Body of Stars Read online

  “Thanks,” she said. “Now go and clean yourselves up, both of you. You’ve dredged up enough of a mess for one day.”

  Miles and I did not return to our game that afternoon. Instead, we passed the hours in a humid summertime blur: we listened to the radio, we let ice pops drip onto our wrists, we sprawled on the living room floor in front of the fan. Eventually, Miles retreated to his room. I sat by the living room window, watching the sky darken to a deep cobalt. Shadows fell on the other houses in the neighborhood, making them appear desolate and gray, as if they’d aged decades in an instant.

  All the while, I remained aware of the unfinished game, my brother’s response languishing in the basement. Truth or lie. I pictured his answer as a living thing waiting in the falling light, calling for my return. Asking me to bear witness.

  * * *

  * * *

  My descent into the basement that evening was the first step toward everything else—I can see that now—but at the time, I was simply inching forward in the dark, uncertain and on my own.

  At the bottom of the basement stairs, I paused to allow my eyes to adjust. I thought of Miles as I waited, and how he’d grown unknowable during our game. For the first time, I understood he was capable of keeping a real secret, something that carried far more significance than anything we expressed in a game, and I worried what that could mean. There in the cool draft of the underground, an unnamed anxiety stirred to life inside me—alarm for my brother and what else he might one day hide from me.

  The basement was lit by a lone, buzzing bulb, its weak illumination barely reaching the corner where earlier we’d sat coated in dust. I crept in that direction, my senses wired and alert. Finally, under the cover of cobwebs, I arrived at the word etched in the dirt. Miles had written his answer in all capitals, a message foretelling his impending deception as well as my own.

  LIE, the answer read.

  My first glimpse of the truth.

  Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls

  Universal Marking Locations, Back View

  1. Disease and Disorder

  2. Spirituality

  3. Joy and Mirth

  4. Finances

  5. Aging Process

  6. Domestic Matters

  7. Emotional Health

  8. Intellect

  9. Honesty

  10. Career

  11. Love and Romance

  12. Benevolence

  13. Self-Esteem

  2

  By a trick of fate, I was born exactly two years after Miles, giving us a shared birthday. Sometimes I imagined we were twins, that we were separated by neither time nor space. We looked enough alike to make twinhood seem possible: hair the same walnut color, hazel eyes shaded more brown than green, and even the same eyebrows and ear shape, as if I’d been stamped out as his copy two years too late. I was always chasing those two years, trying to catch up to my brother as if I could outsmart time itself.

  That year, summer flared into autumn abruptly, moving from heat to frost with little transition. The first cool day in September was a shock, the chill rendering the air unfamiliar. I remember it so clearly because that was the day Miles asked me to walk with him to interpretation class. His teacher, Julia, wanted to see me before I matured to my adult markings. I’d only met Julia once before, but I’d heard things about her—that she was skilled as an interpreter, though her methods were unorthodox—and I was curious what she had to say to me, a near stranger.

  It was late afternoon, the time of day when sunlight pooled gold and the trees were alight with bird chatter. Miles walked just ahead of me through our neighborhood, Mapping the Future tucked under his arm. I tried to keep up but remained a step or two behind. My legs were long, but his were longer. We were the same, and we were not.

  He was worried about being late; I understood that without him having to say so. As the first and only male student in Julia’s class, he needed to work twice as hard to be taken seriously.

  “We’ll make it,” I assured him, but we’d only just left our street and had more than a mile to go. We lived in an older neighborhood situated on the edge of downtown. It was a community of sidewalks and hedgerows, but the homes were packed together, and some showed their age. One of the houses neighboring ours dropped peels of paint like a great shedding birch, and another had plywood nailed against its upper windows. Only a few blocks away, the lawns grew green and lush, the houses bearing pillars and turrets and, in one case, a pair of lion statues flanking the walkway, their mouths cracked open in perpetual roars.

  We crossed into the downtown city limits, where the streets narrowed and minuscule plants flourished in the sidewalk cracks. Broken parts sprouting new growth, decay layered with whimsy—these were the first signs we were approaching the interpretation district. A wrought iron arch reading Future as Fate marked the entrance. Once we passed under it, we entered a maze of cobblestone streets lined with crooked rows of townhouses. The upper floors of these townhouses served as residences, while interpretation businesses occupied the street level, their windows uncovered so customers could peer inside.

  The interpretation district was half serious, half farce. Both real and facetious interpretation took place there, with professionals like Julia coexisting alongside pseudo interpreters who hung neon signs and distributed coupons on the street. The crystal balls, palm readings, tea leaves, tarot cards, dream interpretation—they were nothing but theater. Only the markings were true.

  As Miles and I made our way down the main street, the contents of the storefront windows flashed in the corner of my eye. Lights, lace, crystals, the cheap rattle of beaded curtains—these were the trappings of fantasy. I found myself telling Miles about the girls I knew at school who patronized these businesses for a laugh. They delighted in the outlandish predictions false interpreters dreamed up: improbable romances, financial windfalls, adventure.

