Pretties, Page 25

  They had come this far together, after all. Even before the pills, they had changed each other.

  Of course, David had changed Tally too. Back in the Smoke, he’d been the one who’d convinced her to stay in the wild, even to stay ugly, giving up her future in the city. Her reality had been transformed by those two weeks in the Smoke, starting . . . when? That first time David and she had kissed.

  “How lucky is that?” Tally muttered to herself. “Sleeping Beauty with two princes.”

  What was she supposed to do? Choose between David and Zane? Especially now that all three of them were living together here at Fort Smokey? Somehow it didn’t seem fair that she found herself in this position. Tally had barely remembered David when she’d met Zane—but she hadn’t wanted to have her memories erased, after all.

  “Thanks again, Dr. Cable,” she said.

  • • •

  The water looked really cold.

  Tally had easily kicked through the layer of ice on top, and was now staring down with dread into the gurgling spring. Maybe smelling bad wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Spring would come in only three or four months, after all. . . .

  She shivered, turning the heat up in her borrowed jacket, then sighed and started to take off her clothes. This little bath would be very bubbly-making, at least.

  Tally smeared a soap packet onto herself before jumping in, rubbing some into her hair, guessing she would last about ten seconds in the half-frozen spring. She knew she’d have to jump—no dangling of the foot or lowering herself in slowly. Only the laws of gravity would keep her going once her naked flesh hit cold water.

  Tally took a breath, held it . . . and leaped into the spring.

  The icy water crushed her like a vice, forcing the breath from her lungs, locking every muscle tight. She hugged herself with her arms, rolling into a ball in the shallow pool, but the cold seemed to cut through her flesh and straight into her bones.

  Tally fought to take a breath, but managed only shallow little gasps of air, her entire body shaking as if it would break apart. With a titanic act of will she dunked her head in, erasing all sound, the rasp of her breath and gurgle of the spring replaced by the rumble of roiling water. She rubbed furiously at her hair with trembling hands.

  When her head burst into the air again, Tally drew in great breaths and found herself laughing—everything had turned strangely clear, the world more bubbly than a cup of coffee or a glass of champagne could make it, the sensation more intense than falling toward the earth on her hoverboard. She lay there for a moment in the water, amazed at it all—the clarity of the sky and the perfection of a leafless tree nearby.

  Tally remembered her first bath in a cold stream on the way to the Smoke, all those months ago. How it had shifted the way she saw the world—even before the operation had put the lesions on her brain, before she’d met David, much less Zane. Even then, her mind had started to change, realizing that nature didn’t need an operation to make it beautiful, it just was.

  Maybe she didn’t need a handsome prince to stay awake—or an ugly one, for that matter. After all, Tally had cured herself without the pill and had made it all the way here on her own. No one else she’d ever heard of had escaped the city twice.

  Maybe she’d always been bubbly, somewhere inside. It only took loving someone—or being in the wild, or maybe just a plunge into freezing water—to bring it out.

  • • •

  Tally was still in the pond when she heard the cry: a hoarse shout that came from the air.

  She climbed out hurriedly, and the wind cutting through her felt colder than the water. The towels Tally had brought were brittle in the chill air, and she was still drying herself when a hoverboard streaked into view, banking to a halt a few meters away.

  David hardly seemed to register that she was naked. He jumped from the board and ran toward her, clutching something in his hand. Skidding to a halt by her pack, he waved the device across it—scanning it for bugs, she realized.

  “It’s not you,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t.”

  Tally was pulling on her clothes. “But you already—”

  “A signal just started up out of nowhere, broadcasting our location. We picked it up on the radio, but haven’t localized it yet.” He looked down at her pack, the relieved expression still on his face. “But you didn’t bring it.”

  “Of course I didn’t.” Tally sat down to yank on her boots. Her pounding heart began to drive the cold from her body. “Don’t you scan everyone who joins you?”

