the early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.
of course, tally thought, you’d have to feed your catonly salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinksright. the scudding clouds did look a bit fishy, rippled intoscales by a high-altitude wind. as the light faded, deep bluegaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean,bottomless and cold.
any other summer, a sunset like this would have beenbeautiful. but nothing had been beautiful since peris turnedpretty. losing your best friend sucks, even if it’s only forthree months and two days.
tally youngblood was waiting for darkness.
she could see new pretty town through her open window.
the party towers were already lit up, and snakes ofburning torches marked flickering pathways through thepleasure gardens. a few hot-air balloons pulled at theirtethers against the darkening pink sky, their passengersshooting safety fireworks at other balloons and passingparasailers. laughter and music skipped across the waterlike rocks thrown with just the right spin, their edges justas sharp against tally’s nerves.
around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town bythe black oval of the river, everything was in darkness.
everyone ugly was in bed by now.
tally took off her interface ring and said, “good night.”
“sweet dreams, tally,” said the room.
she chewed up a toothbrush pill, punched her pillows,and shoved an old portable heater—one that producedabout as much warmth as a sleeping, tally-size humanbeing—under the covers.
then she crawled out the window.
outside, with the night finally turning coal black aboveher head, tally instantly felt better. maybe this was a stupidplan, but anything was better than another night awake inbed feeling sorry for herself. on the familiar leafy pathdown to the water’s edge, it was easy to imagine peris stealingsilently behind her, stifling laughter, ready for a night ofspying on the new pretties. together. she and peris had figuredout how to trick the house minder back when theywere twelve, when the three-month difference in their agesseemed like it would never matter.
“best friends for life,” tally muttered, fingering the tinyscar on her right palm.
the water glistened through the trees, and she couldhear the wavelets of a passing river skimmer’s wake slappingat the shore. she ducked, hiding in the reeds. summer wasalways the best time for spying expeditions. the grass washigh, it was never cold, and you didn’t have to stay awakethrough school the next day.
of course, peris could sleep as late as he wanted now.
just one of the advantages of being pretty.
the old bridge stretched massively across the water, itshuge iron frame as black as the sky. it had been built solong ago that it held up its own weight, without any supportfrom hoverstruts. a million years from now, when therest of the city had crumbled, the bridge would probablyremain like a fossilized bone.
unlike the other bridges into new pretty town, the oldbridge couldn’t talk—or report trespassers, more importantly.
but even silent, the bridge had always seemed verywise to tally, as quietly knowing as some ancient tree.
her eyes were fully adjusted to the darkness now, andit took only seconds to find the fishing line tied to its usualrock. she yanked it, and heard the splash of the rope tumblingfrom where it had been hidden among the bridge supports.
she kept pulling until the invisible fishing lineturned into wet, knotted cord. the other end was still tiedto the iron framework of the bridge. tally pulled the ropetaut and lashed it to the usual tree.
she had to duck into the grass once more as anotherriver skimmer passed. the people dancing on its deck didn’tspot the rope stretched from bridge to shore. they never did.
new pretties were always having too much fun to notice littlethings out of place.
when the skimmer’s lights had faded, tally tested therope with her whole weight. one time it had pulled loosefrom the tree, and both she and peris had swung downward,then up and out over the middle of the river beforefalling off, tumbling into the cold water. she smiled at thememory, realizing she would rather be on that expedition—soaking wet in the cold with peris—than dry and warmtonight, but alone.
hanging upside down, hands and knees clutching theknots along the rope, tally pulled herself up into the darkframework of the bridge, then stole through its iron skeletonand across to new pretty town.
she knew where peris lived from the one message he hadbothered to send since turning pretty. peris hadn’t given anaddress, but tally knew the trick for decoding the randomlookingnumbers at the bottom of a ping. they led to someplacecalled garbo mansion in the hilly part of town.
getting there was going to be tricky. in their expeditions,tally and peris had always stuck to the waterfront,where vegetation and the dark backdrop of uglyville madeit easy to hide. but now tally was headed into the center ofthe island, where floats and revelers populated the brightstreets all night. brand-new pretties like peris always livedwhere the fun was most frantic.
