There Once Were Stars Read Online Free PDF

the air as they begin working again.
    I reach for my locket, where it’s embedded into the dirt, and dig it out with my trembling fingers. My handprint. I can’t get it out of my head. The ramifications of this are overwhelming. What’s going to happen to me now?Is there a way to get out of this? Maybe someone can hack into the system for me. Someone like Jak.
    The locket comes loose and I grasp it in my hand as I crawl through the bushes. The saw still roars through the air, as I make my way back to the trees. Once I’m standing again, I dash through the forest, not caring who might hear me. What could be worse than the fate that awaits me now? I’ll be sent to the Learning Institute for reformation, or worse, to B2 to live among the screams. I’m not sure which is worse.
    By the time I reach the fence, I’m so worked up, I can barely see between my tears. I crawl through the space in the fence and sprint away into the darkness, hiding in the shadows until I’m safe at home. But I know this won’t be good enough; no one is safe from his or her actions under the dome.
    As I burst into my bedroom, Grandmother is sitting on my bed holding my mother’s notebook.
    “Where have you been?” she hisses at me. “You missed supper.”
    “I had to go back to the clearing—”
    “You did what!” She jumps up and slaps me with such force I fall back against my bedroom door.
    I cradle my cheek as tears run down my face. She has never struck me before, and though I know this time I have gone too far, my tears are not from the sting of her hand as much as my own fear, because this time I know she’s right.
    “I told you to never, ever, go back there. Do you have any idea what you are doing?”
    “I had to. I dropped my locket earlier and overheard at work they were going to the clearing to cut down a tree. I knew if they found it, they would come after me.”
    She sits down and throws the notebook on the floor as her hands tremble. She clutches her fingers together in her lap and stares at them as if they’re something foreign now. She looks up at my cheek, where I feel the red welt growing. “Oh, Nat,” she whispers. “Do you really have no recollection of what happened before? They wouldn’t come after you, they would come after us.”
    “I don’t understand,” I say. “Why would they come after you?”
    “When your parents had their … unfortunate accident, the Order members came. Do you remember what they did to your grandfather?”
    I remember it all too well. It was nine years ago, and I was playing hopscotch on the front sidewalk with other kids. Order Members trampled through our game and entered our building. I had never seen them before, in their crisp suits, and couldn’t help but follow them up to the apartment, all the way to my grandparents’ unit.
    No one saw me standing there when the men said my parents’ expedition went terribly wrong. The entire Expedition team had been killed by radiation poisoning. I turned, and ran down the stairs, into the street, but didn’t stop there. I passed all the familiar faces and buildings I knew until I no longer recognized anything. I kept running, blinded by the watery world of my tears. And that was when I found the opening to the Outer Forest.
    “I ran away, remember.”
    “Oh, that’s right,” she nods. “Your grandfather got up to run after you, but the Order wouldn’t let us leave. We were detained, and there were so many questions—accusations that turned to threats. You know how Grandfather can be. So stubborn. He turned the tables and started accusing the Director and the Order, until finally they took him away.”
    All I remember was holding Grandfather’s hand at the funeral. Was he gone before that? He was silent for such a long time afterward, but wasn’t that from the grief?
    “What did they accuse you of?”
    “They thought your parents were involved in something untoward. They never explained it to us, but it couldn’t have been