All Unquiet Things

by Anna Jarzab

  “I told you.”

  “Okay, go ahead, ask your questions. Wait. Are we using Jeopardy! format?”

  She stared straight ahead, watching the road for the first time since I buckled my seat belt. “It’s about Carly.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had expected this, of course—giving the bracelet had not been a meaningless gesture, as I had rightly assumed—but all I could think was, Please, can we just not talk about this?

  She sighed. “Can I safely deduce from your silence that you’re not going to do a tuck-and-roll right out of the car?”

  “Deduce away,” I said sullenly.

  “I did steal your cell phone.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But I had my reasons.”

  “Crazy people always do. Did your neighbor’s dog tell you to do it?”

  “Look, after the trial, when the police department released all of Carly’s personal effects, her father gave them to me. He said he couldn’t stand to look at them. That’s how I got the bracelet I gave you yesterday, and that’s how I got Carly’s cell phone.”

  “Illuminating. So?” I’d put the bracelet in my pocket again this morning. I didn’t really know what to do with it—I certainly didn’t want to just put it away somewhere and forget about it.

  “Her last outgoing call was to you.”

  “I know that, and so does the rest of the world. Did you miss that day of the trial, or are you just playing dumb?”

  “I remember. She left you a message. But they didn’t play the tape in court. I never heard the message itself, just your interpretation of it.”

  “Well, believe me, if I was lying the DA would have called me on it. Why do you need to hear it, anyway? Do you get kicks chasing ambulances, too, or do you just fill all your empty hours nowadays playing Cold Case with a murder that’s already been solved?”

  “I wanted to see if you’d kept the message. Saved it, in your mailbox.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Because you were unhealthily fixated on her?”

  “That is not true!” I slammed my fist against the door.

  “You seem awfully worked up,” Audrey said. “What’s that quote from Macbeth? Something about protesting too much?”

  “Shut up, Audrey. So, what, you got me into this car so that you could hassle me about Carly?”

  “I don’t recall holding a gun to your head.”

  “Look, just give me my cell phone, take me home, and we can each go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist. The last thing anybody needs is a rewind of last year.”

  “Why are you being so defensive?” I didn’t answer. She glanced at me and her jaw dropped. “You did save the message, didn’t you? What, did you download it onto your computer or something? Forward it to another digital mailbox? What? Neily, I have to hear that message.”

  “I did not save it. As soon as the detective had a copy, I deleted it. If you want to hear it, you’ll have to break into the evidence room in the Empire Valley Police Department.” I couldn’t even look at her.

  She pressed her lips together and let out a deep breath through her nose. “Fine.” She reached into her pocket and tossed the cell phone at me. “Don’t help.”

  “Help with what?” I turned toward the window and watched the woods go past. “Forget it. I don’t care.”

  “I don’t think my dad killed Carly. And I would really like to prove it.”

  I considered my words carefully. Audrey was a bitch, but her life hadn’t been easy since Carly died. There was quippy, and there was cruel.

  “Look, Audrey, I know you don’t want to believe it—”

  “Wanting has nothing to do with it. I don’t believe it.” She looked at me earnestly. “And I don’t think you do, either.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because you don’t really act like someone who’s got all the answers,” she said. “I’ve been watching you, Neily.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “And I can tell that behind that weak Holden Caulfield affectation is a spongy, leaking heart desperate for some sort of closure.”

  I looked out the window, at the houses whipping past, willing her to stop talking. I had never felt completely comfortable around Audrey, even when we were supposedly friends. This was not a new side to her—she was always trying to get a reaction, like a child poking at a sleeping dog with a stick. It was something she and Carly had in common, but when Audrey pried it was like chipping away at a wall; when Carly had been like this, it was as if she were throwing a stick of dynamite and waiting for the explosion.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting to believe it,” Audrey continued. “It’s human nature to go with the solution that suits us, to lock away the threat and try not to think about it ever again. But that’s not life. Life is messy.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I need you to believe me.”

  “Why? Why do you care what I believe?”

  “Because I want you to help me.”

  I leaned my head back. “God.”

  “What?”

  “Look, you do whatever you want, but I think it’s totally stupid to convince yourself that the truth is inconsequential if you don’t like it. So thanks for the invite, but I’m going to take a pass on the amateur sleuthing.”

  “You’re honestly telling me that if I’m right, if my dad is innocent and the real killer is out there somewhere, you’d rather my dad rot in prison while someone else gets away with murder?”

  I hesitated, my mind a whirlpool of possibilities. “We can’t do this, Audrey. We’re not cops, we’re just kids.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I stopped being a kid the night I found out my best friend was dead and my dad was about to go to prison. I’m not playing, Neily. This is not a game to me.” She shook her head. “And if I can’t convince you of that, then I won’t be able to convince anybody.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you cared about Carly.”

  “I did! I mean, I do.”

  “Then why won’t you help me?”

