Uglies (7 page)

“Look at them all. What dorks.”

“Did we ever look like that?”

“Probably. But just because we were dorks doesn’t mean they’re not.”

Tally nodded, trying to remember what being twelve was like, what the dorm had looked like on her first day there. She remembered how intimidating the building had seemed. Much bigger than Sol and Ellie’s house, of course, and bigger than the huts that littlies went to school in, one teacher and ten students to each one.

Now the dorm seemed so small and claustrophobic. Painfully childish, with its bright colors and padded stairs. So boring during the day and easy to escape at night.

The new uglies all stuck together in a tight group, afraid to stray too far from their guide. Their ugly little faces peered up at the dorm’s four-story height, their eyes full of wonder and terror.

Shay pulled her head back in through the window. “This is going to be so fun.”

“It’ll be one orientation they won’t forget.”

Summer was over in two weeks. The population of Tally’s dorm had been steadily dropping for the last year as seniors turned sixteen. It was almost time for a new batch to take their place. Tally watched the last few uglies make their way inside, gawky and nervous, unkempt and uncoordinated. Twelve was definitely the turning point, when you changed from a cute littlie into an oversize, under-educated ugly.

It was a stage of life she was glad to be leaving behind.

“You sure this thing is going to work?” Shay asked.

Tally smiled. It wasn’t often that Shay was the cautious one. She pointed at the collar of the bungee jacket. “You see that little green light? That means it’s working. It’s for emergencies, so it’s always ready to go.”

Shay’s hand slipped under the jacket to pull at her belly sensor, which meant she was nervous. “What if it knows there’s no real emergency?”

“It’s not that smart. You fall, it catches you. No tricks necessary.”

Shay shrugged and put it on.

They’d borrowed the jacket from the art school, the tallest building in Uglyville. It was a spare from the basement, and they hadn’t even had to trick the rack to get it free. Tally definitely didn’t want to get caught messing around with fire alarms, in case the wardens connected her to a certain incident in New Pretty Town back at the beginning of summer.

Shay pulled an oversize basketball jersey over the bungee jacket. It was in her dorm’s colors, and none of the teachers here knew her face very well. “How’s that look?”

“Like you’ve gained weight. It suits you.”

Shay scowled. She hated being called Stick Insect, or Pig-Eyes, or any of the other things uglies called one another. Shay sometimes claimed that she didn’t care if she ever got the operation. It was crazy talk, of course.

Shay wasn’t exactly a freak, but she was hardly a natural-born pretty. There’d only been about ten of those in all of history, after all. “Do you want to do the jump, Squint?”

“I have both been there and done that, Shay, before I even met you. And you’re the one who had this brilliant idea.”

Shay’s scowl faded into a smile. “It is brilliant, isn’t it?”

“They’ll never know what hit them.”

They waited until the new uglies were in the library, scattered around the worktables to watch some orientation video. Shay and Tally lay on their stomachs on the top floor of the stacks, where the dusty old paper books were stored, peering through the guardrails down at the group. They waited for the tour leader to quiet the chattering uglies.

“This is almost too easy,” Shay said, penciling a pair of fat, black eyebrows over her own.

“Easy for you. You’ll be out the door before anyone knows what’s happened. I’ve got to make it all the way down the stairs.”

“So what, Tally? What are they going to do if we get caught?”

Tally shrugged. “True.” But she pulled on her mousy brown wig anyway.

Over the summer, as the last few seniors turned sixteen and pretty, the tricks had grown worse and worse. But nobody ever seemed to get punished, and Tally’s promise to Peris seemed ages ago.

Once she was pretty, nothing she’d done in this last month would matter. She was anxious to leave it all behind, but not without a big finish.

Thinking of Peris, Tally stuck on a big plastic nose. They’d raided the drama room at Shay’s dorm the night before and were loaded with disguises. “Ready?” she asked. Then she giggled at the nasal twang the fake nose gave her voice.

“Hang on.” Shay grabbed a big, fat book from the shelf. “Okay, showtime.”

They stood up.

“Give me that book!” Tally shouted at Shay. “It’s mine!”

