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

“These cards are beautiful,” Miles said, “and the people who illustrate them earn a lot of money. But it’s wrong, and you know it.”

“I just wanted to see how they were made. I’m not going to keep them.” Rebecca’s face was red. “Now give them back.”

Miles handed the deck to Rebecca but retained a single card that he held to his chest, the side with the girl pressed against his shirt. We could see the arrangement of her markings on the other side. We could see through her.

“Like I said, I’m taking them back the next chance I get.” Rebecca’s hand was still extended, waiting for the last card. She looked hopeless like that, and it didn’t help that we all knew she couldn’t return the cards. She must have purchased them on the sly from one of the back-alley vendors outside the interpretation district.

Miles flipped the card around so we could all see it. The girl had short brown hair, green eyes, skin dappled with tight clusters of markings all over. My brother gripped the card so tightly his whole arm was trembling.

“That’s Elizabeth,” he said.

“You knew her?” I asked, surprised.

“I had pastels with her my first year at art camp,” he said. “She lived on the far east side of the city, so she had to take two buses to get to camp. She even went to one of our school dances. But then she disappeared.”

Rebecca snatched the card from Miles.

“I didn’t realize that deck had a girl from town when I bought it,” she said. “I’m not a monster—I love the cards for their art. That’s all.”

A commotion in the corner of the basement drew our attention away from Rebecca. Jonah was circling Janine, grabbing her lightly around the waist. Every time she stepped back from him, he came closer. Meanwhile, another boy began chasing a third-year changeling through the basement. They were both laughing, but the girl was red in the face and out of breath, her eyes startled.

“Stop it,” Rebecca called. “We have these parties to prove we can be trusted with one another. But we can’t, can we?” She crammed the tarot cards back into the deck. “No one can be trusted. Not a single one of us.”

I glanced reflexively at Miles, but he didn’t react. When I turned to Cassandra, she looked worried. That shook me more than anything—that the behavior of those boys frightened even my boldest and bravest friend.

Rebecca wiped her eyes. “All right,” she said. “The party’s over. I’ve had enough.”

No one said anything.

“I said the party’s over,” Rebecca repeated, louder this time. She picked up an empty bottle of rose sherry. “My parents will be back soon, anyway. It’s time to leave.”

With some reluctance, we started edging toward the stairs. Cassandra and I stuck together, so close our arms were touching.

“I don’t want to go home yet,” I whispered.

“I knew it.” She was smiling. “I knew you hadn’t lost your fun side.”

We joined the crush of bodies moving up the stairs and flowing out the side door. Once outside, everyone stopped, as if unsure how to make use of this unexpected freedom. Maybe we thought Rebecca would follow and tell us what to do. Maybe this was all part of the plan in the first place, a sort of initiation.

But it wasn’t. Rebecca shut the door against us, and then she locked it.

Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls

On Privacy and Shame

Girls and women alike may maintain their privacy by disclosing their markings only to those of their choosing. Unfortunately, some changelings are reluctant to reveal their markings out of a misplaced self-consciousness over their newly developing bodies. For these girls, we offer the following consolation: shame and the changeling have been intertwined since the beginning of time. Girls should not strive to eradicate shame but rather embrace it as the price paid for the gift of being marked for the future.

In some cases, shame arises from nefarious forces. In particular, we highlight the trend of markings thievery, a crime against privacy that the Office of the Future denounces. The production or sale of books, tarot cards, comics, or other printed materials displaying a girl’s markings is unlawful. Regardless, girls who find themselves victimized in this way must acknowledge their complicity in failing to protect themselves. While the shame from such unfortunate cases may not fade, girls can take heart that illicit materials tend to run their course quickly and become defunct. Before long, these materials will fade away.

The passing of time, in this case, is on a girl’s side.

12

We moved like a pack, beasts in the night. Boys, girls, changelings, all together. The boys who’d driven to Rebecca’s house offered rides to as many people as they could fit in their cars, but the other girls and I knew better than to accept. After witnessing the scene in the basement, Cassandra even refused to ride with Jonah. She’d planned for him to drive us back to Marie’s house, where my mother would eventually pick us both up, but now that was all ruined. Now we were set loose into the night instead.

“You need to stay with me every second,” Miles said. He was on foot like the rest of us, with no choice but to join the crowd. We moved as a group from Rebecca’s house to the safest place we could think of: the First Friday celebration in the interpretation district, which was less than a mile away and would be our best chance of finding taxis driven by women. As long as we walked there together, we’d be protected by our numbers and by the First Friday festivities. This was the night interpreters cracked open their finest editions of Mapping the Future, wiped their crystal balls clean of fingerprints, and lured in customers with brie and chardonnay. The event would be crowded, electric, alive—a haven for changelings.

All my