“Dude. What’s going on with you? I mean for real, okay? What the hell is going on with you?”

“Jesus, Brad, hasn’t anyone ever told you not to call a chick ‘dude?’ I mean, are you like, under the impression that that’s something women like?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know. I guess I don’t really think of you as being a chick.”

“Ha! Awesome. So if you don’t think of me as female, what do you think of me as? One of the guys?”

“No, not exactly. I pretty much just think of you as Finnley.”

“You know what? I’ll take that. I don’t actually mind that at all. I’m pretty sure a lot of girls would, but I don’t mind it. There’s something strangely sweet about it, if you want to know the truth.”

“Sweet? Um, sure, okay. I’ll take that.”

“You better,” Finnley laughed, her head throbbing a little as she did so. “It may be the last compliment I ever pay you, so I would suggest you savor it.”

“Oh gee.” Brad rolled his eyes, reminding her of both the reasons for why she liked having him as a friend and the reasons it drove her completely bonkers. “Thanks. Now are you gonna answer my question or not?”

“Question? Did you ask me a question?”

“I thought so. It was a question by anyone else’s standards, although you don’t appear to be working the same way as other people as of late.”

“You’ve got that right. Just ask me again, will you? I’ve got a pretty awful headache, and my thoughts are pretty much running in one ear and then straight out the other.”

“That’s a perfect segway into my question, actually. I was just wondering what’s up with you? You seem a little bit...I don’t know, glum. And just so we’re clear, if you tell anyone I either noticed your current mood or cared enough to ask you about it, I’ll deny it to my grave. Can’t have you sullying my thug reputation, you know?”

“Sure,” Finnley answered sarcastically, “wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

She looked back to the screen of her computer, making an executive decision to just ignore Brad until he went away. It wasn’t even that she minded the intrusion coming from him, at least not really. She loved Brad the way she would have loved an annoying baby brother, had she been lucky enough to have one. No, the issue was that she didn’t feel like talking. The previous evening was still banging around inside of her head like an unwelcome intruder, making her feel entirely unsure and exhausted. The serious amounts of celebratory drinks weren’t exactly helping, either, but only serving to make her feel sluggish and stupid. All in all, it wasn’t a fantastic day to be her, which made her even less keen on answering personal questions than she might otherwise have been. That was saying a lot, too, seeing as Finnley was less than interested in that sort of thing on just a normal day. She didn’t want to answer any questions; she didn’t even want to answer her own questions, the ones that kept cropping up inside of her head. She just wanted to be left alone so that she could drown in the anonymity of the online world. She could have managed it pretty easily, too, if it hadn’t been for Brad’s damned persistence. He was like one of those freaking fruit flies, those gnats that found the something sweet he just couldn’t get enough of and therefore had no intention of leaving any time soon. Instead of taking the hint and going along on his merry way, off to bother somebody else or just maybe to actually get a little bit of work done, he grabbed one of the rolling desk chairs from behind him and pulled it up beside her. Once that was done, he crossed one leg over the other, propped an elbow on said leg, and rested his chin on it. This was the “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me exactly what it is I want to know” stance and she had seen it enough to know that he definitely meant business. He would have meant business even if they were in the middle of one of the most bustling days Cubed had ever seen, but with things the way they stood now, that was an added pressure he didn’t need to worry himself with.

Ever since Travis had announced the sale of their company, something he kept trying to refer to as a “merger” but that was most definitely nothing of the sort, things in the office had been up in the air. And that was a delicate way of putting it, too. It hadn’t been a large company to begin with, but work seemed to have come to a standstill ever since the sale. Whoever it was that had bought them, had done so with the stipulation that there would be no new work taken on until the new bosses were in town. That meant that as people ran through the work they’d already had on their tables, there was very little for them to do. Many of them just stopped showing up altogether, presumably to find other jobs, but perhaps just until they got some kind of indication that there was a reason to come in.

