Modelland (15 page)

After she finished the song, the messenger girl dropped the dress into the arms of the teen girl, who looked extremely relieved. “Thank you, Shiraz,” the father said to the messenger girl, handing her a coin. Then she took off again.

Darting in and out of the streets clogged with Day of Discovery aspirants, the girl approached a decrepit door and slipped an envelope underneath. Then she was off once more, stuffing envelopes under every door she passed. Her footsteps pattered rapidly against the stone streets.

“Man oh man, that chick is quick,” Dylan murmured.

The Scout swooped down and positioned herself right in Shiraz’s path. They collided head-on. Undelivered mail fluttered out of Shiraz’s fingers, but she hardly looked fazed to see the Scout. “Of course!” Shiraz spoke in Labrian, confidently extending her hand to the Scout. “You have come for me!” But the Scout didn’t react.

The girl tried again. “You are here for me, yes?”

The Scout remained motionless.

“Ah, the language barrier,” Shiraz said in heavily accented English. “I try to speak in the English. I am Shiraz Shiraz! Seven inches and four feet tall! Perfect for studies at the Modelland, yes?” Shiraz shook out her hair, straightened her clothes, and stood as tall as her small frame allowed.

The Scout extended her hand, and Shiraz grabbed it with lightning speed.

“Hello to the Modelland and goodbye to the Canne del Abra,” she sang, her voice rising and falling melodiously. The pouch bulged, and Shiraz tumbled inside. And … 
snap!
Into the green hole once more.

Shiraz noticed Tookie and Dylan and widened her eyes. “Oh no! Do not say you are my others.”

“Your others?” Dylan repeated.

“The other girls who are part of the Modelland …” Shiraz waved her hands around, searching for the proper word.

“Experience?” said Dylan.

Shiraz shook her head briskly.

“Excursion?” Tookie said shyly.

Shiraz shook her head again.

“Discovery?” asked Dylan.

“Discovery, yes, yes.” Shiraz brightened. Then she frowned. “But you two, you are not the beauty exceptional like Shiraz.”

Dylan pursed her lips. “Ex-cuh-yuse ME! You may be all cute and little and can run as fast as an exotic feline in the plains, but hold up a sec, Miss Thang, cuz Miss Modelland, or should I say
the
Modelland”—Dylan mocked Shiraz—“don’t have girls lookin’ like you up in there either! And besides, you weren’t even tryin’ out, honey! Me and her saw you!”

Shiraz sniffed huffily. “The jealousies in your big body are burning like big dripless candle. I blow you out now.” She puckered her lips and blew in Dylan’s face.

Dylan’s nostrils flared. “Oh no, this little dot-faced thang did NOT just bl—”

“Stop!” Tookie blurted out, surprising even herself. “Don’t you realize none of us look like Modelland girls? Not one of us!”

Dylan set her jaw, but Shiraz just peered at Tookie, confused. Tookie repeated the tirade in Labrian. “Please don’t fight,” she added. “I see enough fighting at home.”

Shiraz smiled slowly at Tookie, clearly amazed that Tookie could speak her language. But then she sat up straighter. “Well, they pick us for some reason.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said toughly. Although when she looked down at her broad thighs, an uncertain expression washed over her face. She looked up at Tookie. “Do
you
got a theory?”

Tookie stared through the pouch at the electric lightning snapping around them in the tunnel. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know at all.”

The pouch emerged into a sea of thin white strands. Some of them even entered the pouch, covering Tookie’s head and drifting past her mouth. It tickled a little. Everyone started to giggle.

“What are we gonna pop outta
now
?” Dylan joked. “A horse tail?”

Through the mesh wall of the pouch, Tookie saw a bear-cave-sized hole and peeked in. Sticky, pasty gunk with peach fuzz was lodged inside. She frowned. “I think we’re inside an ear!”

“How can we be inside ear?” Shiraz frowned. “Ear of giant? That make no sense!”

“This whole journey ain’t made no sense,” Dylan said.

Then a loud scream erupted. The girls jumped and looked at each other. “Was that you?” Dylan asked Tookie. Tookie shook her head. “Was that you?” Dylan asked Shiraz next. But Shiraz shrugged.

The pouch accelerated without warning, popping out of the sea of white. Behind them, Tookie saw a pale-skinned woman with long platinum locks screaming at the top of her lungs. She was also scratching her scalp and poking at her ears.

