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

I did from my own reflection whenever I glimpsed it in the bathroom mirror: hollow eyes, broken lips, an expression revealing anxiety and rage. During my stay in the hospital, I was actually grateful for the loss of my high lucidity. To feel more than I already did in that place would have been a curse.

“Allow yourselves to comfort one another,” a nurse told us that first afternoon. “You’ve all been through the same trauma.”

We ignored her. We tried not to look at one another. I longed instead for Marie and Cassandra. I fantasized about returning home, how our threesome would resume as though nothing had interrupted our friendship.

“Girls,” the nurse continued. “You are going to be all right.”

As a rule, the nurses didn’t address us by name. They called us girls, dears, sweeties, loves. If I ever learned the real names of these girls, I forgot them at once. We chose pretend names instead, names we invented and whispered into being that first night over dinner. The girl with the brownish-red hair named herself Aurora, the girl with pale markings was Moxie, and the changeling was Glory—though it seemed unfair, for her to choose a name that flaunted her current state. I was the last to say my new name aloud because I was ashamed, both for how quickly it had come to mind and how unlike me it was: Violet. Delicate and feminine, a name that conjured the sensation of velvet. All the things I wasn’t, or no longer believed I could become.

*   *   *

We gathered three times a day in the meeting room. We ate meals together in a cafeteria at the end of the wing. We played silent games of checkers in the game room. We barely spoke in our therapy sessions. Instead, we waited.

We would be held in the Reintegration Wing for four days, which happened to be the same length of time women who gave birth remained in the hospital. The girl we knew as Aurora whispered that our wing was adjacent to the maternity ward. She said this quickly and then fell silent, like she’d left us a gift that she refused to watch us open. We were unable to confirm her information, since we were forbidden from wandering beyond our single hallway, but it made sense to me. I could imagine babies being born—half of them girls, born with tiny sets of predictions—while, only a few hundred feet away, a group of teenage girls tracked the ends of the lives they’d once known.

A nurse confirmed this reality of our new fates during the second day of programming, when we discussed our educational options.

“Most girls don’t reenroll in their old schools once they’ve returned,” she told us. “It’s too stressful. You might find it easier to pursue a different path.”

“But I want to graduate,” I said, and I heard how petulant my voice sounded. My dream of becoming a psychologist was now impossible, though it still hovered like a mirage just beyond my grasp.

“You’re allowed to return to school,” the nurse assured me, but she said it like that was a choice that would result in regret. “Just be prepared for the social fallout.”

The other girls remained silent. As far as I knew, none of them had any intention of returning to their schools. But they were from smaller towns, I reasoned. While my hometown wasn’t exactly a metropolis—larger cities elsewhere were considered more sophisticated—it was surely more progressive than the rural areas these girls were from.

“Returned girls have other options,” the nurse continued. “You might consider a correspondence course. It takes longer to earn your diploma that way, but many girls have made good use of it. Alternatively, you may wish to enroll in a local trade school.”

“That’s what I want to do,” Aurora said. “You can study to be a manicurist, or a domestic employee, or even a culinary artist.” She said culinary artist with reverence, as if it implied working as a chef in a fancy restaurant, but we knew what it really meant: being trapped in steamy kitchens attending to vats of reeking soup and never-ending piles of dishes.

The nurse turned to Moxie, who said she’d go the correspondence route and earn her diploma that way. Finally, the nurse looked to Glory.

“What about you, love?” the nurse asked. “What might you do once you go home?”

“I want to go to university,” Glory said, without hesitation.

“Oh, darling.” The nurse sat back in her chair. “You know that’s impossible.”

Glory’s face crumpled. I silently willed her the strength to not cry.

After the session, I caught up with Glory in the hallway and reached for her hand. I suppose I thought I could comfort her. She wrenched away from my grasp.

“Leave me alone,” she snapped. She disappeared into her room and shut the door fully behind her, which was against the rules. I waited for a nurse to rush over and crack the door open again, but for the moment, no one noticed. Glory had won a rare bit of privacy.

For a long while, I stayed in the hall, staring at the closed door. Maybe Glory knew better than the rest of us how to survive.

*   *   *

The nurses explained that time wasn’t what we thought it was. They assured us that even if it seemed we’d been gone forever, even if it felt as though this incident would loom large for the rest of our lives, it wasn’t so. We’d eventually view the experience as a blip in the long continuum of our lives. It would become like a bad dream, they said.

They said nothing more about our transcripts, or university admission, or our future careers. Maybe they believed we could begin to forget these things if they stopped speaking of them.

On that second night, I lay on the hospital mattress, so thin its coils pressed through the fabric like bone. The Strategies for Reintegration brochure sat on my bedside table, placed there by a nurse with good intentions. Aside from our