Body of Stars

by Laura Maylene Walter

  When Deirdre emerged a few minutes later, her expression was neutral. These government checks were usually anticlimactic, but every now and then a girl received news that her family or interpreters had somehow missed. Not Deirdre, apparently. She proceeded through the gym with her chin held high. An almost imperceptible flutter surrounded her as she went, the energy in the air shifting as the other girls watched her go.

  The line crept forward again. “My turn,” Anne said. She offered her index card to the inspector managing the line and glanced back at me. “See you on the other side.”

  Anne vanished. I was left with the government employee, a tall woman wearing a wrist brace. The Office of the Future employed dedicated markings inspectors like her to administer official government readings in schools. The nongovernmental counterpart to this position was the humanitarian ambassador program run by the Humanitarian Global Alliance for Women, an international entity that promoted the advancement of women and girls. Of the two, humanitarians had the more glamorous positions—they were sent abroad to help underprivileged girls in other nations who were denied education or equal rights, they met with international representatives, and they were rewarded with high pay. Federal inspectors, meanwhile, received full government support, faced less strenuous work demands, and were not obligated to travel or endure long stretches of separation from their families. While this inspector didn’t make as much money as a humanitarian, at least she could return to her family every night.

  Anne breezed out from behind the partition, giving me a quick smile.

  “Next,” the inspector said. I handed her my card, glad to be released of its slender weight, and she waved me in.

  Once concealed in the screened area, I changed into a gown and waited for the inspector to join me. She knocked on the partition in two quick raps and then stepped inside, her attention focused on the paperwork in her hands. She wore a conservative navy suit with a red pin—a tiny, shining square—on her lapel, standard attire for an Office of the Future employee. Her skin was dark, the markings contrasted in smatterings of deep amber.

  “A juvenile reading, I see,” she said, giving me a quick glance. She made a check mark in her paperwork. “Looks like it might be your last one before you change.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. I fell silent, both wanting the reading to be over but not particularly wanting to submit to it. As routine as these inspections were, I felt something bigger might be at stake for me. I just couldn’t say what.

  The inspector gave me a nod, her signal to begin. I stood with my legs planted firmly on the floor, my arms held straight out to the side. After the inspector checked my arms, legs, and face, she carefully shifted the gown out of the way so she could inspect my chest, my stomach, my buttocks and back.

  “Everything looks in order,” she said as she jotted down a few notes.

  “Do you have any idea what my aptitude might be?” I asked.

  The inspector’s gaze drifted my way.

  “I couldn’t imagine,” she said.

  “But you see a lot of girls. Surely you could at least guess what I might turn out to be, even if my career markings are vague.” Those markings suggested Miles and I might work together, while an outlier marking also indicated I might work alone—it didn’t make sense.

  The inspector turned back to her clipboard. “I suggest you at least wait until your change before you get all worked up about the future. At this stage in your life, it doesn’t hurt to try to live in the present now and then.”

  She flipped past my paperwork, signaling that it was time for me to leave. I dressed and ducked out of the changing area. The line had grown longer during my inspection, snaking all the way to the doors. To leave the gym, I had to walk past the end of that line, looping back to where I’d started. A beginning and an end all at once.

  * * *

  * * *

  On my way back to class, I stopped in the bathroom tucked away near the auditorium. The door was marked Women, not Girls, and when I pushed through it and rounded the corner inside, I found Deirdre. She stood at the last of the three sinks and was leaning toward the cloudy mirror to apply lipstick. She paused when she saw me, the bright red lipstick hovering in midair.

  “Hey, Celeste,” she said.

  I nodded at her, but my heart was thrashing. I went to the middle sink and rooted in my bag for my hairbrush. As I fixed my hair, I glanced at Deirdre from the corner of my eye. She smacked her lips together, testing the lipstick’s hold. As I watched her, I felt a low-frequency shimmer, something akin to the shock of static electricity.

  “What’s it like to change?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  She glanced at me. Even the whites of her eyes were brilliant.

  “If you’re talking about the high lucidity, that’s not something I can explain.”

  “No, not that.” I knew all about the heightened senses that accompanied the changeling period. Girls like Deirdre could see more, hear more, feel more. It was something I’d have to wait to experience myself. “I’m talking about everything else. It seems intimidating.”

  “Do you mean getting your adult predictions, or the way men will look at you?” Deirdre smiled. “Or do you mean the abductions? Because I don’t worry about that.”

  “Oh, I don’t, either.” I tried to say this casually, to sound mature. Besides, most girls who disappeared came from rocky families, or were homeless or on drugs. That was what I believed at the time.

  “Here’s a secret.” Deirdre leaned in. “Being a changeling is incredible. There’s so much power. People look at you, I mean really look. They want you, but they also respect you.” She shook her head. “Adults tell us how to behave so they can keep us in line, to make us afraid. Because if we’re afraid, maybe we won’t use this power to our advantage.”

  “What advantage?”

  “To make our own choices. To take control for once.”

  I remembered how those men had stared at Deirdre in the street the other day. Like they wanted to destroy her.

