All Unquiet Things

by Anna Jarzab

  “Sure. We had a few drinks together, shared a joint, and then I went off to talk to some people. After that I lost her. Why?”

  “Did you see her with anybody that night? Any guy besides Adam?”

  Lucy thought about it. “Well, the Bean was following her around everywhere, but I don’t think he really counts.”

  “The Bean?” Toby Pinto, aka the Bean, was one of Adam’s squadron of drug hustlers, a squat chubby guy who followed him around like a lapdog. He seemed to dote on every girl who ever talked to him, which was why I had always tried to avoid him as much as possible. The boys were pretty cruel to him; when they were bored, they pranked him, taking pleasure in upsetting him. The Bean had a legendary temper, and the smallest things could set him off like fireworks, although he was generally a pretty nice guy. All he wanted was to be liked, and that was why they despised him. His desperation made him an easy target.

  “Yeah. She always treated him like her own personal charity case,” Lucy said snidely. “He was pretty hung up on her.”

  “He was pretty hung up on everybody.”

  “But Carly especially. He once told me that he was in love with her.”

  “He did?” That people were fools enough to confide anything in Lucy had always baffled me. “And you told Adam.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Adam and a couple of the guys threatened him. You didn’t hear about that?”

  “No,” I confessed.

  “Big shock there,” she said. “Everyone was always so careful around you—don’t tell Audrey, she’ll get upset. Carly most of all. She was always telling us to keep things secret from you.”

  “Like what things?”

  “She made us promise not to tell you how much she used, for one.” Lucy yawned. “She thought you’d tell her dad or turn her in to Finch. Which you totally would have.”

  “No I wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Audrey! You were such a good girl,” she sneered. “You would’ve ratted her out in a hot second.”

  “I never turned on Adam,” I pointed out. “He did his thing, I did mine. Cass told me everything.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You knew nothing.” But she didn’t seem so sure. “You should go.”

  “Just give me five more minutes,” I insisted. “So the Bean was following Carly around?”

  “Yeah, until Adam had Oz eject him.” Sean Ozrick was one of Adam’s able-bodied henchmen. I thought he was a good person at heart, but then again, we weren’t best friends. I hung out with them sometimes, but I wasn’t what you’d call close with most of Adam’s goons, Brighton students or not. I spent most of my time with Cass or the girls.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, around midnight?”

  “Did you see the Bean take Carly into one of the bedrooms?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I guess somebody must’ve—Adam found Carly in one of the guest rooms, half naked and passed out.”

  “He must’ve been pissed—he dropped her in my lap and practically demanded I drive her home.”

  “He figured she cheated on him. He tried to find out who, but he never could. She denied it, of course.” Lucy swung her tanned legs over the side of the chaise. “You should ask Cass. He might’ve seen something.”

  I wasn’t particularly excited to do that. “Could you ask Cass for me?”

  “Why would I do you a favor?” Lucy said caustically. “I’m already doing you one just talking to you.”

  “You’re a real softy, Luce.” I stood up, impatient to leave. Lucy had no more information for me, that much was clear. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Wait. Now I have a question. What’s going on with you and Think Tank? Are you together now?”

  “Did Cass ask you to find out for him?”

  “Yeah, right.” She laughed. “Like Cass cares what you do with Carly’s rejects.”

  “Feel free to tell him that it’s none of his business.”

  Lucy’s face clouded over suddenly. “What are you doing, Audrey? Hanging around with Neily Monroe, asking all these questions? Carly is dead—this is all in the past. Why do you have to go dragging it all up again?” Her voice wobbled. I almost felt sorry for her. Sometimes I forgot other people had lost a friend as well.

  “I guess I just need to know,” I told her.

  “Need to know what?” she called after me, but I was already walking away and didn’t turn back.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The next day at school, Neily met me at my locker.

  “Do you remember Toby Pinto?” I asked, pulling a yearbook from two years ago out of my bag. I flipped to a flagged page and pointed to a photo.

  “You mean the Bean?” Neily asked. “Sure. Carly and I had gym class with him freshman year. What about him?”

  “He used to be part of Adam’s crew,” I said. “Adam and his buddies were horrible to the Bean. They used to pull pranks on him all the time, but poor Toby thought they were all friends. Sometimes they would goof on him and he would lose it and start swearing and flailing and screaming like a two-year-old, and they would all just sit back and laugh at him.” I shook my head. “It was disgusting.”

  “That was a nice group of guys you and Carly got yourselves mixed up with,” Neily remarked, but I let it go.

  “As far as I can remember, Carly was the only person who was ever really nice to the Bean,” I said. “Whenever he got upset, Carly would stick up for him.” Carly was like that. With her close friends she could be mercurial, moving in and out of good and bad moods like a car dodging through traffic, but with others—like the Bean, or like Fiona Benson, a girl with cerebral palsy whom she took notes for in all the classes they shared—she was uniformly kind and patient. She was actually quite nurturing, if you watched closely enough.

  “You think the Bean had some sort of massive crush on Carly?”

  “Well, there was an incident. One time, Carly was trying to talk to him during one of his tantrums and he accidentally smacked her across the face. The guys flipped out, Adam especially. They would’ve beaten him up, only Carly and I were right there. But he kept bothering Carly, trying to get her to talk to Adam for him, and finally Adam got sick of it, so he organized a really mean trick.”

  “What a shock.”

  “Cass told the Bean that Adam and Carly had broken up, and that they had been fighting over him. Cass convinced the Bean that he should ask Carly to go to prom, because it was obvious that she had feelings for him.”

  “I still can’t believe she actually went with him.” I said. “It made absolutely no sense to me.”

  “Well, later she had to tell the Bean some sort of story so that she could ‘get back together’ with Adam.”

  “So what does that have to do with Carly’s rape?”

  “The Bean was at Cass’s party.”

  “Sounds like everybody was. My invitation must’ve gotten lost in the mail.”

  “Oh boo hoo. Anyway, as far as I can recall the Bean crashed the party—he was already on the outs with Adam. Lucy said that he was following Carly around until Adam threw him out.”

  “So where’s he now?”

  I shrugged. “College?”

  “I don’t think so. Neither the brains nor the motivation.”

  “Then I’m going to go with living at home and working at an auto body shop,” I said. “He was really big on cars. We just have to figure out which shop.”

  “How? There have to be hundreds of mechanics in the tri-valley area.”

  “Maybe somebody knows.”

  “Did the Bean have any real friends?”

  “I don’t know. But I think I know who to ask.” I glanced across the quad at Cass, who was surrounded by his usual cadre of teammates and bimbo cheerleaders. “I just really don’t want to do it.”

  My old boyfriend, Cass Irving, was the star of the basketball team, a good student, and an all-around mensch. Cass was very tall and blond, with a mop of curly hair that his
coach made him cut every three days during the season. He and Adam Murray had been best friends since childhood, which was how we all ended up being as close as we were. While my relationship with Cass disintegrated as a result of Carly’s murder and Dad’s incarceration, Cass and Adam’s had remained firmly intact, although recently there had been talk that the two were fighting. It was difficult to get Cass alone, but eventually I managed it.

  I caught up with him after school as he was walking to his car. I had already made sure I looked perfect, spending almost twenty minutes in the bathroom at the end of seventh period checking myself from head to toe and talking myself into adopting a strong, impervious attitude for approaching my ex. Now that I was standing right next to him, though, I felt the nerves wriggling like worms in my stomach and tried my best to resist the urge to run away.

  “I have a question for you,” I said. It felt completely natural to be walking beside him. My mind started bombarding me with nostalgia-inducing flashes of my former life. I worked hard to push it all out of my head, to start concentrating on the present before my cool exterior crumbled away.

  He gave me a strange look and started scanning the sky.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Checking for flying pigs,” Cass said lightly, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  “Careful,” I said, shrugging it off. “You wouldn’t want your friends to see you making contact. They might have to put you in quarantine.”

  “I think I’ll risk it.”

  Even though we were no longer touching, I could still feel the warmth of his hand. “I just need some information. About the Bean.”

  “I called you like five times yesterday. You never called me back,” he said, looking a little hurt.

  “I’m sorry. I was busy.”

  “With Neily Monroe?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “I saw you talking to him this morning. Are you with him now?”

  “Is Lucy doing reconnaissance for you?”

  “I was curious. Sue me.”

  “Neily and I are just—” Come to think of it, I couldn’t come up with a word to accurately describe what Neily and I were. “Partners. We’re working on a project for English class together.”

  “Bummer,” Cass said, but he looked relieved. “What do you want with the Bean, anyway?”

  “I’m thinking about asking him to prom.”

  “Funny.”

  “I’m having a problem with my car,” I said. “I heard he was working at a garage somewhere. I thought he might be able to give me some advice, or at least a discount.”

  “I could take a look at it,” Cass offered. He stopped walking and made eye contact with me, which I couldn’t avoid.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll leave it to a professional.”

  Cass ran his fingers through his hair, which hadn’t been subjected to its inaugural basketball-season chop yet. “Yeah, well, I don’t know where the Bean works, but I could give you his number.”

  “That would be very decent of you, Cass,” I said, smiling and pulling out my phone. He got his out and read the Bean’s number off to me. “Thanks.”

  “So that’s it? That’s all you wanted?”

  “That’s all,” I said, turning to walk away. Cass grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “Come on, Aud, when are you going to forgive me?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t remember you asking for my forgiveness,” I said.

  “It was implied.”

  “No it wasn’t.” He started to say something, but I interrupted him. “And don’t bother trying, because it’s so not going to happen.”

  “So you’re only going to talk to me when you want something?” he asked. “Is that how this works?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s how it works.”

  Freshman Year—Fall Semester

  The first time Cass Irving ever spoke to me is burned into my brain. It was Halloween, and he was dressed as Count Dracula; he had dyed his hair black and was wearing what looked like stage makeup to turn his skin pale. We were in English class and our instructor had stepped out of the room for a couple of moments to talk to Mr. Finch. Cass, who was sitting right in front of me (later he would tell me that he had chosen the seat on purpose), turned around and asked, “So what exactly are you supposed to be?”

  I had no idea that Halloween was such a big deal at Brighton. Even people who normally didn’t care about stuff like that—Neily, for example—came to school that day in elaborate outfits. One of the nerdy guys in my third-period history class actually built an R2-D2 shell that he could climb into, sit in, and wheel around campus in. Student Government held a costume contest at lunchtime and people actually cared who won (it was that R2-D2 kid, and I was pretty sure that was the first and last time that anyone popular noticed him, which was probably the point of all that effort). It was a big change from my old school in Oregon, that’s for sure.

  “I’m not wearing a costume,” I told him. “As you can probably tell.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t like Halloween,” I said.

  “You don’t like Halloween? That’s impossible. Everybody likes Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday.” He beamed at me. I loved his smile. Every time he turned it on me, I felt my skin tingle.

  I shook my head. “Sorry I’ve let you down.”

  “You can redeem yourself by telling me why you don’t like Halloween,” he said. “If I know what the problem is, I’ll do my best to fix it.”

  I wanted to tell him—he was just so friendly and warm and open, I instantly felt like I could trust him with all of my secrets—but I wasn’t very good at sharing. The truth was that my mom had left us on Halloween. That year I’d dressed as a cat and I stood on the pavement outside school for an hour and a half, waiting for her to pick me up. She never showed. I ended up walking the two miles home in my black leotard and leggings, wiping off the whiskers I’d penciled on with Mom’s eyeliner along the way. When I got inside the house it was empty. It had been two years, and I hadn’t seen or heard from her since.

  Cass was expecting an answer, but instead I shrugged. “I’ve just never been able to get into the spirit.”

  “Well, that’s tragic, because you can’t come to my Halloween party tonight if you’re not dressed up,” he warned me. “Nobody’s allowed inside without a costume. That’s the rule.”

  “I wasn’t invited to your party,” I told him.

  He gave an exaggerated look of horror. “Nobody told you? Massive oversight. The Halloween party is open to the whole school. It’s the only nonexclusive shindig I’ll throw all year.”

  “That’s very generous of you. Did you just use the word ‘shindig’?” I smiled.

  “I did. And it is very generous of me; thank you for noticing, I don’t get nearly enough credit for it. But just between you and me, I don’t think you need to worry about getting an invite to any of my parties from here on out,” Cass said, leaning close to me and practically whispering. “I think it’s safe to say you’ll always be welcome at an Irving ‘shindig.’”

  “There’s that word again.”

  “So what do you say, Audrey Ribelli?” he asked. “Will you be attending the event of the year?”

  I paused to consider. I really wanted to spend time with Cass, and he was personally inviting me, but I could see how this would go: I’d show up, there’d be a million other people there he knew better and he’d ignore me. Carly and Neily wouldn’t go with me; their holiday spirit had definite limits. I’d probably be stuck in a corner alone, drinking spiked punch and missing my mom. “I don’t think I’ll be very fun tonight, to be honest. Some other time, maybe.”

  “How about next weekend?” Cass suggested.

  “You’re having another party next weekend?”

  He shook his head. “I meant just you and me hanging out. We could go see a movie and have dinner or something.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date?” I was so excited
I thought I might choke, but I forced myself to breathe and tried to look calm.

  “Yes,” he said firmly. “Are you accepting?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling so light it was as if I were airborne. “Absolutely.”

  Senior Year

  I called the Bean’s number as soon as I shook Cass, but he didn’t pick up, so I left him a message. I doubted he would call back. The Bean had only known me through Cass, and it was pretty likely he’d either forgotten me or dodged my call on account of my ex.

  Neily and I met up at Paul’s house to keep going through Carly’s things, and I told him what I had found out. He seemed to find my conversation with Cass a lot more interesting than what Cass had told me.

  “So he does want to get back together,” Neily said. “And you blew him off?”

  “Naturally,” I said, folding a sweater and putting it in the Goodwill box. “What did you think I was going to do, swoon? The guy barely even apologized.”

  Neily shrugged. “You had a really intense thing going for a really long time. I wouldn’t blame you if you still had feelings for him.”

  “Yes you would.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Hey, have you figured out a way to get to the safe-deposit box yet?”

  “No. And I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter if I do.”

  “You don’t know what’s in it,” he pointed out. “There could be something important in there.”

  “I don’t even have the key,” I told him. “And I can’t very well ask Paul for it.”

  “Maybe Carly had one.”

  “We didn’t find it in her room.”

  “Yeah, but we haven’t gone through everything. Anyway, maybe Carly hid it. It would be like her to do that.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or she could’ve misplaced it. But I wouldn’t worry about it just yet—I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually.”

  The Bean never called me back, but that didn’t matter. Neily did some recon, visiting every auto body shop in three towns until he found someone who could tell him where the Bean worked.