Kiss the Morning Star by Elissa Janine Hoole Page A

them there, outlined in morning dew. It isn’t the least bit tacky; it’s the merest suggestion of a tattoo.
    “That’s amazing.” My words are muffled, both hands pressed up against my mouth. All my doubts fall away, and I turn to Kat with a grin.
    “I’m ready,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
    Shaggy starts with me. I recline, tilted to one side, while he outlines the design in the soft flesh above my left hip bone. Kat is getting the mirror image, on her right side.
    At first the needle hurts, but after a while the sensation deepens into something else entirely, something almost living, and I imagine that the lotus is actually rising up from my insides—tiny points of my bones and sinews rising to form an intricate mosaic on the surface of my skin. This thought rushes over me like a wave, and Kat presses her hand to the side of my face. I’m dizzy.
    “Easy, babe. You’re looking a little pale,” she says. “Can I get you a Coke?”
    Shaggy chuckles. “I get so many people in here all worried about whether or not they’ll be able to deal with the pain. Pain is one thing. What people can’t take is feeling so much, so much of anything.” He pauses, blotting at my skin with the edge of the paper sheet he has draped over his skinny jeans. He nods. “You’re doing great, though. This outline is the hardest part.” He blots my hip again and then the roaring drone of the needle is back, rattling my core, but now it’s as though he has softened the blow, pulled out the tiger’s teeth.
    So what I’m afraid of isn’t pain. It’s feeling. My chest expands, breath flooding through me. I can do this. Kat is here beside me, holding my hand.
    The sound, the feeling, sinks into my body. I close my eyes. This is forever.
     
     
    It feels as though several millennia have passed since the garage in Gillette. My left side is sore, and my brain is tired and droopy. Shaggy finishes Kat’s tattoo, and even in its red freshness it is beautiful. There’s only a hint of color, a blush of soft pearl on the lotus petals, a touch of pink highlights. Kat’s light olive skin gives the image a duskier feel than my own pale cream, lightly dappled with freckles, but the blossoms are still mirror twins, and my face burns at the thought of our hips touching, skin to skin. Has she thought of it, too?
    Shaggy snaps the needles into the sharps bin and peels off his gloves carefully. “All done, you two. Here, stand side by side so I can see them together. Easy does it, Katy.” He holds her arm. I’m surprised at the brief surge of jealousy that flares in my chest when he uses her nickname.
    Kat stands, a little shaky at first but smiling, and I go around to her right side so our tattoos are close, our arms around each other’s waists. I stare into the mirror, trying to make this new image fit into my vision of myself.
    “Can I take a photo for my wall?” Shaggy asks, pointing over to the bulletin board full of smiling patrons displaying his artwork.
    I bite the inside of my lip, feeling a little shy, but then I nod. It’s not as if anybody knows me here, anyway.
    Shaggy snaps the photo, and I look at it in the display on the back of his camera with a kind of wonder. “There we are.” There I am. With a tattoo. And…a girlfriend?
    “There you are,” he repeats. “And here are your after-care instructions. You can cover it up lightly, like this, to keep your clothes from touching it. They look nice, ladies. Really nice. That was fun.” He smiles.
    We all troop out to the front room, but it’s empty; Casey and Sammi are nowhere to be seen. “Maybe they got bored?” says Kat. We walk to the front door and peer up and down the street, which is dark except for the occasional neon splash. The sky has a faint brush of violet across the black, and I wonder once again what time it is.
    “I guess they’ll be back soon,” says Kat. Her voice is bright, but I can sense the uncertainty beneath the confident words. Where are