Rules for Stealing Stars Read Online Free Page A

be thebeginnings of words that she doesn’t know quite how to finish.
    Eleanor pulls the door to her closet open, and there’s nothing inside but one of Astrid’s dioramas. Not even a very good one. It’s a basic park scene: aluminum-foil pond, green construction-paper grass, toothpicks with green pom-poms on top for trees. Orange Play-Doh dots that are meant to look like goldfish swimming in the reflective pond. Tissue-paper roses. It’s pretty vanilla for Astrid, who usually likes her diorama trees pink and her diorama ponds covered in glitter.
    â€œDo you like it?” Astrid says. I don’t know if she means the diorama or the way they’ve positioned it in the middle of the closet. I shrug. “Like, is it a place you’d want to visit?”
    â€œIt’s a park,” I say, which isn’t an answer. “It’s a nice park,” I amend, not wanting to say the wrong thing.
    Astrid steps into the closet. Eleanor steps in beside her. Marla’s next, and it’s a pretty tight squeeze. I’m not sure there’s room for one more.
    I step inside and Eleanor closes the door. It goes dark and I close my eyes, a funny reflex I have when a room goes black.
    Marla starts to giggle. Hearing Marla giggle is so new and strange I wonder if she’s choking before realizing what the sound is. My eyes open because of the smell of roses. It’s strong.Overwhelming. I wonder if Eleanor’s secret boyfriend has bought her some new perfume that she’s spraying like crazy.
    That’s not it, though.
    The ground is covered in green and yellow spikes of grass. At my feet there’s a glassy pool of water. A small pond. I think I even see little orange fish swimming around right beneath the surface. I rub my eyes. There are roses everywhere, growing right out of the ground and not in bushes. We are in a very pretty park, the size of a baseball field.
    I don’t understand the things I’m seeing.
    â€œWe’re in a park,” I say. My feet won’t move, and my sisters don’t look confused enough, given what’s happening.
    â€œThis is the best it’s ever been, isn’t it?” Astrid says to Marla and Eleanor. Eleanor nods and her eyes widen, but Marla shrugs, unconvinced.
    â€œIt’s probably a good diorama,” Marla says, her voice tight and fast, not leaving any room for other theories.
    â€œMaybe all four of us together make the closet stronger,” Astrid says. “We should have brought Priscilla in earlier.” The sun’s bouncing off the pond and her white-blond hair and the tips of our noses.
    â€œCautious is good,” Eleanor says, but she’s glowing in the sun too, and her jaw and elbows and shoulders look looser.
    â€œWhat happened?” My voice screeches. They’re all too calm. “How are we in a park? Is it . . . a time machine? Is this what you do? You go to parks? How do they— What do they—” I was so gung ho about having an adventure that I hadn’t considered the way an adventure actually feels—prickly and terrifying. I want desperately to hold on to something steady, but nothing feels real or anchored here. “Help me understand.”
    â€œWe bring in the dioramas,” Marla says. I can tell she’s trying to make it sound like she’s done it a million times before, even though last night was the first time. “And they become real.”
    I start laughing, because it is a completely insane conversation that we’re having.
    â€œSo Astrid’s magical?” I say, thinking of the way her hands move so gracefully when she’s making the dioramas. There’s some magic there.
    â€œThe closets are,” Marla says.
    â€œ This closet makes dioramas real,” Eleanor says, “but Astrid’s closet doesn’t work.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “This is the magic closet. The others aren’t, okay?”