I woke in pain, on my side, on a mattress that was both narrow and cheap. A coil pressed into my hip. Once I forced my eyes open, I found myself staring at a wall the deep gray of wet pavement. The trim running along the floor and around the doorway was blood red.
“Celeste?”
I rolled onto my back and turned, blearily, toward the sound of my mother’s voice. She took my hand.
“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” she said.
I blinked away from her, focusing my gaze upward. The ceiling was also painted gray, just a few shades lighter than the walls. Why would anyone do that? I wondered. To purposefully make a place dreary.
“I feel strange,” I told her. My head pounded, my vision blurred, and a slick pit of nausea pooled in the back of my throat. I grappled for the plastic bin next to the bed, but I was too weak to hold it. My mother took the bin from my trembling hands and positioned it under me just before I vomited. The taste in my mouth was unfamiliar. What and when had I last eaten? I had no idea.
I didn’t remember anything.
My mother smoothed a strand of sweaty hair against my temple. I looked down. The sheets were gray. The pillows were gray. The blanket, blood red. I was wearing a hospital gown, the strings tied securely at my back.
“Where am I?” My voice was thick.
“You’re in the hospital,” my mother said. “You’re safe here.”
“I want to go home.”
“Soon. In just a few days.”
She handed me a plastic cup of water with a straw poking out of it. I sipped. The water was so cold it stung the inside of my mouth. My stomach turned.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
My mother’s face registered worry. “Can you hold it for a little bit? They’ll be here any minute.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
I didn’t allow myself to absorb that information. I was focused on my piercing headache, the dizziness, the fabric of the hospital gown that I did not recognize and could not remember putting on. I wanted to be in my own pajamas and in my own bed.
“I really have to go.”
Resigned, my mother helped me scoot to the edge of the mattress. My hips hurt. My muscles felt sore all over. My throat was raw, as if I’d been screaming.
Together, we worked my feet into a pair of slippers.
“The bathroom’s in the hall,” my mother said, gently pulling me up to stand. “You can lean on me.”
The hallway was bright, painted dove gray and blasted with fluorescent light. It held about a dozen rooms and, at the end, a nurses’ station. The bathroom was two doors away from my room.
“I’ll wait out here,” she added. “Unless you want me to come in.”
I shook my head and limped into the bathroom, closing the door on my mother’s anxious face.
Once I was locked inside, I shambled to the toilet. When I peed, it burned. I rose wearily and flushed, then washed my hands with pink soap I worked into a violent foam. Finally, I raised my eyes to the mirror.
My face looked puffy. I touched my fingertips under my chin, just like my mother had the time my lymph nodes were swollen from strep throat. I leaned closer. My pupils were dilated, and my eyes appeared blank with an odd sheen, as if someone had scrubbed them clean. How badly I wanted to be in my own bedroom, gazing instead into the full-length mirror my father and I had installed next to the closet. This bathroom mirror was hung at an angle, the top tipping forward drunkenly to provide a full-body view.
Slowly, I untied the strings of my hospital gown and let it fall away.
My body was covered with bruises.
A kaleidoscope of contusions, from black to muddy brown to sickly yellow, anointed my upper arms, my ribs, my thighs. Acorn-sized bruises lined my shoulders, plums and grapes and currants scattered up and down my torso. A delicate bracelet of bruising along my right wrist carried the faint imprint of someone’s fingers.
Some of the bruises partially concealed my markings. This was the case on my left side, for the prediction about Miles—the pattern was obscured, altered, temporarily unreadable.
I stared at my damaged skin in the mirror for a long time. I stared until a realization struggled to the surface, kicking, to illuminate my new reality: I was no longer a changeling. No longer did I have a faint glow, that magnetic dazzling pull. I had been gone long enough for the transformation to complete itself, and now I was a regular young woman. No special allure, no heightened senses, no outrageous beauty.
I gathered my hospital gown and put it on. As I tied the strings behind my back, I caught sight of a brochure waiting on the side table, next to the extra toilet paper and a bottle of crusted-over hand lotion. Strategies for Reintegration. A photograph of a depressed-looking teenage girl appeared below the title.
