Body of Stars Laura Walter (chrome ebook reader .txt) 📖

screen. Her absence felt like physical pain. I tried to distract myself by chatting with Anne about her science project—it was something involving cacti and water retention—but I failed. Deirdre was all-consuming. For weeks she would be noticeable in this way, irresistible, until finally her changeling period came to an end. Only then would she be ordinary again.

When Deirdre emerged a few minutes later, her expression was neutral. These government checks were usually anticlimactic, but every now and then a girl received news that her family or interpreters had somehow missed. Not Deirdre, apparently. She proceeded through the gym with her chin held high. An almost imperceptible flutter surrounded her as she went, the energy in the air shifting as the other girls watched her go.

The line crept forward again. “My turn,” Anne said. She offered her index card to the inspector managing the line and glanced back at me. “See you on the other side.”

Anne vanished. I was left with the government employee, a tall woman wearing a wrist brace. The Office of the Future employed dedicated markings inspectors like her to administer official government readings in schools. The nongovernmental counterpart to this position was the humanitarian ambassador program run by the Humanitarian Global Alliance for Women, an international entity that promoted the advancement of women and girls. Of the two, humanitarians had the more glamorous positions—they were sent abroad to help underprivileged girls in other nations who were denied education or equal rights, they met with international representatives, and they were rewarded with high pay. Federal inspectors, meanwhile, received full government support, faced less strenuous work demands, and were not obligated to travel or endure long stretches of separation from their families. While this inspector didn’t make as much money as a humanitarian, at least she could return to her family every night.

Anne breezed out from behind the partition, giving me a quick smile.

“Next,” the inspector said. I handed her my card, glad to be released of its slender weight, and she waved me in.

Once concealed in the screened area, I changed into a gown and waited for the inspector to join me. She knocked on the partition in two quick raps and then stepped inside, her attention focused on the paperwork in her hands. She wore a conservative navy suit with a red pin—a tiny, shining square—on her lapel, standard attire for an Office of the Future employee. Her skin was dark, the markings contrasted in smatterings of deep amber.

“A juvenile reading, I see,” she said, giving me a quick glance. She made a check mark in her paperwork. “Looks like it might be your last one before you change.”

“Probably,” I agreed. I fell silent, both wanting the reading to be over but not particularly wanting to submit to it. As routine as these inspections were, I felt something bigger might be at stake for me. I just couldn’t say what.

The inspector gave me a nod, her signal to begin. I stood with my legs planted firmly on the floor, my arms held straight out to the side. After the inspector checked my arms, legs, and face, she carefully shifted the gown out of the way so she could inspect my chest, my stomach, my buttocks and back.

“Everything looks in order,” she said as she jotted down a few notes.

“Do you have any idea what my aptitude might be?” I asked.

The inspector’s gaze drifted my way.

“I couldn’t imagine,” she said.

“But you see a lot of girls. Surely you could at least guess what I might turn out to be, even if my career markings are vague.” Those markings suggested Miles and I might work together, while an outlier marking also indicated I might work alone—it didn’t make sense.

The inspector turned back to her clipboard. “I suggest you at least wait until your change before you get all worked up about the future. At this stage in your life, it doesn’t hurt to try to live in the present now and then.”

She flipped past my paperwork, signaling that it was time for me to leave. I dressed and ducked out of the changing area. The line had grown longer during my inspection, snaking all the way to the doors. To leave the gym, I had to walk past the end of that line, looping back to where I’d started. A beginning and an end all at once.

*   *   *

On my way back to class, I stopped in the bathroom tucked away near the auditorium. The door was marked Women, not Girls, and when I pushed through it and rounded the corner inside, I found Deirdre. She stood at the last of the three sinks and was leaning toward the cloudy mirror to apply lipstick. She paused when she saw me, the bright red lipstick hovering in midair.

“Hey, Celeste,” she said.

I nodded at her, but my heart was thrashing. I went to the middle sink and rooted in my bag for my hairbrush. As I fixed my hair, I glanced at Deirdre from the corner of my eye. She smacked her lips together, testing the lipstick’s hold. As I watched her, I felt a low-frequency shimmer, something akin to the shock of static electricity.

“What’s it like to change?” I asked in a quiet voice.

She glanced at me. Even the whites of her eyes were brilliant.

“If you’re talking about the high lucidity, that’s not something I can explain.”

“No, not that.” I knew all about the heightened senses that accompanied the changeling period. Girls like Deirdre could see more, hear more, feel more. It was something I’d have to wait to experience myself. “I’m talking about everything else. It seems intimidating.”

“Do you mean getting your adult predictions, or the way men will look at you?” Deirdre smiled. “Or do you mean the abductions? Because I don’t worry about that.”

“Oh, I don’t, either.” I tried to say this casually, to sound mature. Besides, most girls who disappeared came from rocky families, or were homeless or on drugs. That was what I believed