“What’s going on over here?” one of the men asked.
Miles was still pressed against me. The heat of his right palm rested directly on the markings that spelled out his own fate. I held my breath. He hadn’t had time to look at that area; it was only his hand flat against my skin. He didn’t know.
“Let her go,” the man said. He came closer.
Miles released me and took a step back. Shaking, I smoothed my shirt down. When I looked to my brother again, I saw a new expression on his face, something I had never seen before: pure, unmasked fear.
“Who taught you to treat girls like that?” the other man said.
I couldn’t understand why Miles looked so distressed. These men were normal-looking, innocuous, and anyone could see they were no threat to girls. I had been far more afraid in Chloe’s presence than in theirs.
“You okay, miss?” the first man asked. He had dirty-blond hair and a close beard that made him look bookish and gentle. I nodded.
“Good,” the other said. He was taller, with darker skin, and when he smiled, I thought he might have been the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He held out a hand to me. “Let’s get you out of here. This is no place for a changeling.”
Without thinking, I stepped forward and took his hand. The blond man appeared on my other side and put a hand on my back.
“Don’t touch her,” Miles said.
I twisted back to face my brother. “I don’t want you anywhere near me.” I paused, choking for air. “You make me sick.”
“You’ll be all right,” the bearded man whispered. Gently, and so softly I could barely feel it, he began rubbing my back. “You deserve to be taken care of.”
“I said don’t touch her,” Miles repeated. He rushed to keep up with us, trying to pry the men off me. They barely broke stride when they pushed him back. No matter what angle Miles tried, I turned my face from him.
“We’ll make sure you’re safe,” the second man told me. His voice was smooth and seductive. I thought about Owen and felt the soft press of need. I squeezed this man’s hand and he squeezed back.
“Celeste,” Miles said. “Celeste, listen to me. I think these men might work for Chloe. You can’t go with them. You have to fight back.”
I heard my brother’s words, but they sounded far away, like he was on a boat receding into the sea.
“Celeste,” he said again. Then he gave up on my name and started to scream. He screamed, “Help,” and I marveled at the strength in his voice. I held on to that single word until it, too, started to slide away, until the bearded man disappeared from my side. Somewhere in the far-off distance I heard a scuffle, and after that the screaming stopped. The man returned and grabbed hold of my arm again.
“Let’s go,” he said to his partner.
My feet felt heavier with every step. The men gripped me, holding me up. At one point I tried to turn to look for my brother, but I saw only a vast alleyway, empty.
After what felt like a long time, we stopped walking. The man in the brown jacket let go of my arm and knelt to unlock a pair of storm cellar doors. Distant alarms sounded somewhere in my mind, telling me to run. I jerked my shoulder and tried to take off, but the bearded man wrapped his arms around me. He held me still and sighed against my neck, but there was no desire in it, just weariness. When the storm cellar doors creaked open, he gently pushed me forward.
“I’m scared,” I said.
The blond bearded man patted my arm. “You’re here now,” he said, “and you’ll be all right in the end.”
He stepped into the dark and waited for me to follow him. The other man stood just behind me, his body a solid wall blocking my way out.
I stumbled and hesitated, but when it came down to it, I did not claw or scream or cry. I was caught, the game already over. And so I stepped down into the stale black air. It was so dark I felt bodiless, floating through space.
I took a tentative step deeper into the black, then another. Again and again I pressed forward until I was consumed. Until I was lost.
III
Awake
Strategies for Reintegration: A 7-Stage Guide for Recovery and Rehabilitation
Stage 1: Acknowledging Your New Future. On behalf of the Office of the Future and the staff of this federally accredited medical institution, we welcome you to the reintegration program designed to address the aftermath of your trauma event. In the days to come, hospital staff will assist you in your recovery journey and ensure all your physical and emotional needs are met.
Your first step is to recognize your new reality. Please note that acknowledging this reality is not the same as overcoming it. In this initial stage, your priority is simple: to survive.
14
I woke in pain, on my side, on a mattress that was both narrow and cheap. A coil pressed into my hip. Once I forced my eyes open, I found myself staring at a wall the deep gray of wet pavement. The trim running along the floor and around the doorway was blood red.
“Celeste?”
I rolled onto my back and turned, blearily, toward the sound of my mother’s voice. She took my hand.
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” she said.
I blinked away from her, focusing my gaze upward. The ceiling was also painted gray, just a few shades lighter than the walls. Why would anyone do that? I wondered. To purposefully make a place dreary.
“I feel strange,” I told her. My head pounded, my vision blurred, and a slick pit of nausea pooled in the back of my throat. I grappled for the plastic bin next to the bed, but I was too weak to hold it. My mother took the bin from my trembling hands and positioned it under me just before I vomited. The taste in my mouth was unfamiliar. What and when had I last eaten? I had no idea.
I didn’t remember anything.
My mother smoothed a strand of sweaty hair against my temple. I looked down. The sheets were gray. The pillows were gray. The blanket, blood red. I was wearing a hospital gown, the strings tied securely at my back.
