Uglies (post #2)

"Tally brought the hoverboard up to speed, pleased that she'd found the answer. If all of Shay's little riddles were this easy to solve, this whole trip was going to be a breeze" (146).

"Take the coaster straight past the gap,
until you find one that's long and flat.
Cold is the sea and watch for brakes.
At the second make the worst mistake.
Four days later take the side you despise,
and look in the flowers for fire-bug eyes.
Once they're found enjoy the flight,
Then wait on the bald head until it's light" (112).

So I know this is two quotes, but whatever. Tally decided that she would rat out Shay to keep her promise to another friend that she’d turn pretty. That was her rationale. So she went to where the “Specials” worked and told them everything she knew. However, that wasn’t enough. It turned out that they had already made a copy of the note Shay had given Tally before she left to go to the Smoke without Tally’s knowledge. Obviously, Tally was a little confused about what the Specials wanted from her if they already knew everything she did. Tally only knew what the first line of the mysterious note meant, so she didn’t even think she could tell the Specials how to get to the Smoke. Well, as you could probably have figured out just by reading the back cover of the book, the Specials send Tally out alone to find this place and be a spy. Not even her parents know what’s happening when Tally sneaks out like she was told and ventures out to a place that’s referred to as the Rusty Ruins (our old decrepit cities). She “Takes the coaster straight past the gap” which means, as Shay and Tally already have done, that she had to hover board along an old rollercoaster and ride in free fall over a gap in it. She goes straight afterwards and still doesn’t have a clue about what “until you find one that’s long and flat” means. All of a sudden, she finds that she’s riding on an old “rollercoaster” that’s long and flat (a road). She’s confused about what the fun of riding a long, straight, flat rollercoaster would be, but now she’s feeling a little cocky about her ability to interpret the note, which makes me think that later, it won’t be so simple.