Pretties u-2 Read online

  Zane was already awake, sipping coffee and staring out the window, absently spinning his cuff with one finger. He glanced at her as she stirred, but didn't make a sound. The silence between them since they'd been cuffed had felt conspiratorial, their secret whispers intimate, but Tally wondered if talking so little was gradually shutting them off from each other. Shay had been right about one thing: Tally had hardly known Zane before that day they'd climbed the tower. What Dr. Cable had told her made Tally realize that she still didn't know him very well.

  But once the cuffs were off and they were outside the city, their memories freed from the blur of pretty-headedness, there would be nothing to stop them from telling each other everything.

  "Bogus weather, huh?" she said.

  "Just a few degrees colder and it'd be snowing."

  Tally brightened. "Yeah, snow would be totally pretty-making." She fished a dirty T-shirt from the floor, wadded it up, and threw it at his head. "Snowball fight!"

  He let it bounce off him, smiling softly. Zane's headache from the night of the party had passed, but it had left him in a serious mood. Without having said a word, they both knew they would have to escape the city soon.

  It all came down to the cuffs.

  Tally gave hers an experimental pull. It slipped from her wrist onto her hand, catching only centimeters from coming off. She'd hardly eaten anything the day before, determined to fade away to nothing if that's what it took to get the thing off, but Tally wondered if she would ever be skinny enough. The cuff's circumference looked just smaller than the width of the bones in her hand, a measurement that no amount of starvation was going to alter.

  She stared at the red marks left by the metal. The big bone that was the joint of her left thumb was most of the problem. Tally envisioned pulling the thumb back hard enough to snap the bone, leaving room for the cuff to slip off, and couldn't imagine anything more painful.

  A ping came from the door, and Tally sighed. Someone had gotten sick of being ignored and had come around in person.

  "We're not here, are we?" Zane said.

  Tally shrugged. Not if it was Shay outside, or some wannabe trying to get into the Crims. Come to think of it, there was no one she was in the mood to see.

  The ping came again.

  "Who is it, anyway?" Tally asked the room, but the room didn't know. Which meant whoever it was wasn't wearing their interface ring.

  "That's…interesting," Zane said. They looked at each other for a moment, and Tally felt the moment when curiosity got the better of them.

  "Okay, open up," she told the room.

  The door slid away to reveal Fausto, looking like a kitten pulled out of a river. His hair was plastered to his head, his clothing soaked, but his eyes were bright. Under his arms he carried two hoverboards, their knobbly surfaces dripping water on the floor.

  He walked into the room without a word and dropped the boards. They came to a hovery stop at knee height, while Fausto unloaded four crash bracelets and two belly sensors from his pockets. He took one of the boards and turned it over, gesturing at the access panel on its bottom. Tally rolled out of bed to take a closer look. The nuts securing the panel were stripped, and two red wires snaked out, their ends twisted together and sealed with black tape.

  Fausto mimed pulling the wires apart, then opened his hands in a gesture that meant, Where is it? He grinned.

  Tally nodded slowly. Fausto was still bubbly from the breakthrough, his flash tattoo spinning. He, at least, hadn't wasted the last rainy days and nights. These boards were tricked up, ugly-style. When the wires were disconnected, their governors and trackers would crash, freeing the boards from the city interface.

  Once they'd gotten rid of the cuffs, Zane and Tally could fly anywhere they wanted.

  "Awesome," she said aloud, not caring if the walls heard it.

  They didn't wait for sunshine.

  Flying through the rain was like standing under a freezing shower. The hole in the wall had coughed up goggles and grippy shoes, so it was possible to stay on board, but just barely. The high winds plastered Tally's soaking winter coat against her skin, pulling her hood back from her head and threatening to spill her on every turn.

  Her reflexes from ugly days hadn't disappeared, though. If anything, the operation had improved her balance, and the almost freezing rain kept Tally from slipping into a pretty haze, even with her coat's heating turned to maximum. With a pounding heart and chattering teeth, her mind stayed crystal clear.

