1269_UgliesFreeBook

152 Scott Westerfeld
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The hoverboard still had some charge left, so after breakfast
she decided to keep moving. She reread the first few lines
of Shay’s note:
Take the coaster straight past the gap,
until you find one that’s long and flat.
Cold is the sea and watch for breaks.
At the second make the worst mistake.
If “the second” meant a second broken bridge, Tally
wanted to run into it in daylight. If she’d spotted the gap a
split second later, she would have ended up so much
SpagBol at the bottom of the cliffs.
But her first problem was getting across the chasm. It
was much wider than the gap in the roller coaster, definitely
too far to jump. Walking looked like the only way around.
She hiked inland through the scrubby grass, her legs grateful
for a stretch after the long night on board. Soon the
chasm closed, and an hour later she had hiked back up the
other side.
Tally flew much slower now, eyes fixed ahead, daring
only an occasional glimpse at the view around her.
Mountains rose up on her right, tall enough that snow
capped their tops even in the early autumn chill. Tally had
always thought of the city as huge, a whole world in itself,
but the scale of everything out here was so much grander.