There was really no need for Finnley to come in, she had no active projects at the moment, but it seemed too weird to stay at home. She was all for freedom, but the idea of having a completely open schedule with nothing to do and nothing to keep her together seemed not quite right. So instead of hanging around and doing not a damn thing, she came into the office every morning, keeping pretty much the same schedule that she’d kept before everything got weird. On this particular morning, however, it might have been best for her to just stay home. She’d had too much to drink the night before and not enough sleep, and her head was still spinning with the proposal she’d witnessed. That, and she was pretty sure, now that she was looking at her reflection on her computer screen, that her eyes were puffy and swollen from her crying the night before. Not only was that not a good look for her, it was also completely noticeable to anyone who had half a mind to look. Chances were that was what Brad wanted to know about, sitting there and looking at her with those wide eyes that were half scrutinizing and half puppy dog.  

“Ugh!” She groaned, rubbing her eyes briefly. “What?!”

“You what? What’s going on with you, lady? Seriously, what’s the deal?”

“No deal. Just hungover. You know, too much alcohol?”

“Right, but that’s not like you, Finnley. You don’t go get sloshed the night before work. So what’s up?”

“Nothing, really. I was out with Clara and Elsie.”

“And their GQ model, rich boyfriends?”

“Yup, those would be the ones.”

“So they did this to you.”

“No, come on, it’s not like that. It was a celebration. Caleb proposed to Elsie last night, so you know, drinks.”

“No shit?! That’s great! Seriously, that’s awesome. Good for her! Or good for them, I guess. That’s great, even if the guy is annoyingly perfect.”

Finnley wasn’t sure what she was going to say to that, and it turned out she didn’t have to say anything. That was the moment when Travis came barreling into the room, slamming the door of his office as he came. Her was also talking to himself, muttering under his breath angrily, and although Finnley considered giving him the advice the cab driver from the night before had given her, she decided to keep her mouth shut. Judging by the look on Travis’ face, he was in no mood for advice, jokingly or otherwise. He looked like he was going to have a flat-out heart attack, if she was telling the truth, and she could imagine why that might be. It made her remember that she wasn’t the only one having a hard time with adjusting to things lately, that there were massive changes happening for more than just her.

“Hey, boss, what’s happening?”

“What?! Oh, hey guys. What are you two doing here?”

“Um, last time I checked,” Brad answered slowly, glancing at Finnley to see if she maybe wanted to jump in and say something here, “we still worked here. Is that not true anymore? Because I gotta say if it’s not, the chain of communication definitely broke down on this one.”

“No, don’t be stupid,” Travis sighed, running his hand distractedly through his hair. “Of course, you still work here. But I don’t know if you’ve noticed, people aren’t exactly coming in reliably these days. Not that I blame them, mind you. There isn’t a lot of shit for you guys to be doing, what with the executive order coming down from the heavens.”

Travis stopped talking then and just stood there, a disgruntled and possibly even helpless look on his face. Finnley, despite her hangover and her just in general feeling of unease over the way things in her life were going, felt her heart go out to him. She couldn’t quite imagine what it must be like for him right now, feeling like the weight of the world was on his shoulders, and all of the while, he could do nothing to make things go the way he really wanted them to. She wanted to say something to him, to say something that might make him feel a little bit better, but in the end, she had no idea what that something might be and so she chose to remain silent. There the three of them sat, her, Brad, and Travis, each of them looking more dejected than the last. Finnley had just enough time to think that anyone coming into the office unexpectedly would surely have thought they looked like the most depressed bunch alive when somebody did walk through the front door and right away proved her theory to be correct.

“Geez, guys, what’s the matter with you all? I feel like I just walked into the smallest funeral ever to be held, except that nobody told me there was going to be a funeral at all.”

“Clara! Hey, I didn’t know you were coming in today! Things are looking up!”

Finnley hopped up to her feet quickly, pretending not to notice the slight wave of dizziness that came over her or the little lurch her stomach gave. Sure, the hangover was still going strong, but she wasn’t going to let that get in the way of being happy to see her friend. Over the past six months, even a little bit before that when Peter Sanchez had first made himself a terrible presence in her life, Clara had been coming into the office less and less. Finnley understood why she’d stopped coming in the beginning, of course she did. If a psychotic person who’d killed her cat was out there roaming the streets and trying to get to her, she would have stayed away from the places where people were most likely to find her, too. What had surprised her a little was that after Peter Sanchez had been hauled off in a body bag and Marlin Grant put into solitary for the foreseeable future, Clara hadn’t started showing up again. She did sometimes, but those instances became less and less frequent, and although Finnley tried to console herself with the knowledge that she was probably taking advantage of the lack of work for a much needed vacation (that and spending as much time with her handsome millionaire as possible), there was an uneasy feeling that remained in the base of her heart. Seeing Clara walk through those doors now made that uneasy heart feel instantly lighter, made her feel like things were going to be okay, after all.