  She and Zane shot down to the river at treetop level, following the winding path of Denzel Park. The branches danced in the wind under them, like flailing hands trying to reach up and drag them down. As Tally leaned into turns, cutting the wind with her hands, the last traces of her morning pretty-mindedness disappeared. The weight of the sensor clipped to her belly ring — which told the board where her center of gravity was — brought back memories of expeditions to the Rusty Ruins with Shay, reminding her how easy it had been to sneak out of the city back in ugly days.

  Only the inescapable presence of the interface cuff spoiled her mood. The crash bracelets were big enough to fit over the metal ring, their soft, smart plastics conforming to its shape. Still, Tally imagined the manacle cutting into her flesh.

  They reached the river and turned onto it, skimming under bridges, her board slapping the churning whitecaps stirred up by the wind. Laughing maniacally, Zane pulled in front of Tally and dipped his board's tail into the water, sending up a wall of spray.

  She crouched low on the board, ducking the worst of the water, and tipped it forward to shoot into the lead. Banking across Zane's path, she slapped the river with her board, raising up a wall of water in front of him. She heard him whoop as he zoomed straight through it.

  Soaking and panting hard, Tally wondered if this is what it would be like to be a Special — her senses sharp, every moment intense, her body a perfectly tuned machine. She remembered Maddy and Az saying that Specials didn't have the lesions — they were cured.

  Of course, there was a price for being Special — the small matter of a new face: wolflike teeth and cold, dull eyes that terrified everyone you met. And the horror-movie look was nothing compared with having to work for Special Circumstances — tracking down runaway uglies and crushing anyone the city felt threatened by.

  And what if the Special operation changed your mind in some other way: making you obedient instead of empty-headed? With all that speed and strength, running away from the city would be easy, but what if the Special operation put something like the cuff inside you, something that would always tell them where you were?

  A faceful of water reminded Tally to keep her mind on the game, and she shot high into the air, soaring over a footbridge. Below, Zane was looking back uncertainly, trying to figure out where she'd disappeared to.

  Tally dropped down just ahead of him, hitting the river with a sound like a face being slapped, throwing up an explosion of water. But she knew instantly she'd hit too fast. At this speed, the water was as hard as concrete, and her feet slipped at the impact — Tally felt herself sliding off…

  She was falling for a moment, then the crash bracelets kicked in, gripping her wrists cruelly and spinning her to a safe halt.

  She wound up waist-deep in the freezing water, hanging from the bracelets, crying out as she discovered a whole new level of being soaked. She was glad to see that her attack had also dumped Zane.

  "Really bubbly move, Skinny," he shouted, pulling himself back onto his hoverboard. Too out of breath to answer, she crawled onto hers and lay on her stomach, laughing. The two of them wordlessly coasted over to the ground to recover their breath.

  On the muddy riverbank, they huddled close for warmth. Her heart still pounded, the expanse of rain-struck water stretched before them like a field of glittering flowers.

  "So beautiful," Tally said, trying to imagine what it would be like in the wild with Zane, feeling this way every day, free from the mind-numbing restrictions of the ci
ty.

  Her wrist was throbbing, and she pulled her crash bracelet off to take a look. In the wipeout, the metal cuff underneath had cut into her skin. Tally gave it a tug, but even with her soaking skin, it stopped at its usual spot.

  "Still stuck," she said.

  Zane took her hand and said softly, "Don't push it, Tally." He covered the cuff with her coat and whispered, "You'll only make your wrist swell up."

  She swore, pulling on her hood. The rain beat on the plastic, impatient fingers drumming on her head. "I thought maybe with the water …"

  "Nah. Cold makes metal contract, so they're probably tighter out here."

  Tally looked at Zane, raising an eyebrow. "So," she whispered, "do they get bigger when they get hot?"

  He was silent for a moment. Then, so softly that she could barely hear him above the rain, he whispered, "If they got really hot? I guess they'd get a little bigger."

  "How much?"

  He shrugged, the gesture almost invisible under his winter coat, but he was interested now. "How much heat can you stand?"

