Uglies (4 page)

Tally fell off. Again.

The spill didn’t hurt so much, this time. The moment her feet slipped off the hoverboard, she’d relaxed, the way Shay kept telling her to. 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.

But the momentum had to go somewhere, Shay had explained. And around in circles was better than into a tree. Here in Cleopatra Park there were plenty of those.

After a few rotations, Tally found herself being lowered to the grass by her wrists, dizzy but in one piece.

Shay cruised up, banking her hoverboard to an elegant stop as if she’d been born on one.

“That looked a little better.”

“It didn’t feel any better.” Tally pulled off one crash bracelet and rubbed her wrist. It was turning red, and her fingers felt weak.

The bracelet was heavy and solid in her hand. Crash bracelets had to have metal inside, because they worked on magnets, the way the boards did. Whenever Tally’s feet slipped, the bracelets got all hovery and caught her fall, like some friendly giant plucking her from danger and swinging her to a halt.

By her wrists. Again.

Tally pulled the other bracelet off and rubbed.

“Don’t give up. You almost made it!”

Tally’s board cruised back on its own, nuzzling at her ankles like an apologetic dog. She crossed her arms and rubbed her shoulders. “I almost got snapped in two, you mean.”

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

“On a what ?”

“Never mind. Come on, one more try.”

Tally sighed. It wasn’t just her wrists. Her knees ached from banking hard, whipping through turns so quickly that her body seemed to weigh a ton. Shay called that “high gravity,” which happened every time a fast-moving object changed direction.

“Hoverboarding looks so fun, like being a bird. But actually doing it is hard work.”

Shay shrugged. “Being a bird’s probably hard work too. Flapping your wings all day, you know?”

“Maybe. Does it get any better?”

“For birds? I don’t know. On a board? Definitely.”

“I hope so.” Tally pulled her bracelets on and stepped onto the hoverboard. It bobbed a little as it adjusted to her weight, like the bounce of a diving board.

“Check your belly sensor.”

Tally touched her belly ring, where Shay had clipped the little sensor. It told the board where Tally’s center of gravity was, and which way she was facing. The sensor even read her stomach muscles, which, it turned out, hoverboarders always clenched in anticipation of turns. The board was smart enough to gradually learn how her body moved. The more Tally rode, the more it would keep itself under her feet.

Of course, Tally had to learn too. Shay kept saying that if your feet weren’t in the right place, the smartest board in the world couldn’t keep you on. The riding surface was all knobbly for traction, but it was amazing how easy it was to slip off.

The board was oval-shaped, about half as long as Tally was tall, and black with the silver spots of a cheetah—the only animal in the world that could run faster than a hoverboard could fly. It was Shay’s first board, and she’d never recycled it. Until today, it had hung on the wall above her bed.

Tally snapped her fingers, bent her knees as she rose into the air, then leaned forward to pick up speed.

Shay cruised along just above her, staying a little behind.

The trees started to rush by, whipping Tally’s arms with the sharp stings of evergreen needles. The board wouldn’t let her crash into anything solid, but it didn’t get too concerned about twigs.

“Extend your arms. Keep your feet apart!” Shay yelled for the thousandth time. Tally nervously scooted her left foot forward.

At the end of the park, Tally leaned to her right, and the board pulled into a long, steep turn. She bent her knees, growing heavy as she cut back toward where they’d started.

Now Tally was rushing toward the slalom flags, crouching as she drew closer. She could feel the wind drying her lips, lifting her ponytail up.

“Oh, boy,” she whispered.

The board raced past the first flag, and she leaned hard right, her arms all the way out now for balance.

“Switch!” cried Shay. Tally twisted her body to bring the board under her and across, cutting around the next flag. Once it was past, she twisted again.

But her feet were too close together. Not again! Her shoes slipped across the surface of the board.

“No!” she cried, clenching her toes, cupping the air with her palms, anything to keep herself on board.

Her right shoe slid toward the board’s edge until her toes were silhouetted against the trees.

The trees! She was almost sideways, her body parallel with the ground.

The slalom flag zoomed past, and suddenly, it was over. The board swung back under Tally as her course straightened out again.

She’d made the turn!

Tally spun to face Shay. “I did it!” she cried.

And fell.

Confused by her spin, the board had tried to execute a turn, and dumped her. Tally relaxed as her arms jerked straight and the world spun around her. She was laughing as she descended to the grass, dangling by her bracelets.

Shay was also laughing. “Almost did it.”

“No! I got around the flags. You saw!”

“Okay, okay. You made it.” Shay laughed, stepping off onto the grass. “But don’t dance around like that afterward. It’s not cool, Squint.”

