All Unquiet Things (23 page)

“That’s not an excuse,” Neily said.

“No, but it’s an explanation,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re being so uncompromising about this. I’m positive that Carly didn’t know anything about what Adam was capable of, even if you aren’t.”

“Fine,” he said, in a tone that told me it was absolutely not fine. “What’s next?”

“I think we should talk to Adam,” I said.

“Are you nuts?”

“Contrary to what you might like to believe, Adam knew Carly pretty well,” I said. “He spent a lot of time with her.”

“He spent a lot of time jerking her around. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re awfully protective of someone you say you hate,” I pointed out.

“Look, just because I was stupid enough to get involved in all this doesn’t mean you get to start making assumptions about how I feel or what I think,” he fumed. “When it comes to Carly, it gets complicated, and I don’t need you throwing everything I say in my face.”

I stared ahead, watching the cars fly past on the street.

“I don’t trust Adam,” Neily continued. “He’s a dealer and a
liar, and I think”—he paused, as if uncertain of whether or not to go on—“I think
he
killed Carly.”

“You do.” I drew myself up slowly, straightening my shoulders, pushing my hair back from my eyes, like I was preparing for battle.

“Yeah.”

“You think Adam shot his girlfriend in cold blood?” Even as I was saying it, I knew it wasn’t as implausible as my tone implied.

“Yeah, that
would
be unusual. You almost never see an episode of
Law & Order
where someone is murdered by the person they’re sleeping with,” Neily said sarcastically.

“You know that the police investigated him, right? They didn’t find any evidence. What does that tell you?”

“That they fucked up.”

“He has an alibi, Neily, remember?”

“Right. And those have never been known to be falsified.”

“He was with Cass the whole night.”

“Of course,” Neily said, but he sounded unconvinced. He took out his cell phone and checked the time. “Shit. I’m supposed to have dinner with my dad.”

I nodded. “We’ll talk later.”

That evening, Neily called me on my cell.

“I thought you were having dinner with your dad,” I said.

“I am. I’m at Casa Orozco and guess who just walked in?”

“Who?”

“Lucy Miller and Adam Murray.”

“What would Lucy and Adam be doing together?” I asked Neily the next day. We were sitting at Neily’s usual table in the library.

“What do you think?” he asked, raising an eyebrow suggestively.

I shook my head. “No way.”

“Why not? They’ve been friends since middle school. Maybe they’re something more now.”

“I don’t think so. Back when I was hanging out with them, Adam was always complaining to Carly about how clingy Lucy was, how desperate.” It had annoyed Cass, too. She was always hooking up with the guys on the basketball team and then obsessing over them to him.

“Maybe that was all a front. If Adam was secretly hooking up with Lucy behind Carly’s back, of course he would trash-talk her to Carly’s face. They looked more than chummy at the restaurant,” Neily went on. “I watched them all night, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.”

“Ugh. Just what we needed—another wrinkle.”

“This
is
just what we needed. What if there was something going on between them back then, too? Lucy might know something about why Adam killed Carly, even if she doesn’t know she knows,” Neily suggested. “Hell, she might be the reason.”

“So now we’re operating under the assumption that Adam did, in fact, kill Carly?” I gave him a dubious look.

“I am.”

I sighed. “We have no proof of that.”

“Well, if you want to talk about proof, maybe we should go over all the evidence that your father killed Carly. That should be fruitful.”

“Do you always have to go there?” I snapped.

“I thought you wanted answers. Answers that
contradict
the status quo, I mean.”

“I do.”

“Then why are you fighting so hard against my theory that Adam is to blame? What do we have to lose by exploring that possibility?”

“We’ll look into Adam. But don’t forget, he has an alibi for the murder.” An alibi my ex-boyfriend had given him.

“What? That he was getting drunk and high and playing video games at Cass’s house? Yeah, that’s rock solid. There’s no way that Cass, under the influence, wouldn’t have noticed Adam sneaking out of the house,” he said.

“Yeah, okay. But we have to approach this very carefully—if Adam is as dangerous as you think he is, we’re going to land on his shit list
real
fast if he finds out what we’re doing.”

“Agreed. So, where do we start?”

“We need to find out who had Carly in that room at Cass’s party,” I told him. He shot me a dark look. I threw up my hands. “What? We can’t just ignore that it happened because you’ve already got Adam fitted for a noose. I don’t believe in coincidence—I’m sure that it had something to do with what happened to her.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“It’s just a feeling. That’s not the sort of thing Carly would be able to let go of. She must have gone looking for answers, and if she became a threat to the wrong person it might have landed her in a lot of trouble.”

“Okay, but what about Adam?”

“I’ll talk to Cass again about his party, and I’ll also try to fish around about the night that Carly died.”

“You’re going to talk to Cass again?”

“It’s the fastest way to the answers we’re looking for. Believe me, I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you? Just a little?” he asked.

