All Unquiet Things

by Anna Jarzab

  “I am known for my sense of humor.” I slipped past her and into the men’s bathroom, thinking that was the only place that she wouldn’t follow me. I was wrong.

  “Unbelievable!” she shouted. The door swung open and hit the wall.

  “You’re lucky we’re the only ones in here, or else this would be very awkward for you.”

  Audrey ignored me. “Do you know what people say about you?” she asked sourly, crossing her arms.

  “Do you know what people say about you?”

  “They say you were infatuated with Carly. They say you were stalking her. Everyone who hasn’t mentally crucified my dad thinks you killed her. How does that make you feel?”

  I turned on her, furious. “Is that really what you think? Can you honestly look me in the eyes and tell me that you believe I could’ve done something that evil?”

  “Everybody has a dark side, Neily,” Audrey said. “Even you.”

  “I don’t care what people say,” I replied. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  Audrey grabbed my arm. “I’m going to visit my dad this afternoon and I want you to come. If I can’t convince you that he’s innocent, maybe he can. And if you don’t believe me after that, I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

  She looked desperate. Despite my instincts, I felt sorry for her. Though what my father had told me about Enzo had raised my suspicions back up to orange alert levels, I still believed that there were questions that hadn’t been answered, avenues that had yet to be explored. I was sure that Carly’s diary held the key to her true feelings for me, but it also occurred to me that it might hold the key to other things as well, and staying on Audrey’s good side was necessary for getting my hands on it.

  “Fine. But you’re lucky I don’t have a life, or I would have been able to come up with an excuse.”

  “Good. We’ll go straight there after school, then.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said. She glanced around as it finally sank in that she was in the men’s bathroom. “I better get out of here.” She pulled open the door and nearly collided with a freshman whose locker was near my own.

  “What the—?”

  “Sorry,” she said, grimacing at me as she slipped past him out the door.

  The freshman glanced at me. “Should—should I go?”

  I waved him on. “Just do your business,” I said. When he had disappeared around the corner to the urinals, I bent over a sink and stared at myself in the mirror. There was nothing in the world that I wanted less than to get tangled up in all this, but I had no choice, not until I had the answers to the questions the police and prosecution had never asked: What had happened to Carly at the party the night before she died? Why did she leave me that message and what did it mean? And, most important, the answer to one final question: Had Carly still been in love with me?

  Enzo Ribelli was being held at San Quentin. I’d never been to a prison before and I was just a little excited, not that I would’ve admitted it.

  “Do you go see your dad a lot?” I asked Audrey as she drove.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “So we’re friends now?”

  “Just making conversation.” I leaned back. After a moment, I asked, “Are you going to answer my question?”

  “About once a month. I’m the only person he’ll see.”

  “So what makes you think he’ll talk to me?”

  “He will if I ask him to.”

  “Not to seem insensitive, but for that brief moment when you and I were friends, you didn’t seem to care too much for your father. Now that he’s in jail for murder, you’re suddenly a devoted daughter?”

  “Do you blame me? He drank and gambled away everything he and my mother had—you would cringe to think of what we had to make do on because of him, Mr. Moneybags.”

  “You should talk,” I said.

  “Yeah, now I have money. But I grew up moving from apartment to apartment in the middle of the night because my dad would default on the rent—we would go days without heat or electricity while he disappeared on a bender. My mom left us—left me—because she couldn’t stand it anymore. Hasn’t been heard from since.”

  “Did he ever … ?” I let my voice trail off, certain my question was inappropriate.

  “Hit us? No, not me. But he slapped my mom around once or twice when he was piss-drunk, which was enough.”

  I didn’t know what to say. However cold my father could be, my childhood had been cake compared with what Audrey went through. I nodded sympathetically and let her talk.

  “But he’s my dad, and he’s innocent. If I don’t stand by him, nobody else is going to.”

  “That’s really decent of you, Audrey.”

  “It doesn’t hurt that I believe him. If he had done it, I don’t think I could’ve forgiven him. Carly was practically my sister.”

  I nodded. “I know.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Has anything changed between you and your dad?” Audrey asked, eyes on the road.

  “No, but next time I go to his house for court-ordered visitation, I’ll let him know you were asking about him.”

  “Well, at least he’s not in prison.”

  “If he was, I guarantee you that I wouldn’t be trucking it all the way out to the Q just to see him.”

  She stiffened and glared at me. “You know what? The not-talking thing—that was working out really well for me, so if we could just get back to that, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Fine by me,” I said, lowering my seat until I was lying down. As we passed a sign for the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, I closed my eyes and settled back for a short nap.

  Eighth Grade—Spring Semester

  Things got worse for Miranda Ribelli over the next few months. When school ended for the summer, she was already far into her first round of chemo, and her hair was falling out in large clumps. She couldn’t eat much without throwing up, and Paul was constantly taking her to the hospital so that she could be hooked up to IVs and pumped full of nutrients. Carly was beside herself, but instead of talking about it she committed every second to the program, completing assignments faster than I did and asking for more and more work.

