Burning Bridges

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Burning Bridges

They stayed up late into the night, talking with Az and Maddy about their discoveries, their escape into the wild, and the founding of the Smoke. Finally, Tally had to ask the question that had been on her mind since she'd first seen them.

" So how did you two change yourselves back? I mean, you were pretty, and now you're…"

" Ugly? " Az smiled. " That part was simple. We're experts in the physical part of the operation. When surgeons sculpt a pretty face, we use a special kind of smart plastic to shape the bones. When we change new pretties to middle or late, we add a trigger chemical to that plastic, and it becomes softer, like clay."

" Eww, " Tally said, imagining her face suddenly softening so she could squish it around to a different shape.

" With daily doses of this trigger chemical, the plastic will gradually melt away and be absorbed into the body. Your face goes back to where it started. More or less."

" We can only approximate the places where bone was shaved away. And we can't make big changes, like someone's height, without surgery. Maddy and I have all the non-cosmetic benefits of the operation: impervious teeth, perfect vision, disease resistance. But we look pretty close to the way we would have without the operation. As far as the fat that was sucked out" -he patted his stomach-" that proves very easy to replace."

" But why? Why would you want to be ugly? You were doctors, so there was nothing wrong with your brains, right? "

" Our minds are fine, " Maddy answered. " But we wanted to start a community of people who didn't have the lesions, people who were free of pretty thinking. It was the only way to see what difference the lesions really made. That meant we had to gather a group of uglies. Young people, recruited from the cities."

" We refined the trigger chemical, created a once-a-day pill. Over a few months, our old faces came back." Maddy looked at her husband with a twinkle in her eye. " It was a fascinating process, actually."

" It must have been, " Tally said. " What about the lesions? Can you create a pill that cures them? "

They were both silent for a moment, then Maddy shook her head. " We didn't find any answers before Special Circumstances showed up. Az and I are not brain specialists.

We've worked on the question for twenty years without success. But here in the Smoke we've seen the difference that staying ugly makes."

" I've seen that myself, " Tally said, thinking of the differences between Peris and David.

" There has to be, " Maddy said. " Our data showed that everyone has the lesions after their first operation. So when someone winds up in a challenging line of work, the authorities somehow cure them.

The lesions are removed secretly, maybe even fixed with a pill like the bone plastic, and the brain returns to normal. There must be a simple cure."

" We don't have the right equipment, " Maddy said, sighing. " We don't even have a pretty human subject to study."

" But hang on, " Tally said. " You used to live in a city full of pretties. When you became doctors, your lesions went away. Didn't you notice that you were changing? "

Maddy shrugged. " Of course we did. We were learning how the human body worked, and how to face the huge responsibility of saving lives. But it didn't feel as if our brains were changing. It felt like growing up."

" Oh. But when you looked around at everyone else, how come you didn't notice they were…brain damaged? "

Az smiled. " We didn't have much to compare our fellow citizens with, only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people. More engaged. But that was hardly a surprise. History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep.

Before the operation, there were wars and mass hatred and clear-cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn't a far cry from the way humanity was in the Rusty era. These days we're just a bit…easier to manage."

" Having the lesions is normal now, " Maddy said. " We're all used to the effects."

Tally took a deep breath, remembering Sol and Ellie's visit. Her parents had been so sure of themselves, and yet in a way so clueless. But they'd always seemed that way: wise and confident, and at the same time disconnected from whatever ugly, real-life problems Tally was having. Was that pretty brain damage? Tally had always thought that was just how parents were supposed to be.

For that matter, shallow and self-centered was how brand-new pretties were supposed to be. As an ugly Peris had made fun of them-but he hadn't waited a moment to join in the fun. No one ever did. So how could you tell how much was the operation and how much was just people going along with the way things had always been?

Only by making a whole new world, which is just what Maddy and Az had begun to do.

Tally wondered which had come first: the operation or the lesions? Was becoming pretty just the bait to get everyone under the knife? Or were the lesions merely a finishing touch on being pretty? Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same was everyone thinking the same.

She leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were blurry, and her stomach clenched whenever she thought about Peris, her parents, and every other pretty she'd ever met. How different were they? she wondered.

How did it feel to be pretty? What was it really like behind those big eyes and exquisite features?

She laughed softly. It seemed like weeks since she and David had arrived there. A few hours of conversation had changed her world. " Maybe a little."

