Ada sat in silence against the wall. The voice was silent as well. She slowly shook her head. This place was going to be a nightmare. She would be stuck here, and she wouldn’t be able to leave this room. She’d be alone for the rest of her life, through her sixteenth birthday, through her adult life. She’d never marry. She’d never even find love. She’d never kiss anyone. Never become an actress. Never make it big. Never know what it feels like to have cameras on her all the time.

Oh, God, she’d never meet her idols. She’d never get to tell her mother she loved her again. She’d never visit India again.

But she needed to stay strong. That’s what her mother would tell her. “Stay strong, Baby. You can get through anything if you just put your mind to it.”

She was sitting on the floor, running her fingers through her hair and mumbling reassuring words in to herself in Hindi, things her mother always told her, when the door opened.

“Are you going insane now?”

Ada looked up to find a woman with shoulder-length, waving red hair staring at her. The woman looked ready to go to court, in a pinstriped black pantsuit and pumps. The briefcase dangling from her fingers certainly didn’t help that appearance.

“Come on, then. Up, off the floor. We’ve got business.”

Even though she didn’t want to obey, Ada felt she had to. She rose to her feet with difficulty as he body shook with the effort it took to refrain from crying. The woman waited for her to walk to her, then took her by the shoulder. She was directed to the table and pushed into one of the chairs.

Miss Lawyer, as Ada had finally dubbed her, slammed the briefcase down on the table with a loud smack. It made Ada flinch. “Now, now, down to business. Ada Ramakrishnan. Age fifteen. Your mother is Kumara Ramakrishnan, divorced but keeping his name. Your father’s name was Anish Ramakrishnan, and he recently committed suicide while in crippling debt. Over things he bought you.” She slammed a file shut, then looked up at Ada. Her lips were pursed and bright pink. The muscles in her face were tight. The piercing blue of her eyes, though, chilled Ada right down to the bone. The expression she wore was one of contempt, made of ice and out to kill. “How do you feel, knowing that? How do you feel knowing you killed your father?”

Ada stayed silent. Her body shook harder. The tears wanted to come, but she wouldn’t let them. This woman could not get to her. These were empty words she was throwing at her.

“Huh, Miss Ramakrishnan? How does it make you feel that you murdered your father?” When Ada didn’t speak, the woman stood and walked to the other side of the table. “He was just an innocent man. He loved you. He loved you, but he didn’t have that much money. You plunged him into debt for what? Make up? Clothing? Designer labels so you could look popular in your first year of high school?” Her mouth was right next to Ada’s ear. Hot, rancid breath raked over her face. “How does it make you feel? What did you do to him to make him hang himself in his bedroom just before his house was foreclosed, taken by the bank? How do you feel, knowing that your father could have been out on the streets, dying because of you?”

“IT MAKES ME FEEL HORRIBLE!” Ada shouted. The tears were streaming down her cheeks now, and she stood quickly. The chair she had been in seconds ago fell to the carpet, making virtually no sound whatsoever. “It makes me want to kill myself, but I’m too chicken to. I’m too scared to. I killed my own father with just one- one touch, just because I wanted some clothes.”

The woman’s grin was wolf like. Every tooth looked sharper than it truly was. It looked like she wanted to rip Ada’s throat out.

But she didn’t. She just leaned down and picked up the chair. She set it upright, pushed Ada back down into it, and made her way to her chair again. Every movement was fluid and predatory. Ada’s alarms were going off but she couldn’t do anything about it. She was wracked with guilt, her fingers wiping frantically at her cheeks. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t feel this way. To feel this way was to die inside, and after that episode it was worse. It was tenfold.

“Thank you for giving me what I wanted and needed.” The woman sat back in her seat. “I’m Michaela Smith, Miss Ramakrishnan. I’ll be working with you while you’re here.”

Stardust. That's what we're all made from. The chemicals that build our bodies originated in stardust just the same way we started in our mothers' wombs.

When I told my mother this in tenth grade after I learned it, she laughed at me. "Stardust? Please, Kelsie, you're nowhere near that special."

As always, I sighed and feigned a smile. My mother wasn't the best as making us feel our best, but she was our mother. It may not have been written anywhere, but we were bound by law to love her in some portion.

I went to school the next day with a bruise on my cheek and a scrape on my knee. Of course, they weren't from my mother. She didn't think I stole her cigarettes at all. She hadn't gotten drunk last night and pushed me to the ground after punching me. That was absurd, Mrs. Young, my mother had never laid a hand on any of us.

I lied the bruise and scrape off as an elaborate story about falling from my bike. Despite being battered every day as a child, I had a creative mind. In fact, maybe I had my mother to thank for the creativity in my imagination. After all, I'd spent months on end imagining what it would be like in a loving family, where I would have a father who did not die from alcohol poisoning and two brothers who didn't hate their lives and get locked up in jail. We would sit down for dinner every night, have long, happy conversations, and retire to bed after playing games or watching a movie.

The life I longed for never came, though.

My mother was diagnosed with cancer within two weeks of the cigarette incident.

She died three months after being diagnosed.

I wasn't too torn up.

I'd plunged into my schoolwork as usual to hide from her, did things around the house, and spoke with my brothers. One of them was getting out of jail in two months, and I would live with our aunt until he got out. Then I would move in with him.

Mother was too weak to yell at me, let alone hit me, so I was actually kind of relieved.

Dressed in a brand new black dress, I left the house with my aunt on the day of the funeral. Blonde hair, finally trimmed and tied back the way I liked it, spilled down my back, and my dress swished around my legs. I'd never worn a dress before, and I found I enjoyed it. I'd have to buy more when I was able.