“Hey, Finnley, how are you feeling?”

“What, me? Never better, lady, never better. You?”

“Ugh,” Clara laughed, her fingertips rising to her temples instinctively in a move that made Finnley laugh out loud, “let’s just say I hope this is the only time Elsie gets engaged because I don’t think my body can take a second night like that.”

“Right? I’m pretty sure they’re going to stick, though, so I wouldn’t worry about it. They’re pretty much perfect for each other. Which is, you know, completely gross.”

“Ha! Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”

There was an awkward silence then while both Finnley and Clara searched for something to say. This was one of those moments that made it difficult to forget that things were now undeniably different between the two of them. There was a time, a time not all that long ago, when the two girls would have commiserated over the lovey-dovey spectacle they’d had to witness last night. Now, things were just...different. It made sense that they would be, was pretty much a requirement with her being in a relationship that seemed to be headed in the exact same direction as Elsie and Caleb’s, but it still felt weird. It was just another example of Finnley being on the outside looking in, and while she knew that nobody was trying to make her feel that way, it was unavoidable. Never mind that she wasn’t sure she even wanted to be in a relationship. That was beside the point. Either way, her two best friends were now members of the same club, and it was one she herself couldn’t join because she didn’t have the very specific form of admission. Brad, who had looked pretty pleased to have somebody not as down and out as he, Travis, and Finnley in the room, cleared his throat uncomfortably and looked from one girl to the next and then back to the first again. If he’d been hoping Clara being there would lighten the mood, he’d been sadly mistaken. Being a guy, he couldn’t really understand why or what was going on here, but he was definitely smart enough to see that something wasn’t quite right.

“So, what brings you here, Clara?” he asked after clearing his throat again, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s been awhile since you’ve come to the office.”

“I know it has. I’m sorry, things have just been so busy, so crazy lately. I should have come around more often.”

“Well, that’s alright, you’re here now, aren’t you? Come on, let’s do something.”

“Do something?” She laughed, a laugh that Finnley recognized as an uncomfortable one and got her attention in a big way. “What would you like to do? Work? Because if that’s it, I hate to disappoint you, but I’ve already done everything I'm allowed to do.”

“Work?! Hell no! There isn’t any to do right now! None of us have any work left, Clara, unless you want to count Travis’s worrying as work. Nah, I meant something like playing cards, that kind of thing. Something to distract us all.”

“Actually, I have something to say about that.”

Now it was Travis’s turn to sound uncomfortable and his employees, all three of them that had actually bothered showing up today, all looked at him immediately with varying degrees of interest and concern on their faces. Travis had once been just about the jolliest employer a person could hope for, always good for a joke or a drink after hours, always willing to understand and help if one of his employees had a problem. That had been true, that was, until his two partners had outvoted him on the matter of selling their company off to the highest bidder. For months and months and months now, both he and all of the employees of Cubed were locked in a holding pattern, waiting for their new owners to tell them something, anything about what was going to happen to them in the future. So far, the only thing any of them knew was that they weren’t to do any new work without it being sanctioned. They had no idea if they were going to keep their jobs, no idea if their new bosses even cared that at least half of the already small staff had already jumped ship. They knew nothing, nothing except for the fact that they were supposed to wait for further instructions. This had more than taken its toll on Travis, and he had seemed like a shell of himself as of late, getting worse with each passing day. Now, he stood before them, looking nervous and maybe a little bit sick to his stomach to top it off. He clearly had something to say, but what was not so clear was whether or not he actually wanted to do any talking.

“So I’ve spoken to Mr. Wallace.”

His three observers stood stock still and waited, waited for him to say something else, waited for him to offer up some kind of an explanation. When he didn’t, Finnley looked at Clara and Brad, wanting to see if one of them was going to do the follow up or if it was going to be her. Clara, still acting a kind of strange Finnley couldn’t quite put her finger on, was making a point of not looking at her at all, and Brad just shrugged his shoulders, the universal sign for what do you want me to do about it? Trying to ignore the feeling of annoyance beginning to build up inside of her, Finnley turned her attention back to Travis, who looked like he was at least half somewhere else and certainly not with them.

