Things feel...almost normal.

Jaslene is pretty now and we're both fully healed up. Like her morphos photo, she has beautiful brown doe eyes and a short blonde bob. She's curvy and everything looks good on her.

Usually we crash in my room, but tonight we're in her room. Usually I fall asleep first but she's knocked out and I'm the one with my arms around her. She's even more beautiful in the light of the big, looming full moon.

Of course, when I told her everything I knew about the Smoke from Cliodna, she wanted revenge for them taking Tiara. Our plan was to work our way into the Crims and when they decided to run away, go with them, while spying for the city. We had to save Tiara.

How we'd spy for the city, we didn't know. The city listens into everyone's conversations, so we hope they'll take notice of us.

"Do you think if we wore gloves, it would muffle the sound too much?" I ask Jaslene, while I munch on shrimp and cocktail sauce.

"It might. If we use gloves to cover our interface rings, we'd have to keep our hands close to our faces, and the material of the gloves would have to be thin, but not suspiciously thin."

I ponder on that for a while. What would be the thinnest material we could use for gloves?

"Calypso, make me two thin pairs of white silk gloves." I call to the hole in the wall. It spits out two pairs of gloves, which we both put on. Jaslene walks out to my door, and I walk into my bathroom.

"Ping Jaslene." I say.

"Well, you're only kind of muffled. Every time you move your hands, I hear the glove scraping against your ring."

"How bad is it?" I ask.

"It's not bad, but it's there."

I turn off the ping and let her back in. "How do you think we should go about the whole 'keeping our hands close to our faces' thing?" she asks.

I shrug. "Constantly scratching or tapping our chins?"

"Well…it could work."

The room pings that another pretty is outside. "For whom does this bell toll?"

"It's Fausto. Shay says to hurry up so we can get to the rink!"

I roll my eyes and pick up my flask and orange juice. "Let's do this thing."

Jaslene puts on her gloves and picks up her drinks, and we head out.


"Ugh…just look at everyone fawning all over them."

"The king and queen of the Crims."

I purse my lips and roll my eyes for the millionth time. For someone who's supposedly best friends with Tally, Shay sure complains about her a lot.

"Remember when there were only six of us, Squint-la? Now we're almost worse than the Swarm." Ho whines.

"Well, that was a long time ago, Ho. And a lot has happened since then." Shay sighs.

Jaslene lets out a long, loud yawn.

"What she said." I smirk.

Zane skates past us, smiling. "Everyone good here?"

"Never bubblier, oh fearless leader!" Shay calls back to him.

My bubbly was starting to fade. Funny thing was, I got it from getting scratched by one of Jaslene's nails. I had a long red line running down my arm, and it'd cleared the fog for a little while. Now, the pain was gone, and everything was starting to get fuzzy.

I hear the fireworks start up, and after a while Tally calls out for us to pour out our flasks. I open mine, take a quick swig of vodka for bravery, and tip it out onto the ice.

We wait a few moments, then Zane comes rushing past to the middle of the rink.

"WATCH OUT!" he shouts, leaping up into the air and coming down hard onto the ice. I swallow hard, as I see the cracks coming closer to us.

"I know, Hadley-wa." Jaslene whispers softly, taking my hand.

Then, the world fell from underneath us.


"I don't want this!" Tiara shouted, her face red with anger, her hair covering her wild eyes and sunken in cheeks.

"Tiara, you have to! The doctors can make you better, and you'll look amazing!" Jaslene tried to reason with her.

"I don't want it! I want to be myself! I don't want a fake face! I don't want to do nothing but drink and party! I want to be real!"

"God, Tiara. Grow up. This is a gift we all get to have, but you want to throw it away for camping?" I scoffed. Trying to convince Tiara to stop complaining about the surgery was like trying to convince a littlie to eat their vegetables.

"It's not camping! It's real. They're real! They stay natural their whole lives. That makes them beautiful."

"No, that makes them ugly. Do you want to be ugly and sick for the rest of your life, or do you want to be pretty and healthy?"

"I want to be real!" she screamed for what seemed like the millionth time.

"Fine. What do I care?"I said, walking out of the room. "If you want to be sick and friendless, don't come crying back to me when I'm pretty and having the time of my life!"

I never thought she'd actually leave. I only said that because I was angry. I didn't think she'd run away that night


"Hadley-wa?"

I look to my left. Jaslene's hair is all over her face, and she has a cut on her forehead.

"You got hurt!" I say, ripping part of my scarf and pressing it to the cut.

"Yeah. A piece of ice clocked me on the head. Totally bogus."

The rest of the Crims shout with glee and excitement. Shay's off to the side, glaring at Tally, who's chatting with Peris and completely oblivious.

Cliodna comes running up to us, her eyes shining with excitement. "That was so bubbly! Oh my gosh, Jaslene!"

"I'm fine. I just need some MedSpray and a couple cookies and I'll be fine."

"Yeah, let's head back to the mansion really quick. The afterparty isn't for another few hours." I say, helping her up.

When we walk in, I tell the room to bring cookies, muffins and coffee and search my room for the stolen first-aid kit I had. Now that Jaslene and I had gotten back into hoverboarding, we were constantly getting hurt from pushing ourselves too hard. I'd taken so many ice baths and wipeouts at the rapids that it was almost like I couldn't feel pain anymore. Ugly Jaslene would have been crying and whining about the cut on her head, but Bubbly Jaslene took it in stride. I loved that.

"Found it!" I shout, walking over to Jaslene and spraying her head. The blood coagulates, then falls away into dust, and I spray the cut with fake skin.

"All better." She perks up. The room pings that the food tray has arrived, and we dig in.

"So, what's your plan to get Cliodna to help us get to the Smoke?" Jaslene says through a mouthful of double chocolate cookie.

I sip my coffee. "Well, I'm going to tell her that we've thought about it a lot, and that maybe Tiara had a point, that maybe being pretty isn't everything. That the most fun we have is hoverboarding and trying to be bubbly."

"Okay, the hoverboarding part is totally true, but being pretty is awesome! We can do whatever we want!"

"Of course, but god…when we fell through the ice, I remembered the night she ran away. What I'd said to her, and I…"

I choked off. I was so cruel to her. I owed it to Tiara to bring her back to where she could be safe. She was in awful shape when she ran away. What if she was dying?

"We'll find her. I know we will." Jaslene hugged me tightly.

We have to find her soon.