  “Yeah. But the bug must have been dormant—it only started sending when someone activated it, or maybe it was set to go off at a certain time.” His eyes scanned the horizon. “The Specials will be here soon.”

  She stood. “So we run.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t go anywhere until we find it.”

  “Why not?” She pulled on crash bracelets.

  “It’s taken us months to build up the supplies we’ve got, Tally. We can’t leave them all behind, not with all you Crims having just joined us. But we won’t know what’s safe to take until we figure out where the signal’s coming from. It’s not showing up anywhere.”

  Tally hoisted her pack and snapped her fingers, her board rising into the air. As she stepped on, her mind still racing from the freezing bath, she recalled something from earlier that day. “Tooth-ache,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Zane was in the hospital two weeks ago. It’s inside him.”

  TRACKER

  They swept back up the mountain, banking hard against the high gravities of their turns. Tally stayed in the lead, positive that she was right. The doctors had made Zane unconscious for a few minutes in the hospital while they’d repaired his broken hand. They must have hidden a tracker in his teeth at the same time. Of course, regular city doctors wouldn’t have done something like that on their own—it had to be the work of Special Circumstances.

  The camp was bedlam when they arrived. New Smokies and Crims ran in and out of the observatory door with equipment, clothing, and food, making two piles beside Croy and Maddy, who stood waving scanners over everything wildly. Others hurriedly repacked the scanned gear, getting ready to flee once the bug was found.

  Tally tipped back her hoverboard and forced it up as high as it would go, launching herself over the chaos, directly at the broken dome. When the board reached its maximum height the lifters shuddered, then firmed up as the magnets found the steel frame of the observatory. The crack in the dome was wide enough to glide through, and Tally dropped straight down through the rising smoke, jumping off next to Zane’s makeshift bed.

  He looked up at her with a soft smile. “Nice entrance, Tally.”

  She knelt beside him. “Which tooth hurts?”

  “What’s going on? Everyone’s freaking out.”

  “Which tooth hurts, Zane? You have to show me.”

  He frowned, but stuck a trembling finger into his mouth, tenderly probing the right side. Tally pulled his hand away and opened his mouth wider, and he made a whimper of protest.

  “Shush. I’ll explain in a second.”

  Even in the dim firelight, she could see it: One tooth stood out from the others, its shade of white imperfectly matched—a rushed bit of dentistry, of course.

  The signal was coming from Zane.

  The wheep of a scanner booting up sounded beside her ear; David had followed her down the hole into the dome. He waved the scanner past Zane’s face, and it buzzed angrily. “It’s in his mouth?” David asked.

  “In his tooth! Get your mother.”

  “But, Tally—”

  “Get her! You and I can’t take out a tooth!”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “Neither can she. Not in a few minutes.”

  She stood, staring into his ugly face. “What are you saying, David?”

  “We’ll have to leave him behind. They’ll be here soon.”

  “No!” she shouted. “Go get her!”

&nb
sp; David swore and turned away, running toward the door of the observatory. Tally looked down at Zane again.

  “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “They put a tracker in you, Zane. At the hospital.”

  “Oh,” he said, rubbing his face. “I didn’t know, Tally, honest. I thought my toothache was from all this wild food.”

  “Of course you didn’t know. You were unconscious for those minutes at the hospital, remember?”

  “Are they really going to leave me?”

  “I won’t let them. I promise.”

  “I can’t go back,” he said weakly. “I don’t want to be pretty-minded again.”

  Tally swallowed. If Zane was returned to the city now, the doctors would put the lesions back in, right on top of his blank new tissue. His brain would rewire around them. . . . What chance would he have of staying bubbly?

  She couldn’t let this happen.

  “I’ll take you on my hoverboard, Zane—we’ll escape on our own if we have to.” Her mind raced. She’d still have to get rid of the tracker somehow. She couldn’t just bash it out with a rock. . . . Tally looked around for some sort of tool, but the New Smokies had taken everything useful outside to be scanned.