  “Don’t you sleep?” I asked her a few weeks before school let out.

  “Not much,” she told me, rubbing her eyes. “Sometimes my mom needs me at night.”

  “Maybe you should talk to your dad about getting her a nurse.”

  “Why?” She frowned. “What does she need a nurse for? She’s got me.”

  “Yeah, but you have school and your dad is always at work-it just seems like it’s too much to ask of you. You’re only one person.”

  She shrugged me off. “I can do it. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Well, it bothers me.” She was so tired. Her face was full of anxiety—she never smiled anymore, and she wouldn’t let me hold her as much as she did after we first got together. She seemed to be pushing me away, and as much as I felt for her I couldn’t help fearing that she was no longer in love with me.

  Her bottom lip dropped a little. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re never around, and when you are, you’re tired and cranky.” I knew I was saying all the wrong things, but they just kept pouring out of me like a faucet somebody had turned on. “You never talk to me.”

  “That’s because you’re impossible to talk to.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Whenever I want to talk about my mom, you nod and tune me out, like I’m some kind of song you’re afraid of getting stuck in your head. You don’t listen. If it doesn’t have anything to do with you, you don’t want to hear about it.”

  “That’s not fair.” But maybe it was. I had always thought of myself as a good listener, the sort of person you could depend upon and lean on, especially when it came to Carly, but the truth was that I had very little experience dealing with illness and the possibility of death. I didn’t know what to say or how to
say it, when to give her space and when to push her to confide in me. I was hopeless, and I knew it.

  “And when you do listen, you keep telling me it’s going to be okay—like, what if it’s not okay, Neily? What then? What if she dies? What if she dies and you’ve been sitting here the whole time telling me that everything’s going to be okay?”

  “What do you want me to tell you? Tell me what I can say to make you feel better.”

  “I don’t want you to tell me anything—I want you to listen to me.”

  “Well, I’m listening now.” I took her hand.

  “That’s not good enough. You can’t just be there for me when it’s convenient for you, or when I tell you that you’re doing a lousy job at it. I’m going through enough of a hard time as it is, and I can’t be worrying about your feelings. It’s too much, Neily.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. I know.” She wiped at her eyes. “I need some time alone. To spend with my mom.”

  “Okay. Whatever you need.” It killed me to say it. Part of me sensed that we were moving toward something dense and ugly and all too real, and that I had no power to stop it.

  I left Carly alone for that entire weekend. As difficult as it was, I didn’t call or e-mail or send her any text messages. When I saw her at school the following Monday, I feared it was all over. We stood at opposite ends of a bank of lockers, staring at each other. I wanted to approach her, but I knew that she had to make the first move. When she eventually did move, she tried to brush past me, embarrassment and regret etched all over her beautiful face. Unwilling to let that be the end of it, I caught her wrist as she passed and pulled her toward me, leaned down, and kissed her deeply. She kissed me back, throwing her arms around my neck. When we came apart, I pressed my forehead against hers and said:

  “I love you, please don’t be mad at me. I’m sorry.” “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I love you, too.”

  I smiled and kissed the tip of her nose. From behind us came the sound of a throat clearing. We both looked to the side and saw Finch standing only a couple of feet from us, glaring his disapproval. Wordlessly, he lifted his finger skyward, and at that exact moment, the bell rang.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “You’re both officially late for class. And I will be by the library later to check up on you, if you know what I mean.”

  “Ten-four,” I said. Carly smiled at him sheepishly.

  “This better not be how you spend all your time these days,” Finch said, stepping back as we scooted past him on our way to music appreciation. “I don’t want to have to split you two up.”

  By the time school ended for the summer, things were looking better—Miranda was responding to the chemo, and Carly’s mood had taken an upswing. Paul had engaged a nurse for his wife, and the whole family was feeling good enough to take a night off from hospitals and IVs and worry and go out to dinner for Carly’s fourteenth birthday. Miranda invited me over Paul’s objections. It wasn’t that he didn’t like me, Carly insisted; it was just that he didn’t approve of his daughter having a serious boyfriend at such a young age. My mother had similar concerns, but she mostly kept them to herself; Paul was not as subtle.

  The fine dining options in Empire Valley being limited to fast-food restaurants and one moderately priced steak house, Paul took us all up to San Francisco in his brand-new Mercedes. Bored with the innumerable Italian, Mexican, and seafood restaurants the city had to offer, Paul had chosen something different—a tiny, family-run Polish restaurant in West Portal that doubled as an art gallery. Halfway through our pierogi appetizer, Paul announced that he had news.

  “I don’t know how much this will interest you, Neily,” he said, taking a swig of Polish beer. “But Enzo’s coming back to town, and he’s bringing Audrey with him.”

  “Enzo? Really?” Miranda seemed surprised. “Why?”

  Paul shrugged. “Now that it looks like Hilary’s gone for good, I guess he wants to bring Audrey closer to family. My mother called this morning and told me. She teamed up with Hilary’s parents, Louise and Charles Jordan, to put a down payment on a house in the valley for them, and they’re moving in next week sometime.”

