Free A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata

surprise. “Nothing!” he said shrilly. “I wasn’t staring at anything!”
    A gun fired and Y’Tin whipped around. Y’Siu lay on the ground, his eyes holding an eerie glow, the glow of terror. But he was alive. Y’Tin wondered who had shot the bullet and why.
    Then someone knocked Y’Tin’s legs from underneath him, sending him sprawling. His thoughts became a series of clicks, as if each moment were separate instead of part of a flowing river.
    Click!
Live.
    Click!
Die.
    Click!
Pain.
    Click!
Y’Siu.
    Click!
Fear.
    He lay still, unsure whether the soldiers wanted him to stay here or to get up. As rain started to spray down on him, he lay in the mud unmoving, promising the spirits that if he got out of this alive, he would sacrifice a buffalo. But if there were spirits in the village, they were not smiling on Y’Tin.
    â€œStand up! Stand up!” Y’Tin obeyed instantly, jumping to his feet. The soldiers herded the men toward one of the smaller longhouses. The hard rain grew harder, and Y’Tin doubted that even their captors were having a good time: Everybody was miserable. An old man—Y’Pioc’s grandfather—tripped, and Y’Tin braced himself as a soldier raised the butt of his rifle. But nothing happened. The soldier turned away as if he couldn’t be bothered with an old man. Y’Tin took a chance and helped Y’Pioc’s grandfather to his feet. Luckily, none of the soldiers seemed to care.
    But then the boy soldier noticed him again. He knocked Y’Tin’s feet out from under him and tied a rope around his ankles. Y’Tin couldn’t breathe for a second. He thought he was about to be killed. The boy soldier and another soldier picked up Y’Tin with a grunt and hung him upside down from a ladder at one of the longhouses. Y’Tin had no idea why. Then they left him, the blood flowing to his head until he felt like his scalp was going to explode. He tried to turn his head in different directions so he could see who had been captured. He still hadn’t spotted anyone in his family. At least there was that. Then for the first time herealized that if his family wasn’t here, that could mean they’d escaped, but it could also mean they were dead. He tried to grab at the rope around his ankles, but somebody whacked his back with something, somehow causing not just his back but his whole body to feel pain.
    Y’Tin watched upside down as the soldiers searched longhouse after longhouse for valuables. Every time one of the soldiers passed near Y’Elur, Y’Elur put his palms together and bowed his head and said something. Y’Tin couldn’t hear what he was saying. After a while Y’Tin’s eyeballs were pulsing from the blood pressure. The soldiers made a pile of valuables: lighters, guns, ammunition, canteens, rice.
    The North Vietnamese moved the rest of the men to a different longhouse. Then, again for no reason, someone cut Y’Tin down. He fell straight down on his head and crumpled to the ground. He was hoisted up and thrown under a different longhouse. “Don’t move,” a soldier snapped.
    Y’Tin lay still, his face in the mud, his legs still tied. The rain poured and accumulated in a puddle so that he thought he could actually drown down there. Little by little the water level rose until herealized that he really might drown. He braced himself in case someone was watching, and then he flipped himself onto his back. The rain reached the bottom of his ears. Then a thought filled his head: He was going to die. He fought down that thought and felt viciousness fill his heart. It was as if all his life, a person he didn’t know had been residing inside of him, and this person was a killer. He wanted to get free and kill these soldiers.
    â€œGet out of there,” a soldier suddenly screamed at him. Y’Tin shimmied out from under the longhouse. “Go on, get