All Unquiet Things

by Anna Jarzab

  “I should think that your mental health would be more of a priority to you under the circumstances, Neily. Aren’t you sick of parading around like what happened doesn’t bother you?”

  “I’m fine. That’s what I told Harriet, and I’m not going to change my story and sob my heart out on your shoulder just because you put your ‘I care’ face on all special for me this morning.”

  “You need to let people help you,” Finch said, struggling to sound sympathetic. “You need to really talk to someone instead of using humor and sarcasm as a defense. If you keep holding on to everything that happened, you’re never going to move forward the way you need to.”

  “For Christ’s sake, close the textbook and open your ears. I’m. Fine.” I leaned forward and said it slowly. He stared at me without blinking. “I’m just tired of everybody treating me like I’m some kind of mental patient. I don’t owe you an explanation, and I don’t need your sympathy or your support. If anybody needs to move forward and stop holding on, it’s you.” I got up and headed for the door.

  “I’m just looking out for your best interest.”

  “Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.”

  Eighth Grade–Fall Semester

  Carly and I spent long hours in the library, at a little table in the back near the stacks that Carly called the Nest. Our supervisors—teachers who had offered to oversee our progress in various subjects—would drop by for fifteen minutes each sometime during the day, to give us new assignments, hand back old ones, and gather up our completed exercises. Finch himself paid us several visits a day, mainly to make sure we weren’t goofing off, and Gert, the librarian, was supposed to keep an eye on us the rest of the time. We took gym and music appreciation with the other students in our grade, but mostly we just sat in the back and practiced looking bored. God, were we insufferable then—no wonder everybody avoided us.

  We worked hard. There was more pressure than either of us really understood, but we could feel it bearing down on us all the same, pushing up against our backs. Every once in a while, Carly would stand over me, resting her chin on my shoulder while she read what I had written; sometimes, she would hand me something, or take something from me, and her fingers would comb my palm; once, she got up to go to the bathroom and rumpled my hair as she passed, just to rile me; in these moments, the pressure would lift.

  It had only been a few months since we met, but it felt as though we’d known each other since we were children. We hung out together after school every day. Most of the time, we would walk the mile or so to Carly’s house and do our homework together or just hang out before I got a ride home. Sometimes, though, we would go to the bridge.

  Carly liked Empire Creek Bridge. Of the two ways to get to her house, it was the quickest, and the less traveled. We hardly ever saw anyone there.

  One day we were hanging out on the bridge, just before dark, a time when the valley gets rosy and dim. I had to be home in a half hour for dinner; soon, Carly and I would trudge up the hill together, and my father’s housekeeper would drive me back to my mother’s on her way home.

  We were leaning against the bridge wall, next to each other, talking. I don’t recall the conversation; I suspect it must have been a pretentious, faux-intellectual discussion that amounted to little more than meaningless navel-gazing. To annoy me, Carly hoisted herself up on top of the wall, which was high enough to reach my rib cage while I was standing. Crouching, she reached out her hand for me to catch.

  “Help me up.”

  I did as she asked, briefly considering the danger involved in such a venture. The bridge was not so high, but it was a good ten feet from the lip of the wall to the bottom of the creek. I was afraid she might fall. But Carly stood, occasionally tottering, as if she had just stepped off a boat, before steadying herself. She looked over her shoulder at me and beamed.

  I laughed and let go of her hand. “You better watch yourself or you’ll fall,” I warned her.

  “I won’t fall,” she told me. “I’ve got excellent balance.”

  I snorted. “Whatever. Just be careful.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “No.”

  Carly seemed to believe she was invincible. She’d twisted her wrist the month before in gym class, taking the only girl on the Brighton football team head-on in a field hockey match. Then there were the late-night joyrides in her father’s Lexus even though she hadn’t properly learned to drive (and, to be honest, wasn’t very good at it). I stopped riding with her when she nearly sideswiped a semi coming off the freeway. When I asked her why she took the car, she just shrugged and said, “I like to drive.” That was the way Carly was, whether I liked it or not. Her easy life and her parents’ leniency made it possible for her to get what she wanted most of the time, but if this made her spoiled and slightly selfish, at least there was no guile or malice behind it. She rarely took what she wanted at someone else’s expense, but if it benefited her and hurt no one—well then, she figured, what was the harm?

  “Well, no use in starting now. I’m going to dive.” She kicked off her flip-flops and stretched her arms out over her head.

  I must’ve looked horrified, because she laughed, the sound echoing off the trees and the hills and the stone of the bridge. It was starting to get chilly, and perhaps part of my terror could be attributed to thoughts of how cold the creek water would be, but mostly I was thinking about Chris Whitman.

  Chris had gone to parochial school with me, and in fourth grade he took a sharp, running dive into the shallow end of a friend’s pool, smashing his head and snapping his neck. He died six months later when his parents pulled the plug. After what happened to Chris, I couldn’t think about pools without hearing the crunch of bone against concrete.

  “Just—don’t, Carly,” I pleaded. “You could really hurt yourself.”

