Between Shades of Gray Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t about to thank the NKVD for anything. Every few minutes I heard their boots marching by. I couldn’t sleep. I wondered if there was a moon out, and if so, what it looked like. Papa said scientists speculated that from the moon, the earth looked blue. That night I believed it. I would draw it blue and heavy with tears. Where was Papa? I closed my eyes.
     
    Something bumped my shoulder. I opened my eyes. It was lighter in the train car. Andrius stood above, nudging me with his shoe. He put his finger to his lips and motioned with his head. I looked over at Mother. She slept, clutching her coat tightly around her. Jonas was gone. My head snapped around, looking for my brother. Andrius kicked me again and waved me forward.
    I got up and stepped between the human bundles toward the door of the train car. Jonas stood at the opening, clutching the side. “Andrius said that an hour ago, a long train came in. Someone told him it was full of men,” whispered Jonas. “Maybe Papa is on it.”
    “Who told you that?” I asked Andrius.
    “Don’t worry who told me,” he said. “Let’s look for our fathers.”
    I looked down off the train. The sun had just appeared on the horizon. If Papa was at the train station, I wanted to find him.
    “I’ll go and let you know what I find out,” I said. “Where is the train that pulled in?”
    “In back of us. But you’re not going,” said Andrius. “I’ll go.”
    “How are you going to find my father? You don’t know what he looks like,” I snapped.
    “Are you always so pleasant?” said Andrius.
    “Maybe you can both go,” suggested Jonas.
    “I can go by myself,” I said. “I’ll find Papa and bring him to our car.”
    “This is ridiculous. We’re wasting time. I shouldn’t have woken you up,” said Andrius.
    I looked out of the train car. The guard was a hundred feet away, his back to me. I hung down off the edge and dropped quietly to the ground, scrambling under the train. Andrius beat me there. Suddenly, we heard a yelp and saw Jonas jumping down. Andrius grabbed him and we tried to hide behind one of the wheels, peeking under the train. The NKVD officer stopped and turned around.
    I put my hand over Jonas’s mouth. We crouched near the wheel, afraid to breathe. The officer resumed walking.
    Andrius peeked out the other side and waved us on. I crawled out. The back of our train car had Russian writing on it.
    “‘Thieves and prostitutes,’” Andrius whispered. “That’s what it says.”
    Thieves and prostitutes. Our mothers were in that car, along with a teacher, a librarian, elderly people, and a newborn baby—thieves and prostitutes. Jonas looked at the writing. I grabbed his hand, thankful he couldn’t read Russian. I wished he had stayed on the train.
    Another line of red cattle wagons sat on tracks behind ours. The doors, however, were closed and locked with large bolts. We looked around, then ran under the other train, dodging the splatters of waste. Andrius knocked on the bottom near a bathroom hole. A shadow appeared.
    “What’s your father’s name?” Andrius asked me.
    “Kostas Vilkas,” I said quickly.
    “We’re looking for Petras Arvydas and Kostas Vilkas,” he whispered.
    The head disappeared. We heard scuffling on the floor of the car. The head reappeared. “Not in this car. Be careful, children. Be very quiet.”
    We scurried from car to car, dodging droppings and knocking. Each time a head disappeared, I felt my stomach tighten. “Please, please, please,” Jonas would say. And then we’d move on, with warnings of caution or messages for loved ones. We reached the seventh car. The man’s head disappeared. It was quiet inside. “Please, please, please,” said Jonas.
    “Jonas?”
    “Papa!” we said, trying not to raise our voices. A match scraped across a wood plank. Papa’s face appeared in the hole. He looked gray, and his eye was badly bruised.
    “Papa, we’re in a car over there,” began Jonas. “Come with