Next, I turned my attention to the walls, which were covered with posters and framed prints and other stuff that had been there forever. All of which suddenly seemed absurd to me. This room would never be the Vine Realm, but the unicorn cross-stitch Mom had made me when I was in kindergarten was an embarrassment. The Moana poster I’d saved up for and bought myself at the school book fair seemed totally ridiculous to me now. I walked across the room, tore down Moana, and folded her up until the folds were too thick and I couldn’t fold anymore. Then I shoved the poster in the trash. After that, I took down every piece of art and stacked it all on the floor, until the walls were bare and white, except for the streaks and scrapes and paint chips I had never noticed before.

I rummaged in my closet, and tossed every too-small sweater and shoe and pair of pants out onto the floor of my room. I tossed out my stupid yellow duck-suit pajamas. I tossed out the princess Halloween costume Mom had made me in second grade. Why was it still in there? When the closet was done, I moved on to my dresser. Old socks, threadbare tights, the jeans with a hole in the knee.

At some point, I noticed that while I’d been cleaning out the clutter, I’d also been making a gigantic mess. For some reason, the piles of books and clothes made me want to scream, so I stripped the top sheet off my bed, laid it on the floor, and moved everything onto the sheet, building a mountain of castoffs in the middle. Then I rolled the sheet up, with all the stuff in it, like a big burrito of junk, and shoved it under my bed.

The only thing left to do now was my desk. So I sat in my swivel chair and gave myself a good quick spin before I reached down and opened all the drawers one at a time. Into the trash went dried-out markers and broken pencils. Half-used notepads and useless glue sticks.

Last of all, I reached to open my junk drawer. The place for everything that didn’t have a place. When I pulled on the handle, the drawer was still jammed, but then I took a ruler from my desk and wedged it into the slit at the top of the drawer, started shoving and ramming at the stuff inside until I felt something give and the drawer shot open.