My mother knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”
With shaking fingers, I added another knot to my hospital gown. I couldn’t be in the place that brochure described—it was impossible. If I could only remember what had led me here.
I’d gone to a party with Cassandra—that was certain. I remembered the bottle spinning on the floor, the boys, the closet. Rose sherry, the smell of pine, the inside of an interpreter’s storefront. A girl in lavender serving me tea. A man on the couch, his hand hot on my thigh. My brother pushing me into an alley. Two men holding me up.
After that, my memory was blank.
My mother knocked again. When I opened the door, I saw the gray space behind her with new eyes: I was in the Reintegration Wing of the hospital, where abducted changelings were sent once they were returned. I could no longer pretend otherwise.
“Come along,” my mother said, taking my arm. “We don’t have much time.”
I walked as if in a daze. “I can refuse the exam. I’ll say I don’t need it.”
We reached my tiny gray room again. I dragged myself into bed.
“You have bruises, Celeste.” My mother’s face was strained. “Injuries. Nothing that won’t heal, but you needed medical attention. They examined you when you were first brought to the hospital.”
“While I was asleep?”
She held up her hands, an apology. “They did it before I made it here. We got the call that you were returned, and we rushed right over, but they’d already gone through with it. We couldn’t prevent an exam, anyway. You were gone for more than two weeks.”
I turned my face away, the gray entering my vision like a slap. That was the moment I started to disengage, when I began to view my body as a thing outside of myself. It had been wounded and then examined, and I had no memory of either violation. Not to mention the agony of having known high lucidity only to have it ripped away. I should have appreciated it more during that scant time I’d had it. I should have embraced so much else, too. Things like safety, family, the promise of a future.
My mother was holding my hand. She was asking me not to cry. I told myself I couldn’t be crying because I couldn’t feel tears on my cheeks. I felt no pain, no sensation at all. Even my bruises had evaporated in my mind. I was blank. I was nothing.
The police came in a pair, two men who didn’t bother to sit down or take off their hats. I sat up in bed and crossed my arms over the insufficient fabric of the hospital gown. I had no idea where my clothes were.
“Can you describe the events of the night you disappeared?” the first officer asked. He’d either forgotten to shave that morning or else his stubble grew back fast. From his pocket he produced a small notepad and a pencil. It wasn’t even a full pencil with an eraser; it was one of those mini pencils, the kind meant to be disposable.
“I don’t know,” I said. They stared at me, but I couldn’t make myself go on. My mother came over to sit on the side of the bed. She squeezed my shoulder.
“We spoke to your brother,” the officer continued. “He told us you were downtown at night, that you were drugged.”
“Though we found no evidence of illegal substances at the interpreter’s place of business,” the other put in. He had a big belly, a strain against his belt.
I felt hot all over. “I definitely wasn’t myself. I wouldn’t have left Miles otherwise. I felt out of control.”
“Well. You were a changeling,” the first officer said. He made a mark in his notebook.
I turned to my mother. Her jaw was set.
“Where are Miles and Dad?” I asked her.
“They were here earlier, before you woke up.” She wouldn’t look at me.
“Miss, we need to finish this interview. What can you tell us about the two men who led you away?”
The trappers, those men who were kind to me. Or at least I’d thought they were being kind to me.
“One had reddish hair, I think,” I said. “Or maybe it was blond. The other had darker skin.”
“Age? Height?”
I tried to remember. “Maybe they were in their thirties, but I’m not sure. And one was definitely taller than the other.” I paused. “I think the other one had a beard.”
The officers glanced at each other.
“They may have worked for Chloe,” I added. “The interpreter. She was acting strangely.”
“Yes, your brother mentioned that as well,” the officer said. “We’ve questioned her, but we didn’t find anything that would warrant an arrest. Based on your brother’s statement, it sounds as if you may have gone with these men willingly.”
“I wasn’t willing,” I said, but then I remembered pushing Miles away. Holding hands with one of those men. Feeling, for a few moments at least, safe in their presence. But that didn’t mean I’d gone willingly. Did it?
