Once Read Online Free PDF

corner wondering if my memory is wrong. That can happen when you’re hungry and tired and your feet hurt because your shoes are too big.
    Perhaps I’m confused. Perhaps I’m remembering all the stories I’ve made up about our noisy crowded street. Perhaps I made the crowds up too.
    Then I see it.
    Our shop, there on the next corner, and I know I haven’t made that up.
    Everything’s the same. The peeling green paint on the door, the metal post for customers to lean their bikes on, the front step where Szymon Glick threw up as he was leaving my fifth birthday party.
    And there’s not a single Nazi burn mark anywhere on the shop.
    I feel very relieved, but a bit weak from hunger as well and I have to stop and hold on to the wall of Mr. Rosenfeld’s house.
    Now I’m so close to home, I’m starting to feel sad.
    I wish Mum and Dad were here instead of away somewhere persuading their favorite author to write faster, or trying to sell books on gun safety to soldiers.
    I take a deep breath.
    I haven’t got time to be sad. I’ve got a plan to carry out. Hide the books before the Nazis get here. Then I’ll have plenty of time to find a railway ticket receipt and be reunited with Mum and Dad.
    First I’ve got to get into the shop.
    I walk over and try the door. It’s locked. I’m not surprised. Mum’s dad was a locksmith before he was killed in a ferry-sinking accident. Mum’s very big on locks, except on toilet doors in ferries.
    I peer in through the shop window. If I have to smash my way in, I must make sure the flying bits don’t damage the books.
    I stare for a long time. I have to because when you’re shocked and horrified and feeling sick, your eyes don’t work very well, even with glasses.
    There aren’t any books.
    All the books in the shop are gone.
    The shelves are still there, but no books.
    Just old coats. And hats. And underwear.
    I can’t believe it. The Nazis can’t have burnt the books already or the lock would be broken and there would be ash and weeping customers everywhere.
    Have Mum and Dad changed their business to secondhand clothes? Never. They love books too much. Mum’s not interested in clothes, she was always saying that to Mrs. Glick.
    Have I got the wrong shop?
    I kneel at the front door.
    It is the right shop. Here are my initials where I scratched them in the green paint the day before I went to the orphanage so the other kids around here wouldn’t forget me.
    What’s going on?
    Have Mum and Dad hidden the books?
    Suddenly I hear voices coming from our flat over the shop. A man and a woman.
    Thank you, God and the others.
    “Mum,” I yell. “Dad.”
    Mum and Dad stop talking. But they don’t reply. They don’t even open the window. I can see their faint shapes, moving behind the curtains.
    Why aren’t they flinging the windows open and yelling with joy?
    Of course. It’s been three years and eight months. My voice has changed. I look different. Plus I’m wearing a rabbit hunter’s clothes. They’ll recognize me once they see my notebook.
    The shop door is locked, so I race around the back and up the steps.
    The back door of the flat is open.
    “Mum,” I yell, bursting in. “Dad.”
    Then I stop in my tracks.
    While I was running up the steps part of me feared our kitchen furniture would be gone, just like the books. But it’s all here, exactly where it was. The stove where Mum used to make me carrot soup. The table where I had all my meals and my bread-crumb fights with Dad. The fireplace where Mum and Dad used to give me my bath and dry my book if I dropped it in the water.
    “Who are you?” snarls a voice.
    I spin around.
    Standing in the doorway from the living room, glaring at me, is a woman.
    It’s not Mum.
    Mum is slim with dark hair and a gentle pale face. This woman is muscly with hair like straw. Her face is angry and red. Her neck and arms are too.
    I don’t know what to say.
    “Get out,” shouts the woman.
    “Grab him,” says a man who isn’t