  “Because!” I shouted. She jumped, and I strained to keep it together. “Because if you’re right, and your father is innocent, and that message Carly left me the night before she died has something to do with it, then that means it’s all my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I could’ve answered the phone, I could’ve listened to the message, but I didn’t. Not until it was too late. I was still angry, and I didn’t want anything to do with her. Every day I think about what might have happened if I had answered the phone or called her back right away. Part of me thinks she’d still be alive.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you, or I, or anyone knows. If we do this, if we dig everything back up again, all we’d be doing is tearing out our own stitches.”

  “Don’t you want to know for sure?”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Is this why you’re having nightmares?”

  I glared at her. “How do you know about that?”

  Audrey averted her eyes. “Harriet stepped out of the office for a minute during our session and I might have caught a glimpse of your file.”

  “Audrey, you’re such a bitch! That’s my private file. You had no right to look at it.”

  “It was sitting right there on her desk—how could I not? If you were me, you would’ve done the exact same thing, and you know it, so don’t give me that judgmental look.”

  She had a point. But I had another question.

  “Why are you doing this now? If you’re so sure your father’s innocent, why wait a year to start looking into it?”

  She pressed her lips together, taking a long pause before answering. “I didn’t believe him at first. As soon as I got over the shock of it all, I bought the DA’s story just like everybody else. But the long
er I sat in that courtroom, the less sure I became, and when I went to see him last month I realized that I wasn’t angry at him anymore because I knew he hadn’t done it. He tried so hard to convince me, and I tried so hard to resist believing him, but I couldn’t keep it up.”

  She finally looked over at me. “I had to fight with Grandma and Grandpa to come back to Brighton. They think it’s going to be hell, and maybe it will be, but I know this is where the answers are. Do you remember what the psychiatric expert said at the trial?”

  “Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “He said that Carly’s murder seemed like a personal crime. He was almost a hundred percent certain that whoever killed her had known her, and hated her.”

  “Exactly. And practically every single person who could possibly fit that description goes to our school. Do you see now why it’s so important that I do this?”

  I nodded. “Okay,” I told her, after a very long silence. “I’ll help you.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  My mother forced me to spend my first weekend back at school with my father. I hated being at his house. The only reason I went at all was because my mother was afraid that if my relationship with my dad disintegrated to the point that we were no longer on speaking terms, he wouldn’t pay for me to go to college. College was my ticket away from Empire Valley, and there was no way I was going to pass up a blank check, even on principle.

  My father wasn’t home when I got to his house on Friday afternoon, so I threw down my bags in the foyer and grabbed a beer from the fridge in the garage. The man hadn’t really parented me since I was very young, and I tended to get away with most things when I was there. At first I tried to push my boundaries, but my father was neither home enough nor interested enough to care, and as long as he could convince himself I still respected him, he pretty much stayed out of my way.

  I had just settled down in front of the TV when the doorbell rang.

  “I want you to come with me,” Audrey said as soon as I opened the door. Even though I had agreed to consider her argument, we hadn’t really had time to talk since Tuesday afternoon when she drove me home. The first week back from summer vacation at Brighton was called Hell Week for a reason—instead of easing us in gently, the teachers liked to overload us with as much work as possible to “catch us up.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Your mom told me.”

  “Figures. Okay, what do you want?”

  “I’m going to the bridge, and I need you to be there.”

  “Why?”

  “I want you to tell me everything that led up to you finding Carly. I need to be able to see it in my mind.”

  I hesitated. Going back on my own was one thing, but going back with Audrey? I had reservations.

  “I thought you were in this with me.”

  I drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Just let me get some shoes on. I’ll be out in a second.”

  When I got into Audrey’s car, she gave me a sympathetic look.

  “Are you scared?”

  “No. Why would I be?”

  “It must’ve been horrible for you. Coming across her body like that.”

  “Just drive,” I said, looking out the window so that I didn’t have to meet her eyes.

  “I wonder how long it took the police to decide you had nothing to do with it.”

  “I’m doing what you want me to do, so stop taunting me.”

  “I’m not taunting you, I’m just thinking out loud.”

  “You’re trying to get a rise out of me.” I glanced at her. “And you have that look.”

  “What look?”

  “That Carly look, the look she used to get when she was sure she’d caught you in something.”

  “I don’t remember her having any look,” Audrey said, but I remained unconvinced. Audrey was far and away the person at whom Carly’s look was most often directed. She and Carly had been like sisters, and, like sisters, they had gotten on each other’s nerves on a daily basis. They had picked fights and argued over stupid things. Maybe that was why Audrey needed me around—she needed somebody to fight with.

  “You’re trying to figure out if I did it. Just go ahead and admit it so we can get this little farce over with.”

  “That’s what some people think,” she said carefully.

  “What people?” I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear her say it.

  “Carly’s old friends.”

  “You mean your old friends? Those idiot robots don’t think,” I scoffed. “It doesn’t match their outfits.”

  “It does make a little bit of sense.”

