Orion knew Lottie was cruel, but this cruel? She never thought the older girl had it in her.
All around her, Orion heard laughter. Not gasps of horror, or disappointed remarks. Just laughter. These bastards were enjoying this, and all because she was ugly.
Orion wished she could help the girl, but how? She couldn't get into the building because she wasn't pretty. It was very doubtful that anyone around her would help. Why would they? They wanted to see their show.
Orion's heart sank as Lottie ripped the robe off of Flat-face's body, revealing her to be completely naked aside from a bungee jacket covering her chest. The ugly girl began to sob, and Orion could her her anguished cries through the wallscreen. Orion felt her own eyes filling with tears, and she squeezed them tightly shut. She was completely helpless in a city of cruelty, and this girl, this poor girl who had done nothing to Lottie but exist as a non-attractive teenager, had no one by her side.
No! Orion thought. She glared up at Lottie, who was oblivious, blabbing away through the ping. I can do something! I can call the wardens and put this to an end!
Orion instinctively flicked out her finger, then cursed in frustration. She'd left her ring on the dresser so she could sneak out!
Damn it all! What do I do now?!
Orion looked to her left and right, both of the girls standing on either side of her were pretties, and both of them had interface rings on their index fingers. Could she do this? She had no choice if she wanted to help Flat-face.
Orion slowly sank to her knees, the shining silver ring teasing her, almost as if saying come and get me!
The tiny hand shot out, and yanked the ring off the pretty's hand. The girl was taken back, and grabbed at Orion. She took off, wading through the crowd, roughly shoving whomever was in her way. She would not let Lottie get away with this, never again.
She sent a ping to the wardens' office as she ran, saying that there was an emergency and they were needed right away. The tiny ugly's heart pounded loudly, her face burning. How long would it take them? She didn't know how long it would be before Flat-face was further humiliated. At least she was still struggling, which would make it harder for them to-
At that moment, Lottie flung the girl from the roof. Orion didn't realize she had screamed until the crowd of pretties turned towards her. Orion stood there in mute horror, covering her mouth with her hands, her entire body shaking. She fell to her knees, silent sobs shaking her chest as the feeling of failure set in. If only she'd acted sooner. If only she hadn't antagonized Lottie earlier that day. If only-
Orion didn't feel the gentle hands helping her up and into a hovercar. She didn't feel the same gentle hands laying her down on her bed. She didn't hear the voices of the wise middle pretties as they gently questioned her, she had gone numb to everything. Little Orion Kinsley had finally lost hope in the kindness of man. She thought that humanity had gotten past the Rusty days, that the pretties would stay on their turf, and the uglies on theirs until their time came.
In the back of her mind, she wondered about Flat-face. How was she? Was she, like Orion, numb to the world? Had she become a recluse like Orion?
If not for the room's ability to read vital signs, Orion would have been seriously sick from the lack of food intake. She didn't know how much time had passed since that awful night, and she hadn't really cared. What was the point? Everyone would still make fun of her ugly face and body until her birthday. If the doctors couldn't fix her, well...
"Orion?"
Orion struggled to open her eyes. It hurt like hell, the hospital lights were like beams of white-hot pain pounding into her skull. In her arm, an IV needle was sticking out, the bag half full of nutrients keeping the young girl alive.
Orion let her head hang limp, looking at the girl she'd been calling Flat-face for years. Strands of tangled black hair partially blocked Orion's vision, but she was too weak to push them away.
"I'm Leora Mizrahi. I'm the girl that-" she trailed off, looking down into her hands, embarrassed of the pain she'd suffered at the hands of that insufferable bitch Lottie Masen.
"You-" Orion croaked out painfully. She cleared her throat and tried again, "You were the girl on the roof. I'm sorry I was too late."
Leora shook her head, handing her a glass of water. Orion drank gratefully as Leora continued. "If it weren't for you, they would have gotten away with it. You were the only one brave enough to get the wardens involved."
"I couldn't let them do that to you." Orion kept her voice low, the water only partially soothing the scratchiness.
Leora bent over the bed and gave Orion a tight hug. "And I thank you for that, I really do. You realize this makes us friends, right?"
