Shay

Shay shows up in Tally's life right after Peris turns Pretty. They become friends fast, but they think differently. Tally is counting down to the surgery. Shay finds it strange that everyone comes out of the operation the same, inside and out.

She has a plan: run away to the Smoke, a free community far from the city, led by David. Shay asks Tally to come along. Tally says no.

To Shay, the city buys people's peace with a pretty face. She can't explain everything the operation does, but she senses that whoever comes back from it isn't the same person, and Peris is living proof of that for Tally.

Shay goes through with it and disappears before her 16th birthday. Her escape has consequences for the one left behind: Dr. Cable uses Tally to reach her and sends her to the Smoke as a spy.

Shay doesn't know. As far as she can tell, Tally just changed her mind and came after her.

Shay picks freedom with no guarantees, trading the comfortable city life for a place she only knows from rumors.

When Cable's troops attack the Smoke, the truth about Tally comes out and the trust between them breaks. Shay is among the rebels taken back to the city.

Tally and David put together a rescue to get the prisoners out.

Being betrayed by her best friend hurts more than being captured. Shay had risked everything by inviting Tally to the Smoke, and it was through Tally that the city found it.

The rescue works, but it comes too late for Shay. She has already had the surgery and no longer remembers the cause she ran away for.

David's mother has the last piece of the cure and refuses to use it on Shay. It's because of her friend that Tally decides to be the test subject.

The other prisoners walk free, all but her. Shay now drifts through the city like the other Pretties, smiling and empty, without the suspicion that made her run. For Tally, the scar she keeps on her hand at the end is also a promise not to forget her friend.

Shay got her own graphic novel in 2012, Uglies: Shay's Story, by Scott Westerfeld and Devin Grayson, which retells the first book from her point of view. In the movie she is played by Brianne Tju.