Uglies

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Contents Part I New Pretty Town Best Friends Forever Shay Wipe Out Facing the Future Pretty Boring Rapids The Rusty Ruins Waiting for David Fight Last Trick Operation Special Circumstances Ugly for Life Peris Infiltrator Part II Leaving Spagbol The Worst Mistake The Side You Despise Firestorm Bug EyesLies The Model Work David Heartthrob Suspicion Bravery The Secret Pretty Minds Burning Bridges Part III Invasion The Rabbit Pen In Case of Damage Run Amazing Ruin Maddy and Az The Oil Plague Familiar Sights

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Accomplices Over the Edge Inside Rescue Getaway Night Alone Hippocratic Oath ConfessionsDown the River Author Bio

Part I
Turning Pretty Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people? —Yang Yuan, quoted in The New York Times

New Pretty Town
The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavored cat food for a while, to get the pinks right. The scudding clouds did look a bit fishy, rippled into scalesby a high-altitude wind. As the light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold. Any other summer, a sunset like this would have been beautiful. But nothing had been beautiful since Peris turned pretty. Losing your best friend sucks, even if it’s only for three months and two days. Tally Youngblood was waiting for darkness. She could see New PrettyTown through her open window. The party towers were already lit up, and snakes of burning torches marked flickering pathways through the pleasure gardens. A few hot-air balloons pulled at their tethers against the darkening pink sky, their passengers shooting safety fireworks at other balloons and passing parasailers. Laughter and music skipped across the water like rocks thrown with just theright spin, their edges just as sharp against Tally’s nerves. Around the outskirts of the city, cut off from town by the 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 thatproduced about as much warmth as a sleeping, Tally-size human being—

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under the covers. Then she crawled out the window. Outside, with the night finally turning coal black above her head, Tally instantly felt better. Maybe this was a stupid plan, but anything was better than another night awake in bedfeeling sorry for herself. On the familiar leafy path down to the water’s edge, it was easy to imagine Peris stealing silently behind her, stifling laughter, ready for a night of spying on the new pretties. Together. She and Peris had figured out how to trick the house minder back when they were twelve, when the three-month difference in their ages seemed like it would never matter. “Best friendsfor life,” Tally muttered, fingering the tiny scar on her right palm. The water glistened through the trees, and she could hear the wavelets of a passing river skimmer’s wake slapping at the shore. She ducked, hiding in the reeds. Summer was always the best time for spying expeditions. The grass was high, it was never cold, and you didn’t have to stay awake through 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, its huge iron frame as black as the sky. It had been built so long ago that it held up its own weight, without any support from hoverstruts. A million years from now, when the rest of the city had crumbled, the bridge would probably remain like a fossilized...