“I’m not sure I want to be here,” I whispered. The music on the other side of the door swelled louder.
“We don’t have to stay.” He paused. “Not if you’re scared.”
“I’m not.” All at once, that was true. He had made it so by offering a way out.
“Good,” he said. “Because I won’t do anything you don’t want.”
I considered him. “You’ve been in here before, I bet.”
“Yes, but not like this. You’re my first changeling.”
“I’m not your anything.”
“I know. I’m sorry, I know.”
A deep silence, the rasp of his breath. My eyes had adjusted and snippets of light crept in—not only from the crack beneath the door but from all around us, as if minuscule holes had been poked into the closet from all sides to shine through with light, like the mechanical star ball at the planetarium. With my high lucidity, it was enough to let me make out the outline of this boy. I could see his chest rising and falling. Time was slipping away, and he knew it. Every second must have been agony for him.
Maybe this closet was safe. He hadn’t tried to touch me yet, and time was dropping down second by second. I took a step closer. Now I could both see it and feel it: his shaking. His entire body trembling for me, or for the idea of me, or for every newly changed woman who had ever crossed his path.
I eased forward until my body brushed against his. I felt the jerk go through him like he’d been shocked. I held still, unable to press on and yet unwilling to pull back. Gently, he snaked an arm around my waist. We fell together at once, and it was impossible to say who advanced first—I just knew that one moment we were apart, and the next we were kissing. He was a soft kisser, and his hands were broad and warm on my arms, my sides, my back. I felt his lips shake, felt the beating in his chest.
It felt good to press up against a boy, or at least this boy. Perhaps all the stories I’d heard growing up—the ones warning me about men and boys, as if they were a different species—weren’t true. Girls were meant to wait until they’d passed out of their changeling periods before entering into relationships for safety’s sake, but how astonishing to experience these sensations now, in high lucidity, when the world was bright and better and full of pleasure.
When the two minutes were up, we forced ourselves to pull away from each other and stumble back into the light. The bottle was already spinning again. My eyes were still adjusting when Cassandra appeared at my side.
“See?” she said. She smiled, and I studied the sheen of her lips, their spark and fullness. I was pulled taut, humming with energy.
“It wasn’t bad,” I admitted.
She gave me a sideways look. “His name is Owen.”
“Thanks. You’re right, I didn’t even know his name.”
She laughed. “I had a feeling you two weren’t having a conversation in there.” She paused, turning serious. “You’re allowed to enjoy yourself, Celeste. It’s powerful, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t help myself. I nodded.
Behind us, the party continued, but the tension felt deflated. Owen had drifted back into the crowd. Everyone felt far away.
“I’m getting more rose sherry,” Cassandra said. “You want some this time?”
I shook my head. When she left, I found my gaze wandering toward Miles again. To look at him was to be snapped back to reality: my markings, his final three years of life. I wondered if it would always be like that for me, those bursts of awareness of his fate. How I’d have to constantly remember his future like it was the past.
Cassandra rushed past Miles toward me, her eyes lit up. She was carrying what appeared to be a pack of playing cards.
“Look at this.” She presented the deck like a treasure. “I’ve never seen this kind in person.”
I looked closer. She was holding not playing cards but a tarot deck—an erotic edition.
Miles appeared and grabbed the deck from Cassandra.
“You shouldn’t have these.” But he cracked open the deck and poured the cards into his hand. Instead of standard-issue tarot cards, which were illustrated with trees, rivers, mountains, and animals, erotic cards showed the bodies of girls. They were a thing of great and terrible beauty.
I watched as Miles began placing the cards one by one onto the table. Each featured a drawing of a naked girl, her markings drilled through the paper in pinprick-sized holes. When he held a card up to the lamp, light sprinkled his face in minuscule, illuminated specks. Though the bodies on those cards were illustrated, they were real. They were girls like Deirdre, changelings from all over the country who were caught and recorded against their will. Seventy-eight girls pressed into glossy card stock and shot through with pricks of light.
“Put that down,” I said. “It’s disgusting.”
I didn’t mean it, not fully—the cards were gorgeous, a work of true art. Hand-drawn images with intricately sketched borders of woven garlands. Detailed, delicate. For as long as I could remember I had always been drawn to patterns, fractals, the designs found in nature: snail shell, snowflake, fern frond, lightning bolt. This pattern worship was the closest I got to religion. How much easier everything would be if the tarot contained only patterns on their own, designs disconnected from the bodies of girls. But those bodies were the entire point of the erotic tarot. The girls’ skin shined slick-bright and bold, and the markings were pierced through with the utmost precision. The future revealed.
As girls and women, we spent our lives marked in our own private futures, but those futures were never fully our own. Family members, spouses, employers, and others made unceasing demands on what our skin foretold, and our only defense was the choice of whether to reveal our markings, and when. Yes, we needed to sign a transcript release form when applying to university or for a job, but it was our choice to apply for those jobs, our decision about who would access our transcripts and when. These cards represented anarchy, a world like the old times when women had no say over who looked and when. These cards reduced girls to mere objects to be collected and consumed and stored in a box.
