondering how she'd wound up here on this tall and windy spike.

The night before, her only goal had been to become a Crim, pretty and popular, surrounded by a clique of new friends. And she'd managed to get everything she'd wanted — on top of which, Zane had kissed her, a bubbly development she hadn't even imagined before this morning.

Of course, getting what you wanted never turned out the way you'd thought it would. Being a Crim wasn't about being satisfied, and hanging out with Zane apparently involved risking your life and not eating breakfast. Tally had only been voted in last night, and here she was having to prove herself again.

And for what? Did she really want to unlock the rusty shack below? Whatever was in there could only make her head more spinning, and was certain to remind her of David and the Smoke and everything she'd left behind. It felt as if every time she took a step forward into her new life, something sucked her back toward ugly days.

With her mind tangled by these questions, Tally put her foot wrong.

The sole of one shoe slipped from a thick cable coated in slick plastic, sending her flailing legs away from the tower, yanking her hands from their grip on a strut that was still wet with dew. Tally tumbled downward, the feeling of free fall surging through her body, familiar from all the times she had wiped out on a hoverboard or thrown herself from the top of a building.

Her instincts told her to relax, until she realized the big difference between this fall and all those others: Tally wasn't wearing crash bracelets or a bungee jacket. This time she was really falling; nothing was going to catch her.

Her brand-new pretty reflexes kicked into gear, and her hands flew out to grab a passing braid of cable. Tally's palms slid down the plastic insulation, the friction burning her skin as if the cable had burst into flame. Her legs swung in toward the tower — knees bent, body turning — and Tally absorbed the impact against the metal with her hip, a blow that shook her whole frame but didn't loosen the grip of her burning fingers.

Tally's feet scrabbled to gain purchase, their soles finding a wide strut and mercifully taking most of the weight from her hands. She wrapped her arms around the cable, every muscle tense, barely hearing Zane's shouts above her, and gazed out over the river, amazed at her own vision.

Everything shone, as if diamonds had been scattered across Uglyville. Her mind felt clean, like the air after a morning rain, and Tally understood at last why she had climbed up here. Not to impress Zane or the Smokies, or to pass any test, but because some part of her had wanted this moment, this clarity she hadn't felt since the operation. This was way beyond bubbly.

"Are you okay?" came a distant cry.

She looked back up at Zane. Seeing how far she'd fallen, Tally swallowed, but still managed a smile. "I'm bubbly. Totally. Wait up."

She climbed fast now, ignoring her bruised hip. Her scorched palms complained every time they closed around a handhold, but within a minute she was alongside Zane again. His golden eyes were wider than ever, as if her fall had scared him worse than it had Tally.

She smiled again, realizing that it probably had. "Come on." She left him behind, pulling herself up the last few meters.

Reaching the top, Tally found a black magnet stuck to the bottom of the flagpole, a shiny new key clinging to it. She carefully pulled the key off and slipped it into her pocket while the Valentino flag snapped overhead, the sound as crisp as clothes fresh out of the wall.

"Got it," she yelled, and started down, passing Zane before he'd even moved, the shocked expression still frozen on his face.

It wasn't until she stood on the roof again that Tally realized how sore her muscles were. Her heart was still pounding, and the world remained crystalline. She pulled the key from her pocket, tracing its teeth with one trembling fingertip, her senses registering every detail of the metal's jagged edge.

"Hurry up!" she cried to Zane, who was still only halfway down. He started to climb faster, but Tally snorted and spun on one heel, striding toward the shack.

The padlock popped open when she turned the key, the rusty door groaning with age as its bottom edge skidded across the stone. Tally stepped inside, blind for a moment in the darkness, seeing red traces that pulsed with her heartbeat, full of excitement. If the Smokies had arranged all this to make her bubbly, they'd gotten what they wanted.

The little room smelled very old, the air inside warm and still. As Tally's eyes adjusted, she could see the flaking graffiti that filled every centimeter of wall space, layer upon layer of slogans, scrawled tags, and the names of couples proclaiming their love. Some of the dates included years that made no sense, until Tally realized that they were written in Rusty style, counting all the old centuries before the collapse. The crumbling elevator machinery was decorated with still more graffiti, and the floor littered with ancient contraband: old cans of spray-paint, crushed and empty tubes of notoriously sticky nano-glue, burned-out fireworks smelling like old campfires. Tally saw a yellowed rectangle of paper, squashed and blackened at one end, like a picture of a cigarette from a Rusty history book. She picked it up and sniffed, dropping it when her stomach heaved at the stench.

