“And maybe a bit lighter?” Tally took the shade of the skin closer to baseline.
“Hey, Squint,” Shay said. “Whose face is this, anyway?”
“Just playing,” Tally said. “You want to take a shot?”
“No, I want to go hoverboarding.”
“Sure, great. But first let’s get this right.”
“What do you mean ‘get it right,’ Tally? Maybe I think my face is already right!”
“Yeah, it’s great.” Tally rolled her eyes. “For an ugly.”
Shay scowled. “What, can’t you stand me? Do you need to get some picture into your head so you can imagine it instead of my face?”
“Shay! Come on. It’s just for fun.”
“Making ourselves feel ugly is not fun.”
“We are ugly!”
“This whole game is just designed to make us hate ourselves.”
Tally groaned and flopped back onto her bed, glaring up at the ceiling. Shay could be so weird sometimes. She always had a chip on her shoulder about the operation, like someone was making her turn sixteen. “Right, and things were so great back when everyone was ugly. Or did you miss that day in school?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Shay recited. “Everyone judged everyone else based on their appearance. People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for some politicians just because they weren’t quite as ugly as everybody else. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Yeah, and people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color.” Tally shook her head. No matter how many times they repeated it at school, she’d never really quite believed that one. “So what if people look more alike now? It’s the only way to make people equal.”
“How about making them smarter?”
Tally laughed. “Fat chance. Anyway, it’s just to see what you and I will look like in only…two months and fifteen days.”
“Can’t we just wait until then?”
Tally closed her eyes, sighing. “Sometimes I don’t think I can.”
“Well, tough luck.” She felt Shay’s weight on the bed and a light punch on her arm. “Hey, might as well make the best of it. Can we go hoverboarding now? Please?”
Tally opened her eyes and saw that her friend was smiling. “Okay: hoverboard.” She sat up and glanced at the screen. Even without much work, Shay’s face was already welcoming, vulnerable, healthy…pretty. “Don’t you think you’re beautiful?”
Shay didn’t look, just shrugged. “That’s not me. It’s some committee’s idea of me.”
Tally smiled and hugged her.
“It will be you, though. Really you. Soon.”
Pretty Boring
“I think you’re ready.”
Tally cruised to a stop—right foot down, left foot up, bend the knees.
“Ready for what?”
Shay drifted slowly past, letting the breeze tug her along. They were as high up and far out as hoverboards would go, just above treetop level, at the edge of town. It was amazing how quickly Tally had gotten used to being up high, with nothing but a board and bracelets between her and a long fall.
The view from up here was fantastic. Behind them the spires of New Pretty Town rose from the center of town, and around them was the greenbelt, a swath of forest that separated the middle and the late pretties from the youngsters. Older generations of pretties lived out in the suburbs, hidden by the hills, in rows of big houses separated by strips of private garden for their littlies to play in.
Shay smiled. “Ready for a night ride.”
“Oh. Look, I don’t know if I want to cross the river again,” Tally said, remembering her promise to Peris. She and Shay had shown each other a lot of tricks over the last three weeks, but they hadn’t been back into New Pretty Town since the night they’d met. “Until we get turned, of course. After last time, the wardens are probably all—”
“I wasn’t talking about New Pretty Town,” Shay interrupted. “That place is boring, anyway. We’d have to sneak around all night.”
“Okay. You mean just board around Uglyville.”
Shay shook her head, still coasting gradually away on the breeze.
Tally shifted her weight on the board uncomfortably. “Where else is there?”
Shay put her hands in her pockets and spread her arms, turning her dorm’s team jacket into a sail. The breeze pulled her farther away from Tally. By reflex, Tally tipped her toes forward so that her board would keep up.
“Well, there’s out there.” Shay nodded at the open land before them.
“The suburbs? That’s dullsville.”
“Not the burbs. Past them.” Shay slid her feet in opposite directions, to the very edges of the board. Her skirt caught the cool evening wind, which tugged her away even faster. She was drifting toward the outer edge of the greenbelt. Off-limits.
Tally planted her feet and dipped the board, and pulled up next to her friend. “What do you mean? Outside the city completely?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s crazy. There’s nothing out there.”
“There’s plenty out there. Real trees, hundreds of years old. Mountains. And the ruins. Ever been there?”
Tally blinked. “Of course.”
“I don’t mean on a school trip, Tally. You ever been there at night?”
Tally brought her board to a sharp halt. The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there’d been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly. “No way. Don’t tell me you have.”
Shay nodded.
Tally’s mouth dropped open. “That’s impossible.”
“You think you’re the only one who knows good tricks?”
“Well, maybe I believe you,” Tally said. Shay had that look on her face, the one Tally had learned to watch out for. “But what if we get busted?”
Shay laughed. “Tally, there’s nothing out there, like you just said. Nothing and no one to bust us.”
“Do hoverboards even work out there? Does anything?”
“Special ones do, if you know how to trick them, and where to ride. And getting past the burbs is easy. You take the river the whole way. Farther upstream it’s white water, too rough for skimmers.”