  "You're not talking about a candle, are you?"

  Zane shook his head. "Something much hotter than that. Something we could control, so it wouldn't roast our hands off. We'd still get burned, though."

  She looked at the bulge in her sleeve and sighed. "Beats breaking your own thumb, I guess."

  "Doing what?"

  "Just something I was …" Her voice trailed off.

  Zane's gaze followed hers across the river. On the opposite bank, two figures on hoverboards stood watching them, faceless in their hooded raincoats.

  Tally fought to keep her voice down. "Smokies?"

  Zane shook his head. "Those are dorm jackets."

  "What would city uglies be doing out in this rain?"

  He stood up. "Maybe we should ask."

  Cutters

  On the Uglyville side of the river, the four of them sheltered together under a tarp covering a paper recycler, hidden from view and out of the rain. The two uglies weren't wearing rings, Tally was glad to see; the four of them wouldn't be recorded by the city interface as having hung out together.

  "Is that really you, Tally?" the girl whispered.

  "Uh, yeah. Recognize me from the feeds?"

  "No! It's me, Sussy. And this is Dex," she said. "Don't you remember us?"

  "Remind me."

  The girl just stared. She was wearing a crude leather strap around her neck, which looked like the sort of thing a Smokey might own — handmade and discolored by age. Where had she gotten it?

  "We helped you with that 'New Smoke Lives' thing, remember?" the boy offered. "Back when you were…ugly."

  An image came slowly into Tally's mind: huge burning letters lit as a diversion while she and David had broken into Special Circumstances. These were two of the uglies who had organized that trick, and then helped them hide out in the Rusty Ruins, bringing news and supplies from the city, playing more tricks to keep the wardens and Specials busy.

  "You really forgot us," Dex said. "So it's true. They do something to your brains."

  "Yeah, it's true," Zane said. "But a little softer, please." The rain was as loud as a jet engine on the plastic tarp, making it hard to hear. The two uglies needed reminding to keep their voices down.

  Dex's stare dropped to Tally's wrist, covered by a crash bracelet and bound in a scarf, as if he didn't believe the cuff was really under there, listening. "Sorry."

  When his eyes crept back up to stare at her face, Dex couldn't hide his amazement at her transformation. Sussy was silent — awestruck and hanging on every word. Under their gaze, Tally felt self-conscious and weirdly powerful. It was obvious the two would do anything she or Zane asked. Back when her brain had been prettified, she'd felt entitled to this sort of awe. But now, with her head clear, it was kind of embarrassing.

  But talking to the two uglies was less awkward than it might have been. Tally's unpretty thoughts over the last month had made it easier to look at their imperfect faces. They didn't horrify her as much as her first glance at Croy had. The tiny gap between Sussy's two front teeth seemed more charming than revolting, and even Dex's zits didn't make her skin crawl.

  "But the damage wasn't permanent," Zane was saying. "We're starting to get smarter. Which, by the way, is not something you can spread around to everyone, okay?"

  The two nodded dumbly, and Tally wondered if hinting about the cure to random uglies was worth the risk. Of course, enlisting Sussy and Dex might be the quickest way to get a message to the New Smoke.

  "What's the news from the ruins?" she asked.

  Sussy leaned closer, remembering to whisper. "That's why we came down here. As far as we could tell, the New Smokies had all disappeared. Until last night."

  "What happened last night?" Tally asked.

  "Well, since they went missing, we've been going to the ruins every few nights," Dex said. "To check out the old spots, light sparklers. But we haven't seen anything all month."

  Tally and Zane shared a glance. A month ago was about the same time Croy had left the pills for Tally to find. The timing probably wasn't a coincidence.

  "But last night we found some stuff in an old hideout," Sussy said. "Burned-out lightsticks and some old magazines."

  "Old magazines?" Tally asked.

  "Yeah," Sussy said. "From the Rusty era. Those ones that showed how ugly everyone used to be."

  "I don't think the New Smokies would have left those lying around," Tally said. "Those are precious. I knew someone who died to save them. So they must be back."

