The Unquiet (26 page)

Bennie frowns, thinking hard. “Oh.” He brightens. “She said ‘Be sure to take your medicine, Bennie.’”

“Why’d she say that?”

Bennie smiles broadly. “ ’Cause then I can’t see nothin’. Then Annaliese can’t touch me.”

Nate and I make up after school. I apologize for my snarky attitude. Nate apologizes for his rudeness and for not being more sensitive to my Annaliese fixation. Then he invites me to his house to do homework.

Luke and Mom, I’ve noticed, are spending more time together, too. Tonight, in fact, they’re having dinner at some fancy restaurant in Kellersberg. Nate and I avoid this subject while he diligently works on a German paper, and I sweat buckets of blood over my algebra problems. I’m not sure which is
the biggest shocker: That Mom and Luke no longer want to rip each other’s throats out? Or that Mom trusts me enough to let me hang out with Nate, at night, in an empty house, without supervision?

I surrender in the middle of my second page of problems. “If I tell you something about Annaliese, will you flip out again?”

Nate drops his pen. “This is the part where I’m supposed to be more sensitive, right?”

I relate what Bennie Unger told me. “So he thinks if he takes his seizure meds, Annaliese can’t hurt him.”

“Need I remind you, surfer girl, that Bennie’s not all there?”

“He’s there enough. He
believes
this stuff. So did Miss Prout and Mrs. Gibbons. Were
they
missing part of their brains?”

“Well …” Nate thinks. “Miss Prout was an oddball. She’d deal Tarot cards right in the office, and read fortunes and stuff. And
obviously
Mrs. Gibbons had problems. Anyway, how do you know Bennie wasn’t making it up? Nobody talks to him. You gave him a captive audience.”

“He was pretty convincing.” But I’m thinking:
Tarot cards?

Nate pushes his book aside. “Let’s watch TV. It’ll get your mind off this stuff.”

“I hate TV. How many times do I have to tell you?”

“Yeah, but you never told me why.”

“It reminds me of my grandmother,” I admit. “We’d watch those old reruns one after another.
Bewitched
was her favorite.”

“Not
Laverne and Shirley
?”

Wow! He remembers our first conversation? “No, that was mine. I liked
The Andy Griffith Show
, too. I called you Opie in my mind when I met you,” I confess shyly.

He plays with my hair. “Is that good?”

“Oh, yeah. Opie’s cute. If we had
cable
around here I could show you how cute.”

“Maybe we could rent the DVDs and watch them together.”

“That’d be cool.”

So we curl up on the sofa together with the TV on.

Not that we watch it, of course.

Saturday, November 15

Moving from headstone to headstone, I search for the grave of Annaliese Gibbons. At last I find it, but the grave is open, the lid to the casket gone, and Annaliese stares up from her satin pillow. I smile. She smiles back—and then I watch in horror as her lips erupt into blisters. Her face blackens and curls, torched by invisible fire, till all that remains is a raw, leering skull and the stench of cooked meat.

Haunted by the nightmare, half-dead from a cold, I stumble downstairs for something to clear the Play-Doh out of my nose. Mom hands me a blister pack of cold tablets. “Nate was looking for you already, but I told him you were sick. I heard you sneezing all night.”

I moan. “I feel
awww
-ful.” And if I feel awful, Nate’s bound to get it, too. Last night was lovely.

I swallow the tablets with my regular meds. “No riding for
you today,” Mom warns. “Stay in bed. I’m going to pick up some groceries. You want anything?”

Too sick to shake my aching head, I crawl back to my room, burrow under the covers, and sleep until the phone rings later in the afternoon.

“There’s nothing wrong,” a voice says in my ear.

“What?”

“With
me
. I got the MRI results today. There’s nothing wrong—which means there’s nothing they can do.” Meg hiccups. “Tasha’s out of town, and I had no one else to c-call, and oh, God, I can’t b-believe this is
happening
to me.”

“You want me to come over?” My feet are already on the floor.

Ignoring my offer, she cries out, “How can they say there’s nothing wrong? This buzzing is
killing
me. Oh God, my ears hurt so bad,
sooo baaad
—”

In the background a woman chides, “Meg, please don’t be so dramatic.”

“
But they hurt!
” Meg screams, nearly cracking
my
ear.

“I know, but the doctor said—”

“Who cares what he said? I can’t fucking
cheer
!”

Hearing Meg drop the F-bomb—to her mom, no less—sets off a terrible alarm. The Meg I know never uses that word. “Meg?”

“For that, young lady”—her mother’s voice moves closer—“you can hang that phone up right now.”

“
I’m using this goddamn phone!
” Meg screeches back at her.

“I
said
—”

I hear a smack against flesh. Then the sounds of a tussle. The phone drops.

“Meg!” I shout. “Meg, pick up the phone!”

“Stop! What are you doing?” Meg’s mom screams in the distance. “What the
hell
are you doing?”

More scuffling.

“No!” Meg’s mom, gasping, hysterical. “Stop! Oh God, no!
No-o-o-o!
”

Moans. Inaudible cries. Panicked sobbing.

And then … a terrible quiet.

“Meg,” I shriek. “Meg, I’m coming over right now!” As I start to hang up, I hear the clunk of someone picking the phone off the floor. Steady breathing whooshes in my ear. “Meg? Did you hear me? I’m on my way!”

“Don’t bother,” Meg whispers, eerily calm. “I’