Against the canvas of the night sky, people turn into stars.

The city below is dim. Its citizens are hushed. Streaking above us and through the air are stars shaped like people, tearing past like fighter jets, hurling away like a scream. Their skin is living liquid light, and stardust trails in their wake. The dust settles gold over my skin, and itches.

Father's hand is warm on my ankle, and I am sitting on that someone's shoulders. I am small enough for it.

Look, he says. Look, Sozo.

I look, but the people are gone. They've dipped away into the dense geometry of the cityscape, and all is dark again.

Sozo, Mother says. She leans close to whisper. The Decade-Races are the race of dreams. Fly fast enough, and strong enough, and better than everyone else, and you win a wish, any wish.

You win the right to anything you desire.

Do you understand, Sozo?

"Yes," I lie, because I'm only four during this race, and all I understand is the height of the world from my father's shoulders, and the warmth of my mother's hand on my back.

Why should I understand races and wishes when I already have everything I need?

*

Against the canvas of a white white wall, I am told to take off my clothes.

I'm lined up with other kids around my age, six or seven years old. All our clothes are too big. All our shoes are too worn. Standing to my left is a girl, half a head taller with round blue eyes, and we look at each other. We are standing too far apart to hold hands, so all we can do is look at each other.

Clumped before us are men and women in blue police gear, and they go down our line one by one, to turn us and to check us, to look at us all over.

Listen up, they say. There's been reports of an Omen here.

They're charged with burglary, assault, vandalism, theft. It's young, and likely a girl. Black hair, black eyes, pale skin. There's an omen stain somewhere on her body, possibly on her back.

They are talking about me. I swallow. I have broken into many places. I have stolen many things. The lie I tell myself is that I have to. No one else in the world is looking out for me after all, not anymore.

It's my turn to be looked over. The police eye me and wait.

I retract my arms from my airy shirt and pull it up over my head. And then I do what I always do – I hide my omen stain.

Hiding it is not something the others can do. I don't know why. All I know is that it is a simple thing, like holding my breath, where the black spill of my omen sinks back underneath my skin. But like holding my breath, I can't hide it for long, just long enough to get away with things like this.

The men and women turn me around and look over my skin, and I know they see nothing but the bumps of my spine, the bumps of my ribcage, the pinprick bumps over my white skin from the cold. They find no omen stain there, though it's there.

It will always be there.

The police move on. I slip on my clothes. They look at the girl next to me and she shrinks back against the wall. She shakes her head, no, no. She doesn't want to bare herself like this.

One of them, a woman, glove thick and squeaking, clamps her hand around the girl's arm and yanks. The girl yelps. The girl struggles. She paws at the unfeeling glove and says, Please, please.

So I step between them.

Wait, I say. It's not her, I beg. And I know. I should tell them, tell them the whole truth. I'm the thief. I'm the Omen girl. I'm the one you're looking for.

But I'm scared. I know I have no right to be. But I'm scared.

The girl rails against the grip on her arm, and I'm shoved aside. No one is listening. She pushes off the ground and kicks and kicks, and the more she does, the more something coils up from her too-worn shoe, up around her ankle, up her calf.

An omen stain, dark as a scab.

It thickens leathery like a hide. It crawls up her leg and hip until the whole of her skin is no longer skin, but rough like earth, and just as dark. Her teeth are lengthening. Her nails are sharpening. She growls, and slobbers, and becomes something like a beast.

I've never seen anything like this before.

The stories were true.

We can turn into monsters.

The police have bolt pistols in their hands. They take aim against the no-longer-girl's head, and fire. There is no blood. The monster collapses against the ground, and does not move. It's dead, I think. I don't know. I can't breathe. I can't move. It's my fault she's dead.

Am I even allowed to mourn her?

Before the police leave, they turn to us – us stupefied and petrified by the white white wall. They say, Stay away from Omens. They say, At best they're criminals. At worst, monsters.

One of them looks at me and asks me if I understand, and I can say nothing. I can't even nod. If I moved, I might break. If I opened my mouth, I might hurl.

But I understand.

I do not want to understand, but I do. 

*

Against a dead end in the night full of smoke, a woman named Esp finds me.

Three years have passed since that day against the wall. I am huddled underneath a dripping red tarp, and a pipe beside me trembles with hot water, and hisses, and hisses. My reflection in the laundry-grey puddles is like the reflection of a stray – small, dark, dirty.

A shadow casts over me. I look up, and see Esp.

It's like looking up at a vulture, a black vulture. Her jacket is puffy and dark, with fur fat around the collar to guard her against the nighttime chill. Her legs are slender, long, slick with the reflected reds of neon lights. She's chewing gum, and blowing a bubble. Her hair is electric green.

"You lost?" She asks.

"Are you?" I reply.

She pops her gum, and stares. I stare back. This is my dead end; I got here first. But if I act afraid, act small and soft, she will take it from me.

I notice her omen stain then, her stain like a loud afterthought, curved like a sickle from the corner of her lip and over her cheek and ear, and up into her hairline. I don't know how I missed it.

She snorts at my glare. "Put your gun away, kid. You got a name?"

"I'm not a kid."

"No? You look like one, talk like one, act like one."

I bare my teeth. "Zap off."

"A kid," she repeats. "But a kid I could use," and it startles. It startles me into silence. I've never been of use to anybody.

She says, "I hear talk you're special."

My stain, and how I can hide it.

"You tired yet," she asks, "of being lesser-than?"

People like me belong on the streets. People like me are not allowed rights like buying and selling and owning things. For us, mothers pull their children closer to them to point and to say look, look, that one there is evil.

"You got a wish, kid?"

I'm startled again, stunned. I'm an Omen. Omens don't deserve wishes. I recall my faded memory of the races, and of stars, and of the things I felt then. But I don't have a wish.

I have many.

I wish I was good. I wish I had a bed to call my own. I wish people didn't spit on my shadow when I passed by, and that I had told the truth that day against the wall.

I wish I could go back to that warmth underneath the stardust, to the days when I didn't need wishes.

Maybe the woman sees something in my expression, because she nods. She says, "I have a wish. People like us all do. Omens, they say. Monsters, they say. We're the unlucky byproduct of some genetic lottery. That's all we are. Ten people could commit the same crime, and only one of them would be stained. A city and a world where the unlucky are punished. What a joke. What an absolute joke."

It's unjust, she says, and I agree. With a force like thruster fire, I agree.

It needs to be rectified, she says, and I tilt up at her, wait for her to tell me the answer. How will this be rectified? How will us monsters be given justice?

Instead she looks at me and asks, "Do you understand?"

I don't. I told her I'm not a kid, but I am. Justice and wishes are beyond me, have always been beyond me. She turns from me then, and steps away. My heart drops – I've failed her, somehow. She's leaving, just like my parents did.

So I say, lie, the way I've always done, "Yes."

I tell her, "I understand."

And she stops. She twists back at the mouth of the dead end. Her voice echoes off the edges of the alleyway when she says, "Good."

She tells me to come, and to follow her, and so I do.

She does not need to know I have lied. And maybe one day, when I am grown, when I am stronger, I will no longer need to lie.