  She bounced a few times on the balls of her bare feet and jerked forward to fake me out. I flinched and she frowned at me.

  “You don’t trust me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s ridiculous,” she said, and leaped off the bridge.

  I lurched toward the wall and peered over the side. She hadn’t dived; she had jumped—thankfully, because a broken leg was preferable to a broken skull. I had no idea how deep the creek was, but it couldn’t have been more than a few feet—five, maybe, if she was lucky. According to my instantaneous calculations, that jump might have been long enough to do some serious damage.

  It seemed that I arrived on the bank of the creek in a split second, before Carly even surfaced. I ditched my shoes and began to wade in, mud and weeds oozing between my toes. When she came up, spurting water, I held my breath. At first she was silent, and I feared the worst—that she had hurt herself badly and was in shock. But then she turned her head and smiled at me.

  “See? I’m fine!”

  “You sure?” I called out as I approached her. The water was up to my chest, but Carly was significantly shorter than me. “No broken bones?”

  “No,” she said, her teeth chattering. “The water is freezing.” She smoothed back all her hair from her face and spat. “And it tastes like mud.”

  “It’s creek water. What did you expect it to taste like?” I reached her with a couple of freestyle strokes.

  “What are you doing in here? Why didn’t you just wait for me up there where it’s dry?”

  I shrugged.

  “Did you come in to save me?” she teased.

  “Nope. Just came to keep you company,” I said. She smiled. “Let’s get out of here before one of us gets hypothermia.”

  Senior Year

  After class, Harvey and I walked together to the lockers, where he planned to spend the ten-minute passing period sucking face with Jules. I had everything I needed, but was interested to see whether the new day had brought another article from my secret admirer. My locker was empty except for a few moldy library books at least two years past their due dates. I wasn’t disappointed—I had enough rem
inders as it was.

  I slammed my locker door shut as hard as I could to get Harvey’s and Jules’s attention, but they were lost. “I’m going to class,” I announced. No answer. I shrugged and walked away, unable to resist knocking Harvey’s shoulder with my bag as I passed. And still they were undeterred. I admired their tenacity.

  I was early. I thought I would be the first one in the classroom, but Audrey was already there, sitting in the farthest back corner. Seeing her reminded me of something. I patted the front and back pockets of my jeans, then dropped my bag on a back-row desk and started rifling through it, pulling out notebooks and loose paper, pens and pencils, a couple of tattered paperbacks, my physics book. I emptied the whole thing out, made a big production of it, ran my hands through all the pockets. It wasn’t there.

  “Something wrong?” Audrey asked, glancing at the door as people began to file in.

  “No,” I told her. “I just lost my cell phone.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad.”

  She had stolen it. I was pretty sure about that. My bag had fallen open when we bumped into each other yesterday outside Harriet’s office; my stuff had been dumped all over the floor. It would have been so easy for her to pick it up and slip it in her pocket without me noticing. I couldn’t think of any reason why she would want my cell phone. I couldn’t think of a reason she would want anything of mine, actually, but I was sure it had something to do with the fact that she had suddenly started turning up—in my classes, outside Harriet’s office, not to mention last night on the street where I live. And the fact that she had returned Carly’s bracelet to me had to mean something, too—I wasn’t entitled to it, it didn’t belong to me, and if she didn’t want to at least strike up some sort of friendship, then there was no need for her to go out of her way to hand it over. Then again, cell-phone theft was hardly the way to make friends with somebody, and she certainly knew that. As much as I hated it, I was interested in finding out exactly what sort of goal all these various intrusions served, but it was clear from the way she had just reacted that I was going to have to ask her directly. I resolved to do just that.

  I caught up with Audrey after school on her way to the parking lot. I didn’t know what I planned on saying, but when she finally noticed me the words sort of tumbled out of my mouth.

  “Where’s my cell phone, Audrey?” I asked.

  She gave me a blank look. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Bullshit. You stole it when you bumped into me yesterday, and I want it back.” Apparently I was going with an aggressive approach. I immediately regretted it; she was less likely to be forthright if she thought I was trying to intimidate her.

  She stared at me, and for a second I thought it might have worked. It hadn’t.

  “That was a clever little stunt you pulled,” she said coldly.

  “Don’t change the subject.” I shook my head. “Besides, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” I was committed to my strategy now; if she could invoke plausible deniability, so could I.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Those are some pretty harsh words, coming from a stalker.”

  “I’m not a stalker.” She smirked. “I can’t believe you had the balls to call the cops on me. It’s like I’ve stepped into a parallel universe or something and you’re AlternaNeily.”

  “If you’re not a stalker, what were you doing parked outside my house for hours?”

  “Research.”

  “What do you mean, ‘research’?” I asked, a little thrown. Audrey just shrugged.

  “Whatever. Cell phone. Now.” I held out my hand, which she ignored.

  “Why would I have your cell phone?”

  “Actually, the question is, why would you steal my cell phone?”

  “I. Don’t have. Your cell phone. Maybe you dropped it or left it at home or something.” She gave me a phony smile, clutching her books to her chest like a beatific Norman Rockwell child.

