SPAGBOL

She made good time that night.
The track zoomed along beneath her, tracing slow arcsaround hills, crossing rivers on crumbling bridges, alwaysheaded toward the sea. Twice it took her through otherRusty ruins, smaller towns further along in their disintegration.
Only a few twisted shapes of metal remained, risingabove the trees like skeletal fingers grasping at the air.
Burned-out groundcars were everywhere, choking thestreets out of town, twisted together in the collisions of theRusties’ last panic.
Near the center of one ruined town, she discoveredwhat the long, flat roller coaster was all about. In a nest oftracks tangled up like a huge circuit board, she found a fewrotting roller-coaster cars, huge rolling containers full ofRusty stuff, unidentifiable piles of rust and plastic. Tallyremembered now that Rusty cities weren’t self-sufficient,and were always trading with one another, when theyweren’t fighting over who had more stuff. They must haveused the flat roller coaster to move trade from town to town.
As the sky began to grow light, Tally heard the soundof the sea in the distance, a faint roar coming from acrossthe horizon. She could smell salt in the air, which broughtback memories of going to the ocean with Ellie and Sol asa littlie.
“Cold is the sea and watch for breaks,” Shay’s note read.
Soon, Tally would be able to see the waves breaking on theshore. Maybe she was close to the next clue.
Tally wondered how much time she’d made up withher new hoverboard. She increased its speed, wrapping herdorm jacket around herself in the predawn chill. The trackwas slowly climbing now, cutting through formations ofchalky rock. She remembered white cliffs towering over theocean, swarming with seabirds nesting in high caves.
Those camping trips with Sol and Ellie felt as if they’dhappened a hundred years ago. She wondered if there wassome operation that could make her back into a littlieagain, forever.
Suddenly, a gap opened up in front of Tally, spanned bya crumbling bridge. An instant later she saw that the bridgedidn’t make it all the way across, and there was no river fullof metal deposits beneath it to catch her. Just a precipitousdrop to the sea.
Tally spun her board sideways into a skid. Her kneesbent under the force of braking, her grippy shoes squealingas they slipped across the riding surface, her body turningalmost parallel to the ground.
148 Scott WesterfeldBut the ground was gone.
A deep chasm opened up under her, a fissure cut intothe cliffs by the sea. Boiling waves crashed into the narrowchannel, their whitecaps glowing in the darkness, theirhungry roars reaching her ears. The board’s metal-detectorlights flickered out one by one as Tally left the splinteredend of the iron bridge behind.
She felt the board lose purchase, slipping downward.
A thought flashed through her mind: If she jumpednow, she could make a grab for the end of the brokenbridge. But then the hoverboard would tumble into thechasm behind her, leaving her stranded.
The board finally halted in its slide out into midair, butTally was still descending. The last fingers of the crumblingbridge were above her now, out of reach. The board incheddownward, metal-detector lights flickering off one by oneas the magnets lost their grip. She was too heavy. Tallyslipped off the knapsack, ready to hurl it down. But howcould she survive without it? Her only choice would be toreturn to the city for more supplies, which would lose twomore days. A cold wind off the ocean blew up the chasm,goose-pimpling her arms like the chill of death.
But the breeze buoyed the hoverboard, and for amoment she neither rose nor fell. Then the board started toslip downward again. . . .
Tally thrust her hands into the pockets of her jacketand spread her arms, making a sail to catch the wind. AUGLIES 149stronger gust struck, lifting her slightly, taking some weightoff the board, and one of the metal-detector lights flickeredstronger.
Like a bird with outstretched wings, she began to rise.
The lifters gradually regained purchase on the track,until the hoverboard had brought her level with the brokenend of the bridge. She coaxed it carefully back over the cliff’sedge, a huge shiver passing through her body as the boardpassed over solid ground. Tally stepped off, legs shaking.
“Cold is the sea and watch for breaks,” she said hoarsely.
How could she have been so stupid, speeding up just whenShay’s note said to be careful?
Tally collapsed onto the ground, suddenly dizzy andtired. Her mind replayed the chasm opening up, the wavesbelow smashing indifferently against the jagged rocks. Shecould have been down there, battered again and again untilthere was nothing left.
This was the wild, she reminded herself. Mistakes hadserious consequences.
Even before Tally’s heart had stopped pounding, her stomachgrowled.
She reached into her knapsack for the water purifier,which she’d filled at the last river, and emptied the mucktrap.
A spoonful of brown sludge that it had filtered fromthe water glopped out. “Eww,” she said, opening the top topeer in. It looked clear, and smelled like water.
150 Scott WesterfeldShe took a much needed drink, but saved most to makedinner, or breakfast, whatever it was. Tally planned to domost of her traveling at night, letting the hoverboardrecharge in sunlight, wasting no time.
Reaching into the waterproof bag, she pulled out a foodpacket at random. “‘SpagBol,’” she read from the label, andshrugged. Unwrapped, it looked and felt like a finger-sizeknot of dried yarn. She dropped it into the purifier, whichmade burbling noises as it came to a boil.