A cigarette? This place was older than lifters, she reminded herself, maybe even older than the city itself, a strange, forgotten piece of history. She wondered how many generations of uglies and tricky new pretties like the Crims had made it theirs.

The pouch Croy had shown her rested on one of the old rusted gears of the elevator mechanism, waiting.

Tally picked it up. The old leather felt strange in her hands, sending her mind back to the worn textures of the Smoke. She opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper. A small, skittering sound came from the stone floor, and she realized something tiny had fallen from the pouch — two things, in fact. Tally knelt down and squinted, feeling the cool stone with her still burning palms until she found two little white pills.

She stared at them, feeling a memory at the edge of her awareness.

The room darkened, and she looked up. Zane was in the doorway, panting, his eyes flashing in the gloom. "Gee. Thanks for waiting, Tally."

She didn't say anything. He took a step in and knelt beside her.

"You okay?" His hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Didn't hit your head in that fall, did you?"

"No. Just cleared it up. I found this." She handed the sheet of paper to Zane, who smoothed it out and held it up to the light streaming through the door. It was covered with an almost unreadable scrawl.

Tally looked down again at the pills in her hand. Tiny and white, they looked like a pair of purgers. But Tally was pretty sure they would do more than burn calories. She remembered something…

Zane slowly lowered the sheet of paper, his eyes wide. "It's a letter, and it's addressed to you."

"A letter? Who from?"

"You, Tally." His voice echoed softly from the metal walls of the shack. "It's from you."

Note To Self

Tally paused and traced the scrawled words with one finger, trying to remember dictating them. Shay liked to demonstrate how they could make letters with a stylus, one of the tricks she'd learned in preparation for their trip to the Smoke. She had left a note for Tally telling how to follow her there. But was this really Shay's handwriting?

More important, were the words true? Tally really couldn't remember. She took a breath and kept on reading…

Tally heard a sharp intake of breath next to her ear. She turned to find Zane reading over her shoulder. "Looks like you may be right about us pretties," she said. He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Great." He pointed at the next paragraph. "But how about that?" She dropped her eyes to the page again.

Tally stopped reading. "Kidnapped me?"

"Looks like there's been a change of plan since you wrote this," Zane said.

Tally felt funny for a moment, the image of David now stronger in her head. "If I wrote this. And if it's true. Anyway, Croy came to see me, not…David." As she said his name, memories surged through Tally: David's hands roughened from years of work, his jacket made from sewn-together skins, the white scar that went through his eyebrow. A feeling like panic began to well up in her. "What happened to David, Zane? Why didn't he come?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Were you and he …?"

Tally looked down at the letter again. It blurred before her, and a single teardrop fell onto the paper. Ink bled into the spattered mark, turning the tear black. "I'm pretty sure we were." Her voice was rough, memories tangled inside her. "But something happened."

"Oh?"

"I don't know what." Tally wondered why she couldn't remember. Was it really because of lesions — the scars on her brain that the note had warned about? Or did she simply not want to?

"What's that in your hand, Tally?" Zane asked.

She opened her reddened palm to reveal the tiny white pills resting there. "The cure. Let me finish this." She took a steadying breath.

Tally let the paper fall onto her lap. Somehow, the scrawled words had sucked the clarity out of the world, making her head-spinning and fuzzy again. Her heart was still pounding, but not in that beautiful way it had when she'd caught herself falling from the tower. It felt more like panic, as if she were locked inside the little metal shack.

Zane let out a low whistle. "So that's why you came back."

"You believe this, don't you?"

His eyes flashed gold in the darkness. "Of course. It all makes sense now. Why you can't remember David or coming back to the city. Why Shay has so many mixed-up stories about those days. Why the New Smokies are so interested in you."

"Because I'm brain damaged?"

Zane shook his head. "We're all brain damaged, Tally. Just like I thought. But you gave yourself up on purpose, knowing there's a cure." He pointed at the pills in her hand. "Those are the reason why you're here."

She stared down at the pills, which looked small and insignificant in the gloom of the shack. "But the letter said they might not even work. I might wind up brain-dead…"

He took her wrist lightly. "If you don't want to take them, Tally, I will."

She closed her hand. "I can't let you do that."

"But this is what I've been waiting for. A way to escape prettiness, to be bubbly all the time!"

"I wasn't waiting for this," Tally cried. "I didn't want anything but to be a Crim!"

He pointed at the letter. "Yes, you did."

