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

also felt a distant but growing sense of unease. Part of me understood that what I was saying to Cassandra wasn’t fair—but I pushed that thought away and kept talking.

“In fact,” I continued, “it’s partially your fault that I was taken in the first place. If you hadn’t left me and run to Julia’s, I wouldn’t have tried to follow you and ended up in an alley. A real friend would have stayed, but you thought only of yourself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Celeste. It wasn’t my decision to go to Julia’s. Miles told me to head over there.”

“You’re lying. He wasn’t even with you. When you got upset with Chloe and ran out, he stayed with me.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’d lie to me, on top of everything else.”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” Cassandra stood up. “Unlike certain other people, I have a future. I’m going to be a doctor.”

She headed for the door, moving with such self-possession that I was nearly frightened of her. I stayed in the living room, listening helplessly as she collected her backpack, opened the front door, and slammed it shut behind her.

“That was bad,” Marie said in a low voice. “It didn’t have to get ugly like that. She wouldn’t have come here if she didn’t care about you. And it wasn’t Cassie who hurt you, Celeste. It was a man.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting like you know everything.” I looked at my hands as I spoke. “You’re basically a child. You haven’t even changed yet.”

“Celeste,” she said. “Don’t.”

“You’ve never had much common sense,” I went on. I hated myself, I didn’t recognize myself, and yet I couldn’t stop. “Cassie and I have always taken care of you. It’s pathetic.”

Marie was quiet for a stretch, letting my words settle.

“I’m surprised,” she finally said. “I didn’t think this would change you.”

I refused to look at her. “I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

“Whatever you say, Celeste.” She stood. “I’ll leave you alone. That’s clearly what you want.”

Marie made her way to the front hallway and I followed her, as if driven by a final, clumsy urge to be a good hostess. At the door, I thought something would happen. I thought I might spontaneously apologize, or she would tell me those concerns about coming back to school were unfounded, or we would both agree to move past this and never speak of it again.

What happened instead was Marie put her hand on the doorknob and pulled. What happened was she walked down my front steps and along the stone pathway, and she didn’t look back once. I watched her go, following her progress to the end of the walkway, where she turned into the street and proceeded past an idling car.

The driver in that car—female, blond, face crossed by shadow—hunched low over the steering wheel, staring in my direction through the open window. I leaned closer, squinting. I knew who she was even before I got a full view of her face. She and I were, after all, the same now.

Deirdre cut the engine. She climbed out and turned toward me. I had only one wish: for her to disappear, taking her reminders of what I’d become with her.

*   *   *

Deirdre’s hair, still short, was bobbed in the style of an older woman. When she approached and met my gaze, her eyes were watery, vacant. I could not look away. She was a flame snuffed out but then reignited in the deepest reaches of my mind. For years to come I’d rise sweating in the night, jarred awake by a dream I could barely remember save for flickers of gold hair, the creamy richness of lipstick. But I didn’t know that yet. Instead, seeing Deirdre up close gave me resolve. It made me want to make the world easier for her, even if only in the smallest, slightest way.

“It’s good to see you,” Deirdre said. Her voice, at least, sounded the same.

“How were you able to drive here?” I asked, looking with bewilderment at the car she’d abandoned by the curb. “You’re not eighteen yet.”

Deirdre glanced back, as though surprised to see the car there, and to hear that she’d been the one to drive it. “My aunt lets me take it sometimes.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter for us much anymore, does it? It’s not as though our records can be tarnished any more than they already are.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

She took a step closer. “I never would have guessed you’d be taken. You seemed too good.” She paused. “Or careful. You always seemed so careful.”

“Looks like you were wrong about me.”

She brightened a bit. “I’ve been wrong about everything.”

I studied Deirdre. She still seemed damaged. Angry, sullen. Consumed. I hoped I didn’t look like that.

“How have things been for you?” I asked her.

“I moved in with my aunt and uncle, down in the suburbs south of town. It’s quiet there. Boring.”

“Did they find the man who took you?”

“Of course not. Be realistic, Celeste. Don’t tell me you have fantasies of catching who did this to you.”

“Not really.”

Without warning, Deirdre took hold of my left arm. She pushed back my sleeve and stared at my inner elbow.

“See?” She held her own arm next to mine in comparison. “No markings on either of us in that spot. It’s like we’re sisters.”

I pulled my arm back and rubbed the skin she’d just touched. I didn’t believe in connections based on lack.

“Have they come looking for you, too?” she asked. When I didn’t respond, she leaned in closer. “The Office of the Future. A markings inspector visited me. She had my childhood file, and she wanted to see my arm, right there in that spot.”

My mind turned back to that confused first night in the Reintegration Wing. How I’d told myself that the inspector’s visit might be a dream.

“She asked about Miles,” Deirdre added. “They wanted to know when I last had contact with him,