“Yeah,” Tally said softly. “Everyone’s been really nice.” She wished she had activated the pendant the moment she’d gotten there. In only one day she’d begun to realize that it wasn’t just Shay’s dream she’d be betraying. Hundreds of people had made a life in the Smoke.
“And I’m sure your someone will be cool too,” Shay said. “I can’t wait till we’re all together.”
“I don’t know if…that’s going to happen.” There had to be some other way out of this situation. Maybe if she went to another city…or found the rangers again and told them that she wanted to volunteer, they’d make her pretty. But she hardly knew anything about their city, except that she didn’t know anyone there….
Shay shrugged. “Maybe not. But I wasn’t sure you’d come either.” She squeezed Tally’s hand. “I’m really glad you did, though.”
Tally tried to smile. “Even though I got you into trouble?”
“It’s not such a big deal. I think everyone’s way too paranoid around here. They spend all this time disguising the place so satellites can’t see it, and they mask the handphone transmissions so they won’t be intercepted. And all the secrecy about runaways is way overdone. And dangerous. Just think—if you hadn’t been smart enough to figure out my directions, you could be halfway to Alaska by now!”
“I don’t know, Shay. Maybe they know what they’re doing. The city authorities can be pretty tough.”
Shay laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe in Special Circumstances.”
“I…” Tally closed her eyes. “I just think that the Smokies have to be careful.”
“Okay, sure. I’m not saying we should advertise. But if people like you and me want to come out here and live differently, why shouldn’t we? I mean, no one has the right to tell us we have to be pretty, right?”
“Maybe they’re just worried because we’re kids. You know?”
“That’s the problem with the cities, Tally. Everyone’s a kid, pampered and dependent and pretty. Just like they say in school: Big-eyed means vulnerable. Well, like you once told me, you have to grow up sometime.”
Tally nodded. “I know what you mean, how the uglies here are more grown up. You can see it in their faces.”
Shay pulled Tally to a stop and looked at her closely for a second. “You feel guilty, don’t you?”
Tally looked back into Shay’s eyes, speechless for a moment. She suddenly felt naked in the cold night air, as if Shay could see straight through her lies.
“What?” she managed.
“Guilty. Not just that you told your someone about the Smoke, but that they might actually come. Now that you’ve seen the Smoke, you’re not sure if that was such a good idea.” Shay sighed. “I know it seems weird at first, and it’s a lot of hard work. But I think you’ll eventually like it.”
Tally looked down, feeling tears welling into her eyes. “It’s not that. Well, maybe it is. I just don’t know if I can…” Her throat felt too full to speak. If she said another word, she’d have to tell Shay the truth: that she was a spy, a traitor sent there to destroy everything around them.
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.