"That wasn't me. She says so herself."

"But you—" "Maybe I changed my mind!"

"You didn't change your mind. The operation did."

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

"Tally, you gave yourself up, knowing you'd have to risk the cure. That's amazingly brave." Zane reached out and touched her face, his eyes shining in the shaft of sunlight that streamed across him. "But if you don't want to, let me take the risk for you."

Tally shook her head, wondering what she was more afraid of: the pills going wrong on her, or watching Zane turn into a vegetable in her place. Or maybe what she really feared was finding out what had happened to David. If only Croy had left her alone, or if she'd never found Valentino 317. If she could just forget the pills and stay dumb and pretty, none of this would ever worry her again. "I just want to forget David."

"Why?" Zane leaned closer. "What did he do to you?"

"Nothing. He didn't do anything. But why did Croy leave these pills for me instead of him coming and taking me away? What if he's—" The shack shuddered for a moment, silencing her. They both looked up; something big had passed overhead.

"A hovercar…," Tally whispered.

"Probably just flying over. As far as they know, we're in the pleasure garden."

"Unless someone saw us up on the …" She fell silent as a cloud of dust stirred in through the half-opened door, glowing in the shaft of sunlight. "It's landing."

"They know we're here," Zane said, and started tearing up the letter.

"What are you doing?"

"We can't let them find this," he said. "They can't know there's a cure." He stuffed a piece of the letter into his mouth, grimacing at the taste.

She looked at the pills in her hand. "What about these?"

He swallowed the paper with a tortured expression. "I have to take them, now." He bit off another piece of the letter and started chewing.

"They're so small," she said. "We could hide them."

He shook his head, swallowing again. "Getting caught without rings is pretty obvious, Tally. They'll want to know what we were up to. When you get some food in you, you won't be as bubbly — you might chicken out and hand over the pills."

The sound of footsteps approached across the roof outside. Zane yanked the door almost shut, pulling the ends of the chain through to the inside and snapping the padlock closed, plunging them into darkness. "That won't stop them for long. Give me the pills. If they work, I promise I'll make sure you—" A voice called from outside, and something cold crawled down Tally's spine. The voice had an edge, like razors in her ears. They weren't wardens outside. This was a Special Circumstance.

In the gloom of the shack, the pills stared up at her like two soulless white eyes. Tally was somehow certain that the words in the letter were her own, begging her to take them. Maybe when she did, everything would be clear and bubbly all the time, like Zane said.

Or maybe they wouldn't work, and would leave her a hollow, brain-dead shell.

Or maybe it was David who was dead. Tally wondered if after today part of her would always remember his face, no matter what she did. And unless she took the pills, she would never know the truth.

Tally started to bring them to her mouth, but found she couldn't. She imagined her brain unraveling. Being erased, like that other Tally who had written the letter. She looked into Zane's pleading, beautiful eyes. He had no doubts, at least.

Maybe she didn't have to do this alone…

The door made a sharp screech as someone tried to pull it open, snapping the chain taut. A blow landed on the door, the sound booming like fireworks in the little metal shack. Specials were strong, but could they beat down a metal door?

"Now, Tally," Zane whispered.

"I can't."

"Then give them to me."

She shook her head and leaned closer, whispering to stay unheard under the thundering blows against the door. "I can't do that to you, Zane, and I can't do this alone. Maybe if we each took one …"

"What? That's crazy. We don't know how that will—" "We don't know anything, Zane."

The pounding stopped, and Tally shushed his reply. Specials weren't just strong and fast, they had the sharp hearing of predators.

Suddenly, a bright light sparked through the gap in the door, throwing wildly jittering shadows into the shack, leaving tracers on Tally's vision. The cutting tool hissed as it burned into the chain, and the smell of molten metal reached her nostrils. The Specials would be inside in seconds.

"Together," she whispered, handing one of the pills to Zane. With a deep breath she placed the other on her tongue. Bitterness exploded through her mouth, like biting into a seed inside a grape. She swallowed the pill, which trailed an acid taste down her throat.

"Please," she pleaded softly. "Do this with me."

He sighed and took the pill, grimacing at the taste. He stared at her, shaking his head. "That may have been very stupid, Tally."

She tried to smile. "At least we were stupid together." Leaning forward, she grasped the back of his neck and kissed him. David hadn't come to rescue her. He was either dead or he must not care what happened to her. He was ugly, and Zane was beautiful, and bubbly, and he was here. "We need each other now," she said.

They were still kissing when the Specials burst in.