And Then Everything Unraveled by Jennifer Sturman Page A

morning with a crushing disappointment that had sent me into emotional overload.
    By the time Charley knocked on my door, maybe half an hour or so later, the tears had slowed to a trickle, and I had that wrung-out, dazed feeling you get after a session of torrential sobbing. I blew my nose and wiped my eyes and went to open the door.
    “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
    I knew that if I did, the crying would start up all over again, so I shook my head. And being Charley, she didn’t press or pry. She only said, “It’s probably healthy to let it all out.” Then she made a face. “I can’t believe I said something that lame. More importantly, have you checked the weather?”
    Outside, a mass of purple-black storm clouds had gathered on the horizon. They looked as gloomy as I felt, but Charley had a different take.
    “Isn’t it fabulous?” she said. “Just the excuse we need to cut out early from the Truesdale house of horrors. And I know the perfect way to spend a rainy day.”
    I was worried that Charley’s idea of a rainy-day good time would involve another shopping trip, and I didn’t think I could deal with that many mirrors given what I must look like after all the sobbing. But instead we packed up and went to an enormous multiplex somewhere in the Long Island suburbs.
    We watched two movies, played every single arcade game in the lobby, and systematically worked our way through the menu at the concession stand. Then we topped it off with the drive-through window at a Dairy Queen on the way back to the city.
    T.K. would’ve been appalled, and I did feel sort of queasy when it was all over, but Charley was right—it really was the perfect way to spend a rainy day. I even felt recovered enough to tell Charley all about Quinn on the beach, and how different he was from the Quinn at school, and how we’d surfed and Ihadn’t choked up or embarrassed myself. At least, not until I’d fled.
    It was after midnight by the time we got to the loft, and when the elevator doors opened, we walked smack into a tower of cardboard. It turned out that all of my boxes had arrived from Palo Alto, and the super had brought them up and stacked them in the foyer while we were away.
    I was too tired to begin unpacking that night, but I got on it as soon as I woke up Sunday morning. I didn’t care much about the clothes, though I pretended to for Charley’s sake—she was always interested in clothes, even boring, T.K.-approved outfits. But between what she’d bought me and having to wear a uniform most days, I already had everything I’d need for New York. In fact, it would probably be more efficient to leave the boxes packed for my return to Palo Alto, but I couldn’t tell Charley that.
    Fortunately, she had plans to go to an art show with friends in the afternoon, and when she urged me to come with her, I pled homework. But as soon as she left, I turned my attention to what I was really interested in: the laptop and the file folders I’d grabbed from T.K.’s desk at home.
    I didn’t know what they’d tell me, if anything—I’d only shoved them in with some sweaters at the last minute, after it became clear that I was being sent to New York no matter how much of a fuss I made—but I was still glad I had them now.
    My mother loves her shredder almost as much as her label maker, so I started with the folders. I figured that whatever papers she’d bothered to hold on to had to be important, and that they’d be current, too, since she hadn’t yet put them away in her file cabinet. And I also knew they’d be about me, because they were all stowed in the desk drawer marked CORDELIA.
    But most of the folders were pretty dull, though they did make me wonder if T.K. was suffering from a kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that involved giving every single item its own properly labeled home. She’d labeled one folder CORDELIA—FALL CLASS SCHEDULE , and all she’d put in it was a lonely copy of my fall class