“Um, Travis? No offense or anything, but we have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Hm?”

“We don’t know what you’re talking about. I think I speak for all three of us when I say that we have no idea who Mr. Wallace is.”

“Don’t you?”

“Um, no.”

“Shit, I’m sorry guys. Somehow I thought I’d told you already. I guess I’m kind of losing track of some of this. I’ve been a little bit too scattered lately. Mr. Wallace is the name of the man who’s bought us out. Or Mr. Wallace, Senior, I guess. Apparently, there’s a son—who may or may not be in the picture—with this whole mess.”

“Okay, so that’s a start. We know who he is now. What was the conversation? Did he change his mind, decide to leave us be?”

“Nope, nothing like that.”

“Well, did he give us the go ahead to work on new assignments at least? I gotta say, this whole doing nothing and pretending to be at work thing is really starting to get to me.”

“You’re still getting paid, aren’t you?”

Travis’s voice came out in something that was almost a bark, something far more severe and unfriendly than he usually used. Finnley was a little taken aback by it and bit her lip to keep from registering it on her face. She should have been used to this kind of thing by now, this process by which the people around her turned into people she didn’t really know, but it would have been a lie if she’d said it didn’t bum her out some. She would have liked to go for a day, just one day, without feeling like she was on a roller coaster ride in her own life.

“Hey, Travis, come on,” Clara answered softly, her voice gentle and full of concern. “I don’t think she’s trying to say anything to piss you off. She’s just talking, you know? And you could do worse than to have employees who don’t want to just get paid but who actually want to do some work. Don’t you think?”

“Shit. Yes. Yes, of course I do. I’m just acting like a jackass. Stressed. I’m really fucking stressed, okay? And clearly, it’s turning me into a dick. Sorry, Finnley. You’re awesome. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell you that, which means that I probably should do it more often. So yeah, sorry.”

“That’s alright, Trav,” Finnley said and smiled, immediately warming up to the mournful look on her boss and friend’s face. “No sweat. I never have been very good at keeping my mouth shut and not interrupting people when they’re trying to tell me something. I should put it on my to-do list.”

“It would probably help if I stopped stalling and got down to the point. Which is this. I spoke to Wallace Senior., and he said he’s finally ready to make the move down here. He’s been in L.A., ‘getting his ducks in a row,’ his words, not mine, and now he’s ready to move him and his ‘people’ to the Big Apple. He’ll be here by the end of the week, and he wants a meeting with everyone who’s still interested in being a part of Cubed bright and early Monday morning. So there you go. I still don’t have a fucking clue what’s going to happen, but at least I know it’s going to start happening soon. At least we all know it’s going to start happening soon. So any questions?”

Finnley and Brad crowed in delight, then turned to each other in a rare celebratory hug. It was only when they pulled apart from each other that Finnley noticed that Clara didn’t look nearly so pleased as she and Brad seemed to feel. What she couldn’t see was why. Why wouldn’t she be pleased? It had been seriously boring to just sit around in limbo and wait for something to happen, and this was the first sign that it wasn’t going to be that way for much longer. Maybe she was just afraid? Maybe she was only nervous that when Mr. Wallace came to town he would come with the news that they were all permanently out of a job? It was a justifiable fear, but one that could easily be pushed aside for later days. That was why Finnley was so surprised when Clara spoke up and not in order to say anything encouraging.

“Hey, Travis? Could I talk to you for a minute? In your office, maybe?”

“Sure, of course. It’s not like I’ve got a whole hell of a lot going on right now, you know? Let’s go.”