  “Some of us are considering coming here for readings after we pass to our adult markings,” I said.

  Miles shook his head. “Don’t waste your money. Besides, visiting the interpretation district as a changeling is dangerous.”

  “Only at night.”

  “Maybe. But it’s still too much of a risk.”

  He was referring to how newly changed girls—especially bold girls, or reckless girls, or vulnerable girls from damaged families—were more likely to disappear after dark in the interpretation district. As the only city district zoned for professional interpretation, these streets attracted scores of visitors and were thus a prime target for predatory men. I already knew this, we all did, but like most people, I preferred not to dwell on it. Back then I viewed abductions as I did my own mortality: they were an indisputable fact of life and yet unfathomable, too vast and horrific to hold in my mind for more than a few seconds.

  So I didn’t. I was fifteen, a teenage girl simply spending the afternoon with her brother. Julia awaited us, as did the whole of our futures. All we had to do was keep moving.

  * * *

  * * *

  Julia’s building had no sign out front, nothing to indicate that her home was also a place of business. No neon lights or cheap beaded curtains, and certainly no crystal balls. Miles and I let ourselves into the parlor, a room adorned with an antique couch, a grandfather clock, and wallpaper dappled with a metallic imprint. It was a place, I felt, where the future was taken seriously.

  We could see Julia through the glass doors that enclosed the classroom area, where she addressed a half dozen teenage girls seated on the floor in front of her. Unlike the theatrical interpreters who wore scarves and iridescent eyeshadow, Julia dressed in jeans and a fitted dress shirt, her heavy brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She was practical but also progressive—which she’d have to be, to teach interpretation to a boy.

  Miles hesitated
outside the glass doors. “You can join me, you know. Julia would be glad to have you.”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather wait here.”

  He slipped into the classroom, leaving me alone in the parlor. I wandered over to the bookcase and scanned the collection until I found it: a heavy hardcover book full of intricate geometric patterns. I’d discovered the book the first and last time I’d been at Julia’s. That had been months ago, during an open house for students and their families. My parents and I dressed up for the occasion. A nervous energy hung over us, as if we worried Julia might find us lacking, but she was warm and welcoming. Julia was the one to lead me to her bookshelf, to invite me to browse. Later, when she found me still poring over the book of patterns, she’d looked pleased.

  I pulled the book down and cracked it open. The pages revealed a mesmerizing array of shapes and designs found in rugs, paintings, sculpture, mosaics—all the beautiful things in life. Best of all, they had nothing to do with my skin or my predictions. It was my only chance to get lost in patterns that held no larger meaning.

  I flipped dreamily through the pages for a long time. When the grandfather clock crept closer to the hour, I replaced the book and peered through the classroom doors. Aside from my brother, the students were all girls. They were a bit older than me and dressed in that effortless way I wished to emulate: sandals in metallic colors, scarves repurposed as belts, and silky, scoop-necked shirts that slipped off the shoulder to reveal a colorful bra strap.

  The girls sat close together, their copies of Mapping the Future flung to the side so they could focus on the living maps of their skin. Their skin was brown, or olive, or else it was like mine, the color of wheat. All marked with the future. Each girl took her turn holding out an arm for a classmate to read. My brother couldn’t offer his own body, but when he leaned closer to interpret a pale-haired girl named Deirdre, he had everyone’s attention. He moved his finger steadily across her skin, knitting his brow with concentration. He was careful, and respectful, and serious. If not for his gender, he could have passed for a professional interpreter.

  Before long, the clock struck the hour, its deep tones marking the end of class. I stood back while the first girls pushed open the classroom doors and came spilling into the parlor. Julia held a copy of Mapping the Future open before her as she exited, explaining a diagram to one of her students. When she noticed me, her expression shifted. It was a subtle, flitting change, but I caught it.

  “Celeste,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She smiled as she approached, then reached forward to tap my left arm. “May I?”

  I nodded, and she held my hand in her own, running her fingertips lightly over my skin. I closed my eyes at her touch. Interpretation involved more than sight. Touch could add new depth and layers. Touch was sometimes part of the magic.

  “Hmm,” Julia murmured. She focused on the cluster of moles near my left elbow, a pattern slightly inconsistent with anything appearing in Mapping the Future. Over the years, interpreters had formulated different explanations: A minor illness around your sixteenth birthday, one suggested. A car crash, but not a serious one, another told me. The only consensus was that I needn’t worry much, that these juvenile patterns were a mere blip of ambiguity in a lifetime of more certain predictions.

  “Miles thinks I’ll change soon.” I glanced down at the freckles on my forearm. I wanted to memorize them, not as they appeared sketched in my brother’s notebook at home, but how they were in the here and now—little pinpricks of the future about to become the past.

  Julia nodded. “It’s an exciting time, just before you change. The possibilities seem endless.”

  The time before the transition to adult markings was like watching a wave bear down on the shoreline: waiting for the crash, for the turmoil and confusion, before the sand could be smoothed into a fresh surface again. When it arrived, girls had the benefit of new predictions, but they were also thrown into the chaos of their changeling periods—those risky, unpredictable weeks when they would be irresistible to nearly everyone, but especially men.