Dylan squinted. “You know, I think Tookie was right. I think we just popped out of that gray-haired woman’s head.”

Once again, the pouch emerged from the portal, giving the girls a view of a giant city in the distance. It was different from any city Tookie had ever seen. A clear protective dome covered the entire metropolis. The city was laid out in what appeared to be a perfect grid and reminded Tookie of one of her algebraic graphs. Not a speck of dirt marred the city streets. The most modern, high-tech buildings hovered about two stories above the ground, allowing pedestrians and vehicles unobstructed passage beneath them. Tube-shaped elevators zipped up, down, side to side, and diagonally on the structures’ exteriors.

The Scout, now translucent and sparkling, floated through the city toward the sound of thumping drums. As they arrived at the edge of the city’s square, a vast crowd of girls, all with stark-white hair and nearly translucent pale skin, moved with drill-team precision. Tookie, Dylan and Shiraz scrambled to the walls of the pouch so they could get a good view.

Tookie gasped. “SansColor,” she whispered. She’d only read about it in books. It was a place that few ever got the chance to experience.

“Sans-cuh-what?” Dylan asked.

“Um, SansColor,” Tookie mumbled, unaccustomed to people asking her direct questions.

About eight hundred pale-skinned girls wearing different types of blue uniforms and caps marched in formation. Along one axis, girls in teal marched together, doing hand and head movements in unison. Another group in navy pranced in the opposite direction. A third group, this one in aqua uniforms, sped along the intersecting axis, and a fourth group, wearing turquoise, headed for the middle of the navy group. The overall effect was of four colorful trains running along intersecting tracks, each set going in a different direction.

Tookie was riveted by the show. The navy and turquoise groups nearly crashed into the aqua and teal groups, but they veered off at the last second, making a precise right turn.

“Is Day of Discovery for them?” Shiraz whispered. Tookie nodded. Here, the T-DOD theme song had a drum-major beat. The walkers wore the expression common to every Modelland hopeful—just a bit toned down.

Dylan squinted at the crowd. “How do they stand out, for goodness’ sakes? It’s the battle of the blands!”

Everyone had the same coloring. Alabaster-skinned onlookers sat on bleachers, watching the performance. A brigade of pale white-blond soldiers stood at attention. Sitting in a plush oversized cobalt-blue chair in the middle of the stage was a platinum-blond woman. A tall, bored-looking girl stood at her side. Even the birds in the sky were pale: a flock of pure-white birds swooped past, their eyes cherry-red.

“Everybody here sick?” Shiraz whispered.

“No, they have albinism,” Tookie whispered back.

“You mean they albinos?” Shiraz blurted out.

Tookie was pretty sure it was rude to call them albinos, but she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to seem like a know-it-all. The Scout swooped through the crowd. All the marching girls on the ground looked up and started to scream and stomp their feet, turning the synchronized parade into chaos. The platinum-haired woman in the thronelike chair frowned, popped her tongue, and rasped at the highly decorated soldier to her right. The soldier then uttered a short popping sound, which was repeated in unison by all the other soldiers down the line. All the girls immediately jumped back into formation.

“It’s Colorian,” Tookie whispered, listening to the distinct rasping, gurgling, popping, and sucking sounds. To the untrained ear, the language sounded like someone swallowing a bucket of raw oysters, but to Tookie, each tiny sound was beautiful. Every language was.

“That sound makes me want to clear my throat,” Dylan said, wrinkling her nose.

The woman on the throne, evidently some kind of dignitary, blurted out more Colorian gurgles, slurps, pops, and rasps, but this time, to the Scout. Tookie was a little rusty with Colorian, but she could understand well enough. “I am the prime minister of SansColor. This is an occurrence we have been awaiting. A chosen one from SansColor at your Modelland might prove to be an effective ambassador for us.”

“What that woman saying?” Shiraz murmured.

“Sorry, I don’t speak gobbledygook,” Dylan said.

“Actually, I do,” Tookie said, and then translated what the prime minister had just said. The girls goggled at her, hanging on her every word.

The woman continued, and Tookie translated: “ ‘If you can
guarantee safety for whomever you choose, you may select anyone who declares herself willing. That is my pledge.’ ”

The Scout bowed to the prime minister, and the crowd cheered. The tall, bored-looking girl who had been standing behind the throne stepped out to get a better look at the Scout. She had keen bright rose-colored eyes and an intense expression that made her appear highly intelligent. She probably was, Tookie thought—all people from SansColor were supposed to be off-the-charts geniuses.

