So this chapter used to be two chapters but I think you guys will prefer it if I just squash them together. Get ready for some teenage drama. Okay, don't worry I'm joking. There's only a little drama. This chapter is still dedicated to you Lily! (Updated on 4/23/16)

"Ugh!" Carolyn shouted, storming into our dorm room. I quickly looked up from my homework to see Carolyn plop onto her bed, face first into her pillow.

"What's wrong now?" I asked her, dreading the answer.

"It's that stupid Ms. Starling!" She shouted sitting up just long enough to say that. I was pretty sure I knew where this was going and I began to mentally prepare myself for what was to come.

"You mean our history teacher?" I asked.

"Yes! She just can't handle the truth!" Oh dear…

"Oh gosh, what did you do now?" I asked, knowing that this would be another trip to the office for Carolyn. This had been her fourth incident with Ms. Starling since the beginning of the semester.

"It honestly wasn't my fault," She said sitting up and grabbed her book, wanting the conversation to end. She knew that my signal for the end of a conversation was me picking up my book, but I wasn't going to let her get away that easily.

"What happened?" I asked again, more sternly this time, pushing myself up from the chair.

"It wasn't really anything to get mad about,"

"Carolyn, what happened?" I pulled the book from her hands and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Ugh," she growled realizing she'd have to tell me, "I just simply told her that she was too stupid to be an Ekaterina, specifically a Starling." She spat out quickly before grabbing her book from my hands and pretending to read.

"You did what!" I shouted, this was exactly what I was afraid she would say, "Carolyn! You're going to get yourself in more trouble than I can get you out of one of these days! Where would you go if you got kicked out?" I paused for a second to regain my composure, not wanting to think of Calderwood without Carolyn. "This needs to stop. Now. Are you willing to give up a full scholarship for some books? What would your mom think if you did?" I stopped suddenly realizing my mistake; Carolyn looked about ready to cry. "Oh, Carolyn I'm…"

"Don't mention my mom to me again," tears were welling up in her eyes as she ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. I was about to say something when I realized it was probably best not to say anything. That's when I realized I had a few tears in my own eyes. I quickly wiped them away, and left the room. There were a few things I had to resolve with a few teachers.

After about a day Carolyn decided that it wasn't worth it to be mad at me. Especially when I went and personally wrote letters to every single teacher she had ever angered or offended in any way and sent them out. Of course I had written them as if she had sent them. What the teachers didn't know wouldn't hurt them. I already had most of these letters written up for a situation just like this in case I needed to make up something to her so within an hour they were all sent out. By the time Carolyn emerged from the bathroom there were small red lines running down her cheeks from her tears and her nose was runny. She said thank you in A.S.L. before she went to sit on her bed and do her homework.

The odd thing is that I knew she wasn't super mad anymore, but she still acted like it. That is until she broke her steamy silence and said,

"I'm sorry I yelled at you…" Her words were emotionless but I knew that she meant it. I smiled at her, and for just a moment she smiled back, before returning back to her book. She was still the Carolyn I knew, so I let her be. She'd return back to her normal self within the hour.

It actually took about a day before she was completely back to normal. A whole day of trying to entertain myself. I spent a lot of time on the internet, a lot of time editing essays that needed to be turned in on Monday, a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, and a lot of time planning pranks. It was sudden, when she returned back to normal, one moment she was silent, the next moment she was giggling and smiling, and it was all due to her homework.

Sunday night, I was reading and she was on her computer, typing away at her genealogy homework. I always found it odd about how they had genealogy classes in a high school, but it was a boarding school for highly capable students so it sort of made sense. I never had taken the class, knowing that my family was too large to ever be able to make a suitable family tree so I had stuck with the more practical electives such as wood shop (which in retrospect wasn't a good idea since I was a terrible artist and basically doing art with wood and large sharp tools never really ended well, and engineering. I really had enjoyed engineering and my teacher liked me because I seemed to have a natural gift for the subject, but again I also happened to have a natural gift for hacking, so whether or not natural gifts are a good thing is beyond me. But because of my 'natural gift' he always gave me very interesting projects to try. For example, he had me design several parts for our schools robotics team. This, for once, actually turned out fairly well and in my opinion the claw-like contraption I had designed was the sole reason they actually did well at competitions.

