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UGLIES 161
SpagBol never again tasted as good as it had that first
time on the cliffs. Tally’s meals ranged from decent to odious.
The worst were SpagBol breakfasts, around sunset,
when the mere thought of more noodles made her never
want to eat again. She almost wished she would run out of
the stuff and be forced to either catch a fish and cook it, or
simply starve, losing her ugly-fat the hard way.
What Tally really dreaded was running out of toilet
paper. Her only roll was already half-gone, and she rationed
it strictly now, counting the sheets. And every day, she
smelled a little worse.
On the third day up the river, she decided to take
a bath.
Tally awoke, an hour before sunset as usual, feeling
sticky inside the sleeping bag. She’d washed her clothes
that morning and left them to dry on a rock. The thought
of getting into clean clothes with dirty skin made her flesh
crawl.
The water in the river was fast-moving, and left almost
nothing in the muck-trap of the purifier, which meant it
was clean. It was icy cold, though, probably fed by melting
snow in the approaching mountains. Tally prayed it would
be slightly less freezing late in the day, after the sun had had
a chance to warm it up.
The survival kit did have soap, it turned out—a few
disposable packets tucked into a corner of the knapsack.
Tally clenched one in her hand as she stood at the edge of