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

I watched the nurses work and told myself that order was being restored. Maybe, I dared to imagine, my actions had shifted a tiny bit of fate. I thought of Julia’s metaphor with the tree and imagined roots deepening, branches growing, leaves unfurling. By ensuring Glory received help, perhaps I’d directed her toward a brighter path. The mere prospect was intoxicating. I felt dazzled, like I’d just pulled off a magic trick.

Maybe I could do it again.

*   *   *

In the hours to come, we were meant to gather our things and wait for our families to arrive for our final therapy session. Back in my room, I found one of the battered suitcases from home on my bed. Inside was a set of clothes: jeans, a pink V-neck T-shirt, canvas sneakers, socks, and a bra and underwear. My mother had delivered the suitcase to the front desk the night before in preparation for my last day.

I dressed. I combed my hair one last time with the plastic comb, and then I threw the comb away. After a moment of hesitation, I bunched up my pajamas and shoved them in the trash can, too. Maybe the staff planned to wash those pajamas and give them to another girl later, but I hoped not. Every girl in that place deserved something new and untouched.

Following an interminable wait, a nurse knocked on the door and peered inside. I was sitting on the edge of my bed, fully dressed and packed, waiting for all this to come to an end.

“It’s time,” the nurse told me. She smiled a little.

I stood up and trailed her down the hallway toward one of the small meeting rooms. When we arrived, she paused with one hand on the door.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

Before I could respond, she pushed the door open.

*   *   *

I took it all in: the overhead lights, blazing fluorescents that made everyone’s skin burn. The plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle. My family in those chairs, alien, sickly.

Miles wore a shirt I didn’t recognize, which was disorienting; I wondered if he’d gone shopping while I was missing. He sat with his right ankle crossed over his left knee, and I tried to puzzle out his expression: distant, aloof, maybe angry. His black eye was nearly gone, but because I knew where to look, I could still see the faint ring of it.

Next to Miles, our parents waited stiffly. My father sat forward on the very edge of the chair. My mother was in her professional clothes, with her hair arranged into a bun at the nape of her neck. She appeared polished, everything neat and tucked away. I realized she must have needed time off from her job to be at the hospital for visitation hours.

The nurse stood behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders.

“Sir?” she said to my father. He was the only person not looking at me. “Sir, you should greet your daughter.”

My father raised his head but did not speak. His hair was trimmed and damp, and I could smell his aftershave. I leaned slightly into the nurse’s hands so she could support me.

“You should say something,” the nurse suggested. I didn’t know whether she was talking to me or to my father, but either way, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I sat across from my father and leaned toward him.

“Dad,” I said. “You need to talk to me.”

He brought his hands to the lower half of his face, as if he couldn’t bear for me to look at him full on.

“I’m so ashamed,” he said at last. “Miles told us, Celeste. About those men in the alley, and how you went off with them.”

“They took me, Dad. I didn’t want to go.” As I spoke, I wasn’t so sure. Hadn’t I pushed Miles away? I remembered what the police had said, about how I’d gone willingly. Maybe that was how the world would see it.

“We know about that party you went to with your friends, how everyone was drinking rose sherry.” My father waved his hand through the air, like he was conjuring a vision of that night. “So maybe you went out, had a little something to drink, and two handsome men come your way, start giving you attention. Or maybe they gave Cassandra more attention than you, and you felt you had something to prove. It’s natural for a young girl just coming into her own to want to feel special.”

“That’s not what happened.” I glanced at the nurse, hoping she might defend me, but she only gave me a tight smile.

“Your mother and I should have known not to trust you,” he went on. “Girls run off all the time after passing to adult markings. They lose control. I should have kept that in mind and done more to protect you. Instead, I let myself get distracted by work.”

“What about Miles?” I asked. “He led me into an alley. If he’d taken me straight back to Julia’s, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Miles looked stricken, but my father frowned.

“You were responsible for yourself,” he said. “You have free will, just like everyone else. You made your own choices that night.”

There was no way for me to win—I could see that now. The hospital was the first place where I glimpsed the truth of how things worked, not just within my family but on a far larger scale. The world was a sharp place for girls and women.

“Celeste, your father loves you,” my mother said. She put a hand on his forearm, as if he were the one who needed comforting. “He was so distraught when you disappeared.”

“She’s right.” My father’s voice cracked. “I regret so much, all the ways I could have done better by you. I was too wrapped up in my own problems. If I hadn’t been demoted, your mother wouldn’t have had to return to work, and we could have paid more attention to you. But you also should have been more careful,