1269_UgliesFreeBook

330 Scott Westerfeld
a long building, now little more than a ridge of blackened
rubble, David pulled the board to a halt.
“I was afraid of this.”
Tally tried to picture what had stood there. Her knowledge
of the Smoke had evaporated, the familiar streets
reduced to an unrecognizable sprawl of ash and embers.
Then she saw a few blackened pages fluttering in the
wind. The library.
“They didn’t take the books out before they . . . ,” she
cried. “But why?”
“They don’t want people to know what it was like
before the operation. They want to keep you hating yourselves.
Otherwise, it’s too easy to get used to ugly faces, normal
faces.”
Tally turned around to look into David’s eyes. “Some of
them, anyway.”
He smiled sadly.
Then a thought crossed her mind. “The Boss was running
away with some old magazines. Maybe he escaped.”
“On foot?” David sounded dubious.
“I hope so.” She leaned, and the board slid toward the
edge of town.
A blotch of pepper still marked the ground where she
had fought the Special. Tally jumped off, trying to remember
exactly where the Boss had escaped into the forest.
“If he got away, he must be long gone,” David said.
Tally pushed her way into the brush, looking for signs