The cleanup gets off to a smooth start. For me and Leslie anyway. We begin by sorting through Doll Mountain, and the catacombs start slowly, oh so slowly, to transform. I am half-hopeful that after years and years of living in a toy sepulcher, Leslie will have a normal bedroom by the end of the week. But it’s only a half hope at best, because downstairs World War III is in full swing. And that sort of thing tends to put a damper on your outlook.

I wish I could say that Mom and Grandma Nora were waging their war on the house, but they’re too busy fighting each other. I’m not really sure who’s winning. Most of the time it sounds like they’re both losing. Like we’re all losing.

We’ve barely seen Chad. It’s not unusual for him to disappear when things get rough. He’s almost as good at the Disappearing Act as Dad. But while Dad most often disappears under the flaps of his deerstalker, Chad is usually off with his friends. He’s super popular.

I’ve only got, like, three real friends. Plus Amanda, I guess. She’s always around. We’re just not as close as we used to be. I don’t even know who she has a crush on. Amanda and I didn’t have a big fight or anything. We just kind of drifted apart after Rae moved to Colorado. Last year, I barely even saw Amanda at school. Someone, I think it might have been Jenny, told me she thought Amanda was reading in the library at lunch most days. Then, this year, Amanda asked if she could eat lunch with us, and now I think we might be learning how to be friends again.

And, of course, there’s Drew. He would make a fifth friend. But, again, I’m not really sure if he counts.

Either way, it’s hard to keep friends when half your life is this huge secret and you can’t let them within five miles of your house. I can’t wait until I can drive, like Chad. He doesn’t have to wait for school to see his friends.

I bet Chad couldn’t even count all his friends. He’s always hanging with “the guys” or going out with some girl or at a party or sleeping on the futon in Will Williamson’s basement. Will is probably Chad’s version of Rae. Like me and Rae, Will and Chad have been best friends since the start of middle school. And from what Chad says, Will has a great house. His family has a backyard basketball court. Sometimes it seems like Chad lives with the Williamsons. Once I even heard Will’s mom make a joke about it, calling Chad her “adopted” son. Chad cracked up. I didn’t think it was funny.

It’s not like I blame Chad for avoiding home. Well, I might as well be honest. I do blame him. I blame him a lot. But I understand why he does it: His room is almost as bad as Leslie’s. Mom divided it into quadrants: one-fourth old exercise equipment, one-fourth used camping gear, and one-fourth unused paint cans. And I don’t mean her watercolors. I think she actually threw those out.

Near the start of her collecting phase, Mom stopped painting on watercolor paper and started stockpiling paint cans. For a while there, she really had this thing for house paint. She was always bringing it home or having it shipped to the house—mostly in dozens of shades of baby blue, light pink, pastel yellows, and spring greens. It’s been a long time since she brought home new paint, though … as far as I know.

The smallest fourth of Chad’s room (hey, I never said all quadrants were equal) is the little corner with his bed, music system, and desk. There’s also usually a pile of clothes on the floor next to his bed. I don’t think Chad has used his closet in years. It’s behind a stack of mostly broken camping chairs.

As Leslie and I work on her room, I keep thinking that, maybe, we can help Chad do something about his room once we’re done with hers. Maybe he won’t want to spend so many nights in the Williamson’s basement if he’s got a tent-free, exercise bike–less room.

I’ve never offered to help Chad before. I don’t know why. I’ve asked Leslie about a hundred times, but I just watched Chad’s room get worse and worse. It never occurred to me that I could help him. I guess I always assumed that since he’s four and half years older than me, he could figure it out for himself. I mean, I cleaned up my room when I was only ten.

I bump into Chad in the upstairs hall on Monday night, just as Leslie and I are wrapping up Day One of the Catacombs Extraction.

“I haven’t seen you all day,” I say. “Where’ve you been?”

“At work,” he says like it’s obvious. As if I should have known, when he never even told us he was applying places.

“You got a job?”

“Yeah. How do you think I got Grandma Nora off my back this morning?”

“Did you go get a job just so she’d leave you alone?” Just so he has an excuse to get out of the house while she’s visiting?

“No, I had one lined up before she came. I’ve gotta pay for gas somehow.”

“Where are you working?”

“The Exploding Hoagie.” He skirts around me and starts walking down the hall.

“Wow!” I say, following him. “That’s so cool.”

And I really mean it. I’m not being sarcastic. I’ve always been a little obsessed with The Exploding Hoagie. For a fast-food kind of place, it’s really clean. It’s not one of those tacky, overdecorated restaurants. If I wanted to eat surrounded by clutter, I could just stay home. And it always smells like fresh bread. But my favorite thing about The Exploding Hoagie is the meat slicer. I love watching the employees use the meat slicer. There’s something mesmerizing about it: the low hum of the machine, the smooth back-and-forth motions, the giant hunks of ham being shaved into razor-thin pieces.

I’m still trailing behind Chad when he starts to shut the bathroom door.

“Hey,” I say, sticking my foot in the doorway before he can close it. This is the first time I’ve really talked to him since Family Game Night, and who knows when I’ll catch him again? “It’s been pretty crazy around here. With Grandma Nora and all.”

He gives a dry chuckle. “I can only imagine.”

