1269_UgliesFreeBook

40 Scott Westerfeld
black hair with long bangs, the dark lips set to maximum
fullness.
“Pretty generic, Tally.”
“Oh, come on! I worked on this one for a long time. I
think I’d look great this way. There’s a whole Cleopatra
thing going on.”
“You know,” Shay said, “I read that the real Cleopatra
wasn’t even that great-looking. She seduced everyone with
how clever she was.”
“Yeah, right. And you’ve seen a picture of her?”
“They didn’t have cameras back then, Squint.”
“Duh. So how do you know she was ugly?”
“Because that’s what historians wrote at the time.”
Tally shrugged. “She was probably a classic pretty and
they didn’t even know it. Back then, they had weird ideas
about beauty. They didn’t know about biology.”
“Lucky them.” Shay stared out the window.
“So, if you think all my faces are so crappy, why don’t
you show me some of yours?” Tally cleared the wallscreen
and leaned back on the bed.
“I can’t.”
“You can dish it out, but you can’t take it, huh?”
“No, I mean I just can’t. I never made one.”
Tally’s jaw dropped. Everyone made morphos, even littlies,
too young for their facial structure to have set. It was
a great waste of a day, figuring out all the different ways you
could look when you finally became pretty.