Body of Stars

by Laura Maylene Walter

  It was my face, a picture I didn’t recognize. I was not smiling. And above my head, the single word printed in all caps in a thick, choking font: LOST.

  Strategies for Reintegration: A 7-Stage Guide for Recovery and Rehabilitation

  Stage 4: Going Home. Following your successful completion of the rehabilitation program, you will be rewarded with a clean bill of recovery and discharged. While most patients are eager to return to the comforts of home, be advised that this transition can be emotionally taxing. In fact, many girls only begin to face the irrevocable changes in their lives after they’ve retreated to a familiar environment. This reckoning is not always welcome, and as a result, some patients choose to begin their lives anew elsewhere.

  No matter your personal circumstances, take heart in knowing it’s normal to feel anxious upon being discharged. In many ways, your struggle has just begun. To endure this struggle is the only way to reach the greater future that awaits you.

  17

  At home I showered, shampooing my hair twice. The suds rained down my body, making me feel clean at last. Afterward, I felt much improved. I was no longer sore, and the steam obscured my remaining bruises. I was even getting used to the lack of high lucidity.

  Downstairs, I found my mother drinking coffee in the kitchen. I slid into a seat at the table and asked for a cup. The coffee was hot, bitter, strong. As I drank, it made a burnt path along my tongue.

  “Anything you’d like to do today?” my mother asked.

  I paused, considering. Routines had vanished from my mind; I struggled to even remember what day of the week it was.

  “I think I’ll just stay in.” The thought of leaving that familiar space to confront the greater world was overwhelming. “But I’ll be fine on my own if you want to go into the office. They must be missing you at work by now.”

  She emptied her remaining coffee into the sink. “That’s not necessary.”

  “Really, Mom. You should be at work.”

  She began washing the mug.

  “Mom?”

  She glanced over her shoulder with a quick, tense smile. “I don’t work anymore.”

  “I can’t believe you quit because I was gone. You knew I’d come back.”

  “That’s not exactly what happened.” She dried her hands on the dish towel, then folded and hung the towel on the peg by the sink. When she finally turned to face me, her expression was inscrutable. “My boss told me that he understood this was a trying time and that I needed to focus on my family.”

  “But you told him you wanted to stay, right?”

  “The board members had already made up their minds.”

  I finally understood what she meant.

  “Maybe I can talk to them,” I said, “to show them things are back to normal.”

  “It’s too late, Celeste.” My mother crossed the kitchen and put a hand on my arm. “Besides, I don’t need that job. We’ll be fine.”

  She was lying, and we both knew it. She’d taken that position for a reason. Not only did we need the money, but she’d been excited about returning to work. I remembered all those clothes she’d bought, how flushed she looked at the prospect of working again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She squeezed my arm. “You have nothing to feel sorry for.”

  This, too, seemed a lie. But I forced myself to smile at my mother before I returned to my room, where I climbed under the covers again.

  I listened to the quiet of the house. My father had left for work once we’d come home from the hospital, and Miles must have gone to school. I lay there and allowed a series of horrifying images to appear in my mind. My brother falling from a bridge. His body crushed in a train collision. Lying still and pale beneath a paramedic pumping at his chest.

  I draped an arm over my eyes and pressed down hard. These morbid thoughts could neither save my brother nor help keep the prediction a secret. And yet I carried on as if my betrayal—the greatest lie of my life—might erase what was coming.

  * * *

  * * *

  Cassandra showed up on my doorstep that afternoon after school let out. She wore a red sundress and carried a blended coffee drink topped with whipped cream. I thought, at first, that the drink was for me. I was about to reach for it when Cassandra lifted the straw to her own lips and took a sip.

  “You seem all right,” she said. “But you look older, now that you’re not a changeling anymore.”

  “You’re not, either,” I pointed out. Cassandra did seem more adult now that her changeling period was behind her. Her glossy hair was pulled into a complicated braid, and she wore a touch of eyeliner and red lipstick. I felt I’d missed out on years of her life, that she had grown and changed in unimaginable ways.

  Once inside, she dumped a heavy backpack on the floor.

  “What’s in there?” I asked. Unbelievably, I still thought Cassandra had something for me, as though she could apologize for her part in my abduction by bringing me a gift. Not that Cassandra seemed to consider herself culpable in any way. The fact that she’d been the one to invite me to the party that night, or that she stalked out of Chloe’s office without waiting for me, didn’t seem to weigh on her in the slightest.

  “Textbooks,” she said. “My mom signed me up for a study group so I can work through the premed curriculum.”

  “You must hate that.”

  She shook her head. “I plan to live up to my markings and become a doctor. I’m thinking either cardiology or oncology.”

  I felt a pang. It seemed a cruel trick that Cassandra had a career to pursue while I had nothing. If I tried to imagine myself as a psychologist, the image clouded over at once.

  Marie arrived next. As soon as I opened the door, she embraced me.