She heard the uglies below fall silent, and had to resist looking down to see their upturned faces.

“No way, Pignose! I checked it out first.”

“Are you kidding, Fattie? You can’t even read!”

“Oh, yeah? Well, read this !”

Shay swung the book at Tally, who ducked. She snatched it away and swung back, catching Shay solidly on her upraised forearms. Shay rolled back at the impact, spinning over the railing.

Tally leaned forward, watching wide-eyed as Shay tumbled down toward the library’s main floor, three stories below. The new uglies screamed in unison, scattering away from the flailing body plummeting toward them.

A second later the bungee jacket activated, and Shay bobbed back up in midair, laughing maniacally at the top of her lungs. Tally waited another moment, watching the uglies’ horror dissolve into confusion as Shay bounced again, then righted herself on one of the tables and headed for the door.

Tally dropped the book and dashed for the stairs, leaping a flight at a time until she reached the back exit of the dorm.

“Oh, that was perfect!”

“Did you see their faces?”

“Not actually,” Shay said. “I was kind of busy watching the floor coming at me.”

“Yeah, I remember that from jumping off the roof. It does catch your attention.”

“Speaking of faces, love the nose.”

Tally giggled, pulling it off. “Yeah, no point in being uglier than usual.”

Shay’s face clouded. She wiped off an eyebrow, then looked up sharply. “You’re not ugly.”

“Oh, come on, Shay.”

“No, I mean it.” She reached out and touched Tally’s real nose. “Your profile is great.”

“Don’t be weird, Shay. I’m an ugly, you’re an ugly. We will be for two more weeks. It’s no big deal or anything.” She laughed. “You, for example, have one giant eyebrow and one tiny one.”

Shay looked away, stripping off the rest of her disguise in silence.

They were hidden in the changing rooms beside the sandy beach, where they’d left their interface rings

and a spare set of clothes. If anyone asked, they’d say they were swimming the whole time. Swimming was a great trick. It hid your body-heat signature, involved changing clothes, and was a perfect excuse for not wearing your interface ring. The river washed away all crimes.

A minute later they splashed out into the water, sinking the disguises. The bungee jacket would go back to the art school basement that night.

“I’m serious, Tally,” Shay said once they were out in the water. “Your nose isn’t ugly. I like your eyes, too.”

“My eyes? Now you’re totally crazy. They’re way too close together.”

“Who says?”

“Biology says.”

Shay splashed a handful of water at her. “You don’t believe all that crap, do you—that there’s only one way to look, and everyone’s programmed to agree on it?”

“It’s not about believing, Shay. You just know it. You’ve seen pretties. They look…wonderful.”

“They all look the same.”

“I used to think that too. But when Peris and I would go into town, we’d see a lot of them, and we realized that pretties do look different. They look like themselves. It’s just a lot more subtle, because they’re not all freaks.”

“We’re not freaks, Tally. We’re normal. We may not be gorgeous, but at least we’re not hyped-up Barbie dolls.”

“What kind of dolls?”

She looked away. “It’s something David told me about.”

“Oh, great. David again.” Tally pushed away and floated on her back, looking up at the sky and wishing this conversation would end. They’d been out to the ruins a few more times, and Shay always insisted on setting off a sparkler, but David had never showed. The whole thing gave Tally the creeps, waiting around in the dead city for some guy who didn’t seem to exist. It was great exploring out there, but Shay’s obsession with David had started to sour it for Tally.

“He’s real. I’ve met him more than once.”

“Okay, Shay, David’s real. But so is being ugly. You can’t change it just by wishing, or by telling yourself that you’re pretty. That’s why they invented the operation.”

“But it’s a trick, Tally. You’ve only seen pretty faces your whole life. Your parents, your teachers, everyone over sixteen. But you weren’t born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.”

“It’s not programming, it’s just a natural reaction. And more important than that, it’s fair. In the old days it was all random—some people kind of pretty, most people ugly all their lives. Now everyone’s ugly…until they’re pretty. No losers.”

Shay was silent for a while, then said, “There are losers, Tally.”

