"Stick! Hey, wait up!"

The girl on the hoverboard didn't even look back.

"I don't hear you when you call me that," she reminded.

"Lee. Lee Cable! Stop a second, would you?"

Lee banked her board to a standstill and waited for her friend to glide slowly to a halt.

"How do you do that?" he asked.

"It just takes practise." Lee had a lot of practise. She boarded every day she got the chance, and, since she had learned how to trick her board to get around the minders, every night too.

"Stick –"

"Lee," she corrected, for the twenty-third time that evening.

"What does it matter?" he asked, a similarly frequent occurrence on this trip. "I mean, I don't care if you call me Pegleg."

"It matters, Sol, because those are our ugly names," she explained once more. "Once we find our way out of this town, we won't be uglies any more."

"What, the Wild will make us Pretty?"

That was his next line, the same argument they had been having for the past week. Sol just didn't understand what she really meant: it was the city that chose who was ugly and who was Pretty. Without that, they could just be people – just Sol Youngblood and Lee Cable.

And nothing would have to change.

But Sol wasn't sticking to his usual argument.

"Actually, that was what I stopped you for. You do realise we're almost at the boundary again? The boards won't work much further."

Lee forced herself not to roll her eyes. Of course she knew they were at the boundary. She had wiped out more times than she could count testing its limits, and she knew the shape of invisible border like the scratches on the back of her hand. But that didn't mean she didn't believe that there had to be some way past it.

"I'm telling you, Lee, there's no way out of this town on a board." And on foot was too slow to avoid capture – plenty of uglies had proved that in the past. "They just don't work off the grid."

A flash of inspiration hit Lee.

"Sol, you genius! Where do hoverboards work off the grid?"

He looked at her, blank and uncomprehending.

"We have to try the river!"

"Stick – Lee – wait!"

But she was already gone.

By the time Sol caught up again, they were nearly at the point where the river passed through the green belt. Further downstream, the waters crawled with party boats and pleasure cruisers, but here only the quiet bubbling of the water below broke the silence of the city at night.

"Please, Lee," Sol whispered, even though there was no-one to overhear him. "Think about this. If the board stops working there aren't any minders. You could drown."

Lee hesitated for a second, and Sol continued.

"Think about this. Is this really how you want to spend your last night as an ugly?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Without saying a word, Lee's face hardened, and she sped up the river as fast as her board would take her, leaving Sol with no choice but to follow.

Lee flew. With Sol wobbling and weaving in her wake, she dipped and turned with the river, drinking in the sheer exhilaration of the rough water beneath her and the wind around her. It was wild and euphoric, something no pretty had ever experienced, and in this moment it was all hers.

Until it was over.

The river calmed again, and she reluctantly came to a stop.

"Wow!" Sol pulled up beside her. "That was brilliant! Totally wild! Lee, you're amazing."

She glanced back over her shoulder at the distant city lights. They had come a long way, further than she had expected. The wild stretched out unbroken before them, bigger than anything she had known could exist.

"What's that?" she pointed at a faint shape on the horizon. She could have been imagining it, but it looked like a city.

Sol hadn't heard her over the river. "We have to try that again. Come on, let's head back."

"No." She spoke louder than she had intended. "I'm not going back."

"But – Lee." Sol's expression grew serious. "Lee, everyone gets nervous about the Operation, but where are you going to go? You don't have any food, any shelter –are you going to eat animals and burn trees like some Rusty? The city is there for a reason. As soon as you're a Pretty everything will be perfect for you."

"You won't be there."

The one thing she hadn't dared to say.

Sol shifted uncomfortably. "It's only two months," he told her. "You won't forget me. We'll be together again soon."

"Come with me. Please." As long as Sol was with her, everything would be okay.

"I can't, Lee." Sol shook his head. "You know I can't. Come on, let's head back."

"No." Lee folded her arms. "I'm not going back yet. I want to go over there."

"But there's no river there. Are you going to carry your board? Lee?"

But Lee had made up her mind. She was going, and Sol knew there was nothing he could say to change her mind.

Well, he was tired of having to follow her on these crazy expeditions. Shaking his head, he turned his board around and headed back to the river.

Lee made her way across the plain, trying to tell herself that the tears gathering in her eyes were merely from the exertion of carrying her board such a long way. Sol had left her. She was on her own now. But she would find somewhere for them both to stay together.

The further she travelled, the more convinced she was that the silhouette in front of her was another city. Had they really travelled that far? She didn't know how to tell. She had never been so far away from other people before, that she was sure of. She was alone in the wilderness now.

But she would find a way to make it hers.

She kept repeating that thought to herself, again and again as the city grew ever closer and her board grew lighter and lighter until finally she got into the air again –

And realised what an idiot she had been.

The Rusty ruins.

She had been there before, on school trips. She knew how close they were. Why had she forgotten?

Now she was alone in a dead and empty city.

Now she knew that there was no place for her in the wild.

The city was her only option. Everything else was death.

The Rusties had proved that, and she would never forget it again.

The next day, Sol Youngblood woke up to a note under his door:

I'm sorry about last night.

You were right. The city is the best place for us to be and when we're Pretties everything will be perfect.

See you in two months.

- Stick

P.S. Show someone the rapids, but don't bother heading across the plain – it's only the Rusty ruins.