  “You should be careful,” I said. “Changelings are vulnerable.”

  Deirdre dabbed at her eyeliner with her pinkie. I could tell I’d lost her attention. I grew ashamed, convinced she could see every plain, timid part of me.

  “You don’t need to be so serious, Celeste.” She stepped closer, and I felt the pull of gravity, the revolving weight of a moon. She reached out and took my chin in her graceful fingers. It was an adult gesture, infused with intimacy and confidence, and at the time it dazzled me. Deirdre touched me as though she wanted to tilt my face toward the sky. To show me the vast unknown.

  Before I could stop myself, I fell forward, unable to resist the pull any longer. I collapsed against Deirdre, pressing my face to her neck. She was all vibration, a tingling siren call. The moment was infused not with sex but with something grander—the whole of the universe and our tenuous place in it.

  After a few moments, Deirdre gently detached herself.

  “Everything will be fine,” she assured me. “Remember that.”

  She gathered her things and left. I watched her swing out the door—Women, not Girls—before turning back to the mirror. I saw an uncertain girl reflected there, young and unknowing. Barely more than a child. Gingerly, I touched my fingertips to the glass as if I could conjure Deirdre’s reflection instead of my own. I felt like a failure, like I’d just wasted something precious.

  That was the last time I would see Deirdre in school. By nightfall, she was gone.

  TEMPLATE FOR MISSING GIRL POSTER

  MISSING GIRL

  [ALTERNATE TITLE: LOST]

  [ATTACH PHOTOGRAPH]

  [LAST NAME, FIRST NAME]

  AGE:

  HEIGHT:

  HAIR COLOR:

  EYE COLOR:

  SKIN COLOR:

  DISTINCTIVE MARKINGS
:

  DATE/LOCATION LAST SEEN:

  CIRCUMSTANCES OF DISAPPEARANCE:

  CONTACT [NAME] AT [TELEPHONE NUMBER] IMMEDIATELY IF SEEN.

  4

  That evening, Miles and I headed to the backyard to play brickball, a game we’d invented as children. We took turns slamming a small rubber ball against the back of the house, which the other person had to catch after no more than one bounce. It was a brutal game, spare and violent, and playing it in the final darkening moments of the evening felt right. As the light dimmed and the shadows lengthened we only played faster, as if railing against the loss of the day.

  Miles played hardest, I noticed, when he was frustrated, and what most frustrated him was his unattainable dream of becoming an interpreter. I, too, threw harder when I was angry, but it was difficult for me to name the root of that anger. At fifteen, I struggled to process how I felt about the rules I was expected to follow, the risks that were mine to bear simply by nature of being a girl. Anger simmered beneath the surface, driving my gameplay. After a few rounds of brickball, my palms burned and my shoulder ached, and sometimes I walked away with bruised shins.

  As we played, I thought of the markings inspector, and Deirdre’s lips, and I threw hard, hard, hard—hard enough for my mother to open an upstairs window and complain about the noise. Her silhouette against the yellow light inside drove home just how dark it had grown, and how we’d need to abandon our game even if she hadn’t ordered us to.

  Miles had possession of the ball. He held on to it as our mother shut the window, her shadowy form vanishing from sight. I watched as he hesitated, his biceps flexing, and I thought he might throw it anyway. He scowled at the back of the house, and then I realized he was counting.

  “Four to three,” he said, lowering his arm. “You won.” He tossed the ball into the weeds near the fence, where it was instantly swallowed by the shadows.

  We headed inside to find our mother standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed to her cheek. Her hand lifted halfway to her chin, fingers trembling. Her face a mask.

  “Miles,” she said in a low voice. “It’s Deirdre. She’s gone.”

  Gone where? I thought at first.

  My mother swiveled toward me. Red splotches bloomed across her cheeks, the first sign she was about to either yell or cry. “Celeste, you shouldn’t be hearing this.”

  “Why not? I want to know what’s happening.”

  Miles put a hand on my shoulder, a tenderness that felt jarring after the violence of brickball. “She’s right, Celeste. You should go.”

  “But I just saw Deirdre this afternoon in school.”

  My mother wasn’t listening. She’d brought the phone back to her ear to conduct a whispered conversation. Finally, she hung up.

  “It’s official.” She left her hand on the receiver and leaned into it, letting it bear her weight. “Her parents have already gone to the police. Apparently someone reported seeing Deirdre on the street talking to a man.”

  “She’ll be fine,” I said, but once the words were out, I wasn’t sure why I’d said them. The moment felt fractured, like reality was dismantling itself piece by piece.

  “Please, Celeste,” my mother said. She blinked to hold back tears. “Go to your room. I’ve already said too much.”

  I left, dazed by the sight of my mother crying, and stumbled upstairs. Without thinking, I climbed into bed and under the covers. I was shaking. First it was just my legs, but soon it spread throughout my body: a violent tremor I could not control. I pulled the blankets tighter and clenched the side of the mattress as if that could provide the mooring I needed. I squeezed my eyes shut and counted to ten. When I opened them again, I was still shaking.