Travis motioned towards his office and began to walk that way, looking as if he’d just had the weight of the world lifted off of his shoulders and ready to talk to Clara about whatever was on her mind. Finnley watched Clara closely, watched and waited for her to make eye contact so that she could ask her what was going on, but again, Clara only looked straight ahead. It was almost as if she was making a point of not looking at Finnley, as if she was making sure it didn’t happen at all costs. Once they were in Travis’s office, Finnley began to pace back and forth nervously.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that the office was made entirely out of windows and was therefore completely transparent to her, she might have just gone insane right then and there. Never one for surprises, this not knowing was driving her up the wall. She’d been so happy to see Clara there when she’d first walked through the door, glad enough that she’d almost forgotten about her hangover completely, but now she was right back to feeling like all kinds of shit. She was back to that because she had a bad feeling about whatever was going on in that office, and despite her half-hearted efforts to shake that sense of doom off, she couldn’t quite manage to get rid of it. And the body language of the two people in the office certainly didn’t help, either. If anything, it only made things worse, and by the time Clara exited Travis’s office, the two of them exchanging a heartfelt hug as she went, Finnley was actually feeling a little bit sick to her stomach. It was all she could do to not rush up to her friend and grab her by the arm, shake her firmly, and make her say what exactly was going on here. If Clara hadn’t approached her first, she might have actually done those things, which would have made her look like a total fool, but the first thing Clara did was come up and sit in the seat Brad had been occupying not all that long ago. It forced Finnley to sit as well, which was just about the last thing on the planet she felt like doing. Once it was done, however, Clara favored her with one of her radiant smiles, a smile that made it look as if nothing in the world was wrong. For the briefest of moments, Finnley actually believed that nothing was wrong, that everything was going to stay exactly the same as it had been before. It was only later that she realized that the message in the smile wasn’t any kind of a lie. It wasn’t a lie because in Clara’s mind, nothing was wrong. In her mind, things were as far from wrong as anything had ever been in all of her life.

“Hey, buddy, sit by me.”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing. What’s up? Everything okay?”

“Sure, everything’s great. How come?”

“I don’t know. You were in there with Travis for kind of a long time. Is something going on?”

“Um, yes. Something’s going on, but nothing’s wrong. Does that make sense? Do those two things make sense together?”  

“I’m sure they do to some people, but not so much to me. Try to remember, Clara, I’m still hurting from last night and this particular kind of hurting makes a girl feel kind of dense. Think you could spell it out for me in a way that I can understand?”

“Sure, I can. It’s just...I’m leaving, Finnley.”

“Leaving? What do you mean, leaving? You mean you’re leaving Weston?! Oh my God! But why? What happened, are you sure? Is there anything I can do?”

“No, no, not leaving Weston. Things are good with Weston. Things are really good, if you want to know the truth. I really do love him, Finnley. I know it hasn’t been too terribly long, and maybe it wouldn’t make sense to everyone, but I love him so, so much.”

“Good,” Finnley said breathlessly, starting to feel dizzy, like the world around her was spinning much too quickly for her to possibly hope to keep up with it. “That’s good. You guys seemed so happy last night; it would have been super weird if it was over just like that. I don’t think anyone is that good of an actor.”

“I’m certainly not.”

“So then what do you mean, leaving? I’m sorry, but I’m still super, super confused. What are you leaving if you’re not leaving Weston?”

“This. Here. I’m leaving Cubed. That’s what I was talking to Travis about. I’m leaving the company.”

“But you can’t! Why would you do that? You can’t do that. I know things have been up in the air lately, and you know as well as anyone that I think it sucks, but it’s finally about to be over. Who knows, right? Maybe this Wallace guy won’t be bad. Maybe we’ll actually like working for him. Maybe Travis will, too. Don’t give up before we get a chance to find out.”

“No, I know all of that. It’s not about any of that. It’s about Weston.”

“Seriously? What is this, the fifties? Man tells his girl to stop working and she just complies, no questions asked? I’m surprised, Clara, really. I never really pegged you as a Stepford-wife type.”

“Hey! Stop it, Finnley, you’re just being nasty now!”

Finnley was seething; she felt like she might spontaneously combust; and the worst part about it was that she knew that Clara was right. She was being totally awful, a flat-out bitch, and she was doing it because Clara was telling her something she didn’t want to hear. When exactly had she turned into this sort of person, anyway? When had she become the kind of girl to treat her friends like shit when she didn’t get her way? That was what the mean girls did, the girls Finnley had always hated in high school. She ran her hands over her face, wishing she could dunk her whole head in a bucket of water instead, and then she looked back at Clara, horrified to see that her friend’s eyes had begun to brim up with tears.