Tally shivered. Everyone knew about uglies-for-life, the few people for whom the operation wouldn’t work. You didn’t see them around much. They were allowed in public, but most of them preferred to hide. Who wouldn’t? Uglies might look goofy, but at least they were young. Old uglies were really unbelievable.

“Is that it? Are you worried about the operation not working? That’s silly, Shay. You’re no freak. In two weeks you’ll be as pretty as anyone else.”

“I don’t want to be pretty.”

Tally sighed. This again.

“I’m sick of this city,” Shay continued. “I’m sick of the rules and boundaries. The last thing I want is to become some empty-headed new pretty, having one big party all day.”

“Come on, Shay. They do all the same stuff we do: bungee jump, fly, play with fireworks. Only they don’t have to sneak around.”

“They don’t have the imagination to sneak around.”

“Look, Skinny, I’m with you,” Tally said sharply. “Doing tricks is great! Okay? Breaking the rules is fun!

But eventually you’ve got to do something besides being a clever little ugly.”

“Like being a vapid, boring pretty?”

“No, like being an adult. Did you ever think that when you’re pretty you might not need to play tricks and mess things up? Maybe just being ugly is why uglies always fight and pick on one another, because they aren’t happy with who they are. Well, I want to be happy, and looking like a real person is the first step.”

“I’m not afraid of looking the way I do, Tally.”

“Maybe not, but you are afraid of growing up!”

Shay didn’t say anything. Tally floated in silence, looking up at the sky, barely able to see the clouds through her anger. She wanted to be pretty, wanted to see Peris again. It seemed like forever since she’d talked to him, or to anyone else except Shay. She was sick of this whole ugly business, and just wanted it to end.

A minute later, she heard Shay swimming for shore.

It was strange, but Tally couldn’t help feeling sad. She knew she’d miss the view from this window.

She’d spent the last four years looking out at
New
Pretty
Town
, wanting nothing more than to cross the river and not come back. That’s probably what had tempted her through the window so many times, learning every trick she could to sneak closer to the new pretties, to spy on the life she would eventually have.

But now that the operation was only a week away, time seemed to be moving too fast. Sometimes, Tally wished that they could do the operation gradually. Get her squinty eyes fixed first, then her lips, and cross the river in stages. Just so she wouldn’t have to look out the window one last time and know she’d never see this view again.

Without Shay around, things felt incomplete, and she’d spent even more time here, sitting on her bed and staring at
New
Pretty
Town
.

Of course, there wasn’t much else to do these days. Everyone in the dorm was younger than Tally now, and she’d already taught all of her best tricks to the next class. She’d watched every movie her wallscreen knew about ten times, all the way back to some old black-and-white ones in an English she could barely understand.

There was no one to go to concerts with, and dorm sports were boring to watch now that she didn’t know anyone on the teams. All the other uglies looked at her enviously, but no one saw much point in making friends. Probably it was better to get the operation over with all at once.

Half the time, she wished the doctors would just kidnap her in the middle of the night and do it. She could imagine a lot worse things than waking up pretty one morning. They said at school that they could make the operation work on fifteen-year-olds now. Waiting until sixteen was just a stupid old tradition.

But it was a tradition nobody questioned, except the occasional ugly. So Tally had a week to go, alone, waiting.

Shay hadn’t talked to her since their big fight. Tally had tried to write a ping, but working it all out on-screen just made her angry again. And it didn’t make much sense to sort it out now. Once they were both pretty, there wouldn’t be anything to fight about anymore. And even if Shay still hated her, there was always Peris and all their old friends, waiting across the river for her with their big eyes and wonderful smiles.

Still, Tally spent a lot of time wondering what Shay was going to look like pretty, her skin-and-bones body all filled out, her already full lips perfected, and the ragged fingernails gone forever.

They’d probably make her eyes a more intense shade of green. Or maybe one of the newer colors—violet, silver, or gold.

“Hey, Squint!”

Tally jumped at the whisper. She peered into the darkness and saw a form scuttling toward her across the roof tiles. A smile broke onto her face. “Shay!”

The silhouette paused for a moment.