  I leaned over to Carly and whispered, “Who’s Enzo?”

  “My uncle,” she said. “Dad’s brother. Audrey is his daughter. She’s our age.”

  “Oh.” It was the first I’d heard of either of them. “Are you close?”

  “Not really. They’ve lived in Portland since we were babies, and they don’t visit that often.” She glanced up and noticed her dad staring at us. “Tell you later.”

  Once we were back at her house, Carly gave me Enzo’s entire sordid history. After graduating from Brighton as one of the marginal one percent of students who don’t go on to a four-year college or university, Enzo Ribelli had careened from failed scheme to failed scheme for almost ten years, sporadically attending classes at the local community college while dabbling in everything from construction to starting his own lawn-mowing business before hooking up with Hilary Jordan, a USC junior, during her summer vacation. The day before Hilary was supposed to go back to school, she found out that she was pregnant; she and Enzo married quickly, and he moved down to Los Angeles with her. In her fifth month, Hilary suffered a painful miscarriage, but somehow she and Enzo stayed married.

  Several years later, two weeks after Miranda had Carly, Hilary sent word that she had also given birth to a baby girl. For a while, the families made an effort to keep in contact, if only for the sake of the children, but Enzo eventually moved his wife and daughter to Oregon, ostensibly for some job, and the lines of communication collapsed. Now the only way Carly’s parents got news from Enzo was through Paul’s mother. The last time they had heard anything was when Hilary had abandoned her husband and daughter two years earlier. Audrey’s grandparents on both sides were sending money every month, but it had recently become clear that it wasn’t being spent the way it was meant to be, so they had finally convinced Enzo to bring his daughter back to Empire Valley.

  It was hard to figure out how Carly felt about Audrey moving to Empire Valley. I tried to draw her out, but she was inscrutable. Later, when we were sitting on the porch, Carly pressing her cheek and shoulder into my chest, I asked her flat out what she was thinking.

  She lifted her head. “About what?”

  “Your cousin coming to town. You seem upset.”

  “I’m not. I just don’t know her very well, and my dad is going to expect me to help her out at school. Mams says she’s not a very good student.” Mams was what Carly called her father’s mother. Her mother’s parents lived in Connecticut, and the Ribellis weren’t nearly as close to them.

  “You’re worried that Paul’s going to make you tutor her?” I raised my eyebrows. That didn’t sound like Carly.

  Her shoulders drooped, and she sat up. “Maybe you should go home now. It’s getting really late. I’m tired.”

  “Carly—” I held fast to her wrist.

  “Neily, let go.”

  “No. Carly, this is getting ridiculous. Ever since we found out about your mom, you’ve been so weird with me. Talk to me.”

  “Don’t say ‘we’ like it’s the same for you and me,” she warned. “You stay up half the night holding her hair back while she throws up from the chemo, then you get to say things like ‘we.’”

  “I would help if you asked me to,” I told her. “I’d do anything. I’ve been trying to give you more space, but if you need me I’m here.”

  Carly brushed at her eyes. “I know.”

  But I felt like I had to keep saying it. “No matter what happens, I’m always going to help you if you need me.” It was these words I remembered the morning of the day Carly died, the ones that made me call her back, seek her out. I wanted to be the sort of guy who made good on his promises.

  “What can I do?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

  “Come on. There has to be s
omething.”

  Carly looked at me. “Well, maybe you can help me with Audrey.”

  “How?”

  “I have a feeling it’s going to be really awkward with her,” Carly said. “Her dad and my dad have been on bad terms since they were kids, and I haven’t seen her for a really long time. I’m afraid she’ll hate me.”

  “Why would she hate you?”

  Carly shrugged. “I don’t know. People tend to.”

  “People don’t hate you.” It was true, Carly and I didn’t have many friends at Brighton, but that was as much our fault as anybody else’s. Our contact with other students in the program was sporadic. As for the nonprogram students, we knew them from elective classes and cocurriculars, but only in the most casual way. Honestly, on the whole I would’ve said that people hardly gave us a passing thought, and my mother had always told me that people have to care about you to hate you.

  “Do we go to the same school?”

  “People don’t hate you,” I repeated. “They’re intimidated by you. They know that you’re smarter than they are.”

  “Well, I don’t want Audrey to feel that way about me,” Carly said. “I want her to like me.”

  “And how am I supposed to help with that?”

  “Be friendly to her. Maybe punch me in the arm when I’m being too clever or too patronizing,” she suggested light-heartedly.

  I laughed. “I’m not going to punch you.”

  “Pinch me, then,” she joked.

  “We need a signal that doesn’t involve physical violence, or you’re on your own,” I said, kissing her.

  “Okay.” She pursed her lips in thought. “How about if you tap your nose with your finger if I’m being obnoxious?”

  “Sure. That I can do.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “No reason.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s just very you. Secret gestures and everything.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small blue box. The white ribbon that the woman in the jewelry store had tied around it was a little smashed. “Happy birthday, Carly.”