The Unquiet (18 page)

2. The séance was not a setup. Everyone did zombie out, but they have no memory of it.
Therefore, I’m not paranoid because what happened really happened.

3. The séance was for real and everyone knows it. But they won’t discuss it because

A. they don’t trust me,

B. they don’t like me, or

C. they’re playing it down because they’re plotting to get me alone after school, duct tape my mouth, and throw me over the fence so Annaliese can rip out my throat with her ghostly teeth.

Okay. Now
that’s
paranoid.

Tuesday, November 4

“For the holiday program,” Mr. Chenoweth announces, “I’ll need a couple of soloists.” He smiles ingratiatingly around the room. “You get ten bonus points just for trying out.”

I don’t need the ten points. Hello, it’s chorus?

“Pass,” I say when he calls my name.

“C’mon, Rinn, I know you have a nice voice. And your mom tells me you play the guitar.” I groan inwardly. “Why don’t you bring it in this week? I’ve got an idea.”

Thanks, Mom.

When Cecilia’s turn comes, she also passes. Heads swivel in surprise.

“I need a break,” she explains. “I always end up with a solo, so maybe it’s time”—she kicks my chair—“to give someone else a chance?”

Disappointed, Mr. Chenoweth says, “Well, if you’re sure,” and glances down at his list to bellow out the next name.

I steal a glance over my shoulder.

Cecilia smiles at me.

I catch up with her as she heads toward the sidewalk after school, hunched under a polka-dot umbrella in today’s relentless drizzle. “Why didn’t you try out today?”

She keeps walking. “You were at the game. You saw what happened.”

“But that was a fluke. Even professionals screw up. I mean, that crowd was huge, right? And then you had that problem that day …”

“What day?”

“The day we decorated the gym. When you lost your—” I stop on the sidewalk.

“Voice.” Cecilia stops, too.

Yes, yes—when she lost her voice!

“Crap,” I whisper. I can’t believe the words even as they fall from my lips. “We locked you in the tunnel and you lost your voice!”

“Thanks for saying ‘we’ instead of blaming it all on Lacy. Not that I care,” Cecilia adds, speeding up. “I’m sure it was her idea.”

“Forget that! Listen! Something weird’s going on.”

“You mean aside from you talking to me when I asked you nicely to leave me alone?”

Rainwater splashes my legs as I break into a jog. For a big girl, Cecilia’s fast on her feet. “Wait! I have to tell you something important and I can’t do it here.” I point to Millie’s Boxcar Diner. “Let’s go in. Please,” I beg as she lags back.

Disgruntled, Cecilia agrees. I choose a booth by the front window, away from Millie’s counter. I don’t need her listening in and then blabbing it all to Mom.

Millie slaps down our hot chocolate and, without asking, a plate of her famous onion rings. “Well, I think this is first time you stopped in here without your mom. What’s the occasion?”

I whip a random book out of my bag. “We have homework to discuss.” The second she’s out of earshot, I lean forward eagerly. “Tell me what happened when you were locked in the tunnel.”

Cecilia frowns. “Why?”

“You tell me first. Then I’ll explain it.”

“Forget it. I don’t trust you.”

“I know,” I say miserably. “I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you.” Relief rushes through me when Cecilia grins at my statement. “I apologized and I meant it. And if it makes you feel any better, Lacy’s not too thrilled with me for sticking up for you.”

Her grin vanishes. “You want a medal for that? Or just a pat on the head?” I wait patiently. She sighs. “I told you, I’m claustrophobic. What do you
think
happened?” She dunks the whipped cream down into her cocoa with a spoon. “You don’t know what I go through. I can’t shut my bedroom door. I can’t walk into a closet. I can’t even pee at school because of the stalls.” She ducks to take a sip. “You have no clue.”

Do I tell her? Do I dare? If she doesn’t trust me, how can I trust her?

“I get it,” I assure her. “Just tell me what happened in the tunnel.”

Beads of perspiration dot Cecilia’s wide forehead. She swipes them away with her crumbled napkin. “She slammed the
door and I couldn’t get it open. I heard you guys laughing. At first, all I wanted was to get out of there so I could kick your asses! Then I panicked. It—it’s hard to describe,” she fumbles. “At first I can’t breathe. I’m
sure
I’m gonna die. But after that passes, it’s like I end up on this higher plane. I’m kinda out of myself, but not quite, you know? I still know what’s going on.” She crunches an onion ring. “There’s a name for that, um …”

“Depersonalization,” I recite.

She doesn’t ask how I know this. “Anyway, it usually happens on its own. But that time it didn’t. I couldn’t stop screaming. At least not until—” She bites her lip.

“Till what?”

“Till the air got in my mouth.”

For a minute I listen to the clatter of silverware and china. Millie’s joking with Edna, the lady who helps her out here. A jukebox plays Reba McEntire. The canvas awning outside thumps erratically in the wind.

It all seems so normal.

“Greasy air,” Cecilia clarifies. “
Thick.
Like Crisco or something.”

“What did it smell like?” I whisper.

“Bleach.”

