Uglies

And that Shay was the fool who had led her there.

"Hey, it's okay." Shay gathered Tally in her arms, rocking her gently as Tally began to cry. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to unload everything on you at once. But I've felt kind of distant from you since you got here. It feels like you're not sure you want to look at me."

"I should tell you everything."

"Shhh." Tally felt Shay's fingers stroking her hair. "I'm just glad you're here."

Tally let herself cry, burying her face in the scratchy wool sleeve of her new sweater, feeling Shay's warmth against her, and feeling awful about every gesture of kindness from her friend.

With half her mind, Tally was actually glad she'd come and seen all this. She could have lived her whole life in the city and never seen this much of the world. With the other half, Tally still wished she had activated the pendant the moment she'd arrived in the Smoke. It would have been so much easier that way.

But there was no way back in time now. She had to decide whether to betray the Smoke or not, completely understanding what it would do to Shay, to David, to everyone here.

"It's okay, Tally," Shay murmured. "You'll be okay."

Suspicion

As the days passed, Tally fell into the routines of the Smoke.

There was something comforting about the exhaustion of hard work. All her life, Tally had been troubled by insomnia, lying awake most nights thinking about arguments she'd had, or wanted to have, or things she should have done differently. But here in the Smoke her mind shut off the moment her head hit the pillow, which wasn't even a pillow, just her new sweater stuffed into a cotton bag.

Tally still didn't know how long she was going to stay there. She hadn't come to a decision about whether to activate the pendant, but she knew that thinking about it all the time would drive her crazy. So she decided to put it out of her mind. One day she might wake up and realize that she couldn't stand to live her entire life as an ugly, no matter who it hurt or what it cost…but for the moment, Dr. Cable could wait.

Forgetting her troubles was easy in the Smoke. Life was much more intense than in the city. She bathed in a river so cold that she had to jump in screaming, and she ate food pulled from the fire hot enough to burn her tongue, which city food never did. Of course, she missed shampoo that didn't sting her eyes, and flush toilets (she'd learned to her horror what "latrines" were), and mostly medspray. But however blistered her hands became, Tally felt stronger than ever before. She could work all day at the railroad site, then race David and Shay home on hoverboards, her backpack full of more scrap metal than she could have lifted a month before. She learned from David how to repair her clothes with a needle and thread, how to tell raptors from their prey, and even how to clean fish, which turned out to be not nearly as bad as cutting them up in bio class.

The physical beauty of the Smoke also cleared her mind of worries. Every day seemed to change the mountain, the sky, and the surrounding valleys, making them spectacular in a completely new way.

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

One morning on the way to the railroad track, David pulled his board up alongside Tally's.

He rode silently for a while, taking the familiar turns with his usual grace. Over the last two weeks, she'd learned that his jacket was actually made of leather, real dead animals, but she'd gradually gotten used to the idea. The Smokies hunted, but they were like the rangers, killing only species that didn't belong in this part of the world or that had gotten out of control thanks to the Rusties' meddling. With its random patches, the jacket would probably look silly on anyone else. But it suited David, somehow, as if growing up here in the wild allowed him to fuse with the animals that had donated their skins to his clothes.

And it probably didn't hurt that he had actually made the jacket himself.

He spoke up suddenly. "I've got a present for you."

"A present? Really?"

By now, Tally understood that nothing in the Smoke ever lost its value. Nothing was discarded or given away just because it was old or broken. Everything was repaired, refitted, and recycled, and if one Smokey couldn't put it to use, it was traded to another.

Few things were given away lightly.

"Yeah, really." David angled closer and handed her a small bundle.

She unwrapped it, following the familiar route down the stream almost without looking. It was a pair of gloves, handmade in light brown leather.

She shoved the bright, city-made wrapping paper into her pocket, then pulled the gloves onto her blistered hands. "Thanks! They fit perfectly."

He nodded. "I made them when I was about your age. They're a little small for me these days."

Tally smiled, wishing she could hug him. When they spread their arms to take a hard turn, she held his hand for a second.

Flexing her fingers, Tally found that the gloves were soft and pliant, the palms worn pale from years of use. White lines across the finger joints revealed how they had fitted David's hands. "They're wonderful."

"Come on," David said. "It's not like they're magic or anything."

"No, but they've got…something." History, Tally realized. In the city, she'd owned lots of things-practically anything she wanted came out of the wall. But city things were disposable and replaceable, as interchangeable as the T-shirt, jacket, and skirt combinations of dorm uniforms. Here, in the Smoke, objects grew old, carrying their histories with them in dings and scratches and tatters.

David chuckled at her and sped up, joining Shay at the front of the pack.

When they got to the railroad site, David a

"What about the trees?" Croy asked.

"What about them?"

"Do we have to chop them down?" Tally asked.

David shrugged. "Scrub trees like this aren't good for much. But we won't waste them.

We'll take them back to the Smoke for burning."

"Burning?" Tally said. The Smokies usually only cut down trees from the valley, not the rest of the mountain. These trees had been growing there for decades, and David wanted to use them just to cook a meal? She looked at Shay for support, but her friend's expression was carefully neutral. She probably agreed, but didn't want to argue with David in front of everyone about how to run his project.

"Yes, burning," he said. "And after we've salvaged the track, we'll replant. Put a row of useful trees where the railroad used to be."

The five others looked at him silently. He spun a saw in his hand, anxious to get started, but aware he didn't have their full support yet.

"You know, David," Croy said. "These trees aren't useless. They protect the underbrush from sunlight, which keeps the soil from eroding."

"Okay, you win. Instead of planting some other kind of tree, we'll let the forest take back the land. All the crappy scrub and underbrush you want."

"But do we have to clear-cut them?" Astrix asked.

David took a slow breath. "Clear-cutting" was the word for what the Rusties had done to the old forests: felling every tree, killing every living thing, turning entire countries into grazing land. Whole rain forests had been consumed, reduced from millions of interlocking species to a bunch of cows eating grass, a vast web of life traded for cheap hamburgers.