1269_UgliesFreeBook

UGLIES 413
“Az died because someone thought like that,” Maddy
said grimly.
“What?”
David put his arm around her. “My father . . .” He
cleared his throat, and Tally waited in silence. Finally he
would tell her how Az had died.
He took a slow breath before continuing. “Dr. Cable
wanted to turn them all, but she was worried that Mom and
Dad might talk about the brain lesions, even after the
operation, because they’d been focused on them for so
long.” David’s voice trembled, but it was soft and careful, as
if he didn’t dare put any emotion into the words. “Dr. Cable
was already working on ways to change memories, a way of
erasing the Smoke forever from people’s minds. When they
took my father for the operation, he never came back.”
“That’s awful,” Tally whispered. She gathered him into
a hug.
“Az was the victim of a medical experiment, Tally,”
Maddy said. “I can’t do the same thing to Shay. Otherwise,
she’d be right about me and Dr. Cable.”
“But Shay ran away. She didn’t want to become pretty.”
“She doesn’t want to be experimented on, either.”
Tally closed her eyes. Through the Mylar shade, she could
hear Shay telling Ryde about the hairbrush she’d made. For
days she’d proudly shown the little brush, made of splinters
of wood shoved into a lump of clay, to anyone who would
listen. As if it were the most important thing she’d ever done.