The Unquiet (25 page)

I’m so creeped out by this revolting story, I think of nothing else the rest of the day. I’m
still
thinking about it after the last bell, when I notice some noisy jocks hanging out in the cafeteria. Yes, Jared’s there, but sitting off to one side, mostly ignoring his obnoxious buddies.

He half rises at my cautious approach. “Hey,” I say.

Jared nods. He doesn’t say hey back. He looks like he wants to
run
. The cloud of testosterone peaks at a critical level as the rest of the guys notice my presence. The booming laughs and dirty jokes cease. Elbows nudge.

I lower my voice. “I have to ask you something about”—I don’t want to say
séance
—“that night.”

Jared’s flash of alarm hardens to irritation. “Look, I’m busy here.”

“Aw, jeez, O’Malley!” One of his teammates. “Be nice to the girl. Ya never know when you’ll need a quick piece of—”

“Do you mind?” I snap back. “This is private.”

At that, Jared jumps up and hustles me a safe distance away. A red stain mottles his hefty neck, working its way up to his angry face. “I
said
I’m
busy
, so make it fast.”

Forget the preamble. “You saw them, didn’t you? At the séance. You saw what happened to them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But his eyes dart.

“You
saw
,” I insist. “That’s why you ran.” I catch his wrist as he turns—a thick, clammy wrist, cool to the touch. “Jared, it’s okay. I saw it, too. I just had to be sure—”

Jared knits his reddish brows menacingly. He leans close,
too
close. “Yeah, I saw it. And I’m telling you now, you say one word about it, I’m gonna deny it, okay?” He jerks his wrist free. “Just stay away from me. You and the
rest
of those freaks!”

As he jogs back to his friends, two thoughts strike me at the same time. One, that this may explain why he broke up with Meg—
is he afraid of her? Does he think she’s a freak because she froze in the pool room?
—and two, this is exactly the proof I’d been hoping for!

What happened in the pool room was not a joke. Not a hallucination, either.

It happened exactly the way I
saw
it happen.

I wait for a wave of relief that never comes.

Friday, November 14

At breakfast Mom says that Lacy’s mom called the school. Lacy’s taking some time off for “health reasons.”

Then she sets a soft-boiled egg down on the table in front of me.

I stare at the cracked white lump, nestled in a ruby-red egg cup. I recognize this cup; Nana gave me a set of four for my thirteenth birthday: “For your hope chest, Rinnie,” like people do that anymore. Three broke. This is the last one left. I don’t even remember packing it.

“She’s staying with relatives in Columbus,” Mom adds.

“Why?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

Disturbed, distracted, I try to peel my egg. I don’t like soft-boiled eggs, and I have no clue why Mom, out of the blue, bothered to cook me one. Guess I’ll stall till she leaves and pitch it down the sink.

Silent, Mom sponges down the counter while I toy with bits of shell. She rinses her fingers, picks up a towel, and halts to nod down at my inedible breakfast. “What are you eating?”

I pretend to study it. “Hmm. Looks like a soft-boiled egg to me.”

“You hate soft-boiled eggs.”

Confused, I ask, “Why’d you make it for me, then?”

“I did?” She glances at the stove, at the pan of murky warm water. “Oh, well.” Playfully she fluffs my yet-unbrushed hair. “See you at school.”

I throw the egg in the trash.

Something weird is going on.

“Do you ever ask your dad about Annaliese?” I ask Nate on our way to school.

“Ask him what?”

“Well, anything. Did he know her? Did they hang out? Was he around when she died?”

Nate stops walking, though he hangs on to my hand. “Is this all you can talk about?”

“It’s not
all
I talk about,” I protest, wondering if it is.

“Excuse me. Maybe only ninety percent of the time, then.”

I shake my hand free. “Sorry I’m so
bor
-ing lately.”

“C’mon. Don’t do this.”

“What am I doing?”

“You’re obsessing.”

“I’m not obsessing. I’m interested.”

“Well, I wish you’d get over it.”

“Why? Am I not paying enough attention to you?”

Nate’s jaw tightens. His chestnut hair blows straight up in a gust of wind, or maybe with fury. “I’m just sick of hearing about Annaliese, Annaliese. I’m sick of hearing about
ghosts
. Can’t we talk about something normal?”

“Normal?”

“Yeah, normal.”

Coldly I reply, “If you want normal, Nate, you
really
picked the wrong girl,” and march off ahead of him.

Ugh, what a day. Meg’s home sick. Tasha’s on her way to Cincinnati for her regionals tomorrow. Cecilia ignores me again. Plus I forgot about the history paper due today, because—I admit it—I can’t get Annaliese out of my mind.

After PE, when everyone gathers to race through the tunnel, I lag back for the first time. Only when the echo of hysterical giggles fades away do I wander over, alone, to the tunnel entrance.

It’s just a dumb corridor.

How scary to think that we all walked through here the other day, not knowing Dino was there on the other side of this wall, hanging upside down, dead for hours.

I gasp when a lightbulb noisily fizzles out. Like Nate said, these lights
always
pop out. Bad wiring, maybe. Amazing that this place doesn’t go up in—

Don’t even think it.

