Body of Stars

by Laura Maylene Walter

  9

  To be a changeling was to be exposed, peeled back and laid bare. At school, I could no longer slip by as an anonymous girl. I startled people, making them jump like they’d just heard a clap of thunder. My history teacher cocked his head whenever I passed his classroom, and outside, the boys running on the athletic field shifted simultaneously as I walked along the fence line.

  That morning, I turned from my locker to find myself surrounded by boys. They appeared as if from nowhere and fanned around me, creating a barrier too strong to break through. Dirty blue jeans, untucked shirts, ragged haircuts, shoes streaked with grass stains. They were earthy and unapologetic in their disarray as only boys could be.

  “Can you give me some space?” I asked.

  The boys leaned forward a few degrees, and I clutched my geometry book to my chest like a shield. I was protecting myself, but I was also holding myself back. I saw my male classmates in a new way that morning. They were thrilling and raw, bodies driven by want. New thoughts drifted into my mind: thoughts of kissing and contact, of those flat boy chests pressing right up against me.

  The boys drew closer. My back was against the lockers. A wanting started to crack through my body, a surge that broke off in pieces like a glacier calving. I desired power, I desired control, I desired freedom. I desired.

  One boy reached out, his fingertip inches from my shoulder. Keep going, I thought, while also thinking at the same time: Stop.

  My homeroom teacher, a woman of cardigans that smelled of mothballs, was the one to save me. She hurried up to the boys and startled them, made them scatter like birds taking flight. When I caught her eye, she smiled.

  “Boys,” she said simply, like that was explanation enough.

  * * *

  * * *

  I moved from class to class in a blur. I was getting better at controlling my senses, at tamping down the sensory data flooding every moment. Some girls fell in love with their high lucidity and went through a depression once it came to an end. Others tried to make money off it, by hiring themselves out to chefs to be expert taste testers, or by creating new color palettes for designers. But not everyone trusted high lucidity. Some people considered it false, a form of hysteria.

  Cassandra was the type to embrace her heightened senses. We met in the school bathroom and stood in front of a single mirror, our hip bones jutting against the sink. Cassandra leaned in close to study her pores. She said it was like seeing straight into her body. I opened my mouth wide and peered at my molars, my uvula, the soft tissue under my tongue. I laughed a little. It was nothing short of bizarre, all that was inside us.

  I took off my sweater, relieved to feel unburdened of the hot material for at least a few moments. Underneath, I wore a sleeveless undershirt, and Cassandra reached out to touch my upper arm. She ran her finger up and down, calling the tiny hairs along my arm to attention.

  “Your skin is so soft,” she said. “Was it like this before your change?”

  “I have no idea.” I reached for her hair, all gloss and velvet. It felt heavy, like I could weigh the protein in each strand.

  So much of what people said about changeling girls was urban legend. If someone had burst into that bathroom right then, they might have started a rumor about Cassandra and me, how we turned to each other out of sheer, mindless attraction. But this wasn’t about sex for us. It was about wonder, and mystery, and the joy of feeling the slightest touch to the core of your being. It was the kind of connection only possible between changeling girls.

  The bell rang, signaling the start of the next class. I slid my sweater back on and we headed to Cassandra’s locker. Our teachers would forgive us for being late. They made allowances for changelings, understanding it was difficult for us to be in school in our state.

  I leaned against the wall of lockers as Cassandra searched for a book. She was stretched up on her tiptoes, rooting through the top shelf of her locker, when Jonah appeared behind her.

  Jonah was a fourth-year, like Miles. He was on the baseball team and also on the drum line, a rare combination, and some mornings he showed up to school without bothering to shave. There in the hallway he crept silently toward Cassandra, shooting me a sly look like he expected me to keep his secret. He edged so close that his breath was probably on the back of her neck. She surely sensed him there, surely heard him and smelled him and even felt the draft of air moving around his body, but she pretended not to. A game.

  When Cassandra finally whirled around to face Jonah, he didn’t back up. Not one inch. Instead he laughed and reached for a strand of her hair. I’d held her hair only moments before, which had seemed right, and harmless. This was something else.

  Cassandra smiled at him. Jonah tugged the lock of hair a little, bringing her closer. If I weren’t standing right there, maybe he would have kissed her. Watching Jonah and Cassandra together made me think about the guidelines for appropriate behavior for changeling girls outlined in Mapping the Future. For the first time I wanted more rules, a whole host of them, anything to keep my friend safe. I didn’t like how she was looking at this older boy, how she was leaning closer every second.

  Jonah finally acknowledged me.

  “Celeste, wow,” he said. “Being a changeling suits you.”

  Cassandra shut her locker, hard. “Being a changeling suits everyone.”

  I looked around the hallway, which had emptied completely. The silence felt ominous.

  “I need to talk to you, Cassie,” I said. “Alone.”

  “Are you sure?” She was still gazing at Jonah.

  “Yes. Right now.”

  “Go ahead,” Jonah told Cassandra. “We’ll meet up later.” He squeezed her shoulder, and I felt something like static go through the air. He walked backwards for the first few steps, keeping his eyes on us, before he turned and disappeared around the corner.

