Lost Stars Read Online Free PDF

me?
    We scrawled our identities on HELLO MY NAME IS . . . name tags, but I vaguely remembered some of them: Kelsey and that scrawny boy named Jimmie and, crap, Tonya Sweeny. Great. I wrote
Caraway
on my name tag just to freak them out, to show that I was different. For once in my life, I was glad that I didn’t belong.
    Lynn handed out black and white composition books and golf pencils with the park’s logo on them. Also black fanny packs (blech) and small hammers, all of them branded by the park.
    â€œThank you so much for coming,” he said.
    â€œDid we have the option not to?” I asked, looking around, assuming my compatriots in forced labor would commiserate. But nothing. Staring straight ahead, which seemed strange for kids who were purportedly troublemakers. They were a compliant set of miscreants. Lynn didn’t smile either; I wondered if my father had called ahead to warn him of my history of misdeeds.
    â€œWe’re pleased to welcome you to the inaugural Youth Summer Workforce Camp.”
    â€œIt’s camp?” I said. “Yay. Color wars!”
    Only the skinny boy, Jimmie, laughed and then stifled it when Lynn looked at him. The flatter my jokes fell, the greater the itch to tell them.
    â€œNot that kind of camp,” Lynn said, his voice laced with so much syrupy understanding that I had to fight to keep from rolling my eyes. “We’ll be teaching you some basic construction skills, as well as familiarizing you with the native flora and fauna of the park.” He said this as if he were offering us free rein at Sizzler, or an extra week of school vacation. “Each week we’ll work on conservation and improvement projects. And by the end of the summer, you’ll be able to see the fruits of your labor.”
    Tonya looked pleased. I wondered what she’d done to land in here.
    Lynn told us that he was finishing his masters in psychology and took this job because he loved working with kids and wanted to share the power of nature and how good it felt to do hard work and how much he loved the low grumble of hunger in his belly after he’d been out in a field, reaping or sowing or building or tearing something down. “I’m really excited to work together,” he said, his John Lennon glasses reflecting the sun. I stopped listening, instead opening my notebook and doodling—​I was very good at drawing flowers, and I could just spy the heads of pink roses unfurling above the windowsill. It reminded me of that song by the Jam. And of that boy. And his guitar.
    â€œCaraway?” Lynn was standing in front of my chair. From the looks of it, he’d been saying my name. “You with us?”
    I slumped in my seat. “Yeah, I’m with you,” I said. “Do I have a choice?”
    Â 
    Lynn took it easy on us that first day. Just a hike around the park to show us the massive calcium deposit that had formed around a geyser—​a streaky white-and-rust-colored mass that looked like a giant’s half-rotten tooth—​and the spots along the creek where the sweet orange flowers called jewelweed grew.
    â€œJewelweed has healing properties,” Lynn said, picking a few buds and passing them around. Each of the kids did their due diligence, studying the delicate orange petals, but I just passed it on to Tonya, who was sweating in her off-brand JCPenney version of an Izod shirt, with a fox instead of an alligator, dark smudges beneath her armpits. I tried my best to smile at her when I saw the way she was pressing her arms down against her sides, trying to hide the watery stains.
    The only other person I knew who was obsessed with Mars, Tonya was the one I had taken with me to the NASA exhibit down at the New York State Museum in Albany when we were thirteen, to see the
Fourth Planet from the Sun
exhibit. I had sort of, kind of, wanted to talk to her about it when the Mars Ares rover disappeared into the ether