Pretties

Tally makes her way to the Rusty Ruins and lands the hovercraft in an old parking lot. She walks to the abandoned city and is immediately struck by the eeriness of her surroundings. In the Rusty days, a bacteria consumed petroleum and caused explosions when exposed to oxygen. She navigates until she finds the tallest building in the city, but when she reaches it she realizes there is no way to climb up. Tally calls out, shouting greetings. It is only when she shouts her own name and lights a flare that a hoverboard appears and begins to descend. Tally briefly panics, realizing she has no way of knowing who is coming to retrieve her, but calms herself. When the hoverboard is close, a familiar voice calls to her. When she sees the person’s face, she recognizes David.

David and Tally look at each other. David seems saddened by her changed looks, and Tally is struck by how unimpressive he is. She grapples with her memories and old affection for him, which are no longer as strong as they were. She confesses that she broke her hoverboard, which makes David smile and reminisce. They ride David’s together, and she feels the desire to hold him but also resents that Croy, not David, was the one to deliver her the cure.

Finally, David speaks, and Tally uses this as a chance to apologize for her accidental betrayal of Smoke. David pauses the board and touches her tattoo, remarking how strange she looks. Tally asks about Croy, and David explains that he was scouting different cities to recruit more uglies when the Specials came and swept the Ruins. It was too dangerous to stay, so New Smoke was packed up. Croy was David’s back-up plan to deliver Tally the cure if David couldn’t. Tally is secretly relieved knowing that David did not forsake her, but when he brings up Zane she is once again torn. Tally asks how Zane is, and David responds by saying she was lucky. When she questions the safety of the pills, David insists that they work and says it would be easier for his mother to explain. They fly the rest of the way in silence.

Tally and David arrive at New Smoke, which is in an old observatory building. Its high position and plethora of old cable car rails make it an ideal spot to keep an eye out for Specials and to make a quick escape if necessary. New Smokies, new ugly recruits, and Crims greet Tally and David. She and Fausto hug, and she recognizes that he has been cured by the look on his face. He guesses that Peris was too frightened to jump before Tally has to say anything. Tally asks for Zane but pauses to thank Croy. He responds that she cured herself, confusing her.

Inside, Zane is breathing shallowly and looks starved. David and his mother, Maddy, step inside. Maddy explains that the nanos within the pills break down the lesions, but in Zane’s case they continued reproducing and started to consume his brain tissue. The pills Croy left for Tally were each different. One contained the nanos, while the other contained compounds to kill the nanos after they did their job. Tally took the second pill while Zane took the first. Maddy has used stem cells to regenerate the destroyed parts of his brain, but his brain must rewire itself. She also speculates that Tally and Zane’s starvation was what saved him, because in starving himself he also took food away from the nanos and killed them. Zane wakes up as Tally asks how she became cured if Zane took the lesion-eating nanos. He tells her that she cured herself, and Maddy concurs.

Tally and Zane talk about his condition. The consumed brain tissue dealt with thought processing and motor skills, and he is struggling to rebuild those lost connections. He is also suffering from a toothache that Maddy believes to be phantom pain. Tally feels guilty for not taking both pills in the first place. Zane asks how she feels about David, and Tally admits to the strangeness. Zane explains that he and David bonded over Tally because David was curious how she had changed after the surgery. Zane explained Tally’s motivations from the first book, providing context that Tally was never able to give David herself. Zane then explains the way that he also betrayed the Smokies: When the other uglies went out to Smoke and Zane stayed behind, Specials interrogated him. Dr. Cable threatened to turn him into one of them, so Zane confessed everything. It was his fault that the Specials tried to recruit Tally in Uglies because he had told them about Shay’s plans to run away, and they knew Tally was her friend. Tally wonders if they should be freed of their guilt after everything that has happened and once again thinks of how strange it is to see David again.

