City of Beasts by Corrie Wang

Author:Corrie Wang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2019-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

“Can of peaches for your thoughts,” Grand offered, setting aside her portable.

I flopped down on the couch across from where she was tucked into her “reading” chair. I didn’t want to tell her this, but there was no one else to tell. Liyan would have said to ignore it. “Who cares?” And Su had already told me that instead of being sensitive, maybe I should try a little harder to fit in. Only, I had been trying.

I pressed my face into the couch’s seat cushions, vaguely wondering at the pre-Night butts that had sat there before us. This was before Majesty was snatched by the beasts. Before we moved to the cul-de-sac. When for as long as I could remember, there was something that made me different from everyone else.

“The Miracles started this thing,” I said into the cushions of the couch. “All the friend groups are making names for themselves. The Tricky Switch Stance Nine. The Sensational Sevens. The Gaudy Arties.”

“What’s your group called?” Grand Mati asked. I could hear the smile in her voice.

I pulled my face from the crack in the cushions to look at her.

“The Optimal One.”

Her bemused expression sank.

“Oh, honey, no. Want me to talk to everyone?”

“No.” I inhaled, mortified. “Don’t you dare.”

Clicking an empty pen that she kept specifically for this purpose, she was quietly thoughtful, then leaned toward me in her chair. “Glori, did I ever tell you why I went into genetic biology?”

I shook my head, riveted. On Grand Island, new stories were as rare as bright colors.

“My mom, your great-grandma, was something of a celebrity. The creator of this thing called a fashion blog. She began it in high school as a side project, and it skyrocketed her to something called celebrity. Which meant lots of people who didn’t know her envied her. But she was not a happy person. She had a horrible relationship with her parents and I grew up believing she had me if not entirely by accident, then at least partially to infuriate them.

“Anyway, even though it was still controversial, my mom signed unborn me up to be CRISPRed. I was one of the first in the US.

“Looking back, I’m sure it was mostly a publicity stunt, which means a thing you do for attention. And yet, it gave us our height, eye color, and good metabolism. Plus, it eradicated our Rhodes family’s susceptibility to breast cancer and depression. There were about twenty-five other adjustments they made as well. I honestly can’t remember all of them. I still have the documentation in a drawer somewhere around here.”

Grand quietly played with her braid. We called that style the Matricula Rhodes. I’d been wearing mine the same way since I could remember.

“When I started school, it was at something called a private school in a place called Brooklyn. Since my mother made no secret of my enhancements—there were entire magazine articles written about it—my competitive classmates knew me long before I knew them. You’d think with time, you would become inured to certain words like freak and monster, but you don’t.

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