Pretties (Uglies, #2)

by Scott Westerfeld

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless. —John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, I

Tally didn’t have the strength to explain that she’d really meant her hangover, which was sprawled in her head like an overweight cat, sullen and squishy and disinclined to budge.

The three looked at Tally, all of them thrilled with the idea, and even though another nasty ping went through her, she knew it would be bogus not to agree. And that with a totally bubbly costume like a real-life Smokey sweater to wear, there was no way anyone would vote against her, because Tally Youngblood was a natural Crim.

There was nothing more bogus than still being in a costume after you’d left a party.

Tally fell asleep a few minutes later, happy to be a Crim at last. But her dreams were totally bogus.

Maybe that was why he was the head Crim—you had to be different from everyone else to really be a criminal.

litchrally already coming full circle!

There were worse things than sitting in a perfect park, being closely watched by a beautiful boy.

Memories from the Smoke always came back at a brain-missing pace, like bubbles rising up through some thick, viscous liquid.

Kissing Zane was dizzy-making, but not like she was falling into darkness. His lips were warm and soft and perfect, and she felt safe. After a long moment, the two pulled a little apart, Tally’s eyes still closed. She felt his breath against her, his hand warm and soft on the back of her neck. “David,” she whispered.

Of course, getting what you wanted never turned out the way you’d thought it would.

and kisses are a better fate than wisdom. —e. e. cummings, “since feeling is first”

Zane instantly disappeared from view with a noise like breaking glass, and Tally heard the crack spreading with a sound that built like the shriek of a falling tree out in the Smoke. For a strange split second she was pushed up into the air as a large plate of ice teeter-tottered on the fulcrum of a lifter, but then it snapped in half and Tally was falling, her stomach lurching up into her throat. Gloved hands grabbed her coat from every direction in a moment of group panic, then a whoop rose up as the middle of the rink gave way altogether, icy shards and Crims and Zambonies all tumbling down toward the green grass of the soccer field, ten thousand faces staring up at them in shock. Now this was bubbly.

The cure had worked. The New Smoke had allies inside the city. The sky was falling.

From the very first kiss, being with Zane had made things complicated. She sighed. Maybe that was the way it always worked.

Suddenly, Tally felt exhausted. There were too many things to juggle. Too many worries all falling on her alone. All she’d wanted was to become a Crim, to feel safe inside a clique of friends, and now she’d found herself in charge of a rebellion.

“We are under control, Tally, because of the operation. Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch. Without the operation, human beings always become Rusties.”

Tally didn’t need her to finish, she could see it in Shay’s eyes: She looked terrible. Tally smiled tiredly at this news. That was part of the cure, of course. She might still be gorgeous—her bone structure perfect, her skin flawless—but Tally’s face revealed the turmoil inside. Now that she could think unpretty thoughts, she would no longer be beautiful every minute of the day. Anger, fear, and anxiety were not pretty-making.

“You are like that, Tally. You have always been like that! No cure is going to make you any different—you were busy betraying people a long time ago. You didn’t need any operation to make you selfish and shallow and full of yourself. You already were.”

Perhaps, thanks to every terrible thing that Tally Youngblood had ever done to her, Shay would find her own way to a cure.

Tally couldn’t make sense of it—the cadence sounded like a chant, almost like the prayers that Rusties and pre-Rusties had once offered up to their invisible superheroes in the sky.

Looking down, Tally shook her head and sighed. Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of falls from ever-greater heights.

She shook him off violently, and Peris took a fearful step back. Pretties didn’t like conflict. Pretties didn’t take risks. Pretties didn’t say no. Tally was no longer pretty. “You already have,” she said. And, clutching her hoverboard, she threw herself into the void.

The beauty of the world… has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. —Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

She smiled as she stared into the flames. Nature was tough, it could be dangerous, but unlike Dr. Cable or Shay or Peris—unlike people in general—it made sense. The problems it threw at you could be solved rationally. Get cold, build a fire. Need to get somewhere, walk there.