When Tally glanced out at the glowing horizon, hereyes opened wide. She’d never seen dawn from outside thecity before. Like most uglies, she was rarely up earlyenough, and in any case the horizon was always hiddenbehind the skyline of New Pretty Town. The sight of a realsunrise amazed her.
A band of orange and yellow ignited the sky, gloriousand unexpected, as spectacular as fireworks, but changingat a stately, barely perceptible pace. That’s how things wereout here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful.
Or both.
The purifier pinged. Tally opened the top and lookedinside. It was noodles with a red sauce, with small kernelsof soymeat, and it smelled delicious. She looked at the labelagain. “SpagBol . . . spaghetti Bolognese!”
She found a fork in the knapsack and ate hungrily.
With the sunrise warming her and the crash of the sea rumblingbelow, it was the best meal she’d had for ages.
UGLIES 151F F FThe hoverboard still had some charge left, so after breakfastshe decided to keep moving. She reread the first few linesof Shay’s note:
Take the coaster straight past the gap,until you find one that’s long and flat.
Cold is the sea and watch for breaks.
At the second make the worst mistake.
If “the second” meant a second broken bridge, Tallywanted to run into it in daylight. If she’d spotted the gap asplit second later, she would have ended up so muchSpagBol at the bottom of the cliffs.
But her first problem was getting across the chasm. Itwas much wider than the gap in the roller coaster, definitelytoo far to jump. Walking looked like the only way around.
She hiked inland through the scrubby grass, her legs gratefulfor a stretch after the long night on board. Soon thechasm closed, and an hour later she had hiked back up theother side.
Tally flew much slower now, eyes fixed ahead, daringonly an occasional glimpse at the view around her.
Mountains rose up on her right, tall enough that snowcapped their tops even in the early autumn chill. Tally hadalways thought of the city as huge, a whole world in itself,but the scale of everything out here was so much grander.
152 Scott WesterfeldAnd so beautiful. She could see why people used to live outin nature, even if there weren’t any party towers or mansions.
Or even dorms.
The thought of home, however, reminded Tally howmuch her sore muscles would love a hot bath. She imagineda giant bathtub, like they had in New Pretty Town,with whirlpool jets and a big packet of massage bubblesdissolving in it. She wondered if the water purifier couldboil enough water to fill a tub, in the unlikely event that shefound one. How did they bathe in the Smoke? Tally wonderedwhat she’d smell like when she arrived, after dayswithout a bath. Was there soap in the survival kit?
Shampoo? There certainly weren’t any towels. Tally hadnever realized how much stuff she’d needed before.
The second break in the track came up after anotherhour: a crumbling bridge over a river that snaked downfrom the mountains.
Tally came to a controlled stop and peered over theedge. The drop wasn’t as bad as the first chasm, but it wasstill deep enough to be deadly. Too wide to jump. Hikingaround it would take forever. The river gorge stretchedaway, with no easy way down in sight.
“At the second make the worst mistake,” she murmured.
Some clue. Anything she did right now would be a mistake.
Her brain was too tired to handle this, and the boardwas short on power, anyway.
UGLIES 153Midmorning, it was time to sleep.
But first she had to unfold the hoverboard. The Specialwho’d instructed her had explained that it needed as muchsurface area in the sun as possible while it recharged. Shepulled the release tabs, and it came apart. It opened like abook in her hands, becoming two hoverboards, then eachof those opened up, and then those, unfolding like a stringof paper dolls. Finally, Tally had eight hoverboards connectedside-to-side, twice as wide as she was tall, no thickerthan a stiff sheet of paper. The whole thing fluttered in thestiff ocean breeze like a giant kite, though the board’s magnetskept it from blowing away.
Tally laid it flat, stretched out in the sun, where itsmetallic surface turned jet black as it drank in solar energy.
In a few hours it would be charged up and ready to rideagain. She just hoped it would go back together as easily asit had pulled apart.
Tally pulled out her sleeping bag, yanked it out of itspack, and wriggled inside, still in her clothes. “Pajamas,”
she added to her list of things she missed about the city.
She made a pillow of her jacket, struggled out of hershirt, and covered her head with it. She could already feel ahint of burn on her nose, and realized she had forgotten tostick on a sunblock patch after daybreak. Perfect. A littlered and flaking skin should go quite nicely with thescratches on her ugly face.
Sleep didn’t come. The day was getting warm, and it154 Scott Westerfeldfelt weird lying there in the open. The cries of seabirds rangin her head. Tally sighed and sat up. Maybe if she had alittle more to eat.
She pulled out food packets one by one. The labelsread:
SpagBolSpagBolSpagBolSpagBolSpagBol . . .
Tally counted forty-one more packets, enough for threeSpagBols a day for two weeks. She leaned back and closedher eyes, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you, Dr. Cable.”
A few minutes later, Tally was asleep.