  I knew what was happening to Deirdre, and I did not, both at the same time. Deirdre was a changeling, and she had disappeared. That meant a man had taken her. That meant she was ruined. Like all girls, I’d grown up with an inherent understanding of that concept—if a girl was taken against her will, she came out on the other side changed, damaged. Never to be the same again.

  Downstairs, the phone started ringing again. I held my hands to my ears and squeezed. I pressed so hard I created a roaring sound, like the echo of the ocean inside a seashell. Crash after crash after crash.

  * * *

  * * *

  I stayed in bed a long time. I was staring at the stars on my ceiling—staring until they blurred, multiplied, birthed themselves anew—when a knock sounded on my door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  The door eased open. Miles entered, our parents just behind him. My father had come home and I hadn’t even noticed. He’d been putting in a lot of time on a new account at work, an advertisement for a banner downtown that he said would shake up the industry, so it was a shock to see him home so early. Or maybe it wasn’t early. Was it possible I’d fallen asleep?

  “I’m sorry, Celeste.” My mother wrapped her arms around her sides, holding herself. “I should have told you about Deirdre in a better way. I was in shock.”

  I sat up and pushed the blankets away. “Is there any news?”

  “An official alert has gone out,” my father said. “I heard it at work.”

  “It’s awful.” My mother shook her head, still holding herself. “Just awful.”

  Miles scanned my room as though he might find Deirdre hiding among my things.

  “What exactly did she say to you this afternoon?” he asked.

  I could feel everyone watching me.

  “I just saw her for a minute in the bathroom. We talked about when I might change.” I didn’t mention the lipstick, or how she’d talked about power and choice. I was afraid to make the case that she’d brought this on herself.

  But it was already too late for that. All over town, as parents and teachers and students heard the alert, they were imagining how Deirdre went wrong. It was a certain kind of girl who let herself get caught by men: the rebellious kind, the flirty kind, the kind who flaunted her future. I had grown up believing that. We all had.

  Miles slumped onto my bed. He smelled faintly of sweat from our brickball game, a sour smell that reminded me he was nearly eighteen, nearly a man, and not the boy I pictured in my mind.

  “I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight,” he said.

  “You can’t blame yourself, Miles.” Our father held up his hands, as if absolving us all. “Deirdre must have behaved recklessly for this to happen.”

  I thought again of the lipstick, the way Deirdre reveled in her newfound allure as a changeling. Maybe my father was right. Maybe it had been her fault.

  “What I’m worried about is how her family didn’t consider this a real threat,” my mother added. “Here we are, living our lives as though everything is fine, but it’s not. It’s truly not.” She broke off with a strangled sound in her throat.

  “She’ll be back before long,” I assured everyone. This was a simple fact. Once a girl’s changeling period ended, she was less desirable. Abducted girls were set free at this point. Years ago, there had been a smattering of murders, girls whose bodies turned up under a soft layer of loam in the forest on the outskirts of the city, but that was an abomination, the result of one sick man. He’d been caught and placed in prison for life. Justice served, everyone said.

  So much about abductions was predictable, even though a girl’s markings never revealed that particular fate. First, Deirdre’s abductor would certainly be a man. I’d once heard a rumor about a woman who took changelings, who couldn’t resist them just like men, but this was urban legend. For men, it was about more than sexual attraction; it was about their need to read our futures, to take something of what they’d never have themselves.

  Next, we could anticipate what Deirdre’s return would lead to—gossip, whispers, isolation. She could never get a good job or go to university if she’d been ruined. The best employers didn’t hi
re women who’d been taken, and no university would admit them. To be abducted indicated a moral failing, a lapse in judgment and restraint that pointed to more serious deficiencies. As a result, her abduction would follow her always.

  The shaking returned. It started in my stomach, a fluttering as if something alive had been placed there.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I said. “I think I’ll go back to sleep.”

  My mother came forward to kiss the top of my head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “We’ll leave you to rest.”

  Once everyone had gone, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what Deirdre might be enduring at that moment—locked in a room with a man, curtains pulled shut, shadows everywhere. A man might drug her and keep her for weeks, until she passed out of her changeling period. When she stumbled into the light again, she would no longer be her same self.

  The story was an old one. The best we could do was warn changelings not to go out alone at night, to stay within the safety of a group, to dress chastely during those dangerous few weeks. Girls were considered women as soon as they changed, so we were expected to shoulder that responsibility, to put forth the effort to protect ourselves.

  In health class at school that year, Mrs. Ellis had digressed from her lesson plan to give us a lecture about returned girls. Mrs. Ellis was short, with broad shoulders—built like a bull, the boys liked to say—and in her gentle way, she explained that most abducted girls didn’t stick around for long once they returned.

  “If they have access to money, they could go to the Mountain School,” she said, though we all knew most people weren’t that wealthy. Others, she continued, moved in with relatives out of town. But if the returned girls didn’t have connections elsewhere, things were more difficult. Maybe they hitchhiked to someplace far away to find work as waitresses, or maids, or strippers, or worse. Maybe they lived on the streets, or stayed in shelters, or found companionship with other lost souls.