Tally stuck out her tongue. In the last week, Tally had learned that Shay only used her ugly nickname as a put-down. Shay insisted they call each other by their real names most of the time, which Tally had quickly gotten used to. She liked it, actually. Nobody but Sol and Ellie—her parents—and a few stuck-up teachers had ever called her “Tally” before.

“Whatever you say, Skinny. That was great.”

Tally collapsed on the grass. Her whole body ached, every muscle exhausted. “Thanks for the lesson.

Flying’s the best.”

Shay sat down close by. “Never bored on a hoverboard.”

“This is the best I’ve felt since…” Tally didn’t say his name. She looked up into the sky, which was a glorious blue. A perfect sky. They hadn’t gotten started until late afternoon. Above, a few high clouds were already showing hints of pink, even though sunset was hours off.

“Yeah,” Shay agreed. “Me too. I was getting sick of hanging out alone.”

“So how long you got?”

Shay answered instantly. “Two months and twenty-six days.”

Tally was stunned for a moment. “Are you sure?”

“’Course I’m sure.”

Tally felt a big, slow smile roll across her face, and she fell back onto the grass, laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding. We’ve got the same birthday!”

“No way.”

“Yeah, way. It’s perfect. We’ll both turn pretty together!”

Shay was silent for a moment. “Yeah, I guess.”

“September ninth, right?”

Shay nodded.

“That is so cool. I mean, I don’t think I could stand to lose another friend. You know? We don’t have to worry about one of us abandoning the other. Not for a single day.”

Shay sat up straight, her smile gone. “I wouldn’t do that, anyway.”

Tally blinked. “I didn’t say you would, but…”

“But what?”

“But when you turn, you go over to New Pretty Town.”

“So? Pretties are allowed to come back over here, you know. Or write.”

Tally snorted. “But they don’t.”

“I would.” Shay looked out over the river at the spires of the party towers, placing a thumbnail firmly between her teeth.

“So would I, Shay. I’d come see you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Shay shrugged, and lay back down to stare up at the clouds. “Okay. But you’re not the first person to make that promise, you know.”

“Yeah, I do know.”

They were silent for a moment. Clouds rolled slowly across the sun, and the air grew cool. Tally thought of Peris, and tried to remember the way he used to look back when he was Nose. Somehow, she couldn’t recall his ugly face anymore. As if those few minutes of seeing him pretty had wiped out a lifetime of memories. All she could see now was pretty Peris, those eyes, that smile.

“I wonder why they never come back,” Shay said. “Just to visit.”

Tally swallowed.

“Because we’re so ugly, Skinny, that’s why.”

“Here’s option two.” Tally touched her interface ring, and the wallscreen changed.

This Tally was sleek, with ultrahigh cheekbones, deep green catlike eyes, and a wide mouth that curled into a knowing smile.

“That’s, uh, pretty different.”

“Yeah. I doubt it’s even legal.”

Tally tweaked the eye-shape parameters, pulling the arch of the eyebrows down almost to normal. Some cities allowed exotic operations—for new pretties only—but the authorities here were notoriously conservative. She doubted a doctor would give this morpho a second glance, but it was fun to push the software to its limits. “You think I look too scary?”

“No. You look like a real pussycat.” Shay giggled. “Unfortunately, I mean that in the literal, dead-mouse-eating sense.”

“Okay, moving right along.”

The next Tally was a much more standard morphological model, with almond-shaped brown eyes, straight black hair with long bangs, the dark lips set to maximum fullness.

“Pretty generic, Tally.”

“Oh, come on! I worked on this one for a long time. I think I’d look great this way. There’s a whole Cleopatra thing going on.”

“You know,” Shay said, “I read that the real Cleopatra wasn’t even that great-looking. She seduced everyone with how clever she was.”

“Yeah, right. And you’ve seen a picture of her?”

“They didn’t have cameras back then, Squint.”

“Duh. So how do you know she was ugly?”

“Because that’s what historians wrote at the time.”

Tally shrugged. “She was probably a classic pretty and they didn’t even know it. Back then, they had weird ideas about beauty. They didn’t know about biology.”

“Lucky them.” Shay stared out the window.

“So, if you think all my faces are so crappy, why don’t you show me some of yours?” Tally cleared the wallscreen and leaned back on the bed.

“I can’t.”

“You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, huh?”

“No, I mean I just can’t. I never made one.”

Tally’s jaw dropped. Everyone made morphos, even littlies, too young for their facial structure to have set. It was a great waste of a day, figuring out all the different ways you could look when you finally became pretty.

“Not even one?”

“Maybe when I was little. But my friends and I stopped doing that kind of stuff a long time ago.”

“Well.” Tally sat up. “We should fix that right now.”

“I’d rather go hoverboarding.” Shay tugged anxiously under her shirt. Tally figured that Shay slept with her belly sensor on, hoverboarding in her dreams.