I roll my eyes. Chad could do more than imagine if he would stick around for longer than an hour or two. I take a step back and try a different approach. “Have you heard from Dad yet? Like, do you know if his plane landed?”

A dark, uncharacteristic look crosses his face.

“No.”

“Are you worried about him?” I ask.

“I would be if I didn’t think he was ignoring us on purpose.”

“What?” I haven’t quite thought of that yet. It’s a little like being slapped.

“He’s just getting even with Mom,” Chad says, and he shuts the door in my face.

I’m not done talking to him, though. There’s so much more I want to say. But I can’t quite find the words, so I end up asking the door: “Do they let you use the meat slicer at work?”

It doesn’t answer.

Neither does Chad. I’m sure he can hear me. I can hear him. But the only response I get is the sound of the toilet flushing. Then the shower starts, and I stand there, trying to decide if I should wait until Chad comes back out. Maybe if I ambush him, I can blurt out the things I really want to say: things about Dad and Mom and Grandma Nora and the fighting and Leslie’s nightmares and divorce and custody and CPS.

Or, if I can’t manage that, I can at least ask if Chad will take me to The Exploding Hoagie with him tomorrow. Leslie could come, too. I’ve got enough money to buy us chips and fountain drinks for his entire shift. Or Leslie and I could hang out at the park or the library. If the rest of Grandma Nora’s visit is going to be as loud and awful as it was today, I’ll do anything to get out of the house for an afternoon or two.

I never get the chance to ambush Chad. The sound of creaking steps sends me running for cover. I don’t know if it’s Grandma Nora or Mom on the stairs, but unless you want to get drafted, it’s best to hide from grown-ups on the warpath.

Later that night, after Leslie and I are both ready for bed, I stand on her mattress and survey our progress. We’re pretty much finished with Doll Mountain. It was one of the biggest piles in Leslie’s room, so even though there are still piles and piles to go, I feel like we’ve accomplished a lot.

While I stand on the bed—which is no longer doubling as an armory—Leslie is standing near the trash bags of discarded dolls, the ones with no eyes or missing limbs or shaved heads. She plucks one from the bag. It has no arms.

“Put it back,” I say.

She looks at me a little guiltily. “But they seem so sad.” Leslie fingers the empty sockets where the arms used to be. “I don’t think they want us to throw them away.”

When I look at those dolls I have to try not to think of Chucky, a horrible doll-murderer from yet another terrifying movie Rae forced me to watch at one of our sleepovers. But when Leslie looks at them, I’m sure she’s thinking of Toy Story. She used to watch it almost as often as she watched the princess movies … before Mom boxed up the DVDs and we stopped our Friday Disney nights.

“Stop feeling sorry for it,” I say. “It doesn’t have feelings. It’s not alive.”

“I know,” says Leslie. She puts the armless doll back in the bag, but she does it with a sigh.

Tuesday morning, we decide to conquer the stuffed-animal pile. It’s slightly less traumatic than Doll Mountain, but it takes twice as long. For one, there are more stuffed animals than dolls. Plus, it’s harder to decide which stuffed animals should be thrown out and which ones are okay for Goodwill.

Our progress is interrupted shortly before lunch, when I reach into the pile and feel something crunchy. I hold it up before realizing that it’s a stuffed dolphin caked in ancient throw up. I shriek and toss it across the room. All I want is to get Pukey as far away from me as possible. I don’t hit Leslie with it on purpose.

“Ew! What was that?” she says.

“A dolphin.”

“Why is it crunchy?” Leslie looks at it lying on the floor at her feet. She doesn’t bend down to touch it.

“I think it’s covered in old vomit,” I say. “I have to go wash my hands.”

I’m almost out the door when something nails me in the back of the head.

“Hey! What was that for?”

Leslie shrugs, a little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “You started it.”

“And I’ll finish it,” I say, grabbing a one-eyed panda and a ladybug Pillow Pet.

By the time Leslie calls for a truce, I realize that we’ve undone half our morning’s work. But at least our war is fun. Based on the noises from the kitchen, Mom and Grandma Nora and World War III remain in a stalemate.

It’s long after we would usually eat lunch when Leslie offers: “Paper-Rock-Scissors?” which is how we’ve been deciding who has to go downstairs whenever we need something.

“Nah,” I say, examining my chapped hands. I have to leave at least three or four times an hour to wash my hands, and I’ve practically washed the skin off them. “I’ll go down. I want to find some gloves. Do you want a pair, too?”

She shakes her head no.

“Are you sure?” I ask, concerned that she hasn’t washed her hands once today. It seems like a recipe for salmonella, hantavirus, or the plague.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Leslie says. “This is my room. I live in here. It just doesn’t feel that dirty to me.”

It should. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Jiminy is chirping up a storm right now. It’s like Leslie doesn’t know what it means to have a clean room. She’s so used to the filth that she doesn’t even see it. I walk downstairs, imagining two hands pushing away the guilt—pushing it out the door, out the window, out of the state, off the map. Squashing the cricket. I’m so distracted that I’m in the downstairs hall before I realize that something is wrong. Terribly wrong.

It’s quiet. World War III has raged for the last two days, and now there is only silence. But it’s not a peaceful quiet. It’s a dead quiet. Quiet like a battlefield when only the corpses are left.