Lies We Tell About The Stars – Susie Nadler

The constellations are really just lies we tell ourselves about the stars, pretending at a closeness that wasn’t ever there. Bonnie left the door hanging open, and Celeste finds her peering around inside, looking wary. “Someone’s been in here.” “Joe?” “The bed’s messy. There’s some trash around.” “Wait, what?” Bonnie calls Sad Joe and puts him on speaker. “Haven’t been by in a while,” he admits.

“Not since right after the quake. I brought the bees over to my place; it’s warmer for the winter. Figured the lawn could wait, seeing as Mimi won’t be back till May?” He laughs, though, when they ask if he took her bike out for a spin. “Sure,” he says, “and then I ran a marathon and swam from here to Oregon.” “We think somebody broke in.” “Oh yeah? Lotta drifters coming through here lately, not the usual surf bums. Foods Co. parking lot’s full of people sleeping in their trucks.

But hey, I’ll keep a closer eye from now on, you can count on it.” Bonnie rolls her eyes at Celeste, and he goes on: “How ’bout we don’t tell Meems about the weeds? I’ll come by next week to get ’em in shape.” They poke around. Despite being a flighty old hippie, Mimi insists on keeping her house in crazy order, never an afghan out of place, so it’s obvious to Celeste right away that her mom is right. Somebody has been here.

It’s little things—like the coffee mugs mixed with the wine glasses on the wrong shelf, and the macramé coasters scattered around everywhere instead of piled in their neat stack. “Pretty courteous burglar that bothers to use a coaster.” “I don’t think they took anything,” Bonnie says. “The telescope’s here, and the bike.”

Celeste walks over to the telescope at the window. There’s a tingly vibration starting in her chest. She presses her palm over the sun tattoo and can feel the speeding beat of her pulse. “Why’s the telescope out here?” she says quietly. “Mimi keeps it put away when we’re not using it. Says it fucks up the feng shui.”

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019 First published in the United States of America by Dutton Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2026 Copyright © 2026 by Susie Nadler Space rocket launch image on this page © alones / stock.adobe.com Gemini constellation on this page © shooarts / stock.adobe.com Penguin supports copyright.

Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Dutton is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

The Penguin colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Books Limited. Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 9798217004515 Ebook ISBN 9798217004522 Cover art © 2026 by Hokyoung Kim Cover design by Kelley Brady Design by Anna Booth, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero This book is a work of fiction.

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. prhid_prh_7.4a_155318083_c0_r0 OceanofPDF.com CONTENTS Dedication Day 1 Day 2 Before Day 9 Before Day 21 Day 41 Before Day 58 Before Day 76 Day 77 Day 80 Day 99 Day 120 Day 125 Day 134 Day 142 Day 146 Day 154 Day 155 Day 657 Acknowledgments About the Author OceanofPDF.com For Iris and Jonah, my Gemini OceanofPDF.com N Day 1 obody will ever believe Celeste when she tells them, much later, that she was thinking about earthquakes at the moment when the Big One finally came.

Specifically, she’s thinking about the word terremoto, which she learned just this week in AP Spanish, and which is so much better and scarier than the English word, sounding almost like the thing itself as it trembles your tongue. This is the kind of stuff Celeste thinks about all the time, only ever speaking the thoughts to her mom, who appreciates nerdy things, and to Nicky, who appreciates everything.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 3004b4818e611c8d
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9798217004515, 9798217004522
• Pages: 254
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 442.45 minutes
• Total Words: 88,490
• Total Characters: 493,943
• Average Words per Page: 348.39
• Average Characters per Page: 1944.66

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