  Voices came from the darkness. It was Maddy, David, and Croy. Tally saw that Maddy was carrying some sort of forceps in her hand, and her heart skipped a beat.

  Maddy knelt beside Zane and forced open his mouth. He whimpered in pain again as the metal tool probed his teeth.

  “Be careful,” Tally pleaded softly.

  “Hold this.” Maddy handed her a flashlight. When Tally pointed it into Zane’s mouth, the discolored tooth was obvious.

  After a moment, Maddy said, “This isn’t good.” She released Zane’s head, and he fell back onto the blankets with a groan, his eyes closing.

  “Just take it out!”

  “They’ve rooted it to the bone.” She turned to Croy. “Finish packing up. We have to run.”

  “Do something for him!” Tally cried.

  Maddy took the light from her. “Tally, it’s bonded to the bone. I’d have to shatter his jaw to remove it.”

  “So don’t take it out, just make it stop sending! Smash the tooth! He can take it!”

  Maddy shook her head. “Pretty teeth are made of the same stuff they use in aircraft wings. You can’t just smash them. I’d need special dental nanos to break it down.” She turned the flashlight on Tally, reaching for her mouth.

  Tally twisted away. “What are you doing?”

  “Just making sure about you.”

  “But I didn’t go into the hos—,” Tally began, but Maddy wrenched open her mouth. Tally growled at the back of her throat, but let the woman poke around for a moment; it was quicker than arguing. When she grunted and let go, Tally said, “Satisfied?”

  “For now. But we have to leave Zane behind.”

  “Forget it!” Tally shouted.

  “They’ll be here in another ten minutes,” David said.

  “Less.” Maddy stood.

  Tally’s vision swam with spots from the little flashlight. She could hardly see their faces in the firelight. Didn’t they understand what Zane had gone through to get here, what he had sacrificed for the cure? “I won’t leave him.”

  “Tally—,” David began.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Maddy interrupted. “Technically, she’s still a pretty-head.”

  “I am not!”

  “You didn’t even take the right pill.” Maddy put a hand on David’s shoulder. “Tally’s still got the lesions. Once they scan her brain, they won’t even put her under the knife. They’ll think she just came along for the ride.”

  “Mom!” David shouted. “We are not leaving her!”

  “And I’m not coming,” Tally said.

  Maddy shook her head. “Perhaps the lesions aren’t as important as we thought. Your father always suspected that being pretty-minded is simply the natural state for most people. They want to be vapid and lazy and vain”—Maddy glanced at Tally—“and selfish. It only takes a twist to lock in that part of their personalities. He always thought that some people could think their way out of it.”

  “Az was right,” Tally said softly. “I’m cured now.”

  David let out a pained growl. “Cured or not, Tally, you can’t stay here. I don’t want to lose you again! Mom! Do something!”

  “You want to argue with her? Go ahead.” Maddy spun on one heel and strode toward the observatory entrance. “We’re leaving in two minutes,” she said without turning around. “With or without you.”

  • • •

  David and Tally were silent for a few moments. It was like when they’d first seen each other in the ruins that morning, neither knowing what to say. Though now, Tally realized, David’s face no longer shocked her. Maybe the panic of the moment or the freezing bath had stripped her remaining pretty thoughts away. Or maybe it had simply taken a few hours to align her memories and dreams with the truth. . . .

  David wasn’t a prince—handsome or otherwise. He was the first boy she’d fallen in love with, but not the last. Time and experiences apart had changed what had been between them.

  More important, she had someone else now. However unfair it was that her memories of David had been erased, Tally had built a whole new set of memories, and she couldn’t just trade them in for the old ones. Zane and she had helped each other become bubbly, had been imprisoned by the cuffs together, and escaped the city together. She couldn’t abandon him now, just because he had been robbed of part of his mind.

  Tally knew too well what that was like, being handed over to the city all alone.