“Where am I?” My voice was thick.
“You’re in the hospital,” my mother said. “You’re safe here.”
“I want to go home.”
“Soon. In just a few days.”
She handed me a plastic cup of water with a straw poking out of it. I sipped. The water was so cold it stung the inside of my mouth. My stomach turned.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
My mother’s face registered worry. “Can you hold it for a little bit? They’ll be here any minute.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
I didn’t allow myself to absorb that information. I was focused on my piercing headache, the dizziness, the fabric of the hospital gown that I did not recognize and could not remember putting on. I wanted to be in my own pajamas and in my own bed.
“I really have to go.”
Resigned, my mother helped me scoot to the edge of the mattress. My hips hurt. My muscles felt sore all over. My throat was raw, as if I’d been screaming.
Together, we worked my feet into a pair of slippers.
“The bathroom’s in the hall,” my mother said, gently pulling me up to stand. “You can lean on me.”
The hallway was bright, painted dove gray and blasted with fluorescent light. It held about a dozen rooms and, at the end, a nurses’ station. The bathroom was two doors away from my room.
“I’ll wait out here,” she added. “Unless you want me to come in.”
I shook my head and limped into the bathroom, closing the door on my mother’s anxious face.
Once I was locked inside, I shambled to the toilet. When I peed, it burned. I rose wearily and flushed, then washed my hands with pink soap I worked into a violent foam. Finally, I raised my eyes to the mirror.
My face looked puffy. I touched my fingertips under my chin, just like
my mother had the time my lymph nodes were swollen from strep throat. I leaned closer. My pupils were dilated, and my eyes appeared blank with an odd sheen, as if someone had scrubbed them clean. How badly I wanted to be in my own bedroom, gazing instead into the full-length mirror my father and I had installed next to the closet. This bathroom mirror was hung at an angle, the top tipping forward drunkenly to provide a full-body view.
Slowly, I untied the strings of my hospital gown and let it fall away.
My body was covered with bruises.
A kaleidoscope of contusions, from black to muddy brown to sickly yellow, anointed my upper arms, my ribs, my thighs. Acorn-sized bruises lined my shoulders, plums and grapes and currants scattered up and down my torso. A delicate bracelet of bruising along my right wrist carried the faint imprint of someone’s fingers.
Some of the bruises partially concealed my markings. This was the case on my left side, for the prediction about Miles—the pattern was obscured, altered, temporarily unreadable.
I stared at my damaged skin in the mirror for a long time. I stared until a realization struggled to the surface, kicking, to illuminate my new reality: I was no longer a changeling. No longer did I have a faint glow, that magnetic dazzling pull. I had been gone long enough for the transformation to complete itself, and now I was a regular young woman. No special allure, no heightened senses, no outrageous beauty.
I gathered my hospital gown and put it on. As I tied the strings behind my back, I caught sight of a brochure waiting on the side table, next to the extra toilet paper and a bottle of crusted-over hand lotion. Strategies for Reintegration. A photograph of a depressed-looking teenage girl appeared below the title.
My mother knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”
With shaking fingers, I added another knot to my hospital gown. I couldn’t be in the place that brochure described—it was impossible. If I could only remember what had led me here.
I’d gone to a party with Cassandra—that was certain. I remembered the bottle spinning on the floor, the boys, the closet. Rose sherry, the smell of pine, the inside of an interpreter’s storefront. A girl in lavender serving me tea. A man on the couch, his hand hot on my thigh. My brother pushing me into an alley. Two men holding me up.
After that, my memory was blank.
My mother knocked again. When I opened the door, I saw the gray space behind her with new eyes: I was in the Reintegration Wing of the hospital, where abducted changelings were sent once they were returned. I could no longer pretend otherwise.
“Come along,” my mother said, taking my arm. “We don’t have much time.”
I walked as if in a daze. “I can refuse the exam. I’ll say I don’t need it.”
We reached my tiny gray room again. I dragged myself into bed.
“You have bruises, Celeste.” My mother’s face was strained. “Injuries. Nothing that won’t heal, but you needed medical attention. They examined you when you were first brought to the hospital.”
“While I was asleep?”
She held up her hands, an apology. “They did it before I made it here. We got the call that you were returned, and we rushed right over, but they’d already gone through with it. We couldn’t prevent an exam, anyway. You were gone for more than two weeks.”
I turned my face away, the gray entering my vision like a slap. That was the moment I started to disengage, when I began to view my body as a thing outside of myself. It had been wounded and then examined, and I had no memory of either violation. Not to mention the agony of having known high lucidity only to have it ripped away. I should have appreciated it more during that scant time I’d had it. I should have embraced so much else, too. Things like safety, family, the promise of a future.
My mother was holding my hand. She was asking me not to cry. I told myself I couldn’t be crying because I couldn’t feel tears on my cheeks. I felt no pain, no sensation at all. Even my bruises had evaporated in my mind. I was blank. I was nothing.