I step close to the pool room door, trying to ignore the chill penetrating my sweater. “Annaliese?” I whisper through the crack.

Pipes clank. I hear a scrabbling sound near the bottom of the door. Another rat?

“Annaliese?” The scrabbling stops. “Hello?”

Silence.

I back away.
There’s nothing in there, nothing in there, nothing in there …

My left shoe sticks to someone’s discarded gum. Bricks pass in a blur as I walk rapidly to the opposite end of the corridor, counting the burned-out lightbulbs: seven in all. When I reach the cafeteria door and the reassuring chatter beyond, I jubilantly leap out and blink in the light.

There—I did it!

Take THAT, Annaliese.

With my stomach knotted up all morning, thanks to the egg episode, plus my fight with Nate, I decide to skip lunch and seek out Bennie Unger.

I discover him scarfing down a sandwich in the custodian’s closet.

“I know you,” he says through a mouthful of bread and bologna. “You’re Corinne.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I know everybody here.” He pops open a Thermos, digs a couple of pills out of his pocket, and washes them down with whatever’s in that bottle. It smells like V8. “I get fits sometimes,” he explains. “I gotta take medicine so I don’t fall out.”

I fidget, hoping he doesn’t fall out anytime soon.

He pulls off his ever-present knit cap and points to the dent in his skull. “They took out a piece of my brain. I was puttin’ on a roof with my brother and I fell right off.”

Stifling a shudder, I wait till his cap’s back on. “Can I talk to you?”

Bennie doesn’t seem surprised. In fact, he acts like he
expected
me to show up here today. This, in itself, is spooky weird; I’ve barely exchanged five words with him, ever. Not that I’m a follow-the-herd kind of girl, but it’s supremely uncool to hang out with the school janitor.

I dive right in and explain everything. How Lacy clobbered me. How both Meg and Cecilia felt that oily, smelly air creep down their throats. I explain about the séance, and the wax, and how everyone froze up. “I think something happened. I think we …”
Unleashed something?

“You think you all called her up,” he states matter-of-factly. “That Annaliese girl.”

“You do believe in her. That’s why you told us that day—‘there’s nobody there
now
.’ Right, Bennie?” Half of me hopes he’ll say no.

Bennie peers around the cluttered closet like he’s checking for video cams. “This ain’t a joke, right? I don’t like people laughing at me.”

Whatever crap I’ve gone through the past few years may be nothing compared to what Bennie’s had to endure. “I’m serious, Bennie. And I’m not gonna laugh.”

Bennie shifts to the other foot. “Okay. I ain’t never
seen
nothin’ … but she’s there, all right. She’s been there a long time.
You
didn’t call her out.” He shakes a chastising finger. “You all weren’t supposed to go in there, anyhow.”

“How do you know she’s there if you haven’t seen her?”

Bennie hunches his sloping shoulders. “Same way you know. You just
know
. Anyhow, Miz Prout told me, too.”

“Miz Prout?” I repeat.

“Yup. She’d take her lunch and go sit by the pool every day.” He pats his oversized key ring with pride. “I’d let her in there myself and clean out a place for her to sit. She always said, ‘Thank you, Bennie.’ She sure liked her peace and quiet. She’d sit in her folding chair and eat her lunch and read for a spell. Then she’d get up and leave. That’s before she got sad.”

“Sad how?”

He cracks his knuckles, one by one. “She used to take pills every day, just like me. She’d drink ’em down with her lunchtime coffee. Then one day she says to me, ‘Bennie, I’m tired of taking these pills.’ And then, I reckon, she didn’t take ’em no more.”

“What kind of pills?”

“Well, they must’ve been happy pills, ’cause then she stopped being happy. She’d cry sometimes. And she’d walk around that pool, just walk, walk, walk, like she didn’t have no other place else to go. I’d hear her talkin’, too. Talking to
Annaliese.
” He scratches the back of his cap. “I reckon she was one of those ladies who sees things, like with crystal balls and stuff. Only she didn’t have no crystal ball.”

Entranced, I ask, “Was she a medium?”

“Yeah, sort of regular size. But not as big as Miz Gibbons.
She
came here, too. Miz Prout brought her once. Good thing Mr. Solomon didn’t know.”

“Why’d she bring Mrs. Gibbons?”

“So they could call up Annaliese ’cause Miz Gibbons missed her so much. She was a sad lady, too.
Real
lonesome.”

I ponder this. Did Miss Prout believe she could communicate with Annaliese? So she brought Mrs. Gibbons along to “visit” her dead granddaughter?

I ask Bennie this. He only shrugs. “Beats me. But it was pretty soon after that when Miz Prout went away. Then poor old Miz Gibbons—” He makes a vague jerking motion above his head.

“Bennie, do you know why Miss Prout left town so fast?”

“Yep. So Annaliese couldn’t find her.”

“What do you mean, f-find her?”

Bennie industriously wraps up the remnants of his sandwich. “Like she found you girls. And like she found that boy, Dino.” A regretful headshake. “He acted mean, but I never wished him no harm. Nope, not like that.”

The end-of-lunch bell rings, I have to get to English, but something else nags me. “You said Miss Prout ‘told’ you about Annaliese. What did she
say
, Bennie? Exactly?”