Uglies Read Free

Tally glanced up and down the hall. No one up here, anyway. The doors were all closed. Maybe a few pretties were actually getting their beauty sleep.
    If she went up to the roof to check for Peris, she’d be trapped.
    â€œHere, piggy, piggy!”
    Time to run. Tally dashed toward the elevator, skidding to a halt inside. “Ground floor!” she ordered.
    She waited, peering down the hall anxiously, panting into the hot plastic of her mask. “Ground floor!” she repeated. “Close door!”
    Nothing happened.
    She sighed, closing her eyes. Without an interface ring, she was nobody. The elevator wouldn’t listen.
    Tally knew how to trick an elevator, but it took time and a penknife. She had neither. The first of her pursuers emerged from the stairway, stumbling into the hall.
    She threw herself backward against the elevator’s side wall, standing on tiptoe and trying to flatten herself so they couldn’t see her. More came up, huffing and puffing like typical out-of-shape pretties. Tally could watch them in the mirror at the back of the elevator.
    Which meant they could also see her if they thought to look this way.
    â€œWhere’d the piggy go?”
    â€œHere, piggy!”
    â€œThe roof, maybe?”
    Someone stepped quietly into the elevator, looking back at the search party in bemusement. When he saw her, he jumped. “Goodness, you scared me!” He blinked his long lashes, regarding her masked face, then looked down at his own tailcoat. “Oh, dear. Wasn’t this party white tie?”
    Tally’s breath caught, her mouth went dry. “Peris?” she whispered.
    He looked at her closely. “Do I . . .”
    She started to reach out, but remembered to press back flatagainst the wall. Her muscles were screaming from standing on tiptoe. “It’s me, Peris.”
    â€œHere, piggy, piggy!”
    He turned toward the voice down the hall, raised his eyebrows, then looked back at her. “Close door. Hold,” he said quickly.
    The door slid shut, and Tally stumbled forward. She pulled off her mask to see him better. It was Peris: his voice, his brown eyes, the way his forehead crinkled when he was confused.
    But he was so pretty now.
    At school, they explained how it affected you. It didn’t matter if you knew about evolution or not—it worked anyway. On everyone.
    There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big eyes and full lips like a kid’s; smooth, clear skin; symmetrical features; and a thousand other little clues. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, people were always looking for these markers. No one could help seeing them, no matter how they were brought up. A million years of evolution had made it part of the human brain.
    The big eyes and lips said: I’m young and vulnerable, I can’t hurt you, and you want to protect me. And the rest said: I’m healthy, I won’t make you sick. And no matter how you felt about a pretty, there was a part of you that thought: If we had kids, they’d be healthy too. I want this pretty person. . . .
    It was biology, they said at school. Like your heart beating, you couldn’t help believing all these things, not when you saw a face like this. A pretty face.
    A face like Peris’s.
    â€œIt’s me,” Tally said.
    Peris took a step back, his eyebrows rising. He looked down at her clothes.
    Tally realized she was wearing her baggy black expedition outfit, muddy from crawling up ropes and through gardens, from falling among the vines. Peris’s suit was deep black velvet, his shirt, vest, and tie all glowing white.
    She pulled away. “Oh, sorry. I won’t get you muddy.”
    â€œWhat are you doing here, Tally?”
    â€œI just—,” she sputtered. Now that she was facing him, she didn’t know what to say. All the imagined conversations had melted away into his big, sweet eyes. “I had to