35
Tally stepped from the board and walked across the
grass on rubbery legs. She found a broken stone big enough
to sit on, and lowered herself shakily onto it.
Shay jumped off her board. “Hey, sorry.”
“That was horrible, Shay. I was
falling
.”
“Not for long. Like, five seconds. I thought you said
you’d bungee jumped off a building.”
Tally glared at Shay. “Yeah, I did, but I
knew
I wasn’t
going to splat.”
“True. But, you see, the first time someone showed me
the roller coaster, they didn’t tell me about the gap. And I
thought it was pretty cool, finding out that way. Best time’s
the first time. I wanted you to feel it too.”
“You thought falling was
cool
?”
“Well, maybe at first I was pretty angry. Yeah, I defi-
nitely was.” Shay smiled broadly. “But I got over it.”
“Give me a second on that one, Skinny.”
“Take your time.”
Tally’s breathing slowed, and her heart gradually
stopped trying to beat its way out of her chest. But her
brain stayed as clear as it had for those seconds of free fall,
and she found herself wondering who had found the roller
coaster first, and how many other uglies had come here
since. “Shay, who showed you all this? “
“Friends, older than me. Uglies like us, who try to fig-
ure out how stuff works. And how to trick it.”
Tally looked up at the ancient, serpentine shape of the
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Scott Westerfeld