The Stars Never Rise

I turned to Jessica, who was twirling a thin strand of dark hair around her finger. “What about you, Jessie? Do you know who your donor was?”


She shook her head. “My donor was from the public registry.” She said the words slowly. Carefully. Reverently.

I blinked at her in surprise. “Well then, you’re extra lucky, aren’t you?” I tried not to think about how nervous her mother must have been toward the end of her pregnancy.

Family donations are the norm, and most donors are memorialized in the new child’s name, or by the celebration of the donation along with the child’s birthday every year.

It’s considered an honor for the elderly to give up their lives and their souls at the moment of a child’s birth so the next generation can live. It’s also considered an obligation. In fact, in most cases, the Church won’t grant a parenting license until the prospective parents have a family donor lined up. The public registry is for emergencies. For cases when the donor dies before it’s safe to induce the baby’s birth, and for rare accidental pregnancies, when there is no family member willing to donate a soul for a child he or she will never see.

People who haven’t already promised their souls to a family member’s child are added to the public registry at the age of fifty and instructed to get their affairs in order. It’s a short list. Most people want their souls to stay in the family, and those who want to grow old sometimes promise a donation to the child of a niece or nephew who’s still several years away from marriage, and even farther from parenthood.

Selfish? Yes. But until the Church comes up with a law to stop it, donor procrastination is also perfectly legal.

When a baby nears birth without a promised soul, it’s assigned a donor from the top of the public registry. Rarely—tragically—a town’s public registry will sit empty for a few days, and inevitably during that time, babies are stillborn for lack of a soul.

“Do you do anything special for your donor on your birthday?” I asked Jessica.

“We give thanks and set a place for her at my birthday party. No one sits in that chair, even though she’s not really there. Mommy says it’s symbiotic.”

I hid a smile. “I think you mean ‘symbolic.’?”

“Yeah.” Jessica turned to her classmates with an air of authority. “?‘Symbolic’ means no one can sit in that chair, even though it’s empty.”

Across the room from our learning center, the classroom door opened and I glanced up from my group of kindergartners to find Sister Anabelle standing in the doorway.

“Sister Camilla, could I please borrow Nina for the rest of the hour?”

Sister Camilla nodded, and Anabelle gestured for me to hurry, so I passed out parable-themed coloring sheets and crayons for my group, then scurried into the hall.

Anabelle closed the door behind me. “They’re about to start the sophomore class physicals. I thought you might want to spend your service hour there today, since Melanie’s…” She frowned at my blank look. “Mellie didn’t tell you?”

“No.” But with that new bit of information, the pieces fell into place in my head. No wonder my sister was nervous that morning. The problem wasn’t her history test, it was her physical exam.

My sophomore physical was the single worst day of my life. Even compared to a degenerate attack in a dark alley.

“Come on.” Anabelle grabbed my arm and tugged me down the hall. “They’re about to start the assembly.”

We got there just as the last of the tenth-grade girls filed into their seats in the auditorium, wide-eyed and obviously scared. The boys would be addressed separately, and I wondered if they would be half as nervous as the girls were. There was no whispering or nudging in line. No one played with anyone else’s hair. No one scribbled on incomplete homework papers or rushed to finish the assigned reading. They just stared at the stage, where a nurse in her pristine white slacks and matching cassock—the bloodred embroidery meant she was consecrated—stood next to the acting headmaster, Sister Cathy.

The girls looked terrified.

I knew exactly how they felt.

Anabelle and I stood against the back wall with several other teachers and volunteers, all staring out over the mostly empty auditorium. The sophomore girls took up less than three full rows.

When Sister Cathy stepped up to the podium, my stomach began to churn.

“Good morning, girls,” she said, and we all flinched when the microphone squealed. Sister Cathy repositioned it, then started over. “Good morning, girls. As you all know, today is your annual physical. As you may also know by now, the tenth-grade physical is a little different from the exams you’ve gotten in previous years. Today, in addition to assessing your general health and development, we will also be conducting your first reproductive assessment.”