  “You shouldn’t get that close to a boy, Cassie,” I said after he’d gone. “It’s risky. Even if you trust Jonah, it might give the wrong idea to other boys. Or men.”

  “We’re in school. Public places are safe.” She put a hand on my arm. “Don’t be paranoid.”

  “I’m just saying it’s better to wait until your changeling period is over before getting mixed up with Jonah.”

  “I can’t wait.” Her voice started to rise. “New girls start changing all the time. I have to catch his attention now.”

  “At least promise me you won’t go anywhere with him alone.”

  Cassandra looked exasperated. “You need to relax. No one’s getting hurt here.” She bent down to zip her backpack, pulling the metal teeth together with a swift flick of her wrist. “No one else will tell you this, so I will,” she added. “You’re becoming a bore.”

  “Cassie. Don’t.”

  “I’m serious, Celeste. If you’re not careful, no one will want to bother with you. You make things too difficult.”

  She grabbed the bag by its straps and turned to leave. I waited, stunned, but she didn’t apologize. She didn’t even look back.

  * * *

  * * *

  At that time in my life, I experienced the possibility of losing a friend as a trauma. Friendships were important to me, Cassandra was important to me, and the prospect of a rift in our relationship just then, when I needed her most, was agonizing.

  On that day, I worried I’d already lost her. When school let out, Cassandra was nowhere to be found, Marie was in her domestic arts club, and Miles had headed straight downtown to Julia’s. I walked home with a group of girls I didn’t know well. Elissa, Janet, and Ali. They adopted me, moving in a protective formation that placed their bodies between mine and passersby. Later I’d learn that Miles had set it up, insisting on a small crowd to walk me home even though it was daylight, hours from dusk.

  A few times, I glanced over my shoulder to see if Cassandra would appear. She didn’t. I hoped she�
��d found someone to walk home with, anyone aside from Jonah.

  “Look,” Elissa whispered. She had red hair and freckles spelling a flurry of predictions across her cheeks. “That man across the street—he can’t stop staring at Celeste.”

  We turned to see a young man, dressed for a workout in running shoes and athletic shorts, gawking at me. When he saw us looking he turned away abruptly, stumbling over his own feet.

  The other girls clutched one another and laughed.

  “Good thing we were here to save you,” Janet said. “He might have dragged you off somewhere so he could pretend you were his girlfriend.”

  She and the others kept laughing, but I felt sick. The gentleness in that man’s expression, his sheer embarrassment—it was wrong to lump him in with monstrous men.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “Think of Deirdre.”

  That quieted them down. We walked in silence for a while, passing neighbors raking leaves, biking, painting shutters. I smelled the paint, registered the tick-tick of a piece of plastic in bicycle spokes, could practically feel a yellowed leaf crushed by the rake. These were the everyday parts of life, lulling me into a sense of normalcy even as they were heightened, warped, made dazzling by my change.

  When we reached my house, I cut through my front yard.

  “Thanks,” I called back. The girls waved and carried on. I watched them for a second from the front stoop. It struck me as natural that there were three of them, a trio of friends traveling in a pack. I looked forward to calmer days, when Cassandra, Marie, and I could return to our old ways of being with one another.

  I fumbled for my key. We kept the house locked all the time now that I was a changeling, even in daylight and when everyone was home. My father insisted on it. I followed his rules even if he often wasn’t present to enforce them—we were both so humiliated by his marking inspection that we’d begun avoiding each other. I was starting to wonder how, exactly, the father-daughter inspection ritual had persisted over the years. Women were superior at reading markings, after all, and mothers could read their daughters more freely, with less embarrassment.

  But had my mother inspected my markings, she would have known the truth about the prediction on my ribs. In that sense, I was lucky it was my father. The tradition, as humiliating as it was, had helped me.

  Inside, I dropped my backpack and climbed the stairs. My mother was in the upstairs hallway, laboring under the weight of shopping bags. I followed as she dragged them into her bedroom.

  “I thought we had to watch our spending,” I said.

  She hefted the bags onto her bed and swept a few sweaty strands of hair from her temple. “I’m going back to work. For a full position this time, not just contract work.”

  I grabbed one of the bags and peeled it open. It contained neat stacks of dress pants, skirts, and collared shirts. My mother’s career markings were incomplete; they indicated success in a career path that helped others but otherwise provided few specifics. She had become a teacher and then worked in education policy. After she quit her job to have Miles and me, she occasionally worked on a freelance basis for her old employer, a charter school consortium, but never anything long-term or full-time. These clothes represented something different.

  “Can you believe I didn’t have anything professional to wear that still fits? It just goes to show that there are still some surprises in life.” She gave my arm a playful jab. “Even for us.”

  “When do you start?” My mouth felt dry, scaled over.

  “Next week. I tried to negotiate a later start date, but they needed someone immediately.” She began pulling out her new purchases and smoothing them on the bed. “I’m looking forward to getting back to it.”