  “I’m so glad you’re back,” she said. “I missed you, and I worried about you. I thought about you every minute.” I thanked Marie but could only think that she looked astonishingly young—she still hadn’t changed. She’d remained a girl while Cassandra and I had become women.

  I led my friends into the living room. In the time before I’d been taken, we would have gone up to my room, but now I refused to take them upstairs. I worried I’d crawl into bed and look to them as Deirdre had to me after her return.

  “I’m doing really well,” I said, though no one had asked. “I don’t remember anything, but that’s for the best anyway. The hospital was strange—I wish you could have visited, but I know that’s not allowed—but maybe it was good, to be there for a few days before coming home. Now I’m ready to go back to school and have everything return to normal.”

  I realized I was rambling, so I stopped myself.

  “Are you sure coming back to school is a good idea?” Cassandra asked gently.

  “I never considered not coming back, to be honest.”

  My friends shared a look.

  “It’s just that most returned girls don’t reenroll in their old schools,” Marie said. “Deirdre didn’t. It’s too hard. We’ve missed you, and we’d like you to come back to school with us. But we’re worried about you.”

  “Well, don’t be. I’m perfectly fine.”

  Cassandra shook her head. “Celeste, look at yourself. You’re covered in bruises.”

  I glanced down at my arms, which were still marred by faint blotches.

  “You said earlier that I looked okay.”

  “I was being polite.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. I felt uneasy, like they were judging me.

  “Neither of you has any idea what I’ve been through.” My voice edged toward desperation. “You can’t even imagine.”

  Marie offered a kind expression. “Then tell us.”

  I thought I might cry. “I don’t know how.”

  “That’s the problem,” Cassandra said. “You’re all mixed up. That’s why girls don’t come b
ack to school. It makes everyone else uncomfortable. No one wants to be around a girl who’s returned. It’s too strange.”

  “So you don’t want to be around me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “That’s what you meant.”

  Cassandra looked off to the side. “I feel bad for you.”

  “We feel terrible about what’s happened,” Marie amended. “You didn’t deserve it.”

  “No one does.” I looked at Cassandra, right into her beautiful face. In that moment, I wasn’t seeing the friend before me but the entirety of my ruin. “You’re lucky you’re not in this same position. You were the one flirting with boys and sneaking out at night.”

  As I spoke, I started to feel angry. It was a relief, to feel something so strongly again. It didn’t matter that I also felt a distant but growing sense of unease. Part of me understood that what I was saying to Cassandra wasn’t fair—but I pushed that thought away and kept talking.

  “In fact,” I continued, “it’s partially your fault that I was taken in the first place. If you hadn’t left me and run to Julia’s, I wouldn’t have tried to follow you and ended up in an alley. A real friend would have stayed, but you thought only of yourself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Celeste. It wasn’t my decision to go to Julia’s. Miles told me to head over there.”

  “You’re lying. He wasn’t even with you. When you got upset with Chloe and ran out, he stayed with me.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’d lie to me, on top of everything else.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this.” Cassandra stood up. “Unlike certain other people, I have a future. I’m going to be a doctor.”

  She headed for the door, moving with such self-possession that I was nearly frightened of her. I stayed in the living room, listening helplessly as she collected her backpack, opened the front door, and slammed it shut behind her.

  “That was bad,” Marie said in a low voice. “It didn’t have to get ugly like that. She wouldn’t have come here if she didn’t care about you. And it wasn’t Cassie who hurt you, Celeste. It was a man.”

  “I don’t know why you’re acting like you know everything.” I looked at my hands as I spoke. “You’re basically a child. You haven’t even changed yet.”

  “Celeste,” she said. “Don’t.”

  “You’ve never had much common sense,” I went on. I hated myself, I didn’t recognize myself, and yet I couldn’t stop. “Cassie and I have always taken care of you. It’s pathetic.”

  Marie was quiet for a stretch, letting my words settle.

  “I’m surprised,” she finally said. “I didn’t think this would change you.”

  I refused to look at her. “I don’t see how it couldn’t.”

  “Whatever you say, Celeste.” She stood. “I’ll leave you alone. That’s clearly what you want.”

  Marie made her way to the front hallway and I followed her, as if driven by a final, clumsy urge to be a good hostess. At the door, I thought something would happen. I thought I might spontaneously apologize, or she would tell me those concerns about coming back to school were unfounded, or we would both agree to move past this and never speak of it again.

  What happened instead was Marie put her hand on the doorknob and pulled. What happened was she walked down my front steps and along the stone pathway, and she didn’t look back once. I watched her go, following her progress to the end of the walkway, where she turned into the street and proceeded past an idling car.

  The driver in that car—female, blond, face crossed by shadow—hunched low over the steering wheel, staring in my direction through the open window. I leaned closer, squinting. I knew who she was even before I got a full view of her face. She and I were, after all, the same now.

  Deirdre cut the engine. She climbed out and turned toward me. I had only one wish: for her to disappear, taking her reminders of what I’d become with her.