6 scott westerfelduglies 7tally had memorized the map, but if she made onewrong turn, she was toast. without her interface ring, shewas invisible to vehicles. they’d just run her down like shewas nothing.
of course, tally was nothing here.
worse, she was ugly. but she hoped peris wouldn’t seeit that way. wouldn’t see her that way.
tally had no idea what would happen if she got caught.
this wasn’t like being busted for “forgetting” her ring, skippingclasses, or tricking the house into playing her musiclouder than allowed. everyone did that kind of stuff, andeveryone got busted for it. but she and peris had alwaysbeen very careful about not getting caught on these expeditions.
crossing the river was serious business.
it was too late to worry now, though. what could theydo to her, anyway? in three months she’d be a pretty herself.
tally crept along the river until she reached a pleasuregarden, and slipped into the darkness beneath a row ofweeping willows. under their cover she made her wayalongside a path lit by little guttering flames.
a pretty couple wandered down the path. tally froze,but they were clueless, too busy staring into each other’seyes to see her crouching in the darkness. tally silentlywatched them pass, getting that warm feeling she alwaysgot from looking at a pretty face. even when she and perisused to spy on them from the shadows, giggling at all thestupid things the pretties said and did, they couldn’t resiststaring. there was something magic in their large and perfecteyes, something that made you want to pay attention towhatever they said, to protect them from any danger, tomake them happy. they were so . . . pretty.
the two disappeared around the next bend, and tallyshook her head to clear the mushy thoughts away. she wasn’there to gawk. she was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. and shehad a mission.
the garden stretched up into town, winding like a blackriver through the bright party towers and houses. after a fewmore minutes of creeping, she startled a couple hiddenamong the trees (it was a pleasure garden, after all), but in thedarkness they couldn’t see her face, and only teased her as shemumbled an apology and slipped away. she hadn’t seen toomuch of them, either, just a tangle of perfect legs and arms.
finally, the garden ended, a few blocks from whereperis lived.
tally peered out from behind a curtain of hanging vines.
this was farther than she and peris had ever been together,and as far as her planning had taken her. there was no wayto hide herself in the busy, well-lit streets. she put her fingersup to her face, felt the wide nose and thin lips, the toohighforehead and tangled mass of frizzy hair. one step outof the underbrush and she’d be spotted. her face seemedto burn as the light touched it. what was she doing here?
she should be back in the darkness of uglyville, awaitingher turn.
8 s cott westerfeldbut she had to see peris, had to talk to him. she wasn’tquite sure why, exactly, except that she was sick of imagining athousand conversations with him every night before she fellasleep. they’d spent every day together since they were littlies,and now . . . nothing. maybe if they could just talk for a fewminutes, her brain would stop talking to imaginary peris.
three minutes might be enough to hold her for three months.
tally looked up and down the street, checking for sideyards to slink through, dark doorways to hide in. she feltlike a rock climber facing a sheer cliff, searching for cracksand handholds.
the traffic began to clear a little, and she waited, rubbingthe scar on her right palm. finally, tally sighed andwhispered, “best friends forever,” and took a step forwardinto the light.
an explosion of sound came from her right, and sheleaped back into the darkness, stumbling among the vines,coming down hard on her knees in the soft earth, certainfor a few seconds that she’d been caught.
but the cacophony organized itself into a throbbingrhythm. it was a drum machine making its lumbering waydown the street. wide as a house, it shimmered with themovement of its dozens of mechanical arms, bashing awayat every size of drum. behind it trailed a growing bunch ofrevelers, dancing along with the beat, drinking and throwingtheir empty bottles to shatter against the huge, imperviousmachine.
uglies 9tally smiled. the revelers were wearing masks.
the machine was lobbing the masks out the back, tryingto coax more followers into the impromptu parade:
devil faces and horrible clowns, green monsters and grayaliens with big oval eyes, cats and dogs and cows, faces withcrooked smiles or huge noses.
the procession passed slowly, and tally pulled herselfback into the vegetation. a few of the revelers passed closeenough that the sickly sweetness from their bottles filledher nose. a minute later, when the machine had trundledhalf a block farther, tally jumped out and snatched up adiscarded mask from the street. the plastic was soft in herhand, still warm from having been stamped into shapeinside the machine a few seconds before.
before she pressed it against her face, tally realized thatit was the same color as the cat-vomit pink of the sunset,with a long snout and two pink little ears. smart adhesiveflexed against her skin as the mask settled onto her face.
tally pushed her way through the drunken dancers,out the other side of the procession, and ran down a sidestreet toward garbo mansion, wearing the face of a pig.
