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

pattern on Deirdre’s arm, and then when she disappeared, I started to suspect it was a real prediction.”

“If you’d said something,” I told him, “maybe I could have been saved.”

“I kept hoping I was wrong. I had no way to prove it, and not enough evidence to be certain.”

My heart was pounding, and I felt ready for flight. But there was nowhere to go, no way to escape what my brother had just revealed.

“I told Julia after Deirdre disappeared,” he said. “She wasn’t convinced, especially since it doesn’t present as a regular pattern. The pattern itself varies, it’s inconsistent, and interpreting it is partly based on touch. She thought it was a coincidence.” He looked away, ashamed. “I was stupid. I made so many mistakes.”

I took a deep breath, trying to reimagine my childhood through the lens of this new information. I saw Miles pulling at my shirt to look at my markings, his hands lingering on my left arm—how he so deeply and openly anticipated my change.

“I kept telling myself that even if I was right, I couldn’t do anything to prevent the prediction from coming true. If it’s fated, it’s fated. End of story,” he went on. “But that doesn’t excuse what I did that night. I wanted to get you alone to look at your markings. I thought they might give another clue, that they’d reveal exactly how you’d be taken. I planned the whole thing, you know. I told Cassie what to do beforehand, how she should go to Julia’s so I could be alone with you. But I was reckless, and I’m sorry.” His breath came out in a gasp. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I swear I’ll never forgive myself. That’s why I left school, so I could try to help other girls. It will never make up for what happened to you, but it’s all I can do.”

I got up from the bed and grabbed Mapping the Future. I flipped through the pages so quickly they made snapping sounds. “If it’s not in here,” I said desperately, “then it can’t be true.”

“I’m trying. I’ve contacted the Office of the Future. I sent them copies of your childhood markings, plus copies of Deirdre’s, and explained as best I could how to do the reading.” He looked pained. “I thought they’d be grateful.”

“No, you were showing off. You thought this could be your way into the profession.” I dropped the book onto the dresser, where it landed with a hollow clap.

He flinched but kept going. “Imagine the change that could come, at some point in the future, if that prediction becomes an official part of Mapping the Future,” he said. “It might make things better for girls. For even just one girl. Julia says we can’t change fate, but she also says our actions can have tiny, nearly imperceptible consequences. Think of what that can mean. Maybe fewer girls will be abducted, or maybe they won’t be punished anymore for the crimes of men. Things could be different, Celeste.”

All the pieces were clicking into place. My brother’s contact with the Office of the Future, his revelation about this prediction—these were minor breezes that could shift his future in a new direction. Fate was a sensitive, complicated, evolving phenomenon, and maybe this was the catalyst pushing Miles toward the end of his life.

“Don’t go through with this.” I stood in front of my brother, summoning the will to plead with him even as I despised him, even as I understood his fate was set no matter how I tried to save him. “Don’t try to get these markings added to the official record. Please.”

“I have to, Celeste. Julia agrees. Girls should be fluent in their own futures, she says.”

I laughed, the sound rolling out of me like pain. “Fluent in their own futures?”

“Yes.”

I started pacing around the room. When I stopped at the dresser mirror, I confronted my reflection. I looked wild-eyed and furious. Feral.

Miles met my eyes in the mirror. His face was wet.

“Maybe this was the real reason I invented Did You Know,” he said. “I thought it might help you, to be able to lie. I knew you’d have a hard time from here on out. If you could keep some things to yourself, to not reveal all your truths—that could make a difference.”

“You might have done too good of a job,” I said. In one swift motion, I grasped the hem of my shirt and pulled it over my head. Underneath I wore only a bra, solid black without a hint of lace.

Miles took a step back. “What are you doing?”

I wished I could say I was driven by guilt or compassion, the resolve to not let Miles live in the dark as long as I had. But in truth, I was consumed with anger. The horror of my own abduction was still all-consuming, and I wanted to exact a punishment. I wanted revenge.

Miles turned away. “Put your shirt on.”

I took another step toward him. “I can’t hide this anymore.” I resisted the urge to cross my arms over my chest. I waited, cold and shivering and revealed. Agony.

At last, Miles faced me. He went directly for my left side, as I’d known he would, to the markings he hadn’t been able to puzzle out from my father’s photograph. A diagonal, an arc, a smattering of stars.

He lifted a finger and placed it on the markings. He traced them, gently, and in his touch I recalled all the other times he’d read my markings. How serious and insistent he’d been. Now I felt his hand shaking against my skin.

“Say something,” I told him.

He closed his eyes. I felt, for a disorienting flash, that I was no longer in the room with him. He was alone, standing in silence, grasping at his own receding future.

Time slowed, stopped, held steady. I found myself swimming in a memory. It was a few summers back, out in the heat of our neighborhood, when Miles and I came