* * *
* * *
The police came in a pair, two men who didn’t bother to sit down or take off their hats. I sat up in bed and crossed my arms over the insufficient fabric of the hospital gown. I had no idea where my clothes were.
“Can you describe the events of the night you disappeared?” the first officer asked. He’d either forgotten to shave that morning or else his stubble grew back fast. From his pocket he produced a small notepad and a pencil. It wasn’t even a full pencil with an eraser; it was one of those mini pencils, the kind meant to be disposable.
“I don’t know,” I said. They stared at me, but I couldn’t make myself go on. My mother came over to sit on the side of the bed. She squeezed my shoulder.
“We spoke to your brother,” the officer continued. “He told us you were downtown at night, that you were drugged.”
“Though we found no evidence of illegal substances at the interpreter’s place of business,” the other put in. He had a big belly, a strain against his belt.
I felt hot all over. “I definitely wasn’t myself. I wouldn’t have left Miles otherwise. I felt out of control.”
“Well. You were a changeling,” the first officer said. He made a mark in his notebook.
I turned to my mother. Her jaw was set.
“Where are Miles and Dad?” I asked her.
“They were here earlier, before you woke up.” She wouldn’t look at me.
“Miss, we need to finish this interview. What can you tell us about the two men who led you away?”
The trappers, those men who were kind to me. Or at least I’d thought they were being kind to me.
“One had reddish hair, I think,” I said. “Or maybe it was blond. The other had darker skin.”
“Age? Height?”
I tried to remember. “Maybe they were in their thirties, but I’m not sure. And one was definitely taller than the other.” I paused. “I think the other one had a beard.”
The officers glanced at each other.
“They may have worked for Chloe,” I added. “The interpreter. She was acting strangely.”
“Yes, your brother mentioned that as well,” the officer said. “We’ve questioned her, but we didn’t find anything that would warrant an arrest. Based on your brother’s statement, it sounds as if you may have gone with these men willingly.”
“I wasn’t willing,” I said, but then I remembered pushing Miles away. Holding hands with one of those men. Feeling, for a few moments at least, safe in their presence. But that didn’t mean I’d gone willingly. Did it?
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I didn’t want to go with them.” I could feel my mother looking at me, but I refused to meet her gaze. I was ashamed of myself—for getting trapped in the first place, and for not fighting back.
“Can you tell us anything more about the trappers?” the other officer asked. “Any tattoos, scars, or identifiable marks?”
How much easier it was, I thought, for a man to point to a particular woman. Officer, she had a triangular pattern of markings on her upper arm, the kind that indicates a broken heart. Officer, she had a large birthmark on her cheek, which I remember because, my god, what a shame. But men, whose bodies were not documented in transcripts that could be subpoenaed in criminal investigations, were so much more difficult to identify.
“No,” I said. “Nothing I can remember.”
“All right. And during the time that you were missing—any memories?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I bit it hard enough to draw a sharp pain, as if that could bring something back, but it was useless. Most girls who were abducted didn’t remember. They were drugged, continuously, until the moment they were set free again.
“No. Nothing. I remember the men and then waking up here. That’s all.”
He flipped shut his notebook. “All right. You let us know if you think of anythi
ng else. In the meantime, focus on healing. The worst is behind you now.”
Both men turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “What happens next?”
My mother gripped my shoulder harder.
The second officer paused at the threshold of my room. “We’ll finish writing up the paperwork. Then we’ll coordinate with the doctors to add everything to your transcript. And we’ll keep an eye out, of course, for those men. But trappers tend to move around. Without any concrete leads, it’s unlikely we’ll find them—the trappers or the man who held you.”
For a moment I imagined the gray walls crumbling around me, that I was sinking into some nightmarish quarry.
“You know, I feel perfectly fine,” I said. “So maybe you don’t need to add anything to my transcript.”
“Celeste,” my mother said softly. “You were missing for weeks. You had a full medical exam. It’s too late.”
“I won’t press charges, even if you find him,” I went on. “I don’t need to bother with the paperwork. Maybe we can let it slide.”
The officer with the stubble lifted his cap a few inches, giving me a glimpse of his sweaty hair. “We can’t do that, miss. Not when a federal crime has been committed. But like I said, you should focus on your recovery.”
I waited until he left before I curled onto my side.
My mother patted my back. “Celeste. You’ll be all right. You’re back, and you’ll heal. That’s all that matters.”
“Not if my transcript reflects this. I won’t be able to go to university. My friends will go off to school without me. I’ll be alone, and I won’t be able to become a psychologist. My life is ruined.”
“It’s not ruined. It’s just changed.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I asked her to turn out the light and let me sleep, and she obliged. Sleep was my last refuge.
But once I was alone, I dwelled on how I’d lost the last few weeks. That time was gone, disappeared, and I could only imagine what unspeakable things had happened to me. Every now and then a streak of pain hit my body, a sizzling wave of discomfort. And I kept picturing Cassandra, kept daring to think it should have been her, not me, lying broken in this hospital bed.
Body of Stars Page 15