Maddy and Az stood, and David helped Tally up from the chair. She said good-bye to them in a daze, flinching inside when she recognized the expression in their old and ugly faces: They felt sorry for her. Sad that she'd had to learn the truth, sad that they'd been the ones to tell her. After twenty years, maybe they'd gotten used to the idea, but they still understood that it was a horrible fact to learn.

Ninety-nine percent of humanity had had something done to their brains, and only a few people in the world knew exactly what.

Tally and David were in the darkness, climbing the ridge back toward the Smoke, the sky full of stars now that the moon had set.

Tally shivered, realizing how close she had come so many times. In the library, she'd actually opened the pendant, almost holding it to her eye. And if she had, the Specials would have arrived within hours.

David stopped and took hold of Tally's shoulder, anguish on his face. " Neither do we.

And what if we told everyone what we suspect? Most of them wouldn't believe us, but others would go charging back to the city to rescue their friends. And eventually, the cities would find out what we were saying, and would do everything in their power to hunt us down."

They already are, Tally said to herself. She wondered how many other spies the Specials had blackmailed into looking for the Smoke, how many times they'd come close to finding it. She wanted to tell David what they were up to, but how? She couldn't explain that she had come here as a spy, or David would never trust her again.

She sighed. That would be the perfect way to stop herself from coming between him and Shay.

Tally tried to smile. David had shared his biggest secret with her; she should tell him hers.

But she wasn't brave enough to say the words. " It's been a long night. That's all."

Tally wondered how long it was until dawn. In a few hours she'd be eating breakfast alongside Shay and Croy, and everyone else she had almost betrayed, almost condemned to the operation. She flinched at the thought.

" Hey, " David said, lifting her chin with his palm. " You did great tonight. I think my parents were impressed."

" Of course, Tally. You understood immediately what this all means. Most people can't believe it at first.

" Exactly. I've seen a lot of city kids come through here. You're different from the rest of them. You can see the world clearly, even if you did grow up spoiled. That's why I had to tell you. That's why…"

Tally looked into his eyes and saw that his face was glowing again-touching her in that pretty way she'd felt before.

The words made her dizzy for a moment, like the falling feeling of looking into a new pretty's eyes.

She laughed, shaking her head clear. " What, with my thin lips and my eyes too close together? "

" Don't say that." His fingers brushed her cheeks where the scratches were almost healed, and ran fleetingly across her lips. She knew how callused his fingertips were, as hard and rough as wood. But somehow their caress felt soft and tentative.

" That's the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife: You're all brainwashed into believing you're ugly."

" I mean, no one can really be…you see, biologically, there're certain things we all-" The words choked off. " You really think I'm beautiful? "

They both stood silent, their mouths gaping. The question had popped out of Tally before she could think. How had she uttered something so horrible?

" I think you're more beautiful than Shay." He said it so matter-of-factly, as if talking about the weather.

Tally's eyes closed, every bit of exhaustion from the long day crashing into her at once.

She saw Shay's face-too thin, eyes too far apart-and an awful feeling welled up inside her. The warmth she'd felt from David was crushed by it.

Every day of her life she'd insulted other uglies and had been insulted in return. Fattie, Pig-Eyes, Boney, Zits, Freak-all the names uglies called one another, eagerly and without reserve. But equally, without exception, so that no one felt shut out by some irrelevant mischance of birth. And no one was considered to be even remotely beautiful, privileged because of a random twist in their genes. That was why they'd made everyone pretty in the first place.

" Listen, Tally. That's not what's important to me. What's inside you matters a lot more."

" But first you see my face. You react to symmetry, skin tone, the shape of my eyes. And you decide what's inside me, based on all your reactions. You're programmed to! "

He shrugged in defeat, the anger draining from his voice. " Maybe some of it is." He chuckled tiredly.

She shook away the electric feeling his fingers left behind. " That's nuts. Imperfect skin is a sign of a poor immune system."

David laughed. " It was a sign that you'd been in an adventure, Tally, that you'd bashed your way across the wild to get here. To me, it was a sign that you had a good story to tell."

Her outrage faded. " A good story? " Tally shook her head, a laugh building inside her.

" Actually, my face got scratched up back in the city, hoverboarding through some trees.

" It does tell a story, though. As I thought the first time I saw you-you take risks." His fingers wound into a lock of her singed hair. " You're still taking risks."

" I guess so." Standing here in the darkness with David felt like a risk, like everything was about to change again. He still had the look in his eye, the pretty look.

