"Where'd the piggy go?"
"Here, piggy!"
"The roof, maybe?"
Someone stepped quietly into the elevator, looking back at the search party in bemusement. When he saw her, he jumped. "Goodness, you scared me!" He blinked his long lashes, regarding her masked face, then looked down at his own tailcoat. "Oh, dear.
Wasn't this party white tie?"
Tally's breath caught, her mouth went dry. "Peris?" she whispered.
He looked at her closely.
"Do I…" She started to reach out, but remembered to press back flat against the wall. Her muscles were screaming from standing on tiptoe. "It's me, Peris."
"Here, piggy, piggy!"
He turned toward the voice down the hall, raised his eyebrows, then looked back at her.
"Close door. Hold," he said quickly.
The door slid shut, and Tally stumbled forward. She pulled off her mask to see him better.
It was Peris: his voice, his brown eyes, the way his forehead crinkled when he was confused. But he was so pretty now.
At school, they explained how it affected you. It didn't matter if you knew about evolution or not-it worked anyway. On everyone.
There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big eyes and full lips like a kid's; smooth, clear skin; symmetrical features; and a thousand other little clues.
Somewhere in the backs of their minds, people were always looking for these markers. No one could help seeing them, no matter how they were brought up. A million years of evolution had made it part of the human brain.
The big eyes and lips said: I'm young and vulnerable, I can't hurt you, and you want to protect me. And the rest said: I'm healthy, I won't make you sick. And no matter how you felt about a pretty, there was a part of you that thought: If we had kids, they'd be healthy too. I want this pretty person….
It was biology, they said at school. Like your heart beating, you couldn't help believing all these things, not when you saw a face like this. A pretty face. A face like Peris's.
"It's me," Tally said.
Peris took a step back, his eyebrows rising. He looked down at her clothes.
Tally realized she was wearing her baggy black expedition outfit, muddy from crawling up ropes and through gardens, from falling among the vines. Peris's suit was deep black velvet, his shirt, vest, and tie all glowing white.
She pulled away. "Oh, sorry. I won't get you muddy."
"What are you doing here, Tally?"
"I just-," she sputtered. Now that she was facing him, she didn't know what to say. All the imagined conversations had melted away into his big, sweet eyes. "I had to know if we were still…"
Tally held out her right hand, the scarred palm facing up, sweaty dirt tracing the lines on it.
Peris sighed. He wasn't looking at her hand, or into her eyes. Not into her squinty, narrow-set, indifferently brown eyes. Nobody eyes. "Yeah," he said. "But, I mean-couldn't you have waited, Squint?"
Her ugly nickname sounded strange coming from a pretty. Of course, it would be even weirder to call him Nose, as she used to about a hundred times a day. She swallowed.
"Why didn't you write me?"
"I tried. But it just felt bogus. I'm so different now."
"But we're…" She pointed at her scar.
"Take a look, Tally." He held out his own hand.
The skin of his palm was smooth and unblemished. It was a hand that said: I don't have to work very hard, and I'm too clever to have accidents.
The scar that they had made together was gone.
"They took it away."
"Of course they did, Squint. All my skin's new."
Tally blinked. She hadn't thought of that.
He shook his head. "You're such a kid still."
"Elevator requested," said the elevator. "Up or down?"
Tally jumped at the machine voice.
"Hold, please," Peris said calmly.
Tally swallowed and closed her hand into a fist. "But they didn't change your blood. We shared that, no matter what."
Peris finally looked directly at her face, not flinching as she had feared he would. He smiled beautifully.
"No, they didn't. New skin, big deal. And in three months we can laugh about this.
Unless…"
"Unless what?" She looked up into his big brown eyes, so full of concern.
"Just promise me that you won't do any more stupid tricks," Peris said. "Like coming here. Something that'll get you into trouble. I want to see you pretty."
"Of course."
"So promise me."
Peris was only three months older than Tally, but, dropping her eyes to the floor, she felt like a littlie again. "All right, I promise. Nothing stupid. And they won't catch me tonight, either."