Conform or Suffer: The Darkness of Beauty

Chapter 24 Beauty Fables

Friday Inside Yoleta's Hearse at 7:20 a.m.

*

Yoleta's limo parked near the school, and the cleaning chemicals made Betsy's eyes water. She rubbed them and blinked.

Two signs with spray-painted crowns covered the front of the brick building. All elementary schools are still locally owned.

The others with the child were Madd-Ox and other guards, Yoleta, a plastic surgeon dressed in scrubs, Odin, and a driver.

"I'll pick you up early, around 10," Odin said to Betsy.

She waved at her dad as she climbed out.

Another student, a dragon child, rubbed a new second badge on her tender left arm.

Betsy hugged her and spoke. "Magpie, I'm going to a wedding. My uncle is marrying Auntie Grew-Ella. I hope they don't have sixteen kids. Don't want that many babies slobbering all over my dollhouse. My ears hate crying, poop makers." She covered her ears with her hands.

"I wish I had a family." Magpie closed her mouth to hide her crooked teeth. Her matted hair, frayed at the ends, was worn in haphazard pigtails. Her torn cloak didn't fully cover the dry, patchy skin on her shoulders.

A large group of giggling six-year-old girls prancing in muted green uniforms, with matching wool coats and knit caps, except for the prettiest girls dressed in black or pink dresses. They carried notebooks and clear bags.

Betsy's teacher spoke to her class in a stilted voice that didn't match her voluptuous frame. "Fairy stories, fables, and folk stories prove ugly people are mean and terrible. Do you choose to be mean?"

"No, we don't." The girls mimicked each other's voices until it became a lifeless chant.

The teacher's overly inflated lips upturned into a sly grin. "Nothing is impossible if you're pretty. Before beauty laws, citizens represented attributes of worthless reborn elementals that don't exist. Kindness doesn't exist without beauty."

The girls pointed at the dragon girl and her two badges, giggling.

Magpie shrunk back; wings drooped behind her through slits in her uniform.

"Leave her alone, booger heads, or I'll hit you with my fists." Betsy hugged her.

Yoleta signed autographs on the pages of the girls' writing pads before her driver waved and drove them out of the parking lot while they watched video streams on a tablet computer.

On the recording, a handful of squad members broke into Grew-Ella's apartment. They popped pills on camera.

"Why?" Odin asked.

The doctor narrowed her eyes. "Because they were high. I'm a certified plastic surgeon, and I weed out addicts."

Odin turned to her. "My ex-wife was butchered, but she went to a drive-through plastic surgery palace, not one of our top surgeons."

The woman grimaced, and her voice resembled a kettle bubbling over. "Your so-called top surgeons don't know the difference between infection and fat die-off caused by liposuction because they take an hour seminar after med school. They're still using silicone for lip and facial injections. The price for cheap plastic surgery is too high."

Yoleta turned to the plastic surgeon. "I'm going to my office. Give me any information on Zill's badges."

"The surgeon who operated won't tell me, and he shouldn't, but I suspect the badges were faked," she said.

Yoleta talked to her driver. "Turn around and pick Betsy up." She then spoke to Odin. "I'll pay for private school."

"That is a generous offer, but she won't leave because her friend Magpie is there," Odin said.

"Is she the dragon girl?" Yoleta asked.

Odin nodded, 'yes.' "Quig and Grew-Ella send food and gifts to the girl's guardian, but the clothes are usually pawned. At least she is being fed."