Body of Stars by Laura Walter (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📕

I knew what was happening to Deirdre, and I did not, both at the same time. Deirdre was a changeling, and she had disappeared. That meant a man had taken her. That meant she was ruined. Like all girls, I’d grown up with an inherent understanding of that concept—if a girl was taken against her will, she came out on the other side changed, damaged. Never to be the same again.

Downstairs, the phone started ringing again. I held my hands to my ears and squeezed. I pressed so hard I created a roaring sound, like the echo of the ocean inside a seashell. Crash after crash after crash.

*   *   *

I stayed in bed a long time. I was staring at the stars on my ceiling—staring until they blurred, multiplied, birthed themselves anew—when a knock sounded on my door.

“Come in,” I called.

The door eased open. Miles entered, our parents just behind him. My father had come home and I hadn’t even noticed. He’d been putting in a lot of time on a new account at work, an advertisement for a banner downtown that he said would shake up the industry, so it was a shock to see him home so early. Or maybe it wasn’t early. Was it possible I’d fallen asleep?

“I’m sorry, Celeste.” My mother wrapped her arms around her sides, holding herself. “I should have told you about Deirdre in a better way. I was in shock.”

I sat up and pushed the blankets away. “Is there any news?”

“An official alert has gone out,” my father said. “I heard it at work.”

“It’s awful.” My mother shook her head, still holding herself. “Just awful.”

Miles scanned my room as though he might find Deirdre hiding among my things.

“What exactly did she say to you this afternoon?” he asked.

I could feel everyone watching me.

“I just saw her for a minute in the bathroom. We talked about when I might change.” I didn’t mention the lipstick, or how she’d talked about power and choice. I was afraid to make the case that she’d brought this on herself.

But it was already too late for that. All over town, as parents and teachers and students heard the alert, they were imagining how Deirdre went wrong. It was a certain kind of girl who let herself get caught by men: the rebellious kind, the flirty kind, the kind who flaunted her future. I had grown up believing that. We all had.

Miles slumped onto my bed. He smelled faintly of sweat from our brickball game, a sour smell that reminded me he was nearly eighteen, nearly a man, and not the boy I pictured in my mind.

“I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight,” he said.

“You can’t blame yourself, Miles.” Our father held up his hands, as if absolving us all. “Deirdre must have behaved recklessly for this to happen.”

I thought again of the lipstick, the way Deirdre reveled in her newfound allure as a changeling. Maybe my father was right. Maybe it had been her fault.

“What I’m worried about is how her family didn’t consider this a real threat,” my mother added. “Here we are, living our lives as though everything is fine, but it’s not. It’s truly not.” She broke off with a strangled sound in her throat.

“She’ll be back before long,” I assured everyone. This was a simple fact. Once a girl’s changeling period ended, she was less desirable. Abducted girls were set free at this point. Years ago, there had been a smattering of murders, girls whose bodies turned up under a soft layer of loam in the forest on the outskirts of the city, but that was an abomination, the result of one sick man. He’d been caught and placed in prison for life. Justice served, everyone said.

So much about abductions was predictable, even though a girl’s markings never revealed that particular fate. First, Deirdre’s abductor would certainly be a man. I’d once heard a rumor about a woman who took changelings, who couldn’t resist them just like men, but this was urban legend. For men, it was about more than sexual attraction; it was about their need to read our futures, to take something of what they’d never have themselves.

Next, we could anticipate what Deirdre’s return would lead to—gossip, whispers, isolation. She could never get a good job or go to university if she’d been ruined. The best employers didn’t hire women who’d been taken, and no university would admit them. To be abducted indicated a moral failing, a lapse in judgment and restraint that pointed to more serious deficiencies. As a result, her abduction would follow her always.

The shaking returned. It started in my stomach, a fluttering as if something alive had been placed there.

“I’m not feeling well,” I said. “I think I’ll go back to sleep.”

My mother came forward to kiss the top of my head.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “We’ll leave you to rest.”

Once everyone had gone, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what Deirdre might be enduring at that moment—locked in a room with a man, curtains pulled shut, shadows everywhere. A man might drug her and keep her for weeks, until she passed out of her changeling period. When she stumbled into the light again, she would no longer be her same self.

The story was an old one. The best we could do was warn changelings not to go out alone at night, to stay within the safety of a group, to dress chastely during those dangerous few weeks. Girls were considered women as soon as they changed, so we were expected to shoulder that responsibility, to put forth the effort to protect ourselves.

In health class at school that year, Mrs. Ellis had digressed from her lesson plan to give us a lecture about returned girls. Mrs. Ellis was short, with broad shoulders—built like a bull, the boys liked to say—and in her gentle way, she explained that most abducted girls didn’t stick around for long once they