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

A deep silence, the rasp of his breath. My eyes had adjusted and snippets of light crept in—not only from the crack beneath the door but from all around us, as if minuscule holes had been poked into the closet from all sides to shine through with light, like the mechanical star ball at the planetarium. With my high lucidity, it was enough to let me make out the outline of this boy. I could see his chest rising and falling. Time was slipping away, and he knew it. Every second must have been agony for him.

Maybe this closet was safe. He hadn’t tried to touch me yet, and time was dropping down second by second. I took a step closer. Now I could both see it and feel it: his shaking. His entire body trembling for me, or for the idea of me, or for every newly changed woman who had ever crossed his path.

I eased forward until my body brushed against his. I felt the jerk go through him like he’d been shocked. I held still, unable to press on and yet unwilling to pull back. Gently, he snaked an arm around my waist. We fell together at once, and it was impossible to say who advanced first—I just knew that one moment we were apart, and the next we were kissing. He was a soft kisser, and his hands were broad and warm on my arms, my sides, my back. I felt his lips shake, felt the beating in his chest.

It felt good to press up against a boy, or at least this boy. Perhaps all the stories I’d heard growing up—the ones warning me about men and boys, as if they were a different species—weren’t true. Girls were meant to wait until they’d passed out of their changeling periods before entering into relationships for safety’s sake, but how astonishing to experience these sensations now, in high lucidity, when the world was bright and better and full of pleasure.

When the two minutes were up, we forced ourselves to pull away from each other and stumble back into the light. The bottle was already spinning again. My eyes were still adjusting when Cassandra appeared at my side.

“See?” she said. She smiled, and I studied the sheen of her lips, their spark and fullness. I was pulled taut, humming with energy.

“It wasn’t bad,” I admitted.

She gave me a sideways look. “His name is Owen.”

“Thanks. You’re right, I didn’t even know his name.”

She laughed. “I had a feeling you two weren’t having a conversation in there.” She paused, turning serious. “You’re allowed to enjoy yourself, Celeste. It’s powerful, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t help myself. I nodded.

Behind us, the party continued, but the tension felt deflated. Owen had drifted back into the crowd. Everyone felt far away.

“I’m getting more rose sherry,” Cassandra said. “You want some this time?”

I shook my head. When she left, I found my gaze wandering toward Miles again. To look at him was to be snapped back to reality: my markings, his final three years of life. I wondered if it would always be like that for me, those bursts of awareness of his fate. How I’d have to constantly remember his future like it was the past.

Cassandra rushed past Miles toward me, her eyes lit up. She was carrying what appeared to be a pack of playing cards.

“Look at this.” She presented the deck like a treasure. “I’ve never seen this kind in person.”

I looked closer. She was holding not playing cards but a tarot deck—an erotic edition.

Miles appeared and grabbed the deck from Cassandra.

“You shouldn’t have these.” But he cracked open the deck and poured the cards into his hand. Instead of standard-issue tarot cards, which were illustrated with trees, rivers, mountains, and animals, erotic cards showed the bodies of girls. They were a thing of great and terrible beauty.

I watched as Miles began placing the cards one by one onto the table. Each featured a drawing of a naked girl, her markings drilled through the paper in pinprick-sized holes. When he held a card up to the lamp, light sprinkled his face in minuscule, illuminated specks. Though the bodies on those cards were illustrated, they were real. They were girls like Deirdre, changelings from all over the country who were caught and recorded against their will. Seventy-eight girls pressed into glossy card stock and shot through with pricks of light.

“Put that down,” I said. “It’s disgusting.”

I didn’t mean it, not fully—the cards were gorgeous, a work of true art. Hand-drawn images with intricately sketched borders of woven garlands. Detailed, delicate. For as long as I could remember I had always been drawn to patterns, fractals, the designs found in nature: snail shell, snowflake, fern frond, lightning bolt. This pattern worship was the closest I got to religion. How much easier everything would be if the tarot contained only patterns on their own, designs disconnected from the bodies of girls. But those bodies were the entire point of the erotic tarot. The girls’ skin shined slick-bright and bold, and the markings were pierced through with the utmost precision. The future revealed.

As girls and women, we spent our lives marked in our own private futures, but those futures were never fully our own. Family members, spouses, employers, and others made unceasing demands on what our skin foretold, and our only defense was the choice of whether to reveal our markings, and when. Yes, we needed to sign a transcript release form when applying to university or for a job, but it was our choice to apply for those jobs, our decision about who would access our transcripts and when. These cards represented anarchy, a world like the old times when women had no say over who looked and when. These cards reduced girls to mere objects to be collected and consumed and stored in a box.

Miles continued flipping through the deck as Rebecca veered toward us.

“Give those to me.” Her voice sounded strained and raw.