Slowly, the Scout scanned the hundreds of girls in the procession, then floated over the prime minister’s head and landed in front of the bored-looking girl, who stood poised like a statue. The Scout extended her bejeweled hand. The crowd gasped even louder.

The prime minister whirled around. “Not Piper!” she shouted, a vein in her pale forehead glowing blue-green. “Guardians!”

The soldiers aimed their weapons at the Scout and the pouch. “You cannot take her,” the prime minister declared, standing protectively in front of the girl. “She is my daughter.”

“Uh-oh,” Dylan snickered. “We’re in the middle of a royal mama-daughter showdown.”

The Scout bowed respectfully and turned away to scan the crowd of other pale T-DODers. But the girl ran around her mother to face the Scout. “Madame, please do not listen to my ridiculous mother the
queen
!” The girl rolled her eyes. “I am Piper, First Princess of SansColor, and I have rights. I hereby accept admittance to Modelland!”

Piper’s mother hurled a menacing popping sound at her daughter.
“ ‘I will not allow you to go to that mindless school on the mountain!’ ”
Tookie translated.

“She said all that with that one sound?” Dylan said.

Before anyone could stop her, Piper grabbed the Scout’s hand. Suddenly the pale girl was in the pouch too.

The prime minister’s face twisted with shock and fury. “Fire!” she yelled.

The pouch jerked hard as the Scout flew away. The girls were thrown left, then right as the Scout spiraled frantically through the air.

She’s dodging the bullets
, Tookie thought, her heart in her throat as the soldiers fired their weapons again.

Whirling sideways, the pouch burst out of the bubble dangerously close to a war-torn concrete jungle that surrounded SansColor.

Thousands of ten-foot spears pointed at the bubble now shifted their aim to the Scout. A horde of demonic yellow-eyed jungle inhabitants stared at the pouch, roaring savagely.

One wrong move and the pouch would be ripped to shreds.

“What in the name of wombat milk are those thangs?” Dylan screamed as the Scout lifted the pouch high above SansColor.

Piper, who was huddled on one side of the pouch away from the others, covered her eyes and shook her head violently. “The Le … the Le …,” she stammered.

“The LeGizzârds?” Tookie guessed. She’d read about them in the only Colorian history book at the Peppertown library. The creatures encircled the SansColor bubble, desperate to get inside. “They can’t reach you here,” she said, speaking in Colorian to Piper. “We’re safe.”

“You know my language?” Piper said, switching to English. “Impressive. And rare. What’s your name?”

Tookie lowered her eyes. “Her name’s Tookie,” Dylan spoke for her. “She don’t talk so much, but she knows what everybody else is sayin’—no matter what the language.”

“Those things … the Gizzards?” Shiraz widened her big brown eyes. “Big balloon over your city to keep the Gizzards out, yes?”

Piper nodded. “Yes. The bubble protects us from the sun and the LeGizzârds. They live outside SansColor and thrive off Colorian sweetbreads.”

“Sweetbreads!” Shiraz exclaimed, rubbing her tummy. “Would be nice now. Stomach is doing the growling.”

“Think less pancakes and piecrust and more pancreas and thymus. Glands,” Piper stated with a shiver. “Hundreds of Colorians have been butchered by the LeGizzârds, including my father. Although my mother, the
queen
”—at this Piper rolled her eyes—“lies to our people and says he succumbed to a deadly dermal disease.”

Tookie’s mouth made a small O. Dylan and Shiraz fell silent.

“My papa die too,” Shiraz volunteered.

“Really? My daddy passed when I was a wee li’l thing.” Dylan looked off into the distance.

Piper turned to Tookie. “What about you? Is your father alive?”

Tookie thought about Mr. De La Crème. “Um, I lost my father too. Just recently.” It was, in a way, true. The four of them had at least one thing in common.

Then Piper straightened up and gave Dylan a closed-lipped, narrowed-eyed, strangely striking glare. For a moment, as the light caught her, she looked like a muse in a painting. “I see you staring at me.”

Dylan looked caught. “I—”

“My people have little to no melanin in their skin, hair, and
eyes,” Piper explained in a clipped voice. “It makes us susceptible to excruciating sunburns and various terminal diseases—not to mention stares from people like you.”