Uglies Summary

15-year-old Tally stares morosely at the sunset, which is the pink color of cat vomit. Nothing has looked beautiful since Tally’s best friend, Peris, underwent his pretty operation a few months ago. When it’s dark, Tally sneaks across the bridge from Uglyville, where she and other uglies live, to New Pretty Town, where all the pretties live. Pretty people have big eyes and lips and perfectly symmetrical faces. Tally can’t wait until she’s pretty too. When she finds Peris, he’s not happy to see her. He points out that the scar on his palm from their blood pact to always stick together is gone (he got new skin with the surgery) and he takes Tally to the roof so she can jump off the building using a bungee jacket. Peris makes Tally promise not to get into too much trouble before she has her surgery. Back near the river, Tally meets an ugly girl named Shay waiting to go back across to Uglyville.

Shay and Tally become fast friends. Shay teaches Tally to ride a hoverboard, and unlike most uglies, Shay insists that they use their real names instead of rude nicknames about their features. The girls discover that their birthday is on the same day, meaning they’ll get their pretty surgery at the same time. One afternoon, Tally shows Shay her morphos (composites of what Tally could look like as a pretty). Shay has never made a morpho before, but she grudgingly lets Tally make one of her. She refuses to listen to Tally when Tally points out that pretty surgery is the only way to create a fair society. Not long after, Shay convinces Tally to take a night ride to the Rusty Ruins, the remains of a Rusty city. At the ruins, Shay leads Tally to what she calls a roller coaster and tells Tally that they can hoverboard on it. Then, Shay rides to the top of a building and lights a sparkler. She confirms that it’s a signal—she’s looking for a boy named David, who’s an ugly but doesn’t live in the city. A little while later, Tally and Shay fight about the merits of becoming pretty. Shay remains firm that they’ve been programmed to think they’re ugly, while Tally accuses Shay of not wanting to grow up. The girls don’t talk until a week before their birthday. Shay sneaks into Tally’s dorm and says she’s going to meet David in a place called the Smoke, where people never receive pretty surgery. Tally refuses to go with Shay because she desperately wants to be pretty. Before Shay leaves, she swears Tally to secrecy and gives her handwritten, coded directions in case Tally decides she wants to follow.

On Tally’s 16th birthday, she waits at the hospital for an hour until a middle pretty who looks cruel and scary fetches her. He takes Tally to a group of squat buildings and introduces her to a cruel woman named Dr. Cable. Dr. Cable wants to know about Shay and the Smoke, and she explains that this place is called Special Circumstances. Special Circumstances acts as a hidden police force, and it’s imperative that they crack down on people who live outside of cities because those people want to steal uglies away. Tally shares that she’s never met anyone from outside the cities and she insists she can’t help, but Dr. Cable says that Tally won’t become pretty until she complies. Tally returns to her dorm in Uglyville. Soon, her parents, Sol and Ellie, visit. Ellie insists that Tally has no choice but to cooperate with Special Circumstances, and for the first time, Tally doesn’t find her parents comforting. For the next few days, Tally hoverboards by night and sleeps by day. One morning, she returns to her room to find Peris. He insists that Tally give Shay up so that Tally can keep her promise to always stick with him. Relieved but upset, Tally sends a message to Dr. Cable.

Tally tells Dr. Cable everything she knows about David and the Smoke, but she doesn’t know any more than Special Circumstances does. Dr. Cable gives Tally survival supplies and a heart-shaped pendant that contains a tracking device, and she insists that Tally must go to the Smoke and relay her location. Tally starts her journey that night, following Shay’s coded poem. She rides the roller coaster in the Rusty Ruins, finds train tracks that lead to the sea, and crosses chasms at the coast. She follows a river upstream and decides to bathe in it. The water is exhilarating, but a huge, scary flying machine flies past and startles Tally. The following day, Tally reaches fields of white flowers. Tally sleeps, but wakes up to discover that the field is on fire. Pretties wearing masks rescue her and take her into a helicopter. One pretty, Tonk, explains that they burn the flowers, which are white tiger orchids, because the Rusties made them invasive. The orchids are so successful that they crowd out and kill everything—and eventually create a wasteland. They drop Tally off at a hill, and the next morning, Shay and two other Smokies arrive. One of them, a slightly older ugly boy, is David. He checks Tally for tracking devices, pulls one off her hoverboard, and then leads the group back to the Smoke.

Life in the Smoke is shocking: the Smokies burn wood and cut down trees, and none of them are pretties. Tally is extremely disturbed when Shay introduces her to the Boss, a 40-year-old ugly who runs the library. He’s so wrinkly and decrepit that Tally can barely look at him. Shay introduces Tally to the Boss’s collection of Rusty-era magazines, which have pictures of ugly people flaunting their disgustingly flawed bodies. That afternoon, Tally joins David and Shay as they work on pulling up train tracks: they need the metal to create paths for their hoverboards. David leads Tally up the tracks to show her a caved-in tunnel. There, he explains that he’s not a runaway—he was born in the Smoke. His parents are doctors who ran away from the city and reversed their operations. Tally is caught between wishing she contacted Dr. Cable when she had the chance and wondering if she should never contact Dr. Cable. She understands now that this is David’s home, and it’d be horrendous if she destroyed it.

