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

The upper school was shaped like a T, an endless hallway for arts and languages capped by a shorter hall dedicated to science and math. The time between classes amounted to a crashing push through the halls, a building of pressure as students jammed together at the intersection. Those flashes of disorder were routine, the kind of adolescent chaos I’d later recall with a tinge of fondness.

Each time I failed to find Deirdre between classes, I returned to my usual routine of walking the halls with Marie and Cassandra. We’d met in primary school, a trio of eight-year-olds drawn to one another by curiosity and fate. What different lives we had back then: lighting sparklers, chalking snail hopscotch diagrams onto the playground, lining our wrists with jelly bracelets. We wore ponytails secured with beaded holders in jewel colors, little treasures we’d later trade, and our skin was touched by sunburn and scabs. We were children. We were girls.

I positioned myself between Cassandra and Marie as we pushed our way through the halls. I’d long been the friend in the middle, the bridge between my two friends’ extremes. Marie was the innocent one, the youngest in both appearance and mannerism. At fifteen, she still wore her bangs cut straight across her forehead like a child, still carried herself with a girlish shyness. She seemed a delicate thing compared to Cassandra, who had already begun surging toward risk, adventure, sex. While Marie dressed in jumpers and put her hair in braids, Cassandra wore deep V-neck sweaters and lip gloss, her hair falling freely down her back.

I liked how I was with Cassandra, how I became a bit bolder and more daring. When she and I had gone to the lake that summer, we jumped in the water straightaway and then rose, dripping, to sunbathe on the rocks. Putting ourselves on display. A group of boys on the shoreline watched us, but while I burned with the flickering heat of their attention, Cassandra pretended not to notice them. I envied that of her—maybe I envied everything about her. With her pink bikini and her damp hair fanned across the rock, she looked like a mermaid. When I’d reached for her shoulder her skin was hot and cold, dry and wet, all opposing sensations at once.

“You’re giving me goose bumps,” she’d said, flicking my fingers away. She turned over, revealing the markings on her lower back. The place for love. “I’m hungry,” she added, cutting her gaze toward me. “Celeste. Aren’t you hungry?”

I hadn’t answered her, just squinted at the sun instead. I wasn’t like Cassandra; I wasn’t the type of person to announce my desires and expect them to be met. But maybe I was ready to try. Now, around Cassandra, I could admit when I wanted something, whether it was food or adventure or, more recently, the perilous world of boys—their sweat, their wildness, their shattering lack of control. I wanted it all, even if I remained too uncertain to claim it.

*   *   *

I followed Marie to her locker after Cassandra headed for her next class. Marie pulled a sheet of paper from the top shelf and stared at it for a long and wordless moment. I recognized her expression—nerves, uncertainty, maybe a bit of defiance.

“I’m signing it,” she said at last. She wasn’t quite looking at me, as if making eye contact would weaken her resolve.

She held out the paper for me to read. It was a conscientious objector form that would release her from the markings inspection scheduled that day. These inspections were offered twice yearly in the upper school, the results logged permanently in our transcripts. Submitting to ongoing readings throughout our school years was meant to establish routine, demonstrate obedience, and prevent any oversights related to our markings. Government inspections were usually no more than a mild inconvenience, like getting a medical checkup, but declining to participate was considered taboo.

“Are you sure?” I asked, surprised.

She shook her head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

I took the form and smoothed it out. The paper felt damp from her hands, but the signature line at the bottom was still blank.

“Just because your mother is modest doesn’t mean you need to be the same,” I said. “Always covering up, not being able to work with men—it sounds impossible.”

“There are benefits, too. Security and protection, for one.”

I flattened the form one more time, trying to erase every wrinkle. Marie’s mother was one of a dwindling number of women who chose to cover her markings in public. From the onset of the changeling period until the end of their lives, modest women concealed their skin with long sleeves, long pants or skirts, gloves, and scarves. As much as possible, they avoided work or social situations that might put them in close contact with men outside their families. The system was based on a belief that women’s markings were private, sacred, and infused with inherent sexual tension, and so concealing them and instituting gender segregation was only proper.

This way of thinking struck me as archaic. The modest lifestyle had arisen from a bygone era when women didn’t have the benefit of the same laws we did now—when a woman could be detained by police for an impromptu markings inspection, or when transcripts were public record and thus open to everyone’s scrutiny and judgment—and every generation claimed fewer and fewer adherents. As far as I knew, Marie’s mother had never pushed Marie to become modest herself one day. Even she recognized how limiting that choice would be.

“I can always change my mind later,” Marie went on. “Nothing is permanent.”

“But if you go through with the inspection, you won’t have any gaps in your transcript. That will make a big difference if you don’t become modest. Either way, you’ll have to make the choice for good once you change.” When a girl passed to her adult predictions, a markings inspector was dispatched within the week to