“Shit, don’t do that, Clara. I’m sorry. I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“You know not everyone needs to live their life the exact way that you do, Finnley, and that includes me. I’m allowed to make my own choices, okay? Even if they aren’t the ones you would make. I’m allowed to be my own person.”

“Sure, I know that, but have you really thought this through? Are you sure you want to let this guy make those kinds of decisions for you?”

“This guy? About a minute ago you were calling him Weston, and now that you know that I’m quitting my job he’s downgraded to ‘this guy?’ You sure do turn on people fast, you know that?”

“Well, you said you were leaving because of him!” Finnley said defensively, her face burning with the knowledge that Brad and Travis were undoubtedly listening to this whole conversation. “What was I supposed to think?”

“You weren't supposed to think anything, Finnley. You were supposed to wait long enough for me to explain what I was saying before you started placing judgements on things.”

“Fine, I’m listening. Go ahead and tell me.”

“Are you sure you actually want to hear it, or are you just going to pick another fight with me? Because if all you want to do is fight, I’m going to go. You can just give me a call when you feel like having a rational conversation about it.”

“No, I want to hear, Clara, I do. But to be fair, it’s kind of a big surprise to have sprung on a person. You should give me at least as little bit of a break, don’t you think? Like, five seconds to be upset by the whole thing?”

“Sure, I guess. I guess that’s fair.”

“Okay,” Finnley said slowly, trying very hard to get her bearings so that she could hopefully stop pissing her friend off. “Okay, thank you. Now why don’t you tell me what you really meant? Because I clearly don’t have the sense of it, and I’d like to. Really, I would.”

“Okay, well you know that Weston isn’t going back to the force, right? Like, ever?”

“I do,” Finnley answered, hoping her aggravation wasn’t showing too strongly on her face. She really did want to let Clara explain without jumping to conclusions, and she felt like she was trying very hard to do just that, but it was difficult to keep an open mind when the first explanation for her leaving her job was a guy. Finnley hadn’t ever really considered herself a staunch feminist or anything like that, but when it came to a woman giving up her identity, giving up her life, for a guy, it turned out that a feminist was exactly what she was. If she had loved Clara less, she would probably have gone off on a long and bitter rant about it, at the end of which her friendship with Clara would almost certainly have been damaged beyond repair. Fortunately, she did keep quiet, which meant she was able to at least kind of hear Clara’s reasoning for giving up a job she’d always professed to love.

“So when Weston got cut loose from the force—”

“They didn’t exactly cut him loose; they only put him on suspension.”

“Finnley,” she spoke quietly, but there was a level of warning in Clara’s voice, a warning that said there were only so many interruptions and contradictions she was willing to take when it came to matters of her own life. “I know what they did, okay? Just let me finish, please.”

“Right, sorry. Go ahead.”

“When they cut him loose, he felt like there was this whole piece of who he was that had been taken away from him. Or at least that was how he felt at first. Once he had some time, though, he realized that he kind of liked not having all of those rules, not having people he had to answer to all of the time. He realized that, but he also realized that helping people was at least as important to him as it ever was. He still wants to do that, only on his own. He’s started his own detective business, did I tell you that?”

“I don’t know,” Finnley answered dully, which was a lie because she did know, but for some reason didn’t want to make this conversation too easy on Clara. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Well, that’s what he’s doing, and I want to help him with it. There’s nothing like being stalked and almost killed to make you feel like helping other people in trouble, you know? I want to help him, and I think I would be good at it. So that’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s why I’m leaving Cubed.”

“Are you sure though?” Finnley asked weakly, knowing the answer to the question before she even asked it but feeling compelled to ask it anyway. “Are you really sure? You could help him on the side, you know. You could help him without actually having to quit your job.”

“I know that,” Clara answered gently, the kind of gentle voice a person used when they were trying really hard to let somebody down easily, “but it’s what I want. It really, really is, Finnley. I don’t want you to think there’s any kind of coercion in this. Do you understand?”

Finnley nodded, dangerously close to tears and feeling bound and determined to keep that from happening right there in front of other people. When Clara asked her if it was a decision she could be alright with, if the two of them were alright, Finnley nodded again. Even when Clara got up to go, kissing her on the top of the head as she went, Finnley didn’t speak a word. She didn’t speak a word for the rest of the day, in fact, except for the ones she used to tell Travis she was going home sick.