Miles continued flipping through the deck as Rebecca veered toward us.
“Give those to me.” Her voice sounded strained and raw. When she held out her hand for the deck, her fingers shook.
“These cards are beautiful,” Miles said, “and the people who illustrate them earn a lot of money. But it’s wrong, and you know it.”
“I just wanted to see how they were made. I’m not going to keep them.” Rebecca’s face was red. “Now give them back.”
Miles handed the deck to Rebecca but retained a single card that he held to his chest, the side with the girl pressed against his shirt. We could see the arrangement of her markings on the other side. We could see through her.
“Like I said, I’m taking them back the next chance I get.” Rebecca’s hand was still extended, waiting for the last card. She looked hopeless like that, and it didn’t help that we all knew she couldn’t return the cards. She must have purchased them on the sly from one of the back-alley vendors outside the interpretation district.
Miles flipped the card around so we could all see it. The girl had short brown hair, green eyes, skin dappled with tight clusters of markings all over. My brother gripped the card so tightly his whole arm was trembling.
“That’s Elizabeth,” he said.
“You knew her?” I asked, surprised.
“I had pastels with her my first year at art camp,” he said. “She lived on the far east side of the city, so she had to take two buses to get to camp. She even went to one of our school dances. But then she disappeared.”
Rebecca snatched the card from Miles.
“I didn’t realize that deck had a girl from town when I bought it,” she said. “I’m not a monster—I love the cards for their art. That’s all.”
A commotion in the co
rner of the basement drew our attention away from Rebecca. Jonah was circling Janine, grabbing her lightly around the waist. Every time she stepped back from him, he came closer. Meanwhile, another boy began chasing a third-year changeling through the basement. They were both laughing, but the girl was red in the face and out of breath, her eyes startled.
“Stop it,” Rebecca called. “We have these parties to prove we can be trusted with one another. But we can’t, can we?” She crammed the tarot cards back into the deck. “No one can be trusted. Not a single one of us.”
I glanced reflexively at Miles, but he didn’t react. When I turned to Cassandra, she looked worried. That shook me more than anything—that the behavior of those boys frightened even my boldest and bravest friend.
Rebecca wiped her eyes. “All right,” she said. “The party’s over. I’ve had enough.”
No one said anything.
“I said the party’s over,” Rebecca repeated, louder this time. She picked up an empty bottle of rose sherry. “My parents will be back soon, anyway. It’s time to leave.”
With some reluctance, we started edging toward the stairs. Cassandra and I stuck together, so close our arms were touching.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” I whispered.
“I knew it.” She was smiling. “I knew you hadn’t lost your fun side.”
We joined the crush of bodies moving up the stairs and flowing out the side door. Once outside, everyone stopped, as if unsure how to make use of this unexpected freedom. Maybe we thought Rebecca would follow and tell us what to do. Maybe this was all part of the plan in the first place, a sort of initiation.
But it wasn’t. Rebecca shut the door against us, and then she locked it.
Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls
On Privacy and Shame
Girls and women alike may maintain their privacy by disclosing their markings only to those of their choosing. Unfortunately, some changelings are reluctant to reveal their markings out of a misplaced self-consciousness over their newly developing bodies. For these girls, we offer the following consolation: shame and the changeling have been intertwined since the beginning of time. Girls should not strive to eradicate shame but rather embrace it as the price paid for the gift of being marked for the future.
In some cases, shame arises from nefarious forces. In particular, we highlight the trend of markings thievery, a crime against privacy that the Office of the Future denounces. The production or sale of books, tarot cards, comics, or other printed materials displaying a girl’s markings is unlawful. Regardless, girls who find themselves victimized in this way must acknowledge their complicity in failing to protect themselves. While the shame from such unfortunate cases may not fade, girls can take heart that illicit materials tend to run their course quickly and become defunct. Before long, these materials will fade away.
The passing of time, in this case, is on a girl’s side.
12
We moved like a pack, beasts in the night. Boys, girls, changelings, all together. The boys who’d driven to Rebecca’s house offered rides to as many people as they could fit in their cars, but the other girls and I knew better than to accept. After witnessing the scene in the basement, Cassandra even refused to ride with Jonah. She’d planned for him to drive us back to Marie’s house, where my mother would eventually pick us both up, but now that was all ruined. Now we were set loose into the night instead.
“You need to stay with me every second,” Miles said. He was on foot like the rest of us, with no choice but to join the crowd. We moved as a group from Rebecca’s house to the safest place we could think of: the First Friday celebration in the interpretation district, which was less than a mile away and would be our best chance of finding taxis driven by women. As long as we walked there together, we’d be protected by our numbers and by the First Friday festivities. This was the night interpreters cracked open their finest editions of Mapping the Future, wiped their crystal balls clean of fingerprints, and lured in customers with brie and chardonnay. The event would be crowded, electric, alive—a haven for changelings.
All my life I’d been told to never venture out at nighttime once I changed, and yet there I was, doing it anyway. It was thrilling. Only hours before, I would have been terrified by the mere prospect. Now, excitement zipped along my body like a live wire. Maybe that time in the closet with Owen, those two minutes of security and desire, had changed me. Maybe Cassandra had been right about everything all along: being a changeling was powerful, and beautiful, and alluring. Fear was nothing but a distraction from the wonders newly available to us.
The larger group from Rebecca’s party broke apart when we approached the crowds of First Friday. Janine and the other two changelings set about finding taxis they’d feel safe in, but Miles, Cassandra, and I continued on foot together.
“We’re heading straight to Julia’s,” Miles said. “I don’t care if it’s First Friday. No detours.”
The night did feel harmless, robust with activity. Once we’d crossed under the Future as Fate arch, the streets grew thick with tourists. We sidestepped street vendors and shrieking children and the out-of-town fathers who swiveled their heads in our direction. It was like being at the summer festival, an event that felt safe and familiar with a touch of dark allure. The colors, the sounds, the laughter, the fizz of champagne—it was a brilliant place to experience through the lens of high lucidity.
We found Julia standing on the sidewalk outside her townhouse. When she caught sight of us, she tilted her head and gave Miles a questioning look.
“Isn’t this a surprise,” she said as we approached.
“Our plans tonight changed last minute,” Miles said. “First Friday was our safest bet.”
“Why aren’t you inside, giving readings?” Cassandra asked her.
Julia tugged at her sweater. “I don’t participate in First Friday. It’s a bit vulgar, isn’t it? I just stepped out for some air and got lost in people-watching.”
Cassandra eyed a family of four gathered around a storefront. “Seems like giving readings on First Friday would be a good way to make some money.”
Julia smiled wryly. “Ah. An opportunist.” Her gaze wandered from Cassandra and reached mine. Her eyes looked gray in the dim light of the street lamp. Unflinching.
“We need a ride home,” Miles said.
Genuine concern crossed Julia’s face. “My car hasn’t been fixed yet. I’ll have to call one of your parents to come get you.”
“No,” Cassandra said quickly. “We can find a taxi driven by a woman.”
Julia frowned. “No taxis. Let me ask a friend of mine to drive you home instead. Someone trustworthy. Come on inside while I call her.”
I glanced at the crowds over my shoulder, drawn to the activity and the hint of wonder in the air. I was still carrying the energy from my time with Owen, my newfound strength and sense of control, and I wanted it to last.
“Maybe we could stay out a little longer,” I said.
Julia was already on the stoop. She looked back at me, alarmed. “You still need to be careful, even on First Friday.”
“Please.” I worried that if I stepped inside Julia’s place, I’d lose myself—that I’d succumb to a reading, that she would learn all my secrets. “We’ll stay on this street and come back within a half hour.”
“There’s no risk,” Cassandra said. “There are children everywhere, families, lots of women.”
“That’s true,” Miles added. I looked to him with surprise. “And I’d be with them every minute. I promise.”
Julia gave Miles a long, shrewd look. “Fine. Thirty minutes, then straight back here for your ride home. But you should cover up, Cassie. Here, take my sweater.” She started to shrug out of her baggy gray zip-up, but Cassandra shook her head.
“No, thanks,” she said, and I thought of her ca
rdigan still crumpled on the floor of Jonah’s car. “It doesn’t go with my dress.”
The sweater was already halfway off Julia’s left shoulder. She let it hover there for a moment before pulling it back on. She did this so casually that I thought she must have known from the start that Cassandra would reject her offer. I imagined Julia as a master reader, someone who had access to a set of markings more detailed than any that could exist on a single woman: a whole universe of markings, a multiverse, every moment of every day plotted out in a map only she could see. It was an impossible fantasy, but being around Julia knocked my sense of reality off-kilter.
“Don’t leave this street,” Julia said. “Stay in busy areas, and don’t get separated.”
That simple expression—don’t get separated—was enough to remind me of my brother’s fate. I studied Miles as we headed back into the crowds and thought he seemed healthy and self-assured, at the start of a long adult life. It was agony to be the only person in the world to know the truth. More than that, it was lonely—a pure, cracked-open loneliness that came not only from carrying this secret about my brother, but also from knowing there was nothing I could do to save him.
* * *
* * *
The three of us gravitated to a storefront across the street. The neon sign read Chloe’s Interpretation, and in the window, a novelty crystal ball glowed a garish blue.
“I love it.” Cassandra brightened. “Let’s get readings.”
Miles shook his head. “Frauds like this have no respect for the art of interpretation.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Cassandra told him. “This is for fun. It’s entertainment, and it’s perfectly allowed.”
It was true. Mapping the Future even included a brief section on the matter, titled “On Charlatans,” which issued warnings about false interpreters while acknowledging that not all such interpreters were of malicious intent. Instead, their businesses amounted to a fantasy, which some customers were happy to pay for. “On Charlatans” explained that scarves, costumes, crystal balls, scented candles, and other such frippery signaled interpretation services designated for entertainment value only. The ridiculous glowing ball in Chloe’s window was a clear sign that this was not an authentic interpretation business.
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