1269_UgliesFreeBook

UGLIES 245
“I noticed you didn’t wear the gloves. Not after you had
lunch with Shay. It wasn’t hard to guess why.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s not that I didn’t like them. I just couldn’t.”
“Sure, I know. This is all my fault.” He looked around
the crowded hall. “Can we get out of here? I’ve got something
to tell you.”
Tally nodded, feeling the cold pendant against her neck
and remembering her promise to Shay. “Yeah. I’ve got
something to tell you, too.”
They walked through the Smoke, past cook fires being
extinguished with shovelfuls of dirt; windows coming alight
with candles and electric bulbs; and a handful of young
uglies pursuing an escaped chicken. They climbed the ridge
from which Tally had first looked down on the settlement,
and David led her along it to a cool, flat outcrop of stone
where a view opened up between the trees. As always, Tally
noticed how graceful David was, how he seemed to know
every step of the path intimately. Not even pretties, whose
bodies were perfectly balanced, designed for elegance in
every kind of clothing, moved with such effortless control.
Tally deliberately turned her eyes away from him. In
the valley below, the orchids glowed with pale malevolence
in the moonlight, a frozen sea against the dark shore of the
forest.
David started talking first. “Did you know you’re the
first runaway to come here all alone?”