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

smelled musty. But I took it with me as he asked, all the while knowing I’d never open it again.

“You should have called your mother,” Julia told me as she guided me outside. She had hugged me hard when we met outside Mr. Radshaw’s office, an enveloping, all-consuming embrace. I could still feel it. “You need your mother at times like these.”

“I need a break from my family.”

We reached a car that was unfamiliar to me—a copper-colored, slightly beat-up sedan. I’d later learn she bought it after my abduction, when she was overcome with guilt thinking that if her old car had been usable on First Friday, she could have driven me home.

Julia paused before getting into the driver’s seat. “If you weren’t going to call your mother, then I’m glad you chose me. You and I—we need to trust each other from here on out. Do you understand?”

As usual, I didn’t understand Julia. But I nodded anyway.

“We were all so worried about you,” she went on. “All of us, but especially your brother.” She paused, her gaze landing on my exposed forearms. I was wearing a fitted black shirt with sleeves that stopped at my elbows.

“May I see?” she asked. I nodded again, and she took my arms in her hands.

A few remnants of bruising were still visible, but Julia looked past those to focus on my markings—my adult markings, the ones I hadn’t let anyone see after I changed. How silly I felt for that attempt to hide myself. It had almost worked, too, up to that moment in the alley with Miles, after which I was taken and given these bruises. That was how I saw it, that the bruises were given, a monstrous gift.

Julia looked at my arms carefully, in a way that my mother and even Miles hadn’t. Since I’d been in the hospital, they averted their eyes from my body, as if catching a glimpse of my skin would be shameful.

“You’re all right,” Julia said at last. “I’m so glad you’re back, Celeste. Now get in. I’ll take you to my place for the afternoon, but we have to hurry. I’m late.”

“For what?”

She didn’t answer.

During the drive, I considered unburdening myself to Julia. I could confess what had happened with the spit or the boy who grabbed me, but my mind was already cementing over those moments, sealing them off.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I want to earn my diploma, but I can’t go back there. I don’t want to do correspondence classes, either.” I turned to face the window, choking back tears. “It’s impossible.”

“There are other ways.” Julia’s voice was quiet. “The education at the Mountain School is stellar—better than anything you’d get here.”

“My family can’t afford that.”

Julia paused, clearly too polite to agree with me. “Don’t give up hope yet,” she said eventually.

I didn’t reply. Hope was another luxury I couldn’t afford.

When we arrived at the townhouse, Miles was standing on the front stoop.

“We’ve been waiting,” he told Julia. “You know I can’t start without you. There’s already a girl in your office.”

I frowned at him. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“I stopped going.”

“You can’t drop out. You’re in your final year.” I paused, shocked. “Do Mom and Dad know?”

“Not yet. But they’ll accept it once they learn I’m bringing in an income.”

I turned to Julia. “You can’t possibly support this. What about his future?” The words came out of my mouth before I remembered that within a few years, that would be a moot point.

“This is my future,” Miles said. “Working as an interpreter.” He opened the front door and gestured toward the parlor.

Inside, we faced about a half dozen girls, all unchanged. Four of them crammed onto the couch, and the other two sat in the armchairs. The mood was that of a dentist’s waiting area: no one was particularly happy to be there, and they wanted even less to be called for the appointment.

“Miles, you stay with Celeste,” Julia said. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

Once she left, my brother led me upstairs.

“You can’t do this,” I told him. “The Office of the Future will never allow it.” Back then I didn’t understand much about the Office of the Future, or just how it might infiltrate our lives—but I knew enough to see it as a threat.

“They don’t know about it. Besides, I’m more like Julia’s assistant. For now, she does the readings and only calls me if she needs confirmation.”

“Confirmation on what?”

He didn’t answer. He took me to the guest bedroom and told me to have a seat on the bed. He sat at the desk, pulled open the top drawer, and took out a bag of bloodflower pills.

“You want one?” he asked.

I shrank back. “Definitely not. I’m surprised Julia allows bloodflower in her house.”

“This is my stash. She lets me sleep in this room, sometimes, and she never comes in to poke around. She respects my privacy.” He looked at me pointedly, as if he were too weary to bother telling me I had to keep his secret. All the while, he fiddled with the bag in a distracted sort of way. He looked half a second from removing a pill and popping it into his mouth.

“Miles, you can’t take that. Not now.” I heard the alarm in my voice. Fatal bloodflower overdoses were rare, almost unheard of, but I still worried. Any end was possible for my brother.

He sighed and tossed the bag into the drawer. “I never take bloodflower when I’m working, and Julia might need me to work today. So you can relax.”

I pulled my legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed, trying to make sense of all that was going wrong. “I still can’t believe you dropped out of school.”

“Not everyone is a star student like you.”

“Like that does me any good now.” I paused, thinking. “On the way over here, Julia mentioned the Mountain School. It made me wonder if maybe they have scholarships. You know, for girls