“Later, Shay. I can’t believe you don’t have a single morph. Please .”

“It’s stupid. The doctors pretty much do what they want, no matter what you tell them.”

“I know, but it’s fun .”

Shay made a big point of rolling her eyes, but finally nodded. She dragged herself off the bed and plopped down in front of the wallscreen, pulling her hair back from her face.

Tally snorted. “So you have done this before.”

“Like I said, when I was a littlie.”

“Sure.” Tally turned her interface ring to bring up a menu on the wallscreen, and blinked her way through a set of eyemouse choices. The screen’s camera flickered with laser light, and a green grid sprang up on Shay’s face, a field of tiny squares imposed across the shape of her cheekbones, nose, lips, and forehead.

Seconds later, two faces appeared on the screen. Both of them were Shay, but there were obvious differences: One looked wild, slightly angry; the other had a slightly distant expression, like someone having a daydream.

“It’s weird how that works, isn’t it?” Tally said. “Like two different people.”

Shay nodded. “Creepy.”

Ugly faces were always asymmetrical; neither half looked exactly like the other. So the first thing the morpho software did was take each side of your face and double it, like holding a mirror right down the middle, creating two examples of perfect symmetry. Already, both of the symmetrical Shays looked better than the original.

“So, Shay, which do you think is your good side?”

“Why do I have to be symmetrical? I’d rather have a face with two different sides.”

Tally groaned. “That’s a sign of childhood stress. No one wants to look at that.”

“Gee, I wouldn’t want to look stressed,” Shay snorted, and pointed at the wilder-looking face. “Okay, whatever. The right one’s better, don’t you think?”

“I hate my right side. I always start with the left.”

“Yeah, well, I happen to like my right side. Looks tougher.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

Tally blinked, and the right-side face filled the screen.

“First, the basics.” The software took over: The eyes gradually grew, reducing the size of the nose between them, Shay’s cheekbones moved upward, and her lips became a tiny bit fuller (they were already almost pretty-sized). Every blemish disappeared, her skin turning flawlessly smooth. The skull moved subtly under the features, the angle of her forehead tilting back, her chin becoming more defined, her jaw stronger.

When it was done, Tally whistled. “Wow, that’s pretty good already.”

“Great,” Shay groaned. “I totally look like every other new pretty in the world.”

“Well, sure, we just got started. How about some hair on you?” Tally blinked through menus quickly, picking a style at random.

When the wallscreen changed, Shay fell over on the floor in a fit of giggles. The high hairdo towered over her thin face like dunce cap, the white-blond hair utterly incongruous with her olive skin.

Tally could hardly manage to speak through her own laughter. “Okay, maybe not that.” She flipped through more styles, settling on basic hair, dark and short. “Let’s get the face right first.”

She tweaked the eyebrows, making their arch more dramatic, and added roundness to the cheeks. Shay was still too skinny, even after the morpho software had pulled her toward the average.

“And maybe a bit lighter?” Tally took the shade of the skin closer to baseline.

“Hey, Squint,” Shay said. “Whose face is this, anyway?”

“Just playing,” Tally said. “You want to take a shot?”

“No, I want to go hoverboarding.”

“Sure, great. But first let’s get this right.”

“What do you mean ‘get it right,’ Tally? Maybe I think my face is already right!”

“Yeah, it’s great.” Tally rolled her eyes. “For an ugly.”

Shay scowled. “What, can’t you stand me? Do you need to get some picture into your head so you can imagine it instead of my face?”

“Shay! Come on. It’s just for fun.”

“Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun.”

“We are ugly!”

“This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.”

Tally groaned and flopped back onto her bed, glaring up at the ceiling. Shay could be so weird sometimes. She always had a chip on her shoulder about the operation, like someone was making her turn sixteen.

“Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Shay recited. “Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance.

People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren’t quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color.” Tally shook her head.

No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she’d never really quite believed that one. “So what if people look more alike now? It’s the only way to make people equal.”

“How about making them smarter?”

Tally laughed. “Fat chance. Anyway, it’s just to see what you and I will look like in only…two months and fifteen days.”

“Can’t we just wait until then?”

Tally closed her eyes, sighing. “Sometimes I don’t think I can.”

“Well, tough luck.” She felt Shay’s weight on the bed and a light punch on her arm. “Hey, might as well make the best of it. Can we go hoverboarding now? Please?”

Tally opened her eyes and saw that her friend was smiling. “Okay: hoverboard.” She sat up and glanced at the screen. Even without much work, Shay’s face was already welcoming, vulnerable, healthy…pretty.

“Don’t you think you’re beautiful?”

Shay didn’t look, just shrugged. “That’s not me. It’s some committee’s idea of me.”

Tally smiled and hugged her.

“It will be you, though. Really you. Soon.”