Tally spends several weeks in the Smoke. Shay notices Tally’s pendant and suggests that Tally got a boyfriend in the week before her birthday, and Tally doesn’t correct her. Tally enjoys life in the Smoke. She gets used to the wood, the different bodies, and the hard work. One morning, as they hoverboard to the train tracks, David gifts Tally a pair of gloves he made. At work that day, Tally encounters a boy named Croy who lets Tally know that he suspects she’s a spy—and Tally’s day gets even worse when at lunch, Shay cries that Tally is “stealing” David. Tally agrees to talk to David, so when he asks her to step outside that night, Tally agrees. Rather than tell the truth, Tally clams up when David says he admires her for her loyalty to Shay. Tally feels attracted to David, something she didn’t think was possible since David is ugly. David says that he’s aware Tally isn’t sold on life in the Smoke, but he asks that she meet his parents before she leaves.

David leads Tally to his parents’ house and introduces his mom, Maddy, and his dad, Az. They share with Tally that when they were young surgeons, they conducted research about how to make the pretty operation safer. Az discovered that a side effect of the anesthesia was brain lesions—but as they pursued their research, they discovered that while most pretties had the lesions, people with jobs that required them to make decisions didn’t. As doctors, Maddy and Az didn’t have them. David says that pretty people are placid and uninteresting because the lesions change how they think. Maddy says that Special Circumstances stepped in before she and Az could come up with a cure on their own, but they know there is a cure since all pretties start their pretty lives with lesions. This makes Tally understand the importance of the Smoke. On their walk home, David tells Tally that he thinks she’s beautiful. Tally is shocked—she didn’t think it was possible to be attracted to an ugly person. However, she and David share a kiss, and it feels meaningful and real. Suddenly exhilarated, Tally throws Dr. Cable’s pendant in the fire. She decides she’s going to stay in the Smoke and accept any fallout for stealing David from Shay.

The next morning, Tally wakes up to discover Special Circumstances raiding the Smoke. She sneaks out, but because she’s barefoot, the Boss doesn’t let her try to smuggle a duffel bag full of Rusty magazines out of the Smoke. A Special catches Tally and throws her in the rabbit pen with other Smokies. Right after Shay arrives in the pen, Specials scan Tally’s eye, identify her, and take her to Dr. Cable. Dr. Cable is annoyed that Tally took so long, explains that the pendant would’ve activated if it’d been damaged, and asks where the pendant is. Tally says she hid it on a roof, so Dr. Cable sends a Special out with Tally to fetch it. Tally tricks the Special into cutting her handcuffs and letting her get close to a hoverboard, which allows Tally to escape. She hoverboards barefoot to the railroad cave, where she finds David. They hide all night, and the next morning they discover that the Specials burned the Smoke. They then visit Maddy and Az’s house and discover that they’re gone. Impossibly guilty, Tally insists they must rescue everyone. She decides that she’ll tell David the truth after she’s made things better.

David raids his parents’ cache of survival equipment, and the next night, he and Tally set out. They travel by night for two weeks. Then, they sneak into the city and look down into the Special Services compound. Tally explains to David that they can’t hoverboard over the fence and they can’t touch the ground—both are sensors—but they can steal bungee jackets and jump onto a roof. After they steal jackets and return to the ruins, they discover three uglies—Sussy, An, and Dex—looking for David. The uglies agree to help Tally and David with their trick. The next night, when Tally and David see the uglies’ diversion—they send up a message that says “THE SMOKE LIVES” over New Pretty Town—they jump into the Special Services compound, break into the biggest building, and sneak into the elevator shaft. On the bottom floor, they’re shocked to discover Dr. Cable and Shay, who’s now pretty. However, they have the element of surprise on their side—David hits Dr. Cable over the head and knocks her out. While David frees the other captive Smokies, Shay thanks Tally for getting her back to the city. She loves being pretty. Tally is distraught. Maddy leads the charge out of the building and when David asks where Az is, Maddy reveals that he’s dead.

The next day, the Smokies and Shay convene at the Rusty Ruins. Maddy and David reveal that Maddy stole the information she needs to develop a cure. For 20 days, she works while Tally and the other Smokies spread the news that the pretty operation changes people’s brains. Finally, Maddy sits Shay down and asks her to take the pills. Shay refuses—she’s happy, loves being pretty, and has no interest in experiencing jealousy or paranoia. Tally is incensed, but Maddy refuses to let Tally sneak Shay the pills. Maddy insists that doing so would make them as bad as the city government that performed the operation on Shay without her permission. David also states that Az died because he was the victim of Dr. Cable’s experimental procedure to alter people’s memories. When Maddy reiterates that they need a willing test subject, Tally offers herself up. She tells David the truth—that she was a spy and gave away the Smoke—and says that she’ll go to the city, receive her operation, and return to test the pills. Maddy agrees, but she makes Tally put her consent in writing before she and Shay return to the city.

Tally is conflicted. She wants to return Shay to the person she knows Shay wanted to be, but she also knows that that version of Shay will hate her for betraying the Smoke. When Tally and Shay come across a warden, Tally introduces herself and says she wants to be pretty.