med at each other. We linked arms, thanked the lady, and strode out of the building. Our friends were sitting on the bed of the truck, chain-smoking their hearts out, waiting all too patiently to start the moving again. Laren and I dashed inside and up the stairs with unlimited stamina (and felt it later that night), opened the door to our new apartment and found it well, not exactly clean. The carpet had been stained with urine, matted together with sticky liquids never cleaned up, and burned in multiple places by cigarettes. She and I flipped on lights (thanks to me, the electricity had been turned on that morning) in each room, yelling out the disgusting flaws we found within the apartment. "Laren, come look at this! Someone left cigarettes burning on the kitchen sink and in the bathrooms!" I yelled, a pitiful whine starting to creep into my voice. I was so stunned and disappointed, I didn't know what to do."Yeah well, come look at what my walls look like. It appears the maintenance crew tried to paint over some poorly repaired wall. If this wall caves in on me in my sleep, I'm going to sue their asses!" She grumbled, not leaving any subtle hints of happiness to the imagination. Our friends were trailing behind us, picking up on more clues to the disintegration of the apartment that we hadn't discovered. Laren and I turned to each other, our eyes glum and downcast. We silently agreed to make the best of it for the next year. This wasn't worth our hard-earned money, but it also wasn't worth throwing away months of planning to fight a lease that we had just signed. We slept soundly that night, having learned one lesson in life out of many millions more don't judge a book by its cover. ...