Mother looked exactly the same she did when she passed out. Her blonde hair was shorter than mine, trimmed by her chin. Gaunt, sharp features stared up at us from the coffin. Her tanned hands crossed over her beer-gut of a stomach.

Even if it was a little morbid, I reached out and touched her cheek gently. A small smile crossed my lips. "Goodbye, Mom," I whispered to the corpse.

I could hear her response ringing in my mind. "This isn't 'goodbye,' Kelsie, it's 'see you soon.'"

When I took my seat in the front row of the seats, next to the brother I would soon be living with, Kyle, something left a shiny powder on the hem of my dress. I frowned at it before realizing it was make up.

"Kelsie McCollough has a few words to share with you all about her mother."

I stood slowly, rethinking all of the lies I was going to tell these people. I didn't know if I could do it.

When I faced the group of family and friends, standing behind the microphone and podium, I simply stared. My lips parted a few times, like I was ready to speak, but I stopped before saying anything.

I looked down at my fingers, the ones that had touched my mother's cheek and picked up the shining pink blush.

Swallowing hard, I glanced back up.

"The components that make up the human body originated in stardust," I begun, leaning forward slightly. The group around me simply stared. "Most of the chemicals within our bodies grew into what we have named from stardust, and they fell to Earth for us to find and name. Isn't that awesome?"

Some people laughed and agreed. I caught my aunt's eye, and she grinned at me.

"Mother didn't seem to think so. I told her this, and I told her that the chemicals were born of stardust like we, made of these chemicals, were born of our parents, like we left the mother's womb. Her reply to me was this: "Stardust? Please, Kelsie, you're nowhere near that special." Special- that was what my mother seemed to want. She wanted to go out special, and she wanted to be special, but she never got the chance."

The whole crowd seemed to be holding their breath.

"This is her chance. Ashes to ashes," I said, licking my lips, repeating the minister that had introduced me, "dust to dust. You know what I say to that? Let's transform it. Just for this woman- this abusive, abused, torn apart, drastic disaster of a woman- let's change this. Let's transform it into something new that applies better.

"Ashes to ashes." I say, proud for the first time in my life. "Stardust to stardust. Goodnight and goodbye, Mother. Perhaps I'll see you in the stars one night."

“Angels don’t exist,” he used to tell me, “at least not in the way everyone seems to think they do. They’re all just pieces and parts of these people- the ones around us, all the good ones- thrown together into something no one person can fathom because the qualities the angels absorb are the ones we all hate within ourselves.”

I believed him then. I believed everything Kellan told me. Getting to know him was more interesting than getting to know Albert Einstein, Audrey Hepburn, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, Brad Pitt... You get the idea; he was interesting. He had an outlook on everything and he loved looking through the looking glass instead of at it. He pushed himself as hard as he could, but he never did anything with it. Kellan liked to contradict himself more often than not.

During our short relationship, he loved to make love and then go out onto the roof and just stare at the stars or the sun and share everything on his mind. We did that almost every night, if not more.

The night he told me this, we were stretched out on the concrete of the roof of his apartment building. Rocks were digging into my calves and my arms, and my eyes darted from star to star in the sky like I was creating my own constellations based on the dulcet tones of his voice.

Immediately after the claim, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Jamie. I don’t know if you believe in Him and his minions or not.”

“I don’t,” I replied, knowing my voice was airy. I didn’t believe in them, and I still don’t. I’d never really believed, even when I was forced to go to church every Sunday morning. “I think you’re correct, though.”

“Angels are those few who try to make people feel better. They’re those few that see the world for what it is and try to do better. The ones who try to work their way into the charities without wanting anything in return aside from the satisfaction of helping. They work for and with others. They’re not the prettiest, but they’ve got the prettiest souls.”

I smiled at his words and closed my eyes. I was still on my post-sex high, so my whole body was tingling and my mind was numb and ready for any words that could be pushed into it.

“I think you’re an Angel, Jamie,” is what he said to me the night he proposed.

Sometimes I wish I’d said no to marrying him. Life would be much simpler now.

We're forced to watch as it devours everything. The papers are gone. The books are gone. Everything is gone. It's all in the belly of the beast, torn to shreds by this invisible monster taking over the body of the people I know.

We can't stop it.

No one can stop it.

Papers fly off the shelf into the fire, where they burn to black ash, the ink taking over the whole page and destroying the story inside. The books are being reduced to dust in the wind.

My work is being reduced to dust in the wind.

My friends' work is being reduced to dust in the wind.

They're all being reduced to ash and dust and particles that make us sneeze, and all we can do is watch. Our hands are tied behind our backs with rope, and our feet are bound to the ground by chains. We're put on trial for our daringness and hope.

All we wanted was to teach the people in the town something meaningful.

All we receive is a trial where our fruits are devoured.

All of the stuff they read here, it has no deeper meaning, and it has no underlying truth. It's all romance this, terror that. They don't take the meanings and put them to use, they leave the books bland and unused. The books are pristine with misuse. They are shining in abuse, black and white with no love for them in any heart to provide any color.

The writers of this world are forced to watch their novels burn in this generation without appreciation. They are forced to sit aside and watch as people love their books, but don't take the meanings to the heart. The theme of death in this book is taken to be amusing. The theme of loneliness in that book is just plain depressing, who the hell wants to read that? Justice in this one is taken as protection, and it's not really prominent to the plot line, it wasn't necessary. Government terror in that one is thrown out the window by the media, claiming it was just for fun, something that they wanted to throw in there, not real at all, nope, not real.

People here don't listen to the truths in books, and it's pissing us off.

However, we can't do anything about it. We're stuck here with our hands tied, our feet bound, and our mouths gagged.

When will we get to speak up?