A loud roar rose up before Tally, the stream boiling around her ankles, the ground rumbling. Then suddenly the earth seemed to disappear from under her feet as she ran…. Flailing through the air, Tally realized too late that the roar was behind her now—she’d run straight off the top of a waterfall.

God, he’d said. The old Rusty word for their invisible superheroes in the sky. This was their world out here—this raw, cruel wilderness with its disease and violence and animal struggle for survival. Like these people, this world was ugly. To be pretty was to be from somewhere beyond. Out here, Tally was a god.

Tally dimly remembered learning in school about the pre-Rusty custom of assigning different tasks to men and women. And it was usually women who got the crappy jobs, she recalled. Even some Rusties had doggedly clung to that little trick. The thought gave Tally a queasy feeling in her stomach, and she hoped similar rules didn’t apply to gods.

“We did not know you were coming. Not for many days.” Did gods usually call ahead before visiting?

Tally sat in the darkness, stunned, replaying their fight in her mind. What could she have said to him? What whispered arguments could overcome decades of blood feud? It was hopeless. Maybe it went deeper than that. Tally remembered again her conversation with Dr. Cable, who had claimed that human beings always rediscovered war, always became Rusties in the end—the species was a planetary plague, whether they knew what a planet was or not. So what was the cure for that, except the operation? Maybe the Specials had the right idea.

And inside them was something far more sophisticated, a security system powerful enough to cripple human beings, but clever enough not to harm the trees or the birds. Something that attacked the human nervous system, drawing an impassable border around the villagers’ world. Tally saw it then, why the Specials could allow the village to exist. This wasn’t just a few stray people living in the wilderness; it was someone’s pet anthropology project, a preserve of some kind. Or… what had the Rusties called them? This was a reservation. And Tally was trapped inside.

Tally knew she should be more understanding, but was only willing to cut Andrew so much slack; being born into a culture that assumed women were servants didn’t make it okay to go along with the plan. After all, Tally had turned her back on everything she’d been raised to expect: an effortless life, perfect beauty, pretty-mindedness. It seemed like Andrew could learn to cook his own chickens.

Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.

“Pretty? Think again.” She smiled. “I’m Tally Youngblood. My mind is very ugly. And I’m taking your car.”

He was used to dealing with villagers in awe of his godhood. But one look at Tally’s knife and he’d realized who was giving the orders.

She shook her head. Poor Andrew. His whole world was an experiment, and his father had died in a conflict that meant precisely nothing.

Tally looked down as the car cleared the trees, and saw Andrew waving up at her, his crooked, gap-toothed smile still hopeful. Tally knew that she would have to return, just like he’d said; she no longer had a choice. Someone had to help the people here escape the reservation, and they had no one else but Tally.

She sighed. At least one thing was consistent about her life: It just kept on getting more complicated.

“Boy, you guys were stupid,” Tally muttered at the car windows, but calling them names didn’t make the dead Rusties any less ominous. The few intact skulls just stared back at her with empty expressions.

“He’s right, Tally,” Maddy said. “Somehow, you cured yourself.”

“How lucky is that?” Tally muttered to herself. “Sleeping Beauty with two princes.”

Even then, her mind had started to change, realizing that nature didn’t need an operation to make it beautiful, it just was.

Maybe she’d always been bubbly, somewhere inside. It only took loving someone—or being in the wild, or maybe just a plunge into freezing water—to bring it out.

David wasn’t a prince—handsome or otherwise. He was the first boy she’d fallen in love with, but not the last. Time and experiences apart had changed what had been between them.

She had called David ugly. He would never forget that, nor would she.

“Do you think David was right? My big beautiful eyes are why you chose me?”

Sorry but This made me google giggle

Maybe she would start with a kiss….

And over all those sleepy weeks, the dream always ended the same way, with the dragon coming for the princess, saying the same words every time…. “Face it, Tally-wa, you’re Special.”