Tally didn’t even bother to whisper. “Don’t just stand there. Come in, stupid!”

Shay crawled into the window, laughing, as Tally gathered her into a hug, warm and joyful and solid.

They stepped back, still holding each other’s hands. For a moment, Shay’s ugly face looked perfect.

“It’s so great to see you.”

“You too, Tally.”

“I missed you. I wanted to—I’m so sorry about—”

“No,” Shay interrupted. “You were right. You made me think. I was going to write you, but it was all…”

She sighed.

Tally nodded, squeezing Shay’s hands. “Yeah. It sucked.”

They stood in silence for a moment, and Tally glanced past her friend out the window. Suddenly, the view of
New
Pretty
Town
didn’t seem so sad. It looked bright and tempting, as if all the hesitation had drained out of her. The open window was exciting again. “Shay?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go somewhere tonight. Do some major trick.”

Shay laughed. “I was kind of hoping you’d say that.”

Tally noticed the way Shay was dressed. She was wearing serious trick-wear: all black clothes, hair tied back tight, a knapsack over one shoulder. She grinned. “Already got a plan, I see. Great.”

“Yeah,” Shay said softly. “I’ve got a plan.”

She walked over to Tally’s bed, unslinging the knapsack from her shoulder. Her footsteps squeaked, and Tally smiled when she saw that Shay was wearing grippy shoes.

Tally hadn’t been on a hoverboard in days. Flying alone was all the hard work and only half the fun.

Shay dumped the contents of the knapsack out onto the bed, and pointed. “Position-finder. Firestarter. Water purifier.” She picked up two shiny wads the size of sandwiches. “These pull out into sleeping bags. And they’re really warm inside.”

“Sleeping bags? Water purifier?” Tally exclaimed. “This must be some kind of awesome multiday trick.

Are we going all the way to the sea or something?”

Shay shook her head. “Farther.”

“Uh, cool.” Tally kept her smile on her face. “But we’ve only got six days till the operation.”

“I know what day it is.” Shay opened a waterproof bag and spilled its contents alongside the rest. “Food for two weeks—dehydrated. You just drop one of these into the purifier and add water. Any kind of water.” She giggled. “The purifier works so well, you can even pee in it.”

Tally sat down on the bed, reading the labels on the food packs. “Two weeks?”

“Two weeks for two people,” Shay said carefully. “Four weeks for one.”

Tally didn’t say anything. Suddenly, she couldn’t look at the stuff on the bed, or at Shay. She stared out the window, at
New
Pretty
Town
, where the fireworks were starting.

“But it won’t take two weeks, Tally. It’s much closer.”

A plume of red soared up in the middle of town, tendrils of fireworks drifting down like the leaves of a giant willow tree. “What won’t take two weeks?”

“Going to where David lives.”

Tally nodded, and closed her eyes.

“It’s not like here, Tally. They don’t separate everyone, uglies from pretties, new and middle and late. And you can leave whenever you want, go anywhere you want.”

“Like where?”

“Anywhere. Ruins, the forest, the sea. And…you never have to get the operation.”

“You what ?”

Shay sat next to her, touching Tally’s cheek with one finger. Tally opened her eyes. “We don’t have to look like everyone else, Tally, and act like everyone else. We’ve got a choice. We can grow up any way we want.”

Tally swallowed. She felt like speech was impossible, but knew she had to say something. She forced words from her dry throat. “Not be pretty? That’s crazy, Shay. All the times you talked that way, I thought you were just being stupid. Peris always said the same stuff.”

“I was just being stupid. But when you said I was afraid of growing up, you really made me think.”

“I made you think?”

“Made me realize how full of crap I was. Tally, I’ve got to tell you another secret.”

Tally sighed. “Okay. I guess it can’t get any worse.”

“My older friends, the ones I used to hang out with before I met you? Not all of them wound up pretty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some of them ran away, like I am. Like I want us to.”

Tally looked into Shay’s eyes, searching for some sign that this was all a joke. But the intense look on her face held firm. She was dead serious.

“You know someone who actually ran away?”