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I didn’t want to go with them.” I could feel my mother looking at me, but I refused to meet her gaze. I was ashamed of myself—for getting trapped in the first place, and for not fighting back.
“Can you tell us anything more about the trappers?” the other officer asked. “Any tattoos, scars, or identifiable marks?”
How much easier it was, I thought, for a man to point to a particular woman. Officer, she had a triangular pattern of markings on her upper arm, the kind that indicates a broken heart. Officer, she had a large birthmark on her cheek, which I remember because, my god, what a shame. But men, whose bodies were not documented in transcripts that could be subpoenaed in criminal investigations, were so much more difficult to identify.
“No,” I said. “Nothing I can remember.”
“All right. And during the time that you were missing—any memories?”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I bit it hard enough to draw a sharp pain, as if that could bring something back, but it was useless. Most girls who were abducted didn’t remember. They were drugged, continuously, until the moment they were set free again.
“No. Nothing. I remember the men and then waking up here. That’s all.”
He flipped shut his notebook. “All right. You let us know if you think of anything else. In the meantime, focus on healing. The worst is behind you now.”
Both men turned to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “What happens next?”
My mother gripped my shoulder harder.
The second officer paused at the threshold of my room. “We’ll finish writing up the paperwork. Then we’ll coordinate with the doctors to add everything to your transcript. And we’ll keep an eye out, of course, for those men. But trappers tend to move around. Without any concrete leads, it’s unlikely we’ll find them—the trappers or the man who held you.”
For a moment I imagined the gray walls crumbling around me, that I was sinking into some nightmarish quarry.
“You know, I feel perfectly fine,” I said. “So maybe you don’t need to add anything to my transcript.”
“Celeste,” my mother said softly. “You were missing for weeks. You had a full medical exam. It’s too late.”
“I won’t press charges, even if you find him,” I went on. “I don’t need to bother with the paperwork. Maybe we can let it slide.”
The officer with the stubble lifted his cap a few inches, giving me a glimpse of his sweaty hair. “We can’t do that, miss. Not when a federal crime has been committed. But like I said, you should focus on your recovery.”
I waited until he left before I curled onto my side.
My mother patted my back. “Celeste. You’ll be all right. You’re back, and you’ll heal. That’s all that matters.”
“Not if my transcript reflects this. I won’t be able to go to university. My friends will go off to school without me. I’ll be alone, and I won’t be able to become a psychologist. My life is ruined.”
“It’s not ruined. It’s just changed.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I asked her to turn out the light and let me sleep, and she obliged. Sleep was my last refuge.
But once I was alone, I dwelled on how I’d lost the last few weeks. That time was gone, disappeared, and I could only imagine what unspeakable things had happened to me. Every now and then a streak of pain hit my body, a sizzling wave of discomfort. And I kept picturing Cassandra, kept daring to think it should have been her, not me, lying broken in this hospital bed.
I covered my face with my hands and cried—out of guilt, and shame, and humiliated disbelief—until I exhausted myself. I eventually must have drifted into a light sleep, because one minute I was alone and the next a strange woman was standing over my bed. She wore a navy skirt suit with a little red pin on her lapel. I gazed up at her, convinced I was dreaming.
“Celeste Morton?” she asked. She held a file in her hands. It was my government file, a stack of papers so slender it seemed to have almost no substance at all. She flipped it open to a diagram of my juvenile markings and tapped the mystery pattern on my left elbow.
“Those are gone now,” I said, holding out my arm. I still believed I was asleep. “You’re a government inspector, aren’t you?”
She gave a curt nod.
“Did you ever consider becoming a humanitarian ambassador instead?” I paused, gazing at the woman dreamily. “I was thinking maybe I’ll try for that career one day. I can’t be hired as a government employee, but I could become a humanitarian. Assuming they still hire women like me.”
“It is an equal-opportunity profession,” the inspector confirmed. She kept looking back and forth between me and the diagram of my juvenile markings.
“If I became a humanitarian, I’d make good money, plus I’d get to travel.” I let my gaze wander over the woman. The red pin shined on her lapel like a prize.
