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

“Once these girls make things, they want nothing to do with them. These items remind them of their grief.” She held up the dress, fingering its silken fabric. “Besides, this dress will be glorious on you. You deserve something pretty.”

During that visit, I’d tried to mine my mother for more information about her work as a humanitarian. I wanted to know that what she was doing could change the world. But she was reticent; she said her work required the utmost confidentiality. I, meanwhile, did not tell her about Miles. And so we circled each other, afraid to reveal ourselves.

I swept the tarot cards from the bedspread. Soon, I would have no reason to continue hiding my brother’s fate. Once my parents discovered this card bearing my image, I’d stand exposed, the truth sliding from my grasp as easily as a swath of fabric pieced together by the hands of girls who struggled but nonetheless survived.

Dear Celeste,

You asked in your last letter if I’m being careful. I’m not sure how to answer that. You say you want the truth, but you and I have never been fully honest with each other, have we?

I can assure you that Julia and I are hard at work, and the bits of curriculum you send us are exceedingly helpful. But what we’re attempting is difficult. You’re not here to witness the work we’re doing day after day, how futile it sometimes seems to try to influence the future, and how our personal concerns are so small in the face of all there’s still to accomplish. So no, I won’t say I am being careful. I’m just doing all I can with the time still available to me.

As always, I hope you are learning as much as possible. I hope you are happy, and able to imagine a new kind of future for yourself. Please don’t waste time worrying about me. What will come will come. Isn’t that what we’ve always known from the start?

Miles

22

In the chill of morning, I slid into a wool sweater and set off for class. I passed the dining hall, the administration building, the darkroom, and the performing arts center. Through clusters of trees I caught glimpses of the man-made pond we used for skating in the winter and swimming in the summer. If I proceeded to the outskirts of campus, I’d reach the stables, where we took weekly riding lessons, and then the cemetery, where the tombstones were engraved with marking constellations.

Of all the miracles I experienced on the mountain—the friendships, the safety, the academics, the love—it was the school’s physical existence that seemed the most astounding. The campus had been built decades ago on a summit in the White Star Mountains, a place once slated for an observatory. The atmosphere was thin, the nights darker than the darkest any of us had ever seen. What a trial it must have been to haul the brick and stone all that way. Professors and staff made periodic trips down the mountain to town, but the other girls and I were content to stay behind. It was safe on the mountain, isolated, our lungs strengthened by the elevation. It was a place meant for viewing the stars.

The academic hall was located next to the campus nursery, where I found my friend Jenn on the bench outside. She was nursing her infant daughter, Sophie, who was wrapped in a thick blanket.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked Jenn.

“I needed some air. One of the toddlers vomited all over the playroom.” She laughed a little. “I thought I’d bundle up Sophie and give her breakfast while someone else cleans up the mess. Is that wrong?”

I smiled and joined Jenn on the bench. “No. I would have done the same.”

“Won’t you be late?”

“I’ll only stay a minute. Sophie always cheers me up.”

Jenn nodded. “Yes, I heard about the tarot. I’m sorry, Celeste. That’s awful.”

I waved my hand as if the tarot were inconsequential, as if the most private part of myself hadn’t been wrenched from me and into the hands of the public. “I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s something we all have to go through.”

“Hopefully not all of us.” Jenn nodded at her daughter, who was nursing blissfully, her eyes squeezed shut beneath a woolen baby hat.

“I didn’t mean Sophie,” I said quickly. “Or any of the children here.” I paused. “May they all have brighter futures than we do.”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant.” She shifted Sophie to her other side. “But it’s scary to think what’s out there, and what kind of fate my daughter or any other girl might meet.”

I nodded. Aside from Jenn, several other friends of mine on the mountain had babies. Giving changeling girls birth control, the theory went in many parts of the country, encouraged promiscuity. I only grasped how backward and cruel that line of thinking was when I came to the mountain and found a nursery full of babies and toddlers, all of whom had been born to abducted teenage girls.

“I want Sophie to be free,” Jenn said. “To grow up to be herself. You know?”

I did. More than anything, I wished for those girls to have the ability to command their own lives, no matter what was marked on their skin. I wanted them to be liberated, and unafraid, and brimming with potential and possibility. But that wasn’t how the world worked for girls and women. Instead, we were made vulnerable through no fault of our own and held liable for the crimes committed against us.

We were born already broken.

*   *   *

I stayed with Jenn for longer than I’d expected, and when I finally left her, I bypassed the academic hall and headed toward the cemetery. I felt drawn to the world of the dead, to the quiet landscape of lives put to rest.

We learned so much on the mountain, but sometimes this education seemed a waste. To avoid unwanted attention from the