“And running water. A flagrant display of excess resources.”
“Is that what this is all about?” It suddenly hit me: were the fancy clothes and jewelry, the money this cost all for show? A display of waste because they could, including the three stories of empty air above us, which on Mars would have been filled with floors, rooms, equipment, or oxygen-generating vegetation?
“Not all,” Charles said. “But mostly, I think.”
“Huh.” I looked around with new eyes, mentally putting price tags on everything. Yeah, somebody was showing off here. The school wanted to impress the parents and investors, and the students were all trying to impress one another.
“It’s kind of small,” Angelyn said. She had stopped beside me and was also looking around, but her gaze was narrow, appraising, skeptical: she had seen better. “I guess there’s only so much you can do at a school. My parents have thrown some really epic parties.”
“What for?” I blurted.
Angelyn looked at me with that expression people got when I’d said something strange and alien. “Because it’s fun,” she said.
Fun? I wondered. All that effort, preparation, expense, anxiety—and it was supposed to be fun?
I must have looked astonished, because she said, “Do you really not have parties on Mars?”
“We do,” I said, defensive. “We have concerts and birthdays and holidays and everything. It’s usually just getting together in one of the atrium gardens and hanging out and eating.”
“Then it’s the same thing,” she said, smiling. “Relax and enjoy yourself.”
Right. I felt like I was accelerating into an asteroid field.
When Ethan spotted us, he came over to say hello. He must have arrived earlier and had been here the whole time, clustered with another group of students and talking. He looked happy to see me.
“Wow, Polly, you look great!” He looked me up and down, and I wanted to cross my arms and hide. The whole point was for people to look at me, right? And suddenly my hair itched and my dress felt crooked. I wanted to fidget. But I smiled. With my friends around me, the place didn’t feel so alien.
“Thanks,” I managed to get out before I completely folded in on myself. “So do you.”
He was wearing a steel gray suit with a red waistcoat, which made him look tall, confident, and rich. Ethan Achebe of the Zeusian Mining Enterprise Achebes. It all made sense. He was here as a symbol for his whole family.
And Charles and I were a symbol of Mars. What the heck did people see when they looked at us? The rugged young man in the alien brown uniform and the girl who looked like a dust-filled sunset?
“Charles, why didn’t you dress up?” Ethan asked.
“This is dressed up, on Mars,” he said. Ethan waited for further explanation, but Charles remained silent. He wasn’t going to explain himself.
We all looked grown-up. It was like we were getting glimpses of the people we’d be in ten years. Daunting.
“Oh, my parents are here!” Angelyn exclaimed, and ran off.
I looked to see where she went: a man and woman, obviously her parents. She had the man’s refined chin and nose and the woman’s long legs and dark hair. They were dressed just as spectacularly as she was, him in a tailored black suit and her in a shimmering dark dress.
Two parents. And to think, Mom handled both me and Charles all by herself. Charles had planted himself like a guard at the edge of the room, watching everything. Ethan and I were suddenly by ourselves, side by side. And that was okay, I decided.
“You have any family here?” Ethan asked.
“No. At least not that I know of. When my grandfather left for Mars, he pretty much cut all his ties to Earth. How about you?”
“I’ve got a cousin who runs the trading office here on Earth. She’s supposed to be here. I’ve never met her. But you know, family’s family. I’m sure she’s great. And my parents will want her to check up on me.”
If we had any family on Earth, none of us knew about it. Grandpa Newton abandoned everything, changed his name, and helped found Colony One. We just had Mom back on Mars, and an anonymous, medically selected sperm donor for a father. I had never felt the lack of a biological family. On Mars, we were all family, in a way. This whole biology thing seemed … contrived. We’d beaten biology just by living on Mars at all. But the connections seemed very important here.
Ethan’s cousin found him, then. Wearing silky trousers and a tailored jacket in bright colors, she was short, stocky, and vibrant, with brown skin and a wide smile. She didn’t look anything like Ethan, who stood tall, dark, and spindly beside her. That didn’t seem to matter; she hugged him and gushed over him all the same.
Catering staff in spiffy suits seemed to be running the whole thing. Stage-managing it, even. After a stretch of time in which everyone got drinks and we all stood around talking and complimenting one another, we were guided to assigned seats at the tables. Charles and I were placed at a table with Angelyn and her parents, a serious-looking couple, and an Earth student I didn’t know well and his parents.
I wasn’t sure, but Charles and I might have been the only students here who didn’t have an adult relative with us. Even Boris from the Moon had Earth family looking out for him. It made me feel like we’d sneaked in, and as soon as someone discovered us, we’d get thrown out.