  Zane was the one person in her life she had never betrayed, and she wasn’t about to start now. She took his hand. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “Think logically, Tally.” David spoke slowly, talking to her like she was a littlie. “You can’t help Zane if you stay here. You’ll both be captured.”

  “Your mother’s right. They won’t do anything more to my brain, and I can help him from inside the city.”

  “We can smuggle Zane the cure, like we did for you.”

  “I didn’t need the cure, David. Maybe Zane won’t either. I’ll keep him bubbly, I can help him rewire his brain. But he won’t stand a chance without me.”

  David started to speak, but froze for a moment. Then his voice changed, his eyes narrowing. “You’re just staying with him because he’s pretty.”

  Tally’s eyes widened. “I’m what?”

  “Don’t you see it? It’s like you always used to say: It’s evolution. Since your Crim friends got here, Mom’s been explaining to me how prettiness works.” He pointed at Zane. “He’s got those big, vulnerable eyes, that childlike perfect skin. He looks like a baby to you, a needy child, which makes you want to help him. You’re not thinking rationally. You’re giving yourself up just because he’s pretty!”

  Tally stared back at David in disbelief. How dare he say this to her? The mere fact that she was standing here proved that Tally could think for herself.

  Then she realized what was going on: David was only repeating Maddy’s words. She must have warned him not to trust his feelings when he saw the new Tally. Maddy didn’t want her son turning into some awestruck ugly, worshipping the ground Tally walked on. So now David thought that all that Tally could see was Zane’s pretty face.

  David still thought she was just some city kid. Maybe he didn’t even really believe that she was cured. Maybe he’d never really forgiven her.

  “It’s not the way Zane looks, David,” she said, her voice trembling with anger. “It’s because he makes me bubbly, and because we took a lot of risks together. It could just as easily be me lying there, and he would stay with me if it was.”

  “It’s just programming!”

  “No. It’s because I love him.”

  David started to speak again, but the sound choked off.

  She sighed. “Go on, David. Whatever your mother said a second ago, she w
on’t really leave without you. They’ll all get caught if you don’t start moving now.”

  “Tally—”

  “Go!” she cried. David had to start running, or the New Smoke would die, and it would be her fault again.

  “But you can—”

  “Get your ugly face out of here!” Tally screamed.

  The echoes shuddered back at her from the observatory walls for a moment, and Tally tore her gaze away from David. She cradled Zane’s face in one hand and kissed him. The shouted insult had the effect she’d wanted, but Tally couldn’t bring herself to look up as she heard David’s footsteps retreating into the darkness, first walking, then at a run.

  She saw shapes pulsing in the corners of her vision. It wasn’t shadows cast by the flickering fire—it was her heart, pounding so hard that she could see the rushing blood beating against her eyes, like something trying to escape.

  She had called David ugly. He would never forget that, nor would she.

  But she’d had to use that word, Tally told herself. Every second counted, and nothing else would have pushed him away so powerfully. She’d made her choice.

  “I’ll take care of you, Zane,” she said.

  He opened his eyes into slits and smiled weakly. “Um, I hope you don’t mind if I pretended to pass out for that.”

  Tally let out a strangled laugh. “Good idea.”

  “We really can’t run? I think I can stand up.”

  “No. They’d just find us.”

  He probed at his tooth with his tongue. “Oh, yeah. That sucks. And I almost got everyone else caught too.”

  She shrugged. “Been there. Done that.”

  “Are you sure you want to stay with me?”

  “I can escape the city again, Zane, anytime I want. I can save you and Shay, and everyone else we left behind. I’m cured for good now.” Tally looked at the entrance, saw hoverboards lifting into the air. They were leaving, all of them. She shrugged again. “Besides, I think it’s pretty much a done deal. Running after David now would kind of spoil my brilliant breakup line.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s true.” Zane chuckled softly. “Do me a favor, Tally? If you ever break up with me, just leave a note.”