June was a bad month to be born.
It wasn't that late in the year, but enough for all of her older friends to have already turned Pretty. Leaving her all alone to face the months leading up to her sixteenth birthday.
She spent most of her time hoverboarding, her old friends hadn't really enjoyed it, and were reluctant to fly around town at night with her, or do anything tricky in general.
Actually… thinking about it, Paili's old friends had spent pretty much all of their time doing morphos. She had only had one friend who would do ugly tricks with her, and she was long turned Pretty, being two years older than her.
She sighed, stepping off her board and sitting down, leaning on the trunk of a nearby tree.
She really was sick of being lonely.
She traced the grip on her old hover-board, fingering her old stickers, which she'd stuck on back when she was into retro Rusty accessories.
She caught sight of her ugly face in the slightly reflective surface of her board and grimaced, it had becoming progressively harder to look at herself as she became less of a littlie and more of an ugly, and now, on the verge of her sixteenth birthday, she was most definitely an ugly.
She examined her snub nose, freckled skin, and round cheeks and groaned.
In some ways she couldn't wait to be Pretty, to have those big eyes, and full lips, the perfect cheekbones and skin. To have people think that she's gorgeous and to want to listen to what she says…
But still, there was something that held her back… something about the generic Pretty face, the conformity, having to look like everyone else…
She was ugly… but… her face was a part of her, could she really shed it off as a bad memory? Her features might be ugly, but they were hers!
The operation had always been a topic that sent her mind spinning, and she wasn't in the mood to dispute it with herself again. Anyway, there wasn't like there was an anything else she could do. Being pretty was her only option, so why was she fighting the inevitable?
She dropped her board to the ground, already feeling ready to go back to her room and sleep for the next weeks up to her birthday so she wouldn't have to spend her time going over the pros and cons of the operation just to pass the time.
She stood up, clicking her fingers; she felt her board nudging at her ankles. She stepped on, taking a second to gaze out across Uglyville, and over the river at New Pretty Town. Sighing, she pushed forward, curving around the corner of one of the football pitches.
The girl came out of nowhere, faster than Paili had ever seen an Ugly go. Paili didn't stand a chance, as she boarded unawares right into the oncoming girl's path.
She knocked Paili off the board instantaneously, who closed her eyes as she felt the tug of her crash bracelets swing her around hard enough to pull her arms from her sockets.
She landed back on her board, her wrists a bit bruised, and slightly shocked, but in one piece, but very annoyed: "Hey! Watch where you're going!" She turned to the girl who'd knocked her off her board, and found still recovering from her fall.
She'd been going a lot faster than Paili, and her crash bracelets would have swung a lot faster around and harder than hers had.
The girl straightened up, spinning dizzily, and smiled up apologetically at her: "Sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going."
Paili shrugged, as irritating it was to get pushed off your board, it wasn't worth picking a fight over: "Don't worry about it. But what were you doing speeding so quickly, anyway?"
The girl smiled, her grin spreading across her face. Her mouth was way too wide. She tapped her nose: "Tricks, you know?"
Paili smiled back. She'd missed hanging out with tricky uglies: "Anything good?"
"How do I know I can trust you?" The girl asked, jokingly, but Paili could hear a hint of suspicion in her voice.
You couldn't know who to trust these days.
"You don't." Paili replied honestly. "I'm Paili, by the way."
The girl held out her hand: "I'm Ay."
Paili raised an eyebrow, no one shook hands anymore. It was a real Rusty custom, abandoned by all but the occasional littlie club, and apparently this girl. She took it anyway.
Ay broke the handshake to twiddle her messy brown hair around her finger, as she looked her up and down.
Paili guessed she was probably wondering whether she should trust her, or whether she should be running in the other direction, hoping she wouldn't be ratted out to the wardens, realising that she probably should be wondering the same thing.
But there was something about this girl; she just seemed to exude trickiness. There was no doubt about it, this girl was the real deal.
Ay noticed Paili's board for the first time, seeing the open circuitry when two wires had been cut and her smiled widened Impossibly:
"Paili, have you even been to the Rusty Ruins?"