Uglies

"No, I used to be ugly."

Maddy smiled gently. "These pills won't change the way you look. They'll only affect your brain, undoing what Dr. Cable did to the way your mind works. Then you can decide for yourself how you want to look."

"Decide? After you've messed with my brain?"

"Shay!" Tally said, forgetting her promise to remain silent. "We're not the ones messing with your brain!"

"Tally," David said softly.

"That's right, I'm the one who's crazy." Shay's voice took on the tone of her daily round of complaining.

"Not you guys, who live in a broken-down building on the edge of a dead city, slowly turning into freaks when you could be beautiful. Yeah, I'm crazy all right…for trying to help you!"

Tally sat back and crossed her arms, silenced by Shay's words. Whenever they had this conversation, reality became a little unhinged, as if she and the other New Smokies might really be the insane ones. It felt like Tally's horrible first days in the Smoke, when she hadn't known whose side she was on.

"How are you helping us, Shay?" Maddy asked calmly.

"I'm trying to get you to understand."

"Just like you did when Dr. Cable used to bring you by my cell?"

Shay's eyes narrowed, confusion clouding her face, as if her memories of the underground prison didn't fit in with the rest of her pretty worldview.

"I know Dr. C was horrible to you," she said. "The Specials are psychos-just look at them. But that doesn't mean you have to spend your whole lives ru

"Why not?"

"Because you won't make trouble anymore."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll be happy!" Shay took a couple of deep breaths, and her usual calm returned. She smiled, beautiful again. "Like me."

Maddy picked up the pills on the table in front of her. "You won't take these willingly?"

"No way. You said they're not even safe."

"I said there was a small chance something could go wrong."

Shay laughed. "You must think I'm nuts. And even if those pills work, look what they're supposed to do.

From what I can tell, 'cured' means being a jealous, self-important, whiny little ugly-brain.

It means thinking you've got all the answers." She crossed her arms. "In a lot of ways, you and Dr. Cable are alike. You're both convinced you've personally got to change the world. Well, I don't need that. And I don't need those."

"Okay, then." Maddy picked up the pills and put them in her pocket. "That's all I have to say."

"What do you mean?" Tally asked.

David squeezed her hand. "That's all we can do, Tally."

"What? You said we could cure her."

Maddy shook her head. "Only if she wants to be cured. These are experimental, Tally. We can't give them to someone against her will. Not when we don't know if they'll work."

"But her mind…she's got the lesions!"

"Hello," Shay called. "She is sitting right here."

"Sorry, Shay," Maddy said mildly. "Tally?"

Maddy pulled aside the Mylar barrier, stepping out onto what the New Smokies called the balcony. It was really just part of the top floor of the building, where the roof had entirely collapsed, leaving sweeping views of the ruins.

Tally followed. Behind her, Shay was already talking about what was for di

"So, we give her the pills secretly, right?" Tally whispered.

"No," Maddy said firmly. "We can't. I'm not going to do medical experiments on unwilling subjects."

"Medical experiments?" Tally swallowed.

David took her hand. "You can't know for sure how something like this will work. It's only a one-percent chance, but it could screw up her brain forever."

"It's already screwed up."

"But she's happy, Tally." David shook his head. "And she can make decisions for herself."

Tally pulled her hand away, staring out over the city. A sparkler was already showing on the tall spire, uglies come to gossip and trade. "Why did we even have to ask? They didn't get her permission when they did this to her!"

"That's the difference between us and them," Maddy said. "After Az and I found out what the operation really meant, we realized we'd been party to something horrible. People had had their minds changed without their knowledge. As doctors, we took an ancient oath never to do anything like that."

Tally looked into Maddy's face. "But if you weren't going to help Shay, why did you bother finding a cure?"

"If we knew the treatment would work safely, then we could give it to Shay and see how she felt about it later. But to test it, we need a willing subject."

"Where are we ever going to find one? Anyone who's pretty is going to say no."

"Maybe for right now, Tally. But if we keep making inroads into the city, we might find a pretty who wants out."

"But we know Shay's crazy."

"She's not crazy," Maddy said. "Her arguments make sense, in fact. She's happy as she is, and doesn't want to take a deadly risk."

"But she's not really herself. We have to change her back."

"Az died because someone thought like that," Maddy said grimly.

"What?"

David put his arm around her. "My father…" He cleared his throat, and Tally waited in silence. Finally he would tell her how Az had died.

He took a slow breath before continuing. "Dr. Cable wanted to turn them all, but she was worried that Mom and Dad might talk about the brain lesions, even after the operation, because they'd been focused on them for so long." David's voice trembled, but it was soft and careful, as if he didn't dare put any emotion into the words. "Dr. Cable was already working on ways to change memories, a way of erasing the Smoke forever from people's minds. When they took my father for the operation, he never came back."

"That's awful," Tally whispered. She gathered him into a hug.

"Az was the victim of a medical experiment, Tally," Maddy said. "I can't do the same thing to Shay.

Otherwise, she'd be right about me and Dr. Cable."

"But Shay ran away. She didn't want to become pretty."

"She doesn't want to be experimented on, either."

Tally closed her eyes. Through the Mylar shade, she could hear Shay telling Ryde about the hairbrush she'd made. For days she'd proudly shown the little brush, made of splinters of wood shoved into a lump of clay, to anyone who would listen. As if it were the most important thing she'd ever done.

They had risked everything to rescue her. But they had nothing to show for it. Shay would never be the same.

And it was all Tally's fault. She'd come to the Smoke, and had brought the Specials, leaving Shay an empty-headed pretty, and Az dead.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, you've got a willing subject."

"What do you mean, Tally?"

"Me."

Confessions

"What?" David said.

"Your taking the pills won't prove anything, Tally," Maddy said. "You don't have the lesions."

"But I will have them. I'll go back to the city and get caught, and Dr. Cable will give me the operation. In a few weeks, you come and get me. Give me the cure. You've got your subject."