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

as sacrilege. Lying for the sake of the game was one thing, but to construct such a shocking detail seemed cruel. It almost didn’t matter whether his story was true or false; my distress stemmed from the fact that I couldn’t tell the difference.

Perhaps I didn’t know Miles, not fully. And if that was so, then I couldn’t stand for him to be present when I discovered what he’d written in the dirt. I’d return to the basement later, on my own, when I could confirm his truth or lie in private.

*   *   *

My mother had a novel propped open on the kitchen counter, a thick paperback she was reading as she sliced grapes into a bowl of fruit salad. She glanced up as we came in.

“You two are filthy.” She put down the knife. “Go clean up. But first, will you bring me Mapping the Future? It’s not on the mantel.”

“It’s in my room,” Miles said. “I’ll get it.”

He slipped from the kitchen, but I stayed behind and studied my mother as she leaned over her novel, her eyes flicking from one page to the next. She wore a teal sleeveless shirt faintly stained with cooking grease, and her hair was pulled back in a clip missing two teeth on one side. A few tendrils escaped and trailed down the side of her neck. When I saw my mother in disarray like this I felt anxious, like I was watching her descend into entropy. She’d had a career in education before marrying and having children, all of which had been outlined in her markings—a future she both embraced and couldn’t escape.

“Why do you need Mapping the Future?” I asked.

My mother turned another page. “A character in this novel has a marking for vitality in old age. I have a variation of that pattern, so I’d like to look up both versions and compare them.”

That marking was on the back of my mother’s left thigh. I remembered staring at it as a young child when we were together in a changing room: a line of four moles intersected by two more. It was a lovely prediction to have.

“Miles studies Mapping the Future more than any of us,” I said, “but he’s getting too old to still be so wrapped up in interpretation. Maybe it’s time for him to consider what he’ll be for real.”

“It’s hard for boys.” My mother turned a page of her book. “Imagine not having the future outlined on your body. I’d feel naked without it, wouldn’t you?”

It was easy to forget how lost my brother was as a boy, how he was forced to grasp what he could of the future from me. Our mother’s markings were the spaced-out, long-view type, which meant they were too broad to offer much insight into Miles’s life. He appeared as a lone dot in the markings on her stomach: the classic triangular cluster denoting family, then a separate cluster showing my father and two children, a boy and a girl.

My juvenile markings offered more detail surrounding my brother. The five moles arranged in a diamond-like constellation on my shoulder blade had prophesized my severe case of the flu at age eight. That pattern indicated that Miles would get sick, too, which he did, despite our parents’ efforts to quarantine me. And the cluster of career markings on my right hip suggested that Miles and I might one day work together.

I struggled to see how our future careers could align since I was interested in studying psychology and Miles decidedly was not, but he didn’t seem fazed by this. He also chose to overlook the lone outlier marking in my career pattern, the type of mark that offered a rare contradiction—it indicated that I might, in fact, end up working alone. We’d know more once I passed to my adult predictions, but until then, my brother held out hope that this pattern might align with what he most wanted for his own future, which was to become a professional interpreter. His dream was impractical, nearly impossible, and yet he pursued it.

Another impossibility, and one I could not shake: that what he’d told me in the basement could be true. I looked at my mother and tried to picture her belly swelling against her shirt. Maybe Miles and I were two siblings shadowed by the absence of a third.

“Have you ever wanted something that’s not in your markings?” I asked. “Something you weren’t fated for, I mean.”

She slid a bookmark into her novel and looked at me, surprised. “Of course, Celeste. I’m only human.”

I studied her, searching for a sign that what she wanted was a child beyond me. But I detected nothing.

Miles reentered the kitchen and placed Mapping the Future on the counter. Heavy dark leather, gold text with a filigree design on the cover—a thing weighted with the gravity of truth and time. Our mother gave the text a pat, as if relieved to be reunited with an old companion.

“Thanks,” she said. “Now go and clean yourselves up, both of you. You’ve dredged up enough of a mess for one day.”

Miles and I did not return to our game that afternoon. Instead, we passed the hours in a humid summertime blur: we listened to the radio, we let ice pops drip onto our wrists, we sprawled on the living room floor in front of the fan. Eventually, Miles retreated to his room. I sat by the living room window, watching the sky darken to a deep cobalt. Shadows fell on the other houses in the neighborhood, making them appear desolate and gray, as if they’d aged decades in an instant.

All the while, I remained aware of the unfinished game, my brother’s response languishing in the basement. Truth or lie. I pictured his answer as a living thing waiting in the falling light, calling for my return. Asking me to bear witness.

*   *   *

My descent into the basement that evening was the first step toward everything else—I can see that