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

clothing and hair. This was what high lucidity was meant for: to eliminate the element of surprise.

When I opened the door, my friends stared, their eyes sparking.

“You look so pretty,” Marie said. She didn’t try to hide the wonder in her voice and hugged me hard, as if we’d been separated for ages.

I turned to Cassandra. When she and I embraced, I felt our hearts beating together, as if they were syncing. Maybe they were. Back then I believed my friends were the center of my universe, the sun that all else orbited. With them, I had always been able to reveal my full self. Until now. To successfully conceal Miles’s fate, I had to hide it from everyone, including Marie and Cassandra. I didn’t relish lying to my friends—I considered it a deception, even if only a lie by omission—but it had to be done.

I took my friends up to my room, where Cassandra flung herself on my bed.

“All right,” she said, “let’s see it.”

I took a step back. “I’ve decided not to show anyone.”

My friends exchanged a glance.

“Surely you’ve shown your mother,” Marie said.

“No.”

“Miles?”

I shook my head.

“But your father.” Cassandra narrowed her eyes. “Did he?”

I turned my face away. “Yes. He looked this morning.”

The room was silent for a long stretch. Cassandra picked at the bedspread and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I thought back to her coming-out party, when her father had led her away to her bedroom. When Cassandra returned to the party, she refused to talk about it, said it was something every girl went through and that it was too embarrassing to dwell on.

“Give us a hint about your marriage prediction, at least,” Cassandra said. “Will you end up with someone good?”

I had to think. Aside from the prediction about Miles, my future appeared perfectly ordinary.

“There are no details,” I said. “Just that I’ll marry at some point. I don’t know who it will be, or when. The markings for children are vague, too. A family is a possibility, but I see nothing concrete.” This was all true, and with each word I spoke, I felt a bit more dejected.

“No illnesses?” Marie asked. Her father’s death had been predicted in her own childhood moles. As a baby and toddler, she carried the mark of his fate on her body. Then he died and her markings endured, a reminder of her grief until they could be replaced upon her change.

“None that I can see.” Nothing aside from Miles, dead by twenty-one.

“Then we should celebrate,” Cassandra said. “To your long and happy life.”

My expression must have given something away, because Marie grabbed my hand. She looked so concerned that I teared up. Not only was Miles in danger, but my friends and I were facing one another across a gulf growing wider by the moment.

“I think I understand what you’re feeling.” Cassandra patted my arm. “The high lucidity is disorienting at first. But don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Marie didn’t say anything more, but she kept watching me. Like she thought I might self-destruct right there in front of her.

It was only later that my friends reminded me it was my birthday. Marie presented me with a card she and Cassandra had both signed, and as a gift, they gave me a framed print of one of the old impression tests that psychologists once used. The image consisted of a black teardrop shape with a red smudge in the middle.

“My mother ordered it for us,” Cassandra said. “It was in a catalogue of curiosities.”

I brought the frame closer and stared deep into the red heart of the drawing. The whole point of impression tests was to encourage each viewer to project their own ideas and realities onto a drawing, but this one felt so certain to me. It was a flame, it was fire—there could be no other interpretation. I stared for so long my vision blurred, and the frame grew hot in my hands. It was a gift, I reminded myself. It was art.

It was my future, burning and bright and encased in breakable glass.

*   *   *

After Cassandra and Marie left, my mother took me to the doctor’s office for my birth control shot. She held my hand while the nurse slid a needle into my arm. At first the shot burned, like a splash of poison had been put into my veins, but within a few seconds I felt fine. Already it was behind me.

“There,” my mother said. She stood up and gathered her things. “Now that’s done.”

At home, I found Miles alone in his room. He was studying the photographs of my markings and copying the patterns in his new notebook. He used the brown pencil to dot out the markings and the periwinkle to lightly trace constellations between moles. I watched him work and thought about stars, galaxies, the entirety of the observable universe. The mystery of what might lie beyond.

When Miles noticed I was in his doorway, he picked up his letter from the Office of the Future and waved it at me.

“You were right.” He tossed the envelope down again. “Denied. But it’s okay. I’ll think of something else.”

“Like what?”

He ignored that and stared intently at the photographs. “I have to say, I’m surprised by how uneventful these markings are.” He held up the photo showing the cluster of moles on my left side. “This is the one that catches my attention. What do you think it means?”

I took a moment to pretend to study the prediction. “It seems to indicate a big life change for you just before you turn twenty-one. If I had to guess, I’d say a move.”

“Yes.” He frowned at the photograph. “But it doesn’t quite add up.”

“Maybe you’ll go to graduate school.”

He squinted. “It’s not that.”

“You might study abroad, or join the military, get married and buy a house,” I said, rattling off all the events that could possibly line up with my altered markings.

“Perhaps,” he said, deep in thought. “Or maybe it’s related to