“What are you wearing to the banquet?” Angelyn asked me at breakfast abo
ut three weeks after the hiking accident and a couple of weeks before said banquet.
The banquet. Everyone had been talking about it for days. Around the end of the year, the school held a big party for students and their families—Earth families, who didn’t have to travel a couple hundred million kilometers to get here—to celebrate the winter holiday and the halfway point in the year. Apparently, it was a big deal.
I shrugged. “This, I guess.”
“Oh, no. You can’t wear that.”
I looked down at my school uniform. “What else am I supposed to wear?”
“You wear that every day. This has to be special. Didn’t you bring anything nice from home?”
“I could only bring what I could carry. Weight restrictions. I’ve got a couple of shirts and a pair of pants. What do you mean by nice?”
“A dress. Party clothes. Something snappy.”
I didn’t even know what that meant. I stared blankly at her.
“You don’t have anything?” she said.
“It’s at the school. I figure my uniform ought to be fine.”
“No one else will be wearing their uniforms. Seriously Polly, we really need to go shopping.”
I didn’t know how to do that. I kept looking at her like she was speaking a different language, and she sighed, exasperated. “Sit by me at study period tonight and we’ll start looking.”
So that evening instead of studying for biology I sat with Angelyn and looked at dresses on her handheld. The craziest outfits, every color I could imagine and then some, skintight with flounces and ruffles on shoulders, hips, and hems. Shining and sparkling fabric. The whole idea seemed to be to turn people into decorated artwork, because I couldn’t imagine actually functioning in a gown like that. Angelyn scrolled through dozens of them and sighed at every one.
“See anything you like?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t even know what I was supposed to like. “What are you wearing?”
Her eyes got wide and shining as she punched up a new file and showed me a picture. The gown was … beautiful. I couldn’t even say why it was beautiful, I could just tell that it would make Angelyn look gorgeous and slinky and very grown-up. It was midnight blue and made of some fabric that rippled and shimmered across the model’s body, clinging to curves and falling away like water. Its neckline scooped almost to her breasts, and thin straps left her arms bare. Some kind of electronics made spots of light glow and swirl on the skirt, like actual stars. I imagined Angelyn in that dress, with her hair done up like the model’s, in curls that fell in waves over her shoulders. She wouldn’t look like Angelyn anymore.
I wasn’t sure I even had curves. Not like that, anyway. “Wow. I’ve never seen a dress like that.”
“Don’t you have parties on Mars?”
“Of course we do. But everybody just wears their regular clothes.” Importing fancy stuff like this got expensive, especially when there wasn’t much use for it. I’d sound boring, trying to explain that to Angelyn, so I just let it go.
“We’ll find you something, don’t worry. What’s your favorite color?”
Red, I decided. Dark Martian red. Angelyn started searching. She looked me up and down and announced that with my willowy frame I’d look good in something fitted and slinky, with a long skirt. I took her word for it and made a mental note to look up if “willowy” was good or bad.
We narrowed down the choices. She showed me picture after picture and asked me if I liked it or not, and I went with my gut feeling because what else could I do?
Finally, we found one. It had a skirt that flowed, long sleeves, and embroidered swirls on the neckline. It was rust red, like Mars at sunset. Angelyn said it would bring out the color in my complexion. I had never thought much about my complexion until I came to Earth.
Then all we had to do was enter in my measurement scans, pay for it, and have it delivered. It was that easy. Almost.
“There’s a problem,” I said when we got to that part. “I don’t know if I have any money.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know if you have money?”
“I know my mother has money—she had to, to send us here. But I don’t know if I have any. You know?”
“She didn’t give you an allowance? Like spending money?”