Maybe he really could see past her ugly face. Maybe what was inside her did matter to him more than anything else.

Tally stepped onto a fist-size stone on the path and found an uneasy balance on it. They were eye to eye now.

A strange thought crossed her mind, and Tally said, " I'd hate it if you got the operation."

She couldn't believe she was saying it. " Even if they didn't do your brain, I mean."

" I did too." She touched his eyebrow where the line of white cut through it. " So how'd you get that scar? "

" Good." She leaned forward, her weight pressing into him, and as her feet gradually slipped down the stone, their lips met. His arms wrapped around her and pulled her closer.

His body was warm in the predawn cold, and formed something solid and certain in Tally's shaken reality. She held on tightly, amazed at how intense the kiss became.

A moment later, she pulled away to take a breath, thinking for just a second how odd this was. Uglies did kiss each other, and a lot more, but it always felt as if nothing counted until you were a pretty.

She pulled David toward her again, her fingers digging into the leather of his jacket. The cold, her aching muscles, the awful thing she had just learned, all of it just made this feeling stronger.

Then one of his hands touched the back of her neck, traced the slender chain there, down to the cold, hard metal of the pendant.

She enclosed the metal heart in her fist, her other arm still wrapped around him. There was no way she could tell David about Dr. Cable now. He would pull away, maybe forever.

" Are you okay? " he asked, panting. " I didn't mean to-" " I'm great." She smiled broadly at him, then peered down on the Smoke. A single campfire burned near the center of town, where the night-watch gathered to warm up every hour or so. " Come on."

Suddenly, it seemed important to get there fast, before her certainty faded, before the warm feeling inside her could give way to doubt. She scrambled down between the painted stones of the hoverboard path, David struggling to keep up. When her feet reached level ground, she ran, heedless of the dark and silent huts on either side, seeing only the firelight ahead. Her speed was effortless, like hoverboarding on an open straightaway.

Tally ran until she reached the fire, skidding to a halt against its cushion of heat and smoke. She reached up to unclasp the pendant's chain.

" Tally? " David ran up panting, confusion on his face. He tried breathlessly to say more.

The pendant swung by its chain in her fist, sparkling red in the firelight. Tally focused all her doubts on it, all her fear of discovery, her terror at Dr. Cable's threats. She clutched the pendant, squeezing the unyielding metal until her muscles ached, as if forcing into her own mind the almost unthinkable fact that she might really remain an ugly for life. But somehow not ugly at all.

It landed on a crackling log, the metal heart burning black for a moment, then gradually turning yellow and white in the heat. Finally, a small pop came from it, as if something trapped inside had exploded, and it slid from the log and disappeared among the flames.

She turned to David, her vision spotted with sinuous shapes from staring into the fire. He coughed at the smoke. " Wow. That was dramatic."

He moved closer. " You really meant that. Whoever gave it to you-" " Doesn't matter anymore."

David smiled and gathered Tally into a hug, pulling her away from the edge of the fire.

" Well, Tally Youngblood, you certainly know how to make a point. You know, I would have believed you if you just told me-" " No, I had to do it like this. I had to burn it. To know for sure."

Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion struck Tally, as if her last bit of energy had gone into the fire with the pendant. She was tired from the wild run here, from the long night with Maddy and Az, from a hard day's work. And tomorrow she would have to face Shay again, and explain what had happened between her and David. Of course, the moment Shay saw that the pendant was gone from around Tally's neck, she would know.

But at least she'd never know the real truth. The pendant was charred beyond recognition, its true purpose hidden forever. Tally slumped into David's arms, closing her eyes. The image of the glowing heart was burned into her vision.

She was free. Dr. Cable would never come here now, and no one could ever take her away from David or the Smoke, or do to Tally's brain whatever the operation did to pretties'. She was no longer an infiltrator. She finally belonged here.

David silently walked her to the bunkhouse. At the door, he leaned forward to kiss her, but she pulled away and shook her head. Shay was just inside. Tally would have to talk to her tomorrow. It wouldn't be easy, but Tally knew she could face anything now.

David nodded, kissed his finger, and traced one of the remaining scratches on her cheek.

Tally kissed his hand and slipped inside, where she kicked off her shoes and crawled into bed with her clothes on, falling asleep in seconds, as if the weight of the world had lifted from her shoulders.

The next morning she awoke to chaos, the sounds of running, shouting, and the scream of machines invading her dreams. Out the bunkhouse window, the sky was full of hovercars.