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

for adults. This was a time for girls—or, in Cassandra’s case, girls who’d just become women.

I flung open Cassandra’s door to find her waiting in the center of her pastel bedroom. My friend, newly changed, stood with her palms held forward like she was making an offering. She was naked. It had been a while since the three of us had stripped down to look at our markings, so the sight of Cassandra—her defined waist, her hips, her developed breasts—was a shock. Her body revealed the truth I’d long known but had never witnessed so intimately: that once a girl passed to her adult markings, she was transformed.

Marie was there, too, standing pressed in the corner of the room as if trying to contain herself.

“We were waiting for you.” Cassandra gazed down at her own body, but in a detached way, as if it had nothing to do with her. “Let’s do my back first. You know how hard it is to interpret markings in a mirror.”

I approached Cassandra and lightly ran the tip of my index finger from mole to mole, like I was playing a connect-the-dots game across her shoulder blades and down her spine. Cassandra’s skin shivered beneath my touch. She let out a nervous laugh and pulled away.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still getting used to how this feels.”

“I won’t use too much pressure,” I promised.

Cassandra’s new markings looked like they’d been there forever. She’d woken up that morning and there they were, with no fanfare, just as they’d been fated. It was both a mystery and a fact of life. Whatever her juvenile predictions had revealed about her adult future would still hold true, even now that those markings were faded and gone, but this passage to adulthood pulled everything into focus.

Marie joined us in trying to decipher the markings. I watched her trembling fingers and thought back to the summer festival, when she and I ran straight to the last deep stretch of park until we reached the Ferris wheel. We pushed past the creaking gate to enter a car that swung wildly when we stepped inside. As the ride jolted us into the sky, we leaned forward to view the fair from above. Instead, we saw our classmate Veronica in the car underneath ours, at an angle that allowed us to see straight down her dress to the pale moons of her breasts. Marie gave a start and sat back so hard she made our car sway. When I looked over at her, she was blushing deeply.

It was that same way in Cassandra’s room. Marie stared at our friend’s body, transfixed, her face flooded with color.

“This is good, Cassie,” she said at last. “I don’t see any illnesses, and you’ll be happily married one day.”

“Look at this.” I pointed to the bunch of pale moles on her hip. “You’re going to have a very successful career.”

“Yes, but in what?” Cassandra craned to see for herself. “My mom couldn’t figure it out, and neither could I.”

Marie and I studied Cassandra’s skin for a while longer, but it was no use. The patterns meant nothing specific to us, only something vaguely good. My own juvenile career markings were similarly ambiguous—aside from suggesting I might work with Miles one day, and that my profession would involve intricate work, they didn’t reveal much. Of course, I could look forward to future clarification when I passed to my adult markings. Cassandra no longer had that luxury. Now that she was a woman, these markings represented the last predictions she’d ever have.

We consulted the gilt pages of Mapping the Future to look for career constellations that resembled Cassandra’s, but we couldn’t find a perfect match. I pressed my finger against Cassandra’s right hip and closed my eyes. I waited to feel the low vibration that the best interpreters experienced during readings, but I felt nothing. I was talentless.

I turned to the guide’s index, tracing my finger down the list until I came to the entry for Expectations, Subverted. We’d all heard the tales of a couple who married based on the woman’s markings only to divorce years later, or the woman who gave birth even after her markings labeled her barren. Usually, all one had to do was return to Mapping the Future and remap those markings to discover their true interpretation.

While I read, Cassandra seemed distracted, gazing at her arm. Getting new markings, it appeared, was a bit like falling in love with yourself. I thought again of Deirdre in the school bathroom, how she leaned in close to the mirror to apply that lipstick. She’d been confident and bold, just like Cassandra was now. And then she was gone.

I dropped the book and grabbed Cassandra’s shoulder. “You need to pay attention.”

She blinked. “To what?”

“Everything. I don’t want you to end up like Deirdre.”

Cassandra waved her hand, and her dismissal felt all too familiar. She was a changeling, but she was also the same girl who raced me to the dock at the lake and leapt in wildly, determined to make the bigger splash.

“You need to see a professional.” I gathered Cassandra’s clothes from the floor and tossed them at her. “Someone who knows more than we do about what those markings might mean. And we should go now, rather than wait for your government inspection. That will take too long.”

Cassandra hesitated, holding the clothing to her chest like a shield. Then, slowly and with care, as if each layer against her skin was a weight, she dressed.

*   *   *

Downstairs, Mrs. Hahn waited in the foyer, blocking the door. She wore an immaculate white tunic and a jade necklace, but her polished appearance was marred by her tense expression. She was like a wire strung too tightly.

“You can’t possibly think you’re going out so soon after changing.” Her eyes, red-rimmed, tracked her daughter. “It’s too dangerous. Especially after what happened to Deirdre.”

“We already talked about this,” Cassandra told her. “Remember? It’s daylight, and I’m with my friends. It’s fine.”

“I’ll