"Lizzie come look at this!" Carolyn shouted, I quickly got up keeping my blanket wrapped around me as I wobbled over towards where she was sitting, smiling to myself as she was actually talking to me.

"What is it?" I asked, peering over her shoulder at her computer screen which was on a genealogy website. She had her family brought up, probably having to do with creating yet another family tree. I swear her genealogy class has probably made at least four family trees in the past month or so.

"What's so interesting this time?" I asked, trying to be as polite as possible, but inside I was groaning. It was probably just some random fact that she had discovered about her family like normal. But if it was enough to get the Carolyn I knew back, I'd take it.

"Well, I just found out my several greats grandfather was this really famous photographer a long time ago. He took pictures of all these famous people like Lincoln, and whoever the president was that was before Lincoln,"

"Do you mean James Buchanan?" I asked, retrieving the list of presidents from my mental encyclopedia, which was basically where I kept all and any random facts or information I picked up through reading or just hearing random facts.

"Who was that?" Carolyn was looking at me like I was just making up names.

"The 15th president of the United States," I said slowly, giving her a strange look because she didn't know the 15th president. Of course most people can't list all of the presidents in order like I can so it's understandable that she might not know it.

"Nope, it wasn't him; I meant the president after Lincoln, wasn't his name like Andrew or something?"

"Good job!" I said over enthusiastically realizing that I probably sounded rude too late, "Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States!"

"YES! I got one right!" She shouted, thankfully ignoring my apparent rudeness. This was the Carolyn that I knew, funny, over-excited about everything, creative, and sarcastic. She was back.

"So is that all you wanted to show me?" I asked, starting to walk towards my bed.

"No, I wanted to look you up too! Maybe you'll be related to some famous king or politician, or maybe we're related!"

"I don't think we're related, but you can go ahead and check,"

"Okay, could you spell out your name?"

"Elizabeth Marie Elder," I said slowly, then I spelled it out so Carolyn might actually spell something right for the first time.

"Okay, does that look right?" I nodded. She did a little more typing before clicking the submit button. The computer stood still for a moment, while a little circle turned in the center of the screen, letting us know that it was searching for me. Another second later it brought up every Elizabeth Marie Elder that was currently alive. There were about 75 results. Then we narrowed it down by age, and the results dwindled dramatically. I quickly glanced at the results. There were four Elizabeth Marie Elder's that were under the age of 18 and two of them didn't even live in the United States.

"I'm not here," I said quietly, before looking over the results again.

"That's rubbish! Everyone is on here. Try your mom's name," So she typed in Janette Pearson, this time she came up. But when we clicked on it there was nothing there. It only displayed the message of "We're sorry, there is no recorded family history of Janette Pearson in our data bases, we apologize for any inconvenience,"

"It's okay Carolyn; they can't have everything on here,"

"I would've thought that you might've been on here though…" she trailed off, I patted her shoulder.

"Maybe next year I'll take genealogy and freak out Mr. Eccleston when I tell him that I'm not on there and have him do all the family researching for me," I smiled down at her. She giggled for a second, probably imagining crazy Mr. Eccleston going mad over trying to find any information on my family. It was actually pretty funny to think about, and I left Carolyn to finish her homework while I returned to my bed. Still wrapped in my blanket.

So much foreshadowing, it makes the writer in me get so excited! I'm sure most of you have figured it out, you know this is a 39 clues story. And did anyone like my subtle Doctor Who reference right there at the end? Let me know if you caught it. I'm super excited about the update that's coming for the new chapter. Things are finally going to get really 39-clues-y (It's a word, I'm an Ekaterina and I say it's a word).

Safety Tip: Don't leave Dr. Seuss books lying on the floor.

-Emily (AKA QuietParadox)