  * * *

  * * *

  Deirdre’s hair, still short, was bobbed in the style of an older woman. When she approached and met my gaze, her eyes were watery, vacant. I could not look away. She was a flame snuffed out but then reignited in the deepest reaches of my mind. For years to come I’d rise sweating in the night, jarred awake by a dream I could barely remember save for flickers of gold hair, the creamy richness of lipstick. But I didn’t know that yet. Instead, seeing Deirdre up close gave me resolve. It made me want to make the world easier for her, even if only in the smallest, slightest way.

  “It’s good to see you,” Deirdre said. Her voice, at least, sounded the same.

  “How were you able to drive here?” I asked, looking with bewilderment at the car she’d abandoned by the curb. “You’re not eighteen yet.”

  Deirdre glanced back, as though surprised to see the car there, and to hear that she’d been the one to drive it. “My aunt lets me take it sometimes.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter for us much anymore, does it? It’s not as though our records can be tarnished any more than they already are.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  She took a step closer. “I never would have guessed you’d be taken. You seemed too good.” She paused. “Or careful. You always seemed so careful.”

  “Looks like you were wrong about me.”

  She brightened a bit. “I’ve been wrong about everything.”

  I studied Deirdre. She still seemed damaged. Angry, sullen. Consumed. I hoped I didn’t look like that.

  “How have things been for you?” I asked her.

  “I moved in with my aunt and uncle, down in the suburbs south of town. It’s quiet there. Boring.”

  “Did they find the man who took you?”

  “Of course not. Be realistic, Celeste. Don’t tell me you have fantasies of catching who did this to you.”

  “Not really.”

  Without warning, Deirdre took hold of my left arm. She pushed back my sleeve and stared at my inner elbow.

  “See?” She held her own arm next to mine in comparison. “No markings on either of us in that spot. It’s like we’re sisters.”

  I pulled my arm back and rubbed the skin she’d just touched. I didn’t believe in connections based on lack.

  “Have they come looking for you, too?” she asked. When I didn’t respond, she leaned in closer. “The Office of the Future. A markings inspector visited me. She had my childhood file, and she wanted to see my arm, right there in that spot.”

  My mind turned back to that confused first night in the Reintegration Wing. How I’d told myself that the inspector’s visit might be a dream.

  “She asked about Miles,” Deirdre added. “They wanted to know when I last had contact with him, and what he said.” She narrowed her eyes. “They didn’t seem happy with him.”

  Her words reminded me that the events of the future might appear separate but were really interconnected, like cells in a body or a line of dominoes ready to collapse. One thing affected another and another. My brother, sending a letter to the Office of the Future. My brother, predicted to lose his life.

  Deirdre glanced behind her. “Sometimes I worry they’re following me.”

  “Who’s following you, Deirdre?”

  She was sweating. “What?” Her eyes shifted back and forth. “I don’t know.”

  When I placed my hands on Deirdre’s shoulders, I could feel her trembling.

  “You’re fine,” I said. “No one is following you.”

  “They’re not?”

  “No. Come on, I’ll help you to your car. You should go home and rest.”

  Deirdre leaned against me, promising she could make the drive back home, while I told myself I was nothing like her. I was determined, smart, stubborn. The same person I always was. I’d make my way out of this without falling apart like Deirdre.

 
At her car, Deirdre stopped and reached into her back pocket.

  “I brought you something,” she said.

  She was holding a plastic bag that contained a bloodflower pill. A single spot of red as shiny and appealing as a berry fresh off the bush. She rattled the bag as if to entice me.

  “Take it,” she said. “It will make you remember, but in a way that dulls the edges. No one wants to remember, not really, but you have to. In order to move on.”

  I hesitated only a moment before accepting the bag and slipping it under my sleeve.

  “It wasn’t easy coming back to this neighborhood,” Deirdre added as she climbed into the driver’s seat. “It reminds me too much of life before I changed, when I still had my whole future ahead of me.” She paused to buckle her seat belt. She moved like a much older person, like everything hurt.

  Deirdre put the key in the ignition and looked me right in the eye. For the first time, her expression was sharp.

  “That’s my only advice for you, Celeste,” she said. “Leave. If you stay here, you’ll drown.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Once Deirdre was gone, I took the bloodflower up to my room and shut the door. I felt so shattered by what had happened with my friends that I was glad to have the bloodflower to distract me. I held the pill up to the light and turned it from side to side, marveling that it had come from nature.

  Bloodflower grew wild all over in the warmest weeks of the year. It grew tall, a scraggly plant full of thistles and thorns. Only in the last days of its short life did the red bloodflower itself bloom, half hidden in the twisting stems. The flower opened, released its potent nectar, and then folded over itself and died. It took a significant effort to combat those thistles, to harvest the nectar at just the right stage, to boil and process it, to dry it into a powder and turn it into a pill. Every bloodflower pill was born of sunshine and heat and determination. Every pill had surely, at some stage, drawn blood.