My lips grow numb. “That’s when you lost your voice.”

She nods. “I couldn’t scream anymore. My whole throat closed up. I can’t remember what happened next, except I somehow got out and …” Cecilia strips the breading off an onion ring, rendering it naked. “Well, my voice came back, but it’s not the same. I—I’m tone deaf or something. I can’t
sing
anymore.”

“That’s why you messed up at the game. And why you
didn’t try out for a solo today.” I add, more awestruck than afraid, “It stole your
voice
, Cecilia.”

“What?”

“The tunnel.”

“Annaliese, you mean?” Cecilia throws down her napkin. “Oh, give me a
break.
”

“But Meg says weird things happen in there …”

“Yeah, stupid things that happen to stupid
people
.” Ignoring my protests, Cecilia stands, wriggles into her roomy coat, and jerks her chin at the leftover onion rings. “It’s on you.”

Later, unable to sleep, I get up to make another list:

1. Lacy got headaches after she went into the tunnel. Plus she went Rambo on me.

2. Meg’s ears started ringing after she went into the tunnel. She fell on the ground in front of hundreds of spectators doing a stunt she’s done a thousand times.

3. Cecilia lost her voice after she went into the tunnel.

Laid out in front of me, it’s not much evidence. Three coincidences, all with explanations. Lacy’s headaches could be from stress or hormones. Meg’s ringing ears might be a medical thing. Maybe none of this has anything to
do
with the tunnel.

But Cecilia’s voice baffles me. How do you turn tone deaf overnight? It makes no sense.

What also makes no sense is that people use that tunnel
every day. Has anything bad happened to anyone else? Nate might know. I bite my thumbnail, undecided—
is he hugely mad at me, or just a teeny bit irritated?
—and then dial his number without thinking any further.

“You know what time it is?” he asks sleepily.

“Sorry. I just want to know one thing:
why
is everyone so afraid of that tunnel?”

“What do you do? Lie awake at night and think of this stuff?”

“Seriously. You should see them after gym, banding together like buffalo. Do the boys do that, too?” I guess his silence means yes. “Meg said some weird things have happened to people in that tunnel. Is that true?”

“Flukes. Coincidences.”

“Oh, really? Like what?”

Nate yawns. “Oh, like a kid’ll come out of the tunnel and, I dunno … get sick all of a sudden. Or have an asthma attack. Or lose a report or a library book. Or punch his girlfriend, say, for no reason at all.”

I snicker. “A library book, huh? Wow, what a tragedy.”

“Yeah, well.” He sounds more awake now. “One teacher we had last year, he went into the tunnel to break up a fight. He had a drinking problem, I heard, but he’d been sober for years. He stopped at a bar after school, got drunk, and ran his car into a storefront.”

Now that’s more interesting. “What else?”

“Um, the way the lights never work? Bennie changes those bulbs all the time and they never last. And one time …” Nate grunts like he’s changing position. I hear a TV turn on in the background. “Okay, this one’s for real. This girl brought a kitten to school once, to see if anyone wanted it. She had it in
this box, and she walked through the tunnel with it. When she came out the other end, the cat was dead.”

“You are totally making that up,” I say around the heart in my throat.

“Hey, you asked me, I told you. Don’t blame me if you can’t sleep tonight.”

I decide to call his bluff. “Who’d it happen to?”

“Lindsay McCormick.”

So much for bluffs. “It was probably diseased.”

“Probably,” he agrees. “A fluke, like I said.”

I hesitate, happy that he’s talking to me even though he just scared the pants off me. “So you’re not mad at me anymore, because of Saturday night?”

“I’m talking to you in bed at one in the morning. How mad can I be?”

I picture him there, in what, flannel pajamas? Underwear? Nothing at all? The sudden rush of heat leaves me weak. “Okay, good. And, uh, good night.”

I quickly hang up.

A crash wakes me from a dream I forget as soon as I open my eyes. In the small slant of light from the streetlamp outside I can see the beams of the ceiling. What the hell was
that
?

I tiptoe restlessly from window to window. I check out the school—no visible lights—then peer at Nate’s house across the street, dark except for a TV flickering upstairs. Is that his room? Is he still awake? Should I call him back and say:
Hi, I can’t sleep, thanks to your nasty dead-kitten story. Wanna come over for popcorn?

Lightning flashes, followed by thunder. I heave the heavy window up and press my nose to the wet screen, breathing in the night. The storm draws me in. I quiver in its magnetic pull.

My alarm clock says 2:44.

What time did Mrs. Gibbons hang herself?

What was she thinking about before she did it? Was she thinking of Annaliese?

Was she remembering how, every Halloween, kids throw stuff at her house and yell for her dead granddaughter?

Did she miss Annaliese? Does Annaliese, even now, miss her, too?

If Annaliese were alive, she’d be Mom’s age now. Maybe she’d still be living here, sleeping in that canopy bed.

Maybe she and her grandmother would plant flowers together. Play checkers. Laugh at TV shows. Count fireflies on a summer night.
All the things Nana and I used to do.