  “How?”

  “Carly broke up with you in, admittedly, not the best or most mature of ways,” Audrey said, staring intently at the road.

  “You should know.”

  She shifted in her seat. “You were angry, rightly. For all anybody knew, you spent the last year of Carly’s life obsessing over her, watching her, fantasizing about her.”

  “That’s not how it was.”

  “That’s what you say. Carly’s not going to contradict you, she’s dead.”

  “Carly and I broke up at the end of freshman year. Why would I wait until more than a year later to do something about it, if that was the way I wanted to handle it?”

  “Lack of opportunity?”

  “How would I have gotten her down to the bridge?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you convinced her to meet you there.”

  “You’ve seen her cell phone—five missed calls from me on the day she died, not one of them answered. How do you think I got ahold of her?”

  “Calling the house, e-mail, IM, singing telegram, telepathy? You tell me.”

  “If you really believed all this, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now,” I pointed out.

  “I would if I were stupid.”

  “But you’re not. And anyway, that doesn’t explain how I shot her with your father’s gun. Coming from my mother’s house, I wouldn’t have driven down Empire Creek Road to the bridge; I would’ve driven up Argot Canyon. There’s no way I could’ve known your dad was there, let alone had the presence of mind to frame him. Because that’s what you’re implying, isn’t it?”

  Audrey chewed at her thumbnail. “Yeah, you’re right.” She shrugged. “Oh well. It was just a theory.”

  “It was a crap theory.”

  Empire Creek Bridge, where I found Carly’s body, was down the hill from my father’s house, and as Audrey had no respect for stop signs we reached it in very little time. It was just as quiet as always, only the ambient noise of cars rushing past one another, past the town’s four freeway exits, on their way to other parts. Rush hour started early in the Bay Area, and everybody was aching to get home. I thought of those signs you sometimes see on apartment buildings near the freeway, signs that read something like IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW. They had always seemed more like a threat to me than an enticement.

  We were both silent. After all, what were there to say but insubstantial things? Audrey bent down, perhaps looking for some blood that had been carelessly left behind, or maybe a clue of some kind. But there was nothing, of course. It had all been washed away, cleared up, cleaned out by the police. I wondered why she hadn’t been here since Carly died, but then I reminded myself that such a grim pilgrimage isn’t exactly everyone’s preferred way of remembering the dead. It wasn’t as if Audrey was here to erect a memorial or say a prayer; she was looking for insight. For her, this was business. I couldn’t help but admire that a little, and envy it.

  Audrey stood up and brushed her palms together. She squinted into the sun, shading her face with her hand. “I guess there’s nothing here.”

  “What did you expect to find?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I just wanted to be able to picture it.”

  I nodded, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Can we go now?”

  “Not yet. I want you to tell me how you found her.”

  “Is tha
t really necessary?” That night played itself over and over again in my dreams. I had no desire to relive it in my waking hours.

  “Yes.”

  “You were at the trial. You heard my testimony. Don’t you remember?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember most of that. It was … unreal.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Come on, Neily.”

  I took a breath and let it out slowly. The air was uncomfortably warm. The hills behind Audrey looked like dunes, and for a moment they ceased to appear solid. The light and the shadows cast by shifting clouds made them seem soft and shapeless, mountains of sand. I lowered my eyes to Audrey’s face, which was ripe with expectation. That she was relying on me was strange, that she seemed to trust me even stranger. I wondered if maybe she hadn’t come to me reluctantly, and out of necessity, simply because it wasn’t in her nature to be alone in the world. I could see the weakness in this need to be liked, to be an integral cog in a group dynamic or even just one person’s life—it was something I had long suppressed in myself—but I pitied Audrey for feeling it and especially for betraying it to me, so I did what she asked.

  Sophomore Year—End of Summer

  At two-thirty a.m. on Friday, Carly had called me. I didn’t even have to look at the screen to see who it was; I knew it was Carly because she had programmed my phone to play Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” when it recognized her cell and home numbers, and I hadn’t changed it. I was up reading, but I let the call go to voice mail. It took all my willpower to do so. Audrey was right about one thing—at the time that Carly died, I still had her under my skin, but I knew better than to get drawn into all that again. I thought I was protecting myself, but I was also punishing her. If I was expendable to her to the point that she hadn’t even tried to preserve my friendship, then she had no right to call or talk to me. I had made that clear to her, or thought I had. So I went to bed and tried not to think about it, failing miserably.

  Later that morning I broke down and listened to the message.

  “Neily—Neily!—why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve done something terrible and I need you to pull me out of it—I need you to tell me what to do. I know you hate me—you have a right to hate me. It’s my fault you do and I’m sorry, but I’ve gone and screwed everything up. I said I would keep a secret for a friend, but I didn’t. You have to understand, I just didn’t know, and everything blew up at the party, I finally know the truth and I have to do something. Somebody has to pay for what happened to us. You have to tell me what to do. Please—”