𝐔𝐆𝐋𝐈𝐄𝐒 - 𝐕𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑

New Pretty Town

The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
Of course, Victoria thought, you'd have to feed the cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right. The scudding clouds did look a bat fishy, rippled into scales by a high-altitude wind. As the light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold. Any other summer, a sunset like this world have been beautiful. But nothing had been beautiful since Peris turned pretty. Losing your best friend sucks, even if it's only for three months and two days. Victoria Harper was waiting for darkness. She could see New Pretty Town through her open window. The party towers were already lit up, and snakes of burning torches marked flickering pathways through the pleasure gardens. A few hot-air balloons pulled at their tethers against the darkening pink sky, their passengers shooting safety fireworks at other balloons and passing parasailers. Laughter and music skipped across the water like rocks thrown with just the right spin, their edges just as sharp against Victoria's nerves. Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from the town by the black oval of the river, everything was in darkness. Everyone ugly was in bed by now. Victoria took off her interface ring and said, " Good night."  "Sweet dreams, Victoria," said the room. She chewed up the toothbrush pill, punched her pillows, and showed an old portable heater—one that produced about as much warmth as a sleeping, Victoria-size human being—under the covers. Then she crawled out the window. Outside, with the night finally turning coal black above her head, Victoria instantly felt better. Maybe this was a stupid plan, but anything better than another night awake in bed feeling sorry for herself. On the familiar leafy path down to the water's edge, it was easy to imagine Peris stealing silently behind her, stifling laughter, ready for a night of spying on the new pretties. Together. She and Peris had figured out how to trick the house minder back when they were twelve, when the three-month difference in their age seemed like it would never matter. "Best friends for life," Victoria muttered, fingering the tiny scar on her right palm. The water glistened through the trees, and she could hear the wavelets of a passing river skimmer's wake slapping at the shore. She ducked, hiding in the reeds.
Summer was always the best time for spying expeditions.