And Then Everything Unraveled Read Online Free

jeans and T-shirt I had on was that Nora had packed all of the clothes I actually liked, or that my nose wasn’t usually such a striking shade of beet but I’d forgotten to use sunblock on my last trip to Ross’s Cove.
    It also wasn’t like I could explain any of this with Dieter’s fingers clamped around my jaw. “Ve must find her a part in ze scene,” he declared.
    “Fine,” said Gertrude, but she didn’t sound like she really thought so. In fact, she sounded like she was ready to throttle Dieter, and potentially me. “But she has to sign the release.”
    I tried to say something, but all I could manage was an ineffectual mumble. For such a scrawny guy, Dieter had an impressive grip.
    “You are over eighteen, right?” Gertrude asked, stalking up and thrusting a clipboard in my face.
    “No,” I said, finally managing to free my chin from Dieter’s grasp. “I’m sixteen.”
    Gertrude looked at me as if I’d been born when I had on purpose, just to make her life difficult. “Why is the agency sending us minors?” she said to Dieter. “We can’t use her.”
    “But she’s perfect. Ve MUST use her,” Dieter insisted. “Vere is Zarley? ZARLEY!”
    An especially glamorous dark-haired woman broke loose from one of the carefully arranged groups and made her way toward us, her red satin dress shimmering under the lights.
    “What’s the problem?” she asked brightly.
    “This is the problem,” growled Gertrude, pointing at me.
    “I must have zis girl in ze film,” said Dieter. “But she is ze minor, so she can’t sign ze release.”
    “That’s all right, one of her parents can sign ze—I mean, the —release.” The woman turned to me. “We’ll just need you to get a signature from your mom or dad.”
    “I can’t,” I said.
    “She says she can’t,” the woman reported to Dieter and Gertrude.
    “Then she can’t be in the film,” Gertrude said to Dieter, in a “so there” sort of way.
    “But she MUST be in ze film!” Dieter said stubbornly.
    Gertrude heaved a sigh of exasperation. “This is what we get for working with amateurs.”
    The woman in the red dress didn’t seem to appreciate either of us being called amateurs. She put her hands on her hips and her voice took on a steely edge. “Excuse me?”
    Maybe it was her tone, or her height—she was nearly a foot taller than me—or maybe it was simply the way her green eyes flashed as she spoke, but she was suddenly imposing. Gertrude swallowed whatever she was planning to say, and Dieter moved closer to her, like she might come in handy as a human shield.
    Satisfied, the woman turned her attention back to me. “Sorryit won’t work out this time,” she said. “But maybe you can be in the next film.”
    The steeliness was gone from her tone, and her smile was kind, but it was also dismissive, and somehow the dismissiveness was the last straw. It had been a long day, complete with more mood swings than I usually have in any given week, and I’d been teetering on the brink since the plane landed. I put my own hands on my own hips and let all of the words I’d been holding back pour out.
    “I don’t want to be in this film or the next film or any film! I don’t want to be here at all! It wasn’t my idea to leave California, and my home, and my friends, and my school, and my entire LIFE, and to fly three thousand miles to live with someone I’ve never met who doesn’t even pick me up at the airport when she says she’s going to. And I can’t get permission from my parents because my dad is dead, and everyone thinks my mother is, too—”
    That’s when I ran out of words, which was just as well, because Dieter cracked up. Which isn’t exactly the reaction you want when you’re trying to show you’re a force to be reckoned with.
    “I can see how hilarious this must be for you,” I said to him.
    He tried, unsuccessfully, to stop laughing. “It’s just zat you are like ze Mini-Me. You know, from ze Austin Powers. Not