Zane falls asleep and Tally takes a hoverboard to bathe in a pool of water. She feels bubbly even though she hasn’t been cured, and she attributes this to Zane. She wonders if she even needs the cure, or if she and Zane could stay together and help each other heal. She then reflects on how David also changed her worldview and grapples with the idea of having both boys in her life. She reaches the spring and breaks the ice on its surface, rubbing herself down with soap before leaping in. The water is so cold it hurts, and she emerges with the clearest head she has ever had. She wonders if she needs any boys and thinks back on her accomplishments with pride.

She hears someone shout and climbs out of the water, trying to wipe herself off. David appears and uses a device to check for trackers. He finds nothing and says that a signal has begun broadcasting their location, but he confirms it was not Tally. He believes it was dormant but scheduled to turn on. The New Smokies cannot leave until they find the tracker. Tally realizes that Zane’s toothache may not be a phantom pain and remembers that he was recently in the hospital. She believes the signal is coming from inside his body.

Tally and David return to the observatory, where people are scrambling through supplies trying to find the tracker. Tally leaps through the top of the observatory and lands at Zane’s bedside. When she looks in his mouth, she sees a discolored tooth, and her worries are confirmed when David scans it. She sends David to get his mother, but David warns Tally that they may have to leave Zane behind. Tally promises Zane that she will not abandon him. Maddy, David, and Croy come into the room, and Maddy examines Zane’s mouth. Maddy tells them that the tooth is rooted in his jaw and there is no way to remove it. Maddy checks Tally’s teeth to be sure she does not have a tracker and then suggests leaving Zane behind. When Tally refuses to go, Maddy insults her, claiming that she wants to be pretty-minded before leaving the room.

David and Tally stare each other down as Tally realizes that they have both changed. David tries to convince Tally to leave and then claims that she only wants to protect Zane because he is pretty. Tally is insulted as David tries to use science and logic to dismiss Tally’s feelings. Tally announces that she loves Zane and tells David that he is ugly to make him leave her behind. She drops down next to Zane and holds him as the New Smokies leave. Zane confesses his fear and Tally promises to help make him bubbly again. Zane falls asleep and Tally rests beside him, waiting for the Specials to arrive.

When the Specials arrive in hovercars, Tally tries to sound pretty-minded, asking for help for Zane but secretly trying to plan for whatever the future may hold. Dr. Cable arrives and tells Tally that she has known of Zane’s condition since he was in the hospital two weeks ago. The doctors stopped the nanos, but the implanted tooth caused headaches too. Dr. Cable activated the tracker when they found the doctor Tally locked in the hovercar. Tally refuses to give any information on New Smoke, and she is escorted to sit by a fire. Tally is disappointed that she fell for Dr. Cable’s tricks again but forces herself to think of how she will cure Zane of the lesions.

After an hour, two Specials arrive on unique hoverboards and announce that they have caught some of the Crims. Tally recognizes Shay’s voice, and Shay steps into the firelight. Her face has the extreme angles of the Specials, and she is covered in flash tattoos that outline her self-harm scars. Two of Shay’s Cutters, Ho and Tachs, arrive carrying Fausto’s unconscious body. Shay speaks to Tally as if she were still pretty-minded but then sits beside her and tells her the benefits of being one of the Special Circumstances’ Cutters. Shay claims that she is happy and tells Tally they are going to be “best friends forever” (367). Tally realizes that Shay wants her to become a Cutter and tries to protest, but Shay knocks her unconscious.

Tally sleeps for several weeks and dreams that she is a princess trapped in a tower. She and her friends jump out the window, but her best friend is left behind. They encounter a gray dragon that lets them sneak by. When Tally’s prince arrives, he is an amalgamation of Zane and David and sometimes splits into two princes that she must choose between. The dream always ends with the best friend getting swallowed by the dragon, who then comes to consume the rest of them. The dragon repeats the last words Shay said to Tally: “Face it, Tally-wa, you’re Special” (370).