…And then, he turned it on.

I was speechless. All the burn marks, all the scars, all the mis-shapen tan lines and freckles, they were all completely gone.

“Wow, you really weren’t kidding!” I said.

“I’m a genius,” Rod agreed.

My eyes were now blue instead of brown. My face was more shapely. My hair was silvery white. All totally flawless.

“It’s… it’s even better than I imagined,” I said, looking at my clean, white, perfect hands.

“Just don’t get too much in love with the prince,” he said. He said it as a joke, but I could feel the tension in his voice.

“Don’t worry, Rod, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

I arrived at the party wearing my new dress. The holographic disguise made it change colors subtly depending on the ambient lighting. Right now it was light blue.

My silvery hair was in a loose bun, and I had put a real string of pearls in my hair. I was also wearing my favourite necklace – it had been my mother’s.

I quickly spotted my stepmother in the crowd. She was next to a chocolate fountain, talking to a fat nobleman with a snooty face and impressively large sideburns.

This place had a large round floor and several smaller rooms around the edges, and a huge glass domed ceiling which had a really great view of the galaxy. It was the fanciest space station I’d ever seen. The angular beams in the ceiling were gilded with pure rhodium.

In the very center of the floor stood the prince – prince Cli, the only son of King Fer and Queen Mar. All the girls my age were swamping him like a cloud of belligerent butterflies. I must say, he was handling the attention pretty well.

And then he looked at me.

All the eyes in the room suddenly turned to me. I wasn’t used to being looked at this much! I was more of a background girl. The kind that fixed your spaceship while you were having a good time in the pub.

I just smiled and descended the steps onto the floor, acting as if nobody was watching. I made toward the edge of the crowd of girls, but they all seemed to part in front of me, and the prince bowed to me, and I curtsied, exposing my glass shoes.

The one thing Rod hadn’t been able to figure out was how to disguise my shoes. So he had made me real ones instead, out of solid titanium silicate. Very strong and glittery like diamonds. I couldn’t believe he had gone to all this trouble just for a silly dare. A prank, really.

And then the prince and I were shaking hands, and he asked me if I wanted to dance, and naturally I did. He didn’t even ask me my name, he just gazed into my startlingly blue eyes. I pretended to gaze into his, but I was really focusing on his slightly asymmetrical nose.

This was all because Rod needed something to test his experimental holographic disguiser on. I knew my stepmom and sisters were going to this party, but I was just planning to stay home and work on my vintage StarCruiser 560. Until Sta had mentioned offhandedly that I could probably come if I had a pretty enough dress. Then Fri had dared me to. In fact, she dared me to dance with the prince, and I simply couldn’t pass up a challenge like that!

It was about 22:30 when I showed up. I had timed it so I would get there a little before the dancing started. It had worked flawlessly. When the prince had seen my perfect features, he had eyes for nobody else. He remarked on the lovely shade of my hair, my lovely skin, my lovely dress (which was now light pink). He remarked on how the deep blue of my eyes complimented the deep blue of space. I just batted my perfect eyelashes and told him how much I appreciated the compliments.

Five dances later, my ankles and knees were getting sore (I didn’t usually wear high heels), so I suggested we sit by the fountain and talk. It was a heart-shaped fountain with a statue of a cherub playing a harp in the middle. The top of the heart was just the right place for two people to sit and admire the view out the windows.

The prince still wasn’t expressing the slightest interest in anyone else. This was going to get pretty bad when I left. I was too perfect for my own good.

Somehow, amidst the talk of the night and the fine view out the window, we ended up talking about my shoes. He seemed fascinated that they were made of glass. It was evidently quite the novelty. And indeed, nobody at the party was wearing sparklier shoes. They had made quite the splash.

He asked to see one, and I obligingly took one off for him to see. He turned it over in his hands, appraising it like he might a fine jewel. There were a couple of minor scratches from all the dancing, but it was still just as strong as ever. The titanium silicate had done its job admirably well. “Who made this?” he asked.

It was half an hour before midnight, and it was looking as if I was going to have to stay here all night if I didn’t get out of there quick.

“Your highness, I regret to inform you that I will no longer be available this evening, due to a prior engagement.”

He looked up at me, surprised. “You’re leaving? But that’s just too bad! Why can’t you stay?”

“I do regret incurring your displeasure. I assure you that it pains me much more than you to leave.”

“Well, if you have to go… how about a little kiss?” he whispered.

There were about fifty girls within earshot of us, including my own sisters and stepmother.

“I… unfortunately, I must leave immediately.” I took off my other shoe and walked away, barefoot, across the floor.

He wasn’t to be deterred that easily. He grabbed my arm and pulled me close. I could feel his breath on my face. “My sweet darling. You little angel. You’re the prettiest girl I ever saw.”

I pulled away from him, half-afraid that he would feel the rough surface of my skin underneath the holographic disguise. I really didn’t want to embarrass myself just then.

I’ve never been particularly good at goodbyes, but that night was one of my worst.

I ran.

Everyone seemed to collectively gasp. The prince just stood there in shock for a second. Nobody said or did anything. But then, there was a second gasp as he took off after me. My heart was pounding harder than a fusion reactor. Everyone seemed frozen in time as the prince and I sped across the dance floor and out the entrance doors.

The prince was still hot on my heels when I jumped into Rod’s SpaceFlyer and slammed the door. He sped away before I could even buckle my seat harness, leaving the prince standing on the edge of the platform, vainly trying to reach after us. After me.

“So… how did it go?” Rod asked.

“A little… too well,” I said.

---

When Rod turned off the holographic disguise, it was a mild shock. I looked so… so normal. So much like me. My starburned face, the freckles all over my nose. My slightly-too-large chin. It was so familiar it was weird.

As I combed out my shaggy, greasy brown hair, Rod asked me where my other shoe was.

“I gave it to the prince.” I told him how I had ran away.

“That’s too bad. I was planning to keep them. Good thing we still have one.”

“I think I ruined the party,” I said, looking at my freckled, scarred hands. They contrasted nicely with the spotless white dress I was still wearing.

“Well, at least we know the holographic disguise works.”

“Yeah, but next time, I think you should make it a little less… perfect.”

-EPILOGUE-

The prince offered up a bounty for the first person who correctly identified the shoe. It ended up going to some girl who lived on the other side of the galaxy who looked a lot like me. She and the prince made a nice pair. I was there at the wedding, with my stepmom and sisters. They had no idea why I was grinning the whole time.

And they never did realize that it was I who had been the pretty girl at the party. And I certainly wasn’t telling.