  “Cute. But I know you do. And if you’d rather me not make a scene here, we can always take this up to Finch’s office. You know how much he likes a good afternoon he-said-she-said.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, hesitating. I could tell she was weighing her options. If she told me what she wanted with my cell phone now, she risked deflating all the curiosity she had built up in me; on the other hand, if she kept playing dumb, I might actually take the matter to Finch—less because I wanted to rat her out than because I was bored.

  “Suit yourself. It’s fine, I’ve got all day,” I said, taking off in the direction of the administration building and hoping she didn’t call my bluff. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to Finch. The less attention he paid me, the better.

  “Neily,” she called after me. She didn’t sound frazzled or upset, just irritated. I turned and watched as she fished around in her shoulder bag. She pulled out my cell phone and presented it in her palm.

  I reached to take it from her, but she yanked it back.

  “I’m going to need you to answer a few questions first,” she said.

  “You can’t just take something that belongs to me and hold it ransom,” I said, knowing that—of course—she could.

  “Can and have. Now, why don’t I give you a ride home and I’ll explain everything on the way.” She slipped my phone into her back pocket, virtually ensuring that I wouldn’t reach in and grab it. Virtually.

  “I’m not getting into a car with you. You might drive me down to Tijuana and sell me into white slavery.”

  “Yeah, because I’m sure there are a lot of people who would pay good money for you. Come on. It’ll be painless, I promise.”

  “Painless?”

  She hesitated. “Well, not really. But it’ll be quick. Okay, that’s not true either.”

  “You should go into sales or something. Give it to me.”

  “Come on, Neily. Aren’t you the least bit interested in what I have to say?”

  “You mean, in what you have to ask me? No.” We were playing a game here, and we both knew it. The thing was, since her return to Brighton, Audrey had actually started to interest me. That was unexpected, but sort of exhilarating. I hated to say it-even to think it—but she reminded me, just a little, of Carly.

  “You are such a bad liar. You might want to work on that.”

  I stood there for a minute, thinking it over. I really didn’t want to take this to Finch—it was such a hassle, even though I was guaranteed to get my property back. I did need a ride home, and how bad could her questions be? And if I didn’t get my phone back then, I’d just call the police on her again.

  At that instant, Adam Murray charged between us, knocking Audrey’s books to the ground and smacking me in the shoulder with his backpack. “Out of the way, Think Tank,” he muttered, heading in the direction of his cronies, who were lounging by their cars.

  I bent down to help Audrey with her stuff, picking up a red notebook, which she snatched out of my hand.

  “Hey, don’t touch that,” she said, righting her things and standing back up.

  “What’s that, your diary?” I scoffed. And maybe it was, but I couldn’t have cared less. In saying that, I had just reminded myself of something: Carly had kept a diary. I don’t know for how long, but at least since her mother passed away—it had been one of Harriet’s therapeutic suggestions.

  “What?” asked Audrey, noticing the look on my face.

  “Nothing,” I said, feeling the possibility like a dull thud in my chest. Carly might have written about me in her journal-things that might illuminate how she had felt about me. If I were just able to read it, at least my lingering questions on that subject would be put to rest. The problem was, the only way I was going to get my hands on it, if it even existed, was through Audrey.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll answer your questions.”

  “Fine?”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Honestly, I thought you’d be harder to convince. Come on,
your chariot awaits.”

  “Uh, Audrey?”

  “Huh?” Then she saw it. Her car, a sweet-sixteen present from her grandparents, was sitting in its spot, smeared with egg and blanketed in toilet paper. A throng of Audrey’s old friends—Adam Murray, Lucy Miller, and her ex-boyfriend Cass among them—were lolling around on the lawn, laughing. Audrey drew a deep breath and squinted. Inside she was boiling, I was sure, but she knew as well as I did that a public display would only make things worse.

  She turned to me and smiled. “You think anyone noticed I’m back?”

  I stared at the car, suddenly bitter on her behalf. The sense of entitlement, the lack of empathy, the fucking balls of Adam and his friends had always pissed me off, and even though I tried to remind myself that Audrey had been one of them once, had stood by and watched them humiliate other people just as they were humiliating her now, I did feel a little bit sorry for her. “Don’t let them get to you. You have just as much right to be here as they do.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’ll help you let the air out of Cass’s tires,” I offered.

  “Look at you, getting all fraternal.”

  “What’s that old saying? An enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

  “Touching. But revenge isn’t my style. I just want to clean this up and get out of here.”

  “All right. Come on—I know where the janitor keeps the extra paper towels.”

  After wiping down the windows, we settled into Audrey’s BMW and went screeching out of the student parking lot like we were trafficking stolen goods.

  “Are you kidding? Do you have a death wish?” I snapped as Audrey cut off two cars on her way to the left-hand turn lane.

  “Not really. I’m just impatient.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got time, so I’d appreciate it if you delivered me to my house in one piece. Seriously, I feel like I’m in a scene out of The Italian Job.”

  “I loved that movie.”

  “I’m sure you did. So, when do I get my phone back?”