  “It makes me nervous,” I admitted, “how I have no control over what my new markings will reveal. How I’ll just have to accept them.”

  Julia pulled me closer. A faint scent came off her, something with a hint of lilac. I felt embarrassed when I noticed it, like I’d been caught spying. She gripped my arm tighter, and I had to fight not to pull away.

  “The future will come for you as it intends,” she said. “That is undeniable. With time, however, you’ll see that your actions might make a difference. Not a dramatic difference, but even the slightest change might be meaningful. We do have free will, after all. Think of it as wind moving through the leaves of a tree.”

  Julia released one hand from mine and swept her arm up to conjure a tree in the air between us—her forearm the trunk, her fingers the branches, the thick frenzy of her hair transforming, in my mind, into a leafy canopy. “The tree itself remains the same, but the manipulation of leaves creates altered shapes, shadows, sound. The greater form is unchanged even as it is made anew. Do you see?”

  I blinked at her.

  “That’s all right,” she said. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll understand one day.”

  Shaken, I rubbed my arms as if to shed my confusion. The entire point of interpretation was to submit to an irrevocable future. Depicting a future as fluid as wind rushing through leaves didn’t make sense. Our markings couldn’t reveal everything that would come to pass, but seeing even a glimpse was a relief. It was what drove people to interpreters, to study Mapping the Future, to plan their careers and marriages based on what was already fated.

  If only our markings could reveal the full truth in vivid detail, like a vision. If only I could have seen even a single scene in its entirety—perhaps a day several years in the future, when Julia and I would spend an afternoon together as equals.

  This was the future awaiting me, but that day in Julia’s townhouse, I couldn’t predict it. Maybe that was for the best. We spend too much time either imagining the future, that vast expanse of unborn possibility, or else wandering the past, the land of the dead. And yet I return there, again and again, as if watching it unfold in my memory can affect the outcome. As if the past could ever be as changeable as the future.

  * * *

  * * *

  I was still holding my arm, still caught between the present and what was to come, when Miles stepped out of the classroom with Deirdre and I finally saw things clearly: Deirdre was radiant, searing, her skin alive with a faintly ethereal glow. She was changed, newly passed to her adult markings. Glorious.

  I watched, mesmerized, as Deirdre crossed the room in a filmy indigo skirt that swirled around her ankles. At her throat, an opal dangled on a gold chain. I’d read a gemstone book not long before, so I knew something about opals. They were delicate, vulnerable stones that could crack if struck or exposed to extreme temperatures. Opals were changeable depending on how you looked at them—they were lightning, fire, the sheen in an oily puddle. With this stone shining against her skin, Deirdre moved as though the atmosphere was thinner around her. Like the rest of us were trudging through water while she breezed through a high, clear sky.

  Without intending to, I leaned in Deirdre’s direction. I had the sense that if I touched her, I’d feel a welcoming spark.

  “Miles, I hope you and Celeste are still able to walk Deirdre home,” Julia said. “My car is not yet in working order, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course,” Miles said.

  I looked at him, surprised that he’d made this plan without telling me. Later, I’d learn that Julia’s car sat in an alley behind the townhouse, its brakes hopelessly worn as she saved for repairs. It was an inconvenience that would come to have graver consequences than I could have imagined at the time.

  “Maybe I should come with you, just in case.” Julia frowned. We all kne
w what she was thinking: if the hour grew too late, she couldn’t responsibly send a changeling out into the streets.

  “It’s still light out,” Deirdre said.

  “And we’ll walk fast,” Miles added. “We’ll stay together, all three of us. Celeste will be there the whole time.”

  Was this the real reason Miles had invited me along, to act as a chaperone so he could spend a few more minutes with Deirdre? For the first time, I started to view my brother as the rest of the world did: a boy becoming a young man, and thus a possible threat to girls like Deirdre. It didn’t matter that I knew my brother wasn’t capable of harming anyone. It was the possibility, the chance of it, that counted.

  Julia was looking at me, awaiting confirmation.

  “Deirdre’s house is on our way,” I said. “It’s no problem.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, Celeste. You’re really saving me.”

  Deirdre and Miles were already heading toward the door. I followed them outside, down the front steps, and into the street, where Deirdre grew shy. She positioned herself between Miles and me as if to hide—a fruitless attempt, since changelings were destined to be noticed.

  When we passed a group of men standing outside a corner market, their collective gaze shot over to Deirdre as if she’d hypnotized them. They didn’t approach her, didn’t whistle or call out, but the moment felt turned on its side regardless. Watching those men gaze at Deirdre was one of the rare times I let myself feel it: the fear of being a girl.

  I didn’t linger in that anxiety for long. We turned a corner, the men disappeared, and I went back to my own world.

  * * *

  * * *

  At dinner that evening, when my parents asked about the visit to Julia’s, I told them it was uneventful. That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, either. No one pressed the issue. My father simply served casserole while my mother poured herself a glass of wine. The future was not on their minds.