“And I could help people,” I added as an afterthought. “Humanitarians do good work for girls. That’s what they tell us, anyway. But I’m not sure about inspectors.” I squinted at the woman. “Are you here to help me?”
The inspector reached for my left arm and held it in her cool hands.
“I’m here to confirm,” she said. She pulled out a penlight and shined it on my arm, then ran her fingertips lightly over my elbow. The contact lasted only a moment before she dropped my arm and made a note in the file.
“Thank you, Miss Morton,” she said. “That will be all.”
She withdrew from my bedside. A moment later, she was gone.
I blinked, uncertain whether she’d really been there or if I’d dreamed it. She left no trace, not even a lingering scent. I lay on my side, facing away from the door that was always kept open a crack, and stared with wide eyes into the dark. All around me, I felt the press of night.
During those early hours in the hospital, the inspector’s visit blended into everything else, making a dark smear of confusion. Years later I would struggle to remember her face. I’d study diagrams of the human brain, focusing on the parts responsible for emotion and trauma to better understand my compromised memory from that time. I read about the almond-shaped amygdala, the seahorse-shaped hippocampus. “Hippocampus” as in horse, as in sea monster, but I lingered on monster. I was consumed by a monstrous force in that hospital. I carried the wounds from a battle I couldn’t even remember.
On the first night of my stay, I waited alone in the dark until Miles snuck in to visit me. I heard the door ease open, heard him slip into the chair next to my bed.
“Celeste,” he breathed. “Hey.”
He waited. When I did not respond, he tapped my shoulder.
“Mom’s been in the family waiting area for hours,” he said. “She thinks you’re asleep.”
I rolled over. “Did you see her?”
He paused. “I just told you. Mom’s waiting down the hall. She didn’t want to wake you.”
“Not her. The inspector.” I sat up.
“What are you talking about?”
“An inspector came to visit me. She looked at my arm. She had my file.”
Miles reached over to flick on the lamp by my bed, and for a few seconds we blinked at each other. He had a shadow over his left eye. No, not a shadow—the remnants of a black eye. A whole bruise of his own.
“I think I’m confused,” I said finally. “Maybe I dreamed it.” I was too weak to comprehend the true meaning of that woman’s visit, or to grasp the forces at work in our world—how the future churned on and how our vulnerable, mortal bodies struggled to control it. A dream was the best escape I could imagine.
“It’s my fault,” Miles said.
My first instinct was to comfort him. But then I swallowed, and my throat felt sharp, and I recalled my final memories of that night: How he pushed me into an alley to view my markings. How he was no longer the brother I’d known.
“Chloe may have had a hand in this, too,” he went on. “She probably tips off the trappers whenever she has changeling girls in her office. I’d heard of that type of arrangement, but I never fully believed it.” Miles paused. “Still, I didn’t see her as a risk. And I thought that moment in the alley might be my only chance to look at your markings.”
“You put me in danger.”
He wiped his eyes. “I was selfish and stupid, and I’m sorry.”
“An apology isn’t going to give me my life back.” I turned onto my hip, facing away from him. I saw our history unspooling, all the time we spent together: The game in the basement, the summer evenings of brickball, the strawberry stand. How, in the end, he betrayed me.
But I had betrayed him, too. Miles had only a few years to live, and I hadn’t told him. I couldn’t do it, not even then, after my ruin. Maybe I was the stronger liar of the two of us after all—both better and worse.
Miles pulled his chair closer to my bed. I heard the chair scrape against the floor, a grating sound drawing closer, like a threat. I worried he might touch me—I couldn’t bear to be touched, I even jumped when a nurse took my pulse—but he did not.
“I’m so tired,” I told him. “You should go.”
“I’m not leaving you. I won’t do that again.”
I closed my eyes. Despite my reservations, I fell asleep. I was too exhausted to hold it off. When I startled awake about an hour later, Miles was still sitting by my side. A nurse bustled in to take my temperature, and then another entered to give me pain medication. My brother sat through it all, watching me. As if he alone could make me whole again.