"No I won't!" she shouted. "And I'm going to prove that you're wrong about the Sly Girls, too!"

But Hiro didn't answer…he just shook his head.

Aya made her way home, still trying not to cry.

She was exhausted, Ren hated her, and her stupid brother was getting more famous and horrible every second. If Ren couldn't find Moggle, there was no way she could scrape together enough merits for a new hovercam.

All Aya wanted to do was sleep until tomorrow morning, when Ren had promised to meet her at the new construction site. But this afternoon was already stuffed with classes—the ones she'd rescheduled from this morning on top of the dreaded Advanced English. She couldn't skip: Schoolwork was the quickest way to build up merits when you were an ugly—all the good jobs went to pretties and crumblies.

When she reached Akira Hall, she went down to the basement and found an empty wallscreen.

"Aya Fuse," she told it.

It popped to life, listing her pings and assignments, and displaying her miserable face rank of

451,441.

She was dying to look up Frizz Mizuno and Radical Honesty, but not until schoolwork was out of the way. As she scanned the list for any new assignments, her eyes froze on one It was anonymous and spitting animations, like the fluttering hearts that littlies decorated their pings with. But these weren't hearts, or exclamation points, or smilies.

They were eyes—dull, unsurged, Plain Jane eyes—and they kept winking at her.

Aya opened the ping Saw your story about the graffiti. Not bad, for a kicker. Meet us at midnight, where the mag-lev line leaves Uglyville.

But don't bring a cam, or we won't let you play

—your new friends

SLY GIRLS

"Can't I use my own hoverboard?"

Jai snorted. "That toy? Too slow. The train will be doing a hundred and fifty by the time you jump on."