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

your childhood prediction, the one about us working together one day.” He looked up from the photographs. “Remember? It’s gone now. I don’t see anything in your new markings quite like it.”

I kept my expression neutral. “That prediction had an outlier marking. And now my career pattern is so open-ended it’s like everything’s canceled out.”

“I suppose. But something’s not adding up.”

I tried to appear uninterested, but inside, I knew the truth. My juvenile career marking wasn’t wrong—a girl’s predictions could not be contradicted, even after the passage to adulthood—but now that it was clear my brother only had three years to live, we simply didn’t have much time to work together. As a result, that particular prediction did not shine through in my adult markings. It seemed the outlier marking from my childhood days had been the dominant one after all: I’d end up working alone.

“If you let me see that pattern in person, I’d have a chance of figuring it out.” He looked up at me hopefully. “You’ve always shared your markings with me. Besides, it’s my birthday today, too.”

“I’m sorry, Miles. But no.”

He stared down at his drawing pad, resigned. “It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or himself. “It’s not here. I expected it to be here.”

“What do you mean?” When he didn’t respond, I took a step into his room. “Miles. What did you expect to see?”

His eyes fluttered up to me, then back down to the copies of my markings. “I told you I’ve always felt something awful might be coming.”

I felt chilled. I crossed my right hand over to my left elbow, where I’d once had that vague set of markings. No one had known what they meant, but maybe Miles had an inkling. Maybe he saw in those childhood markings what no one else could: a hint of his own fate.

“You worry too much.” I tried to keep my voice light, but my throat felt scratched, every word a choke. It was not in my nature to lie to Miles.

“Maybe.” He looked up once more, and our eyes locked. We were in the basement again, down in the dirt. We were playing the most important game of Did You Know in our lives. I told myself to keep it up, to conceal the secret at all costs.

“The trouble is,” Miles said at last, “that the future is the future. It cannot be stopped. So even if we knew that something terrible was coming, it couldn’t be prevented.”

My heart, my lungs, my entire body: I felt it all under strain, the blood rushing in a panic. He didn’t know. He couldn’t. The way his face grew puzzled when he considered the image of the altered marking on my ribs—he had no idea what was coming for him.

“Exactly,” I said, and this time I succeeded in sounding calm. “The future is set.”

Miles turned back to his drawings. The more he studied them, the more his concern washed away. I saw it happen, watched his body language relax into complacency. I was relieved and guilty and proud, because everything I’d told him was a lie. And every lie was practice.

Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls

On High Lucidity

Through this natural wonder, changeling girls are gifted the strength and advantages they need to move safely through the world. A changeling in the throes of high lucidity is, in fact, living out the beatific potential of her sex. She is experiencing one of nature’s most glorious privileges while benefiting from an ancient form of protection.

How any changeling can protest, experience fear, or permit herself to be damaged while in this state is a mystery not to be examined by this panel of authors. Time is too fleeting, and the state of lucidity too brief, to waste with such concerns. We direct changelings to be grateful for this phenomenon, and to respect it as one of nature’s forms of grace granted only to women. What a blessing to receive this gift. How astonishing to be a woman in this world!

9

To be a changeling was to be exposed, peeled back and laid bare. At school, I could no longer slip by as an anonymous girl. I startled people, making them jump like they’d just heard a clap of thunder. My history teacher cocked his head whenever I passed his classroom, and outside, the boys running on the athletic field shifted simultaneously as I walked along the fence line.

That morning, I turned from my locker to find myself surrounded by boys. They appeared as if from nowhere and fanned around me, creating a barrier too strong to break through. Dirty blue jeans, untucked shirts, ragged haircuts, shoes streaked with grass stains. They were earthy and unapologetic in their disarray as only boys could be.

“Can you give me some space?” I asked.

The boys leaned forward a few degrees, and I clutched my geometry book to my chest like a shield. I was protecting myself, but I was also holding myself back. I saw my male classmates in a new way that morning. They were thrilling and raw, bodies driven by want. New thoughts drifted into my mind: thoughts of kissing and contact, of those flat boy chests pressing right up against me.

The boys drew closer. My back was against the lockers. A wanting started to crack through my body, a surge that broke off in pieces like a glacier calving. I desired power, I desired control, I desired freedom. I desired.

One boy reached out, his fingertip inches from my shoulder. Keep going, I thought, while also thinking at the same time: Stop.

My homeroom teacher, a woman of cardigans that smelled of mothballs, was the one to save me. She hurried up to the boys and startled them, made them scatter like birds taking flight. When I caught her eye, she smiled.

“Boys,” she said simply, like that was explanation enough.

*   *   *

I moved from class to class in