Uglies (Uglies, #1)

by Scott Westerfeld

The two disappeared around the next bend, and Tally shook her head to clear the mushy thoughts away. She wasn’t here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.

It must be horrible to see an ugly face when you’re surrounded by such beautiful people all the time.

“So, where’re we going?” Shay asked. “I know a bridge.” “But it’ll tattle.” “Not this one. It’s an old friend.”

Spinning out wasn’t much worse than having your dad swing you around by the wrists when you were little. If your dad happened to be a superhuman freak and was trying to pull your arms out of their sockets.

“Never happens. I’ve spilled more times than a glass of milk on a roller coaster.” “On a what?” “Never mind.

The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there’d been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.

“Doing what you’re supposed to do is always boring. I can’t imagine anything worse than being required to have fun.”

Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.”

Tally frowned. Shay sometimes talked in a mysterious way, like she was quoting the lyrics of some band no one else listened to.

Whether he was real or not, Tally thought, David was very real to Shay.

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.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Tally hoped that Shay was right about metal deposits being found in every river. Otherwise, this could be a very long trip. Of course, at this speed she wouldn’t have time to stop if the lights suddenly went out. Which would make it a very short trip.

This was the wild, she reminded herself. Mistakes had serious consequences.

That’s how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.

Perfect. A little red and flaking skin should go quite nicely with the scratches on her ugly face.

When she awoke, the world was on fire.

Tonk had explained that a pair of thin blades, spinning so quickly that you couldn’t see them, carried the craft through the air. She wondered if he’d been kidding. It just looked like a typical force field to her.

Without the pendant, Tally was stuck out here in the wild forever. Ugly for life. Her only way home was to betray her friend.

The Boss was an old ugly. Tally had spotted a few from a distance on the way in, but had managed to turn her eyes away. But here was the wrinkled, veined, discolored, shuffling, horrific truth, right before her eyes.

“That’s nothing. Check these out.” Shay sat her down at a table, turned to a shelf, and pulled out a handful of volumes in protective covers. She plonked them in front of Tally. “Books on paper? What about them?” “Not books. They’re called ‘magazines,’ ” Shay said. She opened one and pointed. Its strangely glossy pages were covered with pictures. Of people. Uglies. Tally’s eyes widened as Shay turned the pages, pointing and giggling. She’d never seen so many wildly different faces before. Mouths and eyes and noses of every imaginable shape, all combined insanely on people of every age. And the bodies. Some were grotesquely fat, or weirdly overmuscled, or uncomfortably thin, and almost all of them had wrong, ugly proportions. But instead of being ashamed of their deformities, the people were laughing and kissing and posing, as if all the pictures had been taken at some huge party. “Who are these freaks?” “They aren’t freaks,” Shay said. “The weird thing is, these are famous people.” “Famous for what? Being hideous?” “No. They’re sports stars, actors, artists. The men with stringy hair are musicians, I think. The really ugly ones are politicians, and someone told me the fatties are mostly comedians.”

“No. They’re sports stars, actors, artists. The men with stringy hair are musicians, I think. The really ugly ones are politicians, and someone told me the fatties are mostly comedians.”

She felt the pendant swinging from her neck, a tiny but insistent pull. Dr. Cable would be impatient by now, waiting for the signal. But David’s revelation had suddenly made everything much more complicated. The Smoke wasn’t just a hideout for assorted runaways, she realized now. It was a real town, a city in its own right. If Tally activated the tracker, it wouldn’t just mean the end of Shay’s big adventure. It would be David’s home taken from him, his whole life stripped away. Tally felt the weight of the mountain pressing down upon her, and found that she was still struggling to breathe as she pulled herself out into the sunlight.

Nature, at least, didn’t need an operation to be beautiful. It just was.

Shay reached out and gave Tally’s heart-shaped pendant a little flick. “And besides, maybe your mysterious someone will show up, and it won’t matter anyway.” Tally nodded. True enough, once the Specials got here, Shay’s romantic life would be the least of anyone’s worries.

Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn’t even a pretty one.

Tally looked away, trying to drown her uncanny pretty feelings in the sea of white weeds.

“The Pretty Committee?”

“Becoming pretty doesn’t just change the way you look,” she said. “No,” David said. “It changes the way you think.”

Tally wondered which had come first: the operation or the lesions? Was becoming pretty just the bait to get everyone under the knife? Or were the lesions merely a finishing touch on being pretty? Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same was everyone thinking the same.

“That’s the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You’re all brainwashed into believing you’re ugly.”

We don’t want to hurt you. But we will if we have to.”

pugnacious,

Me af

Croy’s board wasn’t as fast as hers, and it didn’t know her style. Riding it was like breaking in new shoes—while running for your life.

And that was her city in a nutshell, Tally realized. Nothing left to itself. Everything turned into a bribe, a warning, or a lesson.

What was she now? No longer a spy, and she couldn’t call herself a Smokey anymore. Hardly a pretty, but she didn’t feel like an ugly, either. She was nothing in particular. But at least she had a purpose.

It was nice to be the competent one for a change.

Sometimes Tally felt she could almost accept brain damage if it meant a life without reconstituted noodles.

But even if we blow it tonight, and both wind up under the knife, at least someone will still keep fighting. Making trouble, you know?” “I hope it’s us, making trouble,” Tally said.

Which was worse: a friend with brain damage, or one who despised you?

Tally smiled. At least she was causing trouble to the end. “I’m Tally Youngblood,” she said. “Make me pretty.”