  Before I was born, she’d won a Teacher of the Year award, and a regional magazine published a profile about her. That magazine issue sat by itself in the top drawer of one of the end tables in the living room. I once heard my father saying we should frame it, but my mother refused. She believed in modesty and sacrifice. When she was a new graduate, she worked for Teachers of the Nation, a program that placed young teachers in inner-city schools. She still spoke of her experiences there, usually when she wanted to make a point to Miles and me that we were spoiled.

  She took my hands in her own. Her skin was cool and dry and familiar. “Something bothering you?”

  I could only think of the markings on my left side, and how they foretold part of the future that perhaps shouldn’t be predicted at all. Certain predictions were too severe, too grief-filled, to be laid bare on our bodies. And yet there I was, with this marking unveiling my brother’s fate.

  “Mothers almost never know,” I said slowly, “if their children will die young. Why not?”

  Her expression morphed into alarm. “Why are you asking that?”

  I gently pulled my hands away. “I was thinking of Donny Rheinholdt.”

  She softened. “That was horrible.” Donny and Miles had been friends. A few years ago, Donny rode his bike across an intersection without looking and was hit by a car. Donny only had brothers, no sisters, so no one had the chance to be marked with his death.

  “His mother didn’t see it coming. Why didn’t her markings give a hint of what would happen? Girls get marked with bad news all the time. Marie knew her whole life when her father would get sick and die.”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. For a mother to lose a child is one of the worst tragedies imaginable. Maybe we aren’t given what we can’t handle.”

  “But why? Our markings give us so many clues about the future. They’ll indicate whether we’ll get sick and die young. They usually say if we’ll have kids, and whether the family will be a happy one.” I thought of the pale dots on my mother’s stomach, her shining stars of two children situated close together to indicate closeness in real life. “But certain things never appear in the markings. Like suicides, murder, abductions. Sometimes I’d rather have no predictions than an incomplete view of the future.”

  “Oh, Celeste. I know it can be torture to know a little but not everything. It’s especially hard right after you change, when your future has been upended.” She stopped to look at me. “What I’m trying to say is that it’s normal to feel a little depressed right now.”

  “I’m not depressed.” I stood and moved out of her reach. “I saw Donny’s little brother at school today, that’s all. It made me think of them, and how sad the funeral was. Remember?”

  “I do. You were brave to come with us to support Miles.” She paused, her expression thoughtful. “I admit I’m relieved. I know we have your father’s reading, but I thought you were trying to tell me you’d seen something terrible in your future. A disease, an accident, a short or painful life.”

  I forced a smile. “Of course not.”

  I could never let my mother know what was coming for Miles—that was clear. The truth would be too much for her to bear.

  * * *

  * * *

  In my short time as a changeling, I’d already developed a few coping mechanisms for the high lucidity. One was to close all the blinds in my room and lie in the dark while listening to Top of the Hits on my portable radio. I loved Top of the Hits because it was more or less the same every day. I lay on my comforter in the dark and listened, my eyes tracking the dull glints from the plastic stars on the ceiling. Every song was about one of three things: unrequited love, lost love, or fated love affairs that had not yet begun.

  A ballad in which a man sang about the journey to find his fated wife had just wrapped up when my mother knocked on my door to tell me Cassandra had called for me. I headed downstairs to the phone, squinting against the lights. In my mind I kept seeing Cassandra, only hours before, insulting me by her locker.

  “I need you to meet me at Marie’s house,” Cassandra said. Just like that, as though our encounter at school had never happened.

  I glanced
out the window. It was growing dark, the treetops in the backyard turning black and tangled. I’d need to convince my mother to drive me.

  “I thought Marie was busy tonight,” I said.

  “She is. That’s a cover. Rebecca Delbanco is having one of her parties, and we’re going.”

  Rebecca was a fourth-year. She and Miles attended the art camp together every summer. For the past few years, she’d hosted parties in honor of newly changed girls. Other girls were invited, too, including those who still hadn’t changed, but I had never before been included among them.

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. I wanted to tell Cassandra that going out at night was a terrible idea, but I stopped myself. The word bore reverberated in my mind.

  “We’re only keeping it a secret because of what happened to Deirdre, to prevent our parents from worrying.” Cassandra paused, her voice turning gentle. “Celeste, please. I need you there. Besides, these parties are a tradition.”

  We were meant to revere tradition, especially when it came to our markings. The readings, the professional interpreters, the rose sherry at coming-out parties, the connections shared among girls and women—it was all hallowed ground. I remembered that moment in the school bathroom with Cassandra, how in love we were with our newness and each other. She was my best friend, and I needed her more than ever now that I carried the burden of Miles’s fate. What she had said to me in the hallway at school was just an outburst, I decided, a symptom of this tumultuous time in her life.

  “All right,” I told her. “I’ll get a ride.”

  I hung up the phone and dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and a thin black scarf stitched through with silver thread. I added a dab of lipstick and studied myself in the mirror. I felt covered but visible. Protected yet accessible. Yes and no, bright and dark, pleasure and pain—all of it waiting within the universe of my own body.

  Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls