Body of Stars

by Laura Maylene Walter

  I went upstairs after dinner to work on my geometry homework. It was getting dark, so I snapped on my desk lamp to illuminate the proof I was working on. Angles, arcs, the unending reach of a line. I was beginning to appreciate the reasoned methodology of geometry, its careful, step-by-step documentation outlining how to solve a problem.

  I was halfway through the proof when Miles leaned into my room. He was holding Mapping the Future.

  “Can I check your markings?” he asked. “I learned something new in class I’d like to practice.”

  He loomed in the doorway, waiting. He had grown so much in the past year that sometimes I didn’t recognize him.

  “All right,” I said. “But make it quick.”

  I sat still as Miles took my upper arm in his hands. This I was used to. When it came to my brother, I was his subject, his practice ground, his key to the language of interpretation. This was our oldest and most familiar way of interacting with each other.

  While he worked, I stared at the walls my father had recently helped me paint. The hardware store sold gallons of returned premixed paint at a discount, which was how I ended up with a creamy blue color so pale it was nearly white. We spackled over the nail holes, sanded and cleaned the walls, and finally painted. After the second coat dried, I hung my posters: an enlarged diagram from Mapping the Future that predicted a life filled with joy, a panoramic landscape of mountains, and a painting of a woman reclining among flowers and jewels. As a finishing touch, I applied a set of tiny sharp stars that glowed in the dark, pasting them on the ceiling above the bed in no particular constellation. I liked to look at them at night and know they were only stars and nothing more.

  When Miles finished with my right arm, he came around to my left side.

  “If you put the effort in,” he said, in an offhanded way, “I think you could be really good at interpretation.”

  I sighed. This was a mild but long-standing point of contention between us: Miles wanted me to study interpretation with him, and I had no interest in doing so.

  “It’s not for me. You know that,” I said. “Besides, Julia’s not like other interpreters. You should have heard what she was saying about a tree, and how our actions can change the future.”

  “Nothing we do can outright change what has been fated. Influence uncertain outcomes a bit, maybe. Give them a different flavor. That’s all she means.”

  “It’s still an odd way to think. I like her, I do, but what she said seems off.” I watched as Miles consulted the index in Mapping the Future. “What about you—do you trust her?”

  He didn’t look up. “With my life.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  “Are you almost done?” I asked instead. “I need to finish my homework.”

  “Soon.” He scrutinized my left elbow. “Besides, your markings have always indicated that you’re a strong student.”

  “Yes, but not if I stop studying.” As I spoke, I heard an echo of what Julia had said about the tree, about incremental change. I shook my arm away.

  Miles looked up. “You should appreciate what you have. I’d give anything to be marked like a girl.”

  His words reminded me of how I used to sit on my father’s lap and locate the mole on his neck so I could marvel at its meaninglessness. I drove myself half delirious trying to grasp that it was simply a mole, nothing more, and that in fact male markings were not arranged in patterns as they were on women’s bodies. They were scattershot, random. Unreadable.

  “Deirdre’s going back to school tomorrow, you know,” he added. His voice took on a practiced, casual tone—so this was his real reason for coming into my room. Once again, he had concealed his motivations. “Since you two have classes in the same part of the building, I thought you might keep an eye on her this week.”

  “I barely know her.” Deirdre was a third-year, a year above me. We did not socialize.

  “Just look out for her,” Miles said. “Please. My schedule doesn’t align with hers, but you’ll at least have a chance of seeing her.”

  He looked so serious, like he had aged many years that afternoon. Maybe he had a crush on Deirdre. Maybe, I thought, all of this was no more than teenage attraction.

  “All right. But she’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks, Celeste. I owe you.”

  He reached into his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out a handful of wild strawberries, which he shook loose on my desk.

  “We forgot to pick them this summer, but there’s still some left.” He shrugged. “I thought you’d like them.”

  My brother could do that—disarm me in an instant by conjuring our shared past. When we were children, he and I picked the wild strawberries that grew along the side of our house. Once, we set up a strawberry stand in the front yard, where we divvied the berries into tiny paper cups marked fifty cents each. We didn’t make a single sale. At the end of the day, we ate as many of the remaining berries as we could and then smashed the rest onto our arms. Like we were driven to destroy what we couldn’t consume.

  Once Miles left my room, I popped the strawberries one by one into my mouth. In each berry I felt the slip of dozens of tiny seeds skimming the surface of the pink flesh, just waiting for the chance to come to life.

  Mapping the Future: An Interpretive Guide to Women and Girls

  Category—Career

  Location—Hip, right

  Cluster A: Specifies individuals involved in the subject’s future career. A1 identifies an older sibling, while the position and size of A2 denotes either a parental figure or mentor.

  Cluster B: The downward slant in this classic four-marking career cluster indicates a profession involving intricate work.

  Marking 0: As an outlier, this marking suggests the subject will work alone. [See Appendix C: Contradictions.]

  3

  When my brother made me a promise, he kept it, and I did the same for him. That was our history, and I believed it was our future, too. But fulfilling my promise to look out for Deirdre proved difficult. Deirdre was elusive, unpredictable, a phantom girl slipping from my grasp. I searched for her in the halls after homeroom and again after the first two classes that next morning, but she never appeared. Once I swore I sensed her presence, but when I turned around, no one was there.

  The upper school was shaped like a T, an endless hallway for arts and languages capped by a shorter hall dedicated to science and math. The time between classes amounted to a crashing push through the halls, a building of pressure as students jammed together at the intersection. Those flashes of disorder were routine, the kind of adolescent chaos I’d later recall with a tinge of fondness.

  Each time I failed to find Deirdre between classes, I returned to my usual routine of walking the halls with Marie and Cassandra. We’d met in primary school, a trio of eight-year-olds drawn to one another by curiosity and fate. What different lives we had back then: lighting sparklers, chalking snail hopscotch diagrams onto the playground, lining our wrists with jelly bracelets. We wore ponytails secured with beaded holders in jewel colors, little treasures we’d later trade, and our skin was touched by sunburn and scabs. We were children. We were girls.

  I positioned myself between Cassandra and Marie as we pushed our way through the halls. I’d long been the friend in the middle, the bridge between my two friends’ extremes. Marie was the innocent one, the youngest in both appearance and mannerism. At fifteen, she still wore her bangs cut straight across her forehead like a child, still carried herself with a girlish shyness. She seemed a delicate thing compared to Cassandra, who had already begun surging toward risk, adventure, sex. While Marie dressed in jumpers and put her hair in braids, Cassandra wore deep V-neck sweaters and lip gloss, her hair falling freely down her back.

  I liked how I was with Cassandra, how I became a bit bolder and more daring. When she and I had gone to the lake that summer, we jumpe
d in the water straightaway and then rose, dripping, to sunbathe on the rocks. Putting ourselves on display. A group of boys on the shoreline watched us, but while I burned with the flickering heat of their attention, Cassandra pretended not to notice them. I envied that of her—maybe I envied everything about her. With her pink bikini and her damp hair fanned across the rock, she looked like a mermaid. When I’d reached for her shoulder her skin was hot and cold, dry and wet, all opposing sensations at once.

  “You’re giving me goose bumps,” she’d said, flicking my fingers away. She turned over, revealing the markings on her lower back. The place for love. “I’m hungry,” she added, cutting her gaze toward me. “Celeste. Aren’t you hungry?”

  I hadn’t answered her, just squinted at the sun instead. I wasn’t like Cassandra; I wasn’t the type of person to announce my desires and expect them to be met. But maybe I was ready to try. Now, around Cassandra, I could admit when I wanted something, whether it was food or adventure or, more recently, the perilous world of boys—their sweat, their wildness, their shattering lack of control. I wanted it all, even if I remained too uncertain to claim it.

  * * *

  * * *

  I followed Marie to her locker after Cassandra headed for her next class. Marie pulled a sheet of paper from the top shelf and stared at it for a long and wordless moment. I recognized her expression—nerves, uncertainty, maybe a bit of defiance.

  “I’m signing it,” she said at last. She wasn’t quite looking at me, as if making eye contact would weaken her resolve.

  She held out the paper for me to read. It was a conscientious objector form that would release her from the markings inspection scheduled that day. These inspections were offered twice yearly in the upper school, the results logged permanently in our transcripts. Submitting to ongoing readings throughout our school years was meant to establish routine, demonstrate obedience, and prevent any oversights related to our markings. Government inspections were usually no more than a mild inconvenience, like getting a medical checkup, but declining to participate was considered taboo.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, surprised.

  She shook her head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  I took the form and smoothed it out. The paper felt damp from her hands, but the signature line at the bottom was still blank.

  “Just because your mother is modest doesn’t mean you need to be the same,” I said. “Always covering up, not being able to work with men—it sounds impossible.”

  “There are benefits, too. Security and protection, for one.”

  I flattened the form one more time, trying to erase every wrinkle. Marie’s mother was one of a dwindling number of women who chose to cover her markings in public. From the onset of the changeling period until the end of their lives, modest women concealed their skin with long sleeves, long pants or skirts, gloves, and scarves. As much as possible, they avoided work or social situations that might put them in close contact with men outside their families. The system was based on a belief that women’s markings were private, sacred, and infused with inherent sexual tension, and so concealing them and instituting gender segregation was only proper.

  This way of thinking struck me as archaic. The modest lifestyle had arisen from a bygone era when women didn’t have the benefit of the same laws we did now—when a woman could be detained by police for an impromptu markings inspection, or when transcripts were public record and thus open to everyone’s scrutiny and judgment—and every generation claimed fewer and fewer adherents. As far as I knew, Marie’s mother had never pushed Marie to become modest herself one day. Even she recognized how limiting that choice would be.

  “I can always change my mind later,” Marie went on. “Nothing is permanent.”

  “But if you go through with the inspection, you won’t have any gaps in your transcript. That will make a big difference if you don’t become modest. Either way, you’ll have to make the choice for good once you change.” When a girl passed to her adult predictions, a markings inspector was dispatched within the week to conduct a special reading. Bypassing this changeling inspection was far more meaningful than forgoing one of the twice-yearly obligations.

  Marie frowned, but I could tell she knew I was right. None of us wanted to undress at school and allow a federal employee to run her cold fingertips over our skin, but objecting meant forfeiting important opportunities. While our transcripts were confidential, we had to disclose them in order to advance professionally or personally. When I applied to university, I’d submit my official government markings transcript along with my grades. When I looked for a job, that transcript could mean the difference between getting an interview or not. No records meant, in some respects, no future.

  I leaned toward Marie. She looked clean, untouched. I felt protective of her and grateful at once. I was remembering the year before, when I didn’t have money for the summer festival, and how she asked her mother to pay my admission. It had been a blazing July day, and Marie’s mother sweated under her layers of clothing as she counted out the bills for our tickets. I didn’t know how to thank her. I simply accepted the money, which felt swollen from the humidity.

  There at the lockers, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the index card I’d received in homeroom. My name and appointed inspection time were typed across the top in a crooked line, the ink fading into almost nothing by the end. I showed the card to Marie.

  “My inspection isn’t until two o’clock. When’s yours?”

  Marie hesitated, then lifted the edge of the magnetic mirror inside her locker. She’d tucked her index card underneath, hiding it just behind her reflection.

  “Twelve thirty,” she said.

  I nodded. “Same time as Cassie. You two can go together.”

  Marie stared at the card until she seemed to reach a conclusion. She took the conscientious objector form back from me. I watched as she folded it on the diagonal, cutting a sharp crease through the paper.

  “There,” I said, pride in my voice.

  The bell rang. Marie slammed her locker, and we headed toward our next classes. On the way, I watched Marie toss her objector form into the trash can. The paper slid in gracefully, almost as if it had soared there itself. As if that’s where it always belonged.

  * * *

  * * *

  To think of how many hours I spent with my friends in that school building, how solidly those walls contained us, how trapped and yet how safe we were—it’s remarkable. At the time, that school was everything, the place where we learned and fought and grew. We were challenged, we rebelled, and we looked ahead to when we could strike out on our own as adults.

  At school we were tested constantly, on all subjects, including the future. Every year, we received diagrams of a blank female body, that familiar image from the front of Mapping the Future, and were asked to label the universal marking locations. By the time I was fifteen I could receive the test sheet, close my eyes, and fill in everything. I earned full marks each time, my teacher decorating the top of my test sheet with a hastily scrawled star. I thought this meant I had it figured out, that the future was orderly and would evolve per my expectations. Now I understand that all I saw or could not see in my skin, all that was predicted or not, was only one part of the story.

  The rest I’ve had to create myself.

  * * *

  * * *

  At two o’clock, I clutched my index card and walked toward the gymnasium at the end of the science wing. Classes were in session, so the hallways held a ghostly silence. Still, I could sense the activity in each classroom, the energy of students tucked away in that concrete mass of a building. On my way past the chemistry lab, the flare from a Bunsen burner lit up my peripheral vision.

  When I reached the gym and heaved open the metal door, I was met with a clash of echoing voices. The inspection line began near the basketball net, where screens had been set up
for privacy, and stretched halfway across the gym. We’d strip down in the same space where, on other days, we played volleyball or badminton.

  Everything reeked of disinfectant. I cut across the gym, my shoes squeaking against the floor. I already felt washed out, exposed. Windows near the ceiling—windows placed so high it was impossible to glimpse anything outside other than sky, windows that made me think of portholes or prisons—provided some natural light, but otherwise the industrial fluorescents showered the gym with a poisonous glow.

  I took my place at the end of the line, behind Anne from my homeroom. She turned to greet me and started gossiping about a mutual friend, but I couldn’t focus—because there, just a few spots ahead of us in line, was Deirdre. Deirdre in her rose-colored sweater, her hair in a ponytail to show the back of her neck, the gold chain of the opal necklace clasped at her nape. Deirdre, who stood out from the others like a hot spark. I’d found her at last.

  I swallowed, absorbed by desire. It was like wanting to touch fire despite understanding it would burn. For most men, this sensation manifested in a potent sexual desire. But no men were present—the gym was closed to boys and male teachers for the day, out of respect for our privacy. It was just me, just Deirdre. No one else.

  “It wasn’t fair of him to do that, not when he knew I was already having a bad day,” Anne was saying. “Don’t you think?”

  I blinked, trying to guess what she might be talking about.

  “Right,” I said. “Completely unfair.”

  The line inched forward. Whenever a girl finished her inspection, she appeared from behind the partition and streamed toward the exit with a tangible sense of relief. Free, her body her own again. We waited and waited until Deirdre reached the front and slipped out of sight behind the screen. Her absence felt like physical pain. I tried to distract myself by chatting with Anne about her science project—it was something involving cacti and water retention—but I failed. Deirdre was all-consuming. For weeks she would be noticeable in this way, irresistible, until finally her changeling period came to an end. Only then would she be ordinary again.