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

spending the afternoon with her brother. Julia awaited us, as did the whole of our futures. All we had to do was keep moving.

*   *   *

Julia’s building had no sign out front, nothing to indicate that her home was also a place of business. No neon lights or cheap beaded curtains, and certainly no crystal balls. Miles and I let ourselves into the parlor, a room adorned with an antique couch, a grandfather clock, and wallpaper dappled with a metallic imprint. It was a place, I felt, where the future was taken seriously.

We could see Julia through the glass doors that enclosed the classroom area, where she addressed a half dozen teenage girls seated on the floor in front of her. Unlike the theatrical interpreters who wore scarves and iridescent eyeshadow, Julia dressed in jeans and a fitted dress shirt, her heavy brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She was practical but also progressive—which she’d have to be, to teach interpretation to a boy.

Miles hesitated outside the glass doors. “You can join me, you know. Julia would be glad to have you.”

I shook my head. “I’d rather wait here.”

He slipped into the classroom, leaving me alone in the parlor. I wandered over to the bookcase and scanned the collection until I found it: a heavy hardcover book full of intricate geometric patterns. I’d discovered the book the first and last time I’d been at Julia’s. That had been months ago, during an open house for students and their families. My parents and I dressed up for the occasion. A nervous energy hung over us, as if we worried Julia might find us lacking, but she was warm and welcoming. Julia was the one to lead me to her bookshelf, to invite me to browse. Later, when she found me still poring over the book of patterns, she’d looked pleased.

I pulled the book down and cracked it open. The pages revealed a mesmerizing array of shapes and designs found in rugs, paintings, sculpture, mosaics—all the beautiful things in life. Best of all, they had nothing to do with my skin or my predictions. It was my only chance to get lost in patterns that held no larger meaning.

I flipped dreamily through the pages for a long time. When the grandfather clock crept closer to the hour, I replaced the book and peered through the classroom doors. Aside from my brother, the students were all girls. They were a bit older than me and dressed in that effortless way I wished to emulate: sandals in metallic colors, scarves repurposed as belts, and silky, scoop-necked shirts that slipped off the shoulder to reveal a colorful bra strap.

The girls sat close together, their copies of Mapping the Future flung to the side so they could focus on the living maps of their skin. Their skin was brown, or olive, or else it was like mine, the color of wheat. All marked with the future. Each girl took her turn holding out an arm for a classmate to read. My brother couldn’t offer his own body, but when he leaned closer to interpret a pale-haired girl named Deirdre, he had everyone’s attention. He moved his finger steadily across her skin, knitting his brow with concentration. He was careful, and respectful, and serious. If not for his gender, he could have passed for a professional interpreter.

Before long, the clock struck the hour, its deep tones marking the end of class. I stood back while the first girls pushed open the classroom doors and came spilling into the parlor. Julia held a copy of Mapping the Future open before her as she exited, explaining a diagram to one of her students. When she noticed me, her expression shifted. It was a subtle, flitting change, but I caught it.

“Celeste,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She smiled as she approached, then reached forward to tap my left arm. “May I?”

I nodded, and she held my hand in her own, running her fingertips lightly over my skin. I closed my eyes at her touch. Interpretation involved more than sight. Touch could add new depth and layers. Touch was sometimes part of the magic.

“Hmm,” Julia murmured. She focused on the cluster of moles near my left elbow, a pattern slightly inconsistent with anything appearing in Mapping the Future. Over the years, interpreters had formulated different explanations: A minor illness around your sixteenth birthday, one suggested. A car crash, but not a serious one, another told me. The only consensus was that I needn’t worry much, that these juvenile patterns were a mere blip of ambiguity in a lifetime of more certain predictions.

“Miles thinks I’ll change soon.” I glanced down at the freckles on my forearm. I wanted to memorize them, not as they appeared sketched in my brother’s notebook at home, but how they were in the here and now—little pinpricks of the future about to become the past.

Julia nodded. “It’s an exciting time, just before you change. The possibilities seem endless.”

The time before the transition to adult markings was like watching a wave bear down on the shoreline: waiting for the crash, for the turmoil and confusion, before the sand could be smoothed into a fresh surface again. When it arrived, girls had the benefit of new predictions, but they were also thrown into the chaos of their changeling periods—those risky, unpredictable weeks when they would be irresistible to nearly everyone, but especially men.

“It makes me nervous,” I admitted, “how I have no control over what my new markings will reveal. How I’ll just have to accept them.”

Julia pulled me closer. A faint scent came off her, something with a hint of lilac. I felt embarrassed when I noticed it, like I’d been caught spying. She gripped my arm tighter, and I had to fight not to pull away.

“The future will come for you as it intends,” she said. “That is undeniable. With time, however, you’ll see that your actions might make a difference. Not a dramatic