"Scott Westerfeld - Uglies 2 - Pretties" - читать интересную книгу автора (Westerfeld Scott)

When Peris and Fausto came in, they were on fire.

It was really just sparklers wound into their hair and stuck onto their clothes, making safety flames flicker all over them. Fausto kept laughing because it tickled. They were both wearing bungee jacketsЧtheir costume was that they'd just jumped from the roof of a burning building.

"Fantastic!" Shay said.

"Hysterical," Tally agreed, but then asked, "but how is that Crim?"

"Don't you remember?" Peris said. "When you crashed a party last summer, and got away by stealing a bungee jacket and jumping off the roof? Best ugly trick in history!"

"SureЕbut why are you on fire?" Tally asked. "I mean, it's not Crim if the building's really on fire."

Shay was giving Tally a look like she was saying something bogus again.

"We couldn't just wear bungee jackets," Fausto said. "Being on fire is much bubblier."

"Yeah," Peris said, but Tally could tell he saw what she meant, and was sad now. She wished she hadn't mentioned it. Stupid Tally. The costumes really were bubbly.

They put the sparklers out to save them for the party, and Shay told the hole in the wall to make two more jackets.

"Hey, that's copying!" Fausto complained, but it turned out not to matter. The hole wouldn't do costume bungee jackets, in case someone forgot and jumped off something and splatted. It couldn't make a real jacket; you had to ask Requisition for anything complicated or permanent. And Requisition wouldn't send any up because there wasn't a fire.

Shay snorted. "The mansion is being totally bogus today."

"So where'd you get those?" Tally asked.

"They're real." Peris smiled, fingering his jacket. "We stole them from the roof."

"So theyare Crim," Tally said, and jumped off the bed to hug him.

With Peris in her arms, it didn't feel like the party was going to suck, or that anyone was going to vote against her. His big brown eyes beamed down into hers, and he lifted her up and squeezed her hard. She'd always felt this close to Peris back in ugly days, playing tricks and growing up together. It was bubbly to feel this way right now.

All those weeks that Tally had been lost in the wild, all she'd ever wanted was to be back here with Peris, pretty inNewPrettyTown . It was totally stupid being unhappy today, or any day. Probably just too much champagne. "Best friends forever," she whispered to him, as he set her down.

"Hey, what's this thing?" Shay said. She was deep in Tally's closet, poking around for ideas. She held up a shapeless mass of wool.

"Oh, that." Tally let her arms fall from around Peris. "That's my sweater from the Smoke, remember?" The sweater looked strange, not like she remembered. It was messy, and you could see where human hands had knitted the different pieces together. People in the Smoke didn't have holes in the wallЧthey had to make their own things, and people, it turned out, weren't very good at making things.

"You didn't recycle it?"

"No. I think it's made of weird stuff. Like, the hole can't use it. "

Shay held the sweater to her nose and inhaled. "Wow. It still smells like the Smoke. Campfires and that stew we always ate. Remember?"

Peris and Fausto went over to smell it. They'd never been out of the city, except for school trips to the Rusty Ruins. They certainly hadn't gotten as far as the Smoke, where everyone had to work all day making stuff, and growing (or even killing) their own food, and everyone stayed ugly after their sixteenth birthday. Ugly until they died, even.

Of course, the Smoke didn't exist anymore, thanks to Tally and Special Circumstances.

"Hey, I know, Tally!" Shay said. "Let's go as Smokies tonight!"