  "But they're lying low," Dex said. "Playing it safe."

  "Why?" Zane said softly. "And for how long?"

  "How would we know?" Dex said. "That's why we came down here today. We were going to sneak over in the rain and find you, Tally. We thought you guys might have a clue."

  "After you were all over the news the other day, we figured something was up," Sussy added. "Like, that stadium thing was a trick, right?"

  "Glad you noticed," Tally said. "The New Smokies were supposed to notice too. Apparently, they did."

  "We figured you knew something about it," Sussy said. "Especially after we spotted some of your pretty friends out here in Uglyville."

  Tally frowned. "Pretties? Out here?"

  "Yeah, in Cleopatra Park. I recognized a couple of them from the feeds. I think they were Crims. That's your clique, right?"

  "Yeah, but …"

  Sussy frowned. "You didn't know?"

  Tally shook her head. After the last couple of days, she had gotten a few pings from other Crims — mostly complaints about the rain. But no one had said anything about going to Uglyville.

  "What were they up to?" Zane asked.

  Dex and Sussy looked at each other, unhappy expressions on their faces.

  "Um, we're not sure," Sussy said. "They wouldn't talk to us, just chased us off."

  Tally let out a slow breath through her teeth. Pretties were allowed on this side of the river — they could go anywhere they wanted in the city — but they never came to Uglyville. Which meant that Cleopatra Park would be a great place for a pretty to find some privacy, especially in the driving rain. But privacy for what?

  "Didn't you tell everyone to lie low for a while?" Zane asked her.

  "Yeah, I did." Tally wondered which of the Crims was behind this. And what "this" was.

  "Take us there," she said.

  Sussy and Dex led them up toward the park, flying slowly in the steady rain. Figuring that someone was monitoring the cuffs' positions, Tally had asked them to take an indirect route. The journey wound through half-familiar sights of her childhood: ugly dorms and schools, sodden parks, and empty soccer fields.

  Despite the downpour, there were a few uglies out. One bunch was taking turns skidding down a hill, screaming as they ran to throw themselves onto a mudslide. A few played tag in a dorm courtyard, slipping and falling and winding up just as muddy as the first group. They were all having too much fu
n to notice the four hoverboarders gliding silently past.

  Tally wondered if she'd had that much fun as an ugly. All she could recall from those days was dying to turn pretty, to get across the river and leave all this behind. Floating above the earth, her perfect face hidden by a hood, she felt like some risen spirit, enviously watching the living and trying to remember what it was like to be one of them.

  Cleopatra Park, high in the greenbelt on the outer edge of Uglyville, was empty. The walking paths had been transformed into small creeks carrying the rain down toward the swollen river. The wildlife seemed to be in hiding except for a few miserable-looking birds that clung to the branches of the great pines that drooped low under their loads of water.

  Sussy and Dex brought them to a clearing marked with slalom flags, and Tally felt a flush of recognition. "This is one of Shay's favorite spots. She taught me to hoverboard here."

  "Shay?" Zane said. "But she'd tell us if she was up to some kind of trick, wouldn't she?"

  "Um, maybe not," Tally said softly. No pings had come from Shay since the fight. "I've been meaning to tell you, Zane: She's kind of pissed off at me right now."

  "Wow," Sussy said. "I thought pretties all liked each other."

  "Usually, they do." Tally sighed. "Welcome to the new world."

  Zane narrowed his eyes. "I think Tally and I need to talk." He glanced at the two uglies.

  It took them a moment to realize what he meant, but then Sussy said, "Oh, sure. We'll be going. But what if…?"

  "If the New Smokies show up again, send me a ping," Tally said.

  "Doesn't the city read your mail?"

  "Probably. Don't say anything except that you saw us on the feeds and you want to join the Crims when you turn sixteen. Leave the real message hidden under that recycler, and I'll send someone to pick it up. Got that?"

  "Got it," Sussy said with a gap-toothed smile. Tally figured the two would be headed out to the ruins every night now, rain or not, looking for the New Smokies, happy to have a mission.