The Stars Never Rise. Rachel Vincent

my mom cries, even though I got to live.”

      “I’m sure they’re happy tears.”

      I was lying. People don’t cry in graveyards because they’re happy. But sometimes you have to lie to little kids. Sometimes you have to lie to not-so-little kids too.

      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.”

      My hands felt cold. And damp.

      Sister Cathy made it sound perfectly reasonable. Civilized. Routine. As if there were no emotion involved. But the truth was actually brutal for the girls sitting in those chairs, hands clenched in terror. By the end of the day, every girl in Melanie’s class would be declared either fit or unfit to procreate.

      Those declared fit would be given a second assessment before marriage, and a third when they applied for a parenting license.

      Those declared unfit would be scheduled for sterilization. Immediately.

      My stomach twisted again, as if my breakfast wanted to come back up. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, and when I looked at the stage again, I realized I’d missed the introduction. I had no idea what the nurse’s name was, or when she’d stepped up to the podium.

      “The important thing to remember today, girls, is that the reproductive assessment isn’t personal.” She said it with an air of authority. As if that made it true. “It’s not an assessment of you as a person, or of your ability to love and raise a child. Or even your ability to carry a child. It’s a simple issue of numbers.”

       Numbers.

      The Church was all about the numbers. I guess they had to be, since our population had been decimated by the horde a century ago. We couldn’t recover most of the souls devoured by the Unclean, and since no one knows how or even if new souls can be created …

      “There aren’t enough souls to go around anymore.” The nurse finished my thought out loud, and I realized it didn’t matter what her name was, or what the name of the nurse who’d spoken to my class was, because ultimately, they were both Sister Nurse. This was the same speech countless Sister Nurses all over the country were saying to thousands of fifteen-year-old girls in every town that had survived the onslaught. The same thing Sister Nurses had been saying for more than eighty years, ever since the Church imposed restrictions on reproduction.

      “The Unified Church has a responsibility to make sure that the available souls go to the babies with the best chance of survival. That way, virtually all our children live.”

      That was a nice way to put it. The truth was that, rather than choose which infants lived or died—because that would be cruel—the Church chose which infants could be conceived.

      “The decision is completely fair,” Sister Nurse continued. “It’s based on math and science.”

      I wanted to laugh. But I kinda wanted to scream too.

      At fifteen years old, I was disqualified