Bravery
That night at dinner, she ate alone.
Now that she'd spent a day cutting trees herself, the wooden table in the dining hall no longer horrified her. The grain of the wood felt reassuringly solid, and tracing its whorls with her eyes was easier than thinking.
For the first time, Tally noticed the sameness of the food. Bread again, stew again. A couple of days ago, Shay had explained that the plump meat in the stew was rabbit. Not soy-based, like the dehydrated meat in her SpagBol, but real animals from the overcrowded pen on the edge of the Smoke. The thought of rabbits being killed, skinned, and cooked suited her mood. Like the rest of her day, this meal tasted brutal and serious.
Shay hadn't talked to her after lunch, and Tally had no idea what to say to Croy, so she'd worked the rest of the day in silence. Dr. Cable's pendant seemed to grow heavier and heavier, wound around her neck as tightly as the vines, brush, and roots grasping the railroad tracks. It felt as if everyone in the Smoke could see what the necklace really was: a symbol of her treachery.
Tally wondered if she could ever stay there now. Croy suspected what she was, and it seemed like it would be only a matter of time before everyone else knew. All day long a terrible thought had kept crossing her mind: Maybe the Smoke was where she really belonged, but she'd lost her chance by going there as a spy.
And now Tally had come between David and Shay. Without even trying, she'd shafted her best friend.
Like walking poison, she killed everything.
She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.
Just as she finished eating, David sat down across from her. "Hey."
"Hi." She managed to smile. Despite everything, it was a relief to see him. Eating alone had reminded her of the days after her birthday, trapped as an ugly when everyone knew she should be pretty. Today was the first time she'd felt like an ugly since coming to the Smoke.
David reached across and took her hand. "Tally, I'm sorry."
"You're sorry?"
He turned her palm up to reveal her freshly blistered fingers.
"I noticed you didn't wear the gloves. Not after you had lunch with Shay. It wasn't hard to guess why."
"Oh, yeah. It's not that I didn't like them. I just couldn't."
"Sure, I know. This is all my fault." He looked around the crowded hall. "Can we get out of here? I've got something to tell you."
Tally nodded, feeling the cold pendant against her neck and remembering her promise to Shay. "Yeah.
I've got something to tell you, too."
They walked through the Smoke, past cook fires being extinguished with shovelfuls of dirt; windows coming alight with candles and electric bulbs; and a handful of young uglies pursuing an escaped chicken.
They climbed the ridge from which Tally had first looked down on the settlement, and David led her along it to a cool, flat outcrop of stone where a view opened up between the trees. As always, Tally noticed how graceful David was, how he seemed to know every step of the path intimately. Not even pretties, whose bodies were perfectly balanced, designed for elegance in every kind of clothing, moved with such effortless control.
Tally deliberately turned her eyes away from him. In the valley below, the orchids glowed with pale malevolence in the moonlight, a frozen sea against the dark shore of the forest.
David started talking first. "Did you know you're the first runaway to come here all alone?"
"Really?"
He nodded, still staring down at the white expanse of flowers. "Most of the time, I bring them in."
Tally remembered Shay, the last night they'd seen each other in the city, saying that the mysterious David would take her to the Smoke. Back then Tally had hardly believed there was such a person. Now, sitting next to her, David seemed very real. He took the world more seriously than any other ugly she'd ever met - more seriously, in fact, than middle pretties like her parents. In a funny way, his eyes held the same intensity that the cruel pretties' had, though without their coldness.
"My mother used to in the old days," he said. "But now she's too old."
Tally swallowed. They always explained in school about how uglies who didn't have the operations eventually became infirm. "Oh, I'm so sorry. How old is she, anyway?"
He laughed. "She's plenty fit, but uglies have an easier time trusting someone like me, someone their own age."
"Oh, of course." Tally remembered her reaction to the Boss that first day. Only a couple of weeks later she was much more used to all the different kinds of faces that age created.
"Sometimes, a few uglies will make it on their own, following coded directions like you did. But it's always been three or four in a group. No one's ever come all alone."
"You must think I'm an idiot."
"Not at all." He took her hand. "I think it was really brave."
She shrugged. "It wasn't that bad a trip, really."
"It's not the traveling that takes courage, Tally. I've done much longer trips on my own. It's leaving home." He traced a line on her sore hand with a finger. "I can't imagine having to walk away from the Smoke, away from everything I've ever known, realizing I'd probably never come back."
Tally swallowed. It hadn't been easy. Of course, she hadn't really had a choice.
"But you left your city, the only place you'd ever lived, all alone," David continued. "You hadn't even met a Smokey, someone to convince you firsthand that it was a real place. You did it all on trust, because your friend asked you. I guess that's why I feel I can trust you."
Tally looked out at the weeds, feeling worse with every word David said. If he only knew the real reason she was there.
"When Shay first told me you were coming, I was really angry at her."
"Because I might have given the Smoke away?"
"Partly. And partly because it's really dangerous for a city-bred sixteen-year-old to cross hundreds of miles alone. But mostly I thought it was a wasted risk, because you probably wouldn't even make it out of your dorm window."
He looked up at her, squeezing her hand softly. "I was amazed when I saw you running down that hill."
Tally smiled. "I was a pretty sorry sight that day."
"You were so scratched up, your hair and clothes all singed from that fire, but you had the biggest smile on your face." David's face seemed to glow in the soft moonlight.
Tally closed her eyes and shook her head. Great. She was going to get an award for bravery when she should really be kicked out of the Smoke for treachery.