Shay nodded. “I was supposed to go too. We had it all planned, about a week before the first of us turned sixteen. We’d already stolen survival gear, and told David that we were coming. It was all set up.

That was four months ago.”

“But you didn’t…”

“Some of us did, but I chickened out.” Shay looked out the window. “And I wasn’t the only one.

A couple of the others stayed and turned pretty instead. I probably would have too, except I met you.”

“Me?”

“All of a sudden I wasn’t alone anymore. I wasn’t afraid to go back out to the ruins, to look for David again.”

“But we never…” Tally blinked. “You finally found him, didn’t you?”

“Not until two days ago. I’ve been out every night since we…since our fight. After you said I was afraid to grow up, I realized you were right. I’d chickened out once, but I didn’t have to again.”

Shay grasped Tally’s hand, and waited until their eyes were locked. “I want you to come, Tally.”

“No,” Tally said without thinking. Then she shook her head. “Wait. How come you never told me any of this before?”

“I wanted to, except you would have thought I was crazy.”

“You are crazy!”

“Maybe. But not that way. That’s why I wanted you to meet David. So you’d know that it’s all real.”

“It doesn’t seem real. I mean, what is this place you’re talking about?”

“It’s just called the Smoke. It’s not a city, and nobody’s in charge. And nobody’s pretty.”

“Sounds like a nightmare. And how do you get there, walk?”

Shay laughed. “Are you kidding? Hoverboards, like always. There are long-distance boards that recharge on solar, and the route’s all worked out to follow rivers and stuff. David does it all the time, as far as the ruins. He’ll take us to the Smoke.”

“But how do people live out there, Shay? Like the Rusties? Burning trees for heat and burying their junk everywhere? It’s wrong to live in nature, unless you want to live like an animal.”

Shay shook her head and sighed. “That’s just school-talk, Tally. They’ve still got technology. And they’re not like the Rusties, burning trees and stuff. But they don’t put a wall up between themselves and nature.”

“And everyone’s ugly.”

“Which means no one’s ugly.”

Tally managed to laugh. “Which means no one’s pretty, you mean.”

They sat in silence. Tally watched the fireworks, feeling a thousand times worse than she had before Shay had appeared at the window.

Finally, Shay said the words Tally had been thinking. “I’m going to lose you, aren’t I?”

“You’re the one who’s running away.”

Shay brought her fists down onto her knees. “It’s all my fault. I should’ve told you earlier. If you’d had more time to get used to the idea, maybe…”

“Shay, I never would have gotten used to the idea. I don’t want to be ugly all my life. I want those perfect eyes and lips, and for everyone to look at me and gasp. And for everyone who sees me to think Who’s that? and want to get to know me, and listen to what I say.”

“I’d rather have something to say.”

“Like what? ‘I shot a wolf today and ate it’?”

Shay giggled. “People don’t eat wolves, Tally. Rabbits, I think, and deer.”

“Oh, gross. Thanks for the image, Shay.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll stick to vegetables and fish. But it’s not about camping out, Tally. It’s about becoming what I want to become. Not what some surgical committee thinks I should.”

“You’re still yourself on the inside, Shay. But when you’re pretty, people pay more attention.”

“Not everyone thinks that way.”

“Are you sure about that? That you can beat evolution by being smart or interesting? Because if you’re wrong…if you don’t come back by the time you’re twenty, the operation won’t work as well. You’ll look wrong, forever.”

“I’m not coming back. Forever.”

Tally’s voice caught, but she forced herself to say it: “And I’m not going.”

They said good-bye under the dam.

Shay’s long-range hoverboard was thicker, and glimmered with the facets of solar cells. She’d also stashed a heated jacket and hat under the bridge. Tally guessed that winters at the Smoke were cold and miserable.

She couldn’t believe her friend was really going.

“You can always come back. If it sucks.”

Shay shrugged. “None of my friends has.”

The words gave Tally a creepy feeling. She could think of a lot of horrible reasons to explain why no one had come back. “Be careful, Shay.”

“You too. You’re not going to tell anyone about this, right?”

“Never, Shay.”

“You swear? No matter what?”

Tally raised her scarred palm. “I swear.”