Orion would have jolted up, if not for the fact that she was so weak she could barely move. "F-friends? With me?"
"Well of course! I was always too shy to speak up when I saw you, but when I was told that you called the wardens to help, I felt like I finally had someone on my side."
Orion took in the information. Leora wanted to be her friend. Her first friend since she was a littlie, her first friend in ten years.
"Best friends forever." Orion rasped, poking her pinkie finger out from under the blanket. "Pinkie promise?"
Leora hooked her pinkie to Orion's and gently shook her hand. "Best friends forever."
It had been another month and a half before Orion was released from the hospital. The nurses wouldn't release her until she'd gained at least ten pounds, and she was placed on a high protein diet to achieve this. She'd smiled when she had been informed that she'd grown an inch. Of course, everyone still towered over her, but she now had hope that she'd keep growing up until her birthday.
Leora visited every day, telling stories about when she'd sneak out at night and fly around the woods. She'd noticed a group of uglies that flew off to the Rusty Ruins every night, and identified one of them as a girl named Shay, who she used to have classes with until the other girl started skipping. She'd joined one of their sessions, and there she'd met an ugly boy named David. He was more than old enough to have the surge, so they were confused as to why he was still ugly.
Three weeks after her release from the hospital, Orion had taken to throwing knives at her wall and carving pictures into her desk. While she still refused to go to class, Leora was a much better student than her, and she still had to drag Orion out to lunch. Orion had developed a frightening glower due to the constant shouts of 'Plague-face!' Of course, Leora was always having to reign her in from trying to attack the other students.
Leora was still meeting up with Shay and David's group; Orion wasn't interested in the slightest. Despite the torture of being ugly, Orion stayed loyal to the city. Somewhere deep down, she had hope that she could join everyone in New Pretty Town.
One night, Leora came to visit Orion after what Orion assumed was a very interactive meeting. Leora was tracking dirt all over the floor, which deeply annoyed Orion. She began to blow off steam by carving in her desk.
"I think he's a runaway. I mean, that's totally respectable, because it's got to take guts to run away from home, but what I still don't understand is why he'd run away from being pretty, and why for so long? He's eighteen!" Leora had said while picking at her nails. Orion shrugged, then continued to carve drawings into her desk.
"Who cares about that freak? All I care about is whether the doctors can cure my acne. The bullshit they've been feeding me hasn't done a damn thing."
"I think it's kind of interesting. They don't teach us stuff like that in school." Leora smiled softly.
"No, duh. The city doesn't want us to be all backwards. That camping crap, we don't need it. The city is all we need. After we get the surge, we don't have to worry about anything else."
"But what if being pretty gets boring? I-I don't want to be boring my whole life."
"With a face like that, how could you be boring?" Orion snickered, then flung her knife into the wall, stabbing one of her morphos pictures in a perfect sea green eye. The smaller girl turned to look at Leora with a goofy grin, then her face fell when she saw the older girl with tears falling down her cheeks.
"H-hey. I didn't mean that." Orion reached out towards Leora, who smacked her hand away.
"Goodnight, Orion." With that, she gathered her belongings and left.
Orion felt tears welling up in her eyes, but squeezed them shut and launched another knife at the wall. Right in between the warm brown eyes of one of Leora's morphos pictures.
Orion sat on her bed, a ring of knives staring back at her. The numbness from after Leora's fall had returned, except this time it was merely to cope after the potential loss of a friend. She hadn't meant to make Leora cry, she thought she was being funny. She'd been so used to taking jabs about her acne, she'd just assumed-
"That's my problem. I assumed." Orion muttered, flinging a knife towards a morphos picture. Once again, the knife landed in an eye, this one honey colored.
"Assumptions are not always bad, Orion." the room tried to comfort her.
"Shut up." She growled, throwing a knife in between her door and another picture. The knife didn't stick well, and promptly clattered to the floor.
Orion lay back on the bed, staring up at the blank ceiling. The numbness wavered, and she genuinely wondered if Leora was still upset with her. It had been a week and a half since she'd stormed out, and Orion hadn't made any effort to ping her since that night. She'd even started going to classes, hoping she'd see her, but to no avail. It was like Leora had just up and vanished like- like smoke.