“No,” I insisted, slamming my chemistry book shut and getting up. “Not even a little.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

I
lied to Neily. The way I felt about Cass—the way I had felt about him, the way I still felt about him—resisted definition, and I could hardly explain that to Neily, even though he was likely one of the few people who would understand. But Neily deeply distrusted that whole group, he fundamentally hated the Casses and Adams of the world, and he wasn’t going to go through the trouble of trying to understand what was going through my head. Regrettable, yes, but I had learned to handle things on my own.

I had never expected Cass Irving to like me. Back when we were freshmen at Brighton he was far and away the best-looking and most popular boy in our class. I never imagined
that he would notice me, but I couldn’t help but obsess over him like every other girl our age. It felt more like worshipping a movie star than liking a flesh-and-blood boy—that was how untouchable he seemed to me.

Carly wanted the best for me, even from the beginning, when we were still getting to know each other. When I moved to Empire Valley, she seemed determined rather than inclined to like me, and expected Neily to feel the same way. He never did, as far as I could tell, but he made a good show of it for Carly’s sake, and he put up with us patiently. I think it was because he knew how much it meant for her to have some family member she felt connected to as her mom became sicker and sicker. Paul was no help at all; he ignored her and spoiled her and left her to her own devices, trying to combat his depression over his wife’s illness by plunging headfirst into his work and rarely surfacing. All Carly had was me, and I her, and Neily appeared to respect that.

After her mom’s death, Carly began to change. At first she buried herself in Neily, seeking comfort in him and shutting out the rest of the world, especially me. It was as if she resented me, although I could never figure out why—after all, I was also motherless, except that my mom had left me behind by choice. Maybe she thought I was the luckier one, because my mom wasn’t entirely lost to me—there was at least a chance that she might return, and Carly probably assumed this gave me some sort of comfort. It did not. It never has. My mom wasn’t coming back, that much was obvious. She may not have been dead, but she was as good as.

But Carly’s loss was always threatening to catch up with her, and by the end of freshman year it had. It didn’t happen overnight; it happened slowly, progressively, over several
months, and we would’ve been powerless to stop it. Except that I didn’t try to. I was dating Cass, and it was like I was part of a different world. I wanted Carly to be there with me, to join me in the popular crowd so that I didn’t have to be alone, so that people wouldn’t be aware of how much I didn’t belong. My runaway mom and my drunk of a dad had made me painfully insecure, but Carly could protect me. She could help me hide it. I used her to my own advantage just like everybody else.

I could tell Adam liked Carly, and I liked the idea of them dating. If she was with Cass’s best friend, we’d hang out more. It was a selfish thing to do, but one morning before school I saw her arguing with Neily in the parking lot, and sensing a moment of weakness, I pulled her aside at lunch to float the possibility.

“Fighting with Neily?” I asked, putting a cup of yogurt on my tray as we moved through the cafeteria line.

“Yes,” she sighed, grabbing an apple. “I didn’t hang out with him on Saturday night like I said I would and of course he’s upset with me about it. But what was I going to do, take him to Stephanie’s party?”

“Did you even invite him?”

“Have you met Neily? He’d hate it. And it’s not even the alcohol! If he was morally opposed to underage drinking I could understand, but it’s, like, the
principle
of the thing. He just assumes that everyone who goes to those parties is a self-involved, spoiled rich prick and he refuses to hang out with them.”

“I was at that party. Uh,
thanks
, Neily,” I said.

“Exactly!” she cried. “That’s what I said. ‘I went to that party with Audrey, Neily, so what does that say about me?’ But, you know, he has no response to that and goes into concern
mode—‘I’m worried about you, Carly, I just want you to be happy,’ blah blah blah. It’s like, ‘If you want me to be happy, then don’t try to guilt-trip me every time I do something I want to do just because you don’t like it.’”

“Makes sense to me,” I said. “You want to hear something funny?”

“No. I hate humor,” she deadpanned. Then she smiled. “Of course I want to hear something funny.”

“Well, it’s not ha-ha funny, more like interesting funny. Adam asked if you and Neily were still together because
he
was thinking of asking you out.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Adam
Murray
?”

“Yep. The one and only.”

She grinned. “I think I’m sitting with you guys at lunch today.”

“Slow down, Speed Racer. What about Neily?”

“He’s my boyfriend, not my warden,” she said. “He doesn’t get to say who I can and can’t be friends with.”

“Wow, Carly. That’s very girl power of you.”

“Damn right it is,” she said, taking my arm and tugging me in the direction of my usual lunch table. “Let’s go.”

Adam Murray was full of problems, and the drugs were only the beginning. He and Cass’s brother, Jerod, were superclose, and Adam took over his connections when Jerod left for Los Angeles, bolstering the business with his obscene allowance and unpredictable temper. Cass, to my relief, showed no interest in picking up where Jerod left off—he had basketball to
worry about. Funnily, Adam never seemed very interested in doing hard drugs himself, though he liked to get drunk and smoke out whenever possible, but greed is undeniable and drug dealing is a path to power. I was always amazed that he never got caught, but he was smarter than he looked and his boys were loyal to a fault. Nobody would’ve dared turn on Adam.