Read Online Uglies by Scott Westerfeld - Free Book Online Page A

that uglies made up to scare one another.
    But Shay didn’t seem scared. She seemed genuinely disappointed that no one had answered her signal, as if meeting David would have been even better than showing off the rapids, the ruins, and the roller coaster.
    Whether he was real or not, Tally thought, David was very real to Shay.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    They left through the gap in the wall and flew to the outskirts of the ruins, then followed the vein of iron up out of the valley. At the ridge, the boards started to stutter, and they stepped off. Tiredas Tally was, carrying the board didn’t seem so impossible this time. She had stopped thinking of it as a toy, like a littlie’s balloon. The hoverboard had become something more solid, something that obeyed its own rules, and that could be dangerous, too.
    Tally figured that Shay was right about one thing: Being in the city all the time made everything fake, in a way. Like the buildings and bridges held up by hoverstruts, or jumping off a rooftop with a bungee jacket on, nothing was quite real there. She was glad Shay had taken her out to the ruins. If nothing else, the mess left by the Rusties proved that things could go terribly wrong if you weren’t careful.
    Close to the river the boards lightened up, and the two of them jumped on gratefully.
    Shay groaned as they got their footing. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not taking another step tonight.”
    â€œThat’s for sure.”
    Shay leaned forward and eased her board out onto the river, wrapping her dorm jacket around her shoulders against the spray of the rapids. Tally turned to take one last look back. With the clouds gone, she could just see the ruins from here.
    She blinked. There seemed to be the barest flicker coming from over where the roller coaster had been. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, a reflection of moonlight from some exposed piece of unrusted metal. “Shay?” she said softly.
    â€œYou coming or what?” Shay shouted over the roar of the river.
    Tally blinked again, but couldn’t make out the flicker anymore. In any case, they were too far away. Mentioning it to Shay wouldonly make her anxious to go back. There was no way Tally was making the hike again.
    And it probably was nothing.
    Tally took a deep breath and shouted, “Come on, Skinny. Race you!” She urged her board onto the river, cutting into the cold spray and for a moment leaving a laughing Shay behind.

FIGHT
    â€œLook at them all. What dorks.”
    â€œDid we ever look like that?”
    â€œProbably. But just because we were dorks doesn’t mean they’re not.”
    Tally nodded, trying to remember what being twelve was like, what the dorm had looked like on her first day there. She remembered how intimidating the building had seemed. Much bigger than Sol and Ellie’s house, of course, and bigger than the huts that littlies went to school in, one teacher and ten students to each one.
    Now the dorm seemed so small and claustrophobic. Painfully childish, with its bright colors and padded stairs. So boring during the day and easy to escape at night.
    The new uglies all stuck together in a tight group, afraid to stray too far from their guide. Their ugly little faces peered up at the dorm’s four-story height, their eyes full of wonder and terror.
    Shay pulled her head back in through the window. “This is going to be so fun.”
    â€œIt’ll be one orientation they won’t forget.”
    Summer was over in two weeks. The population of Tally’s dorm had been steadily dropping for the last year as seniors turned sixteen. It was almost time for a new batch to take their place. Tally watched the last few uglies make their way inside, gawky and nervous, unkempt and uncoordinated. Twelve was definitely the turning point, when you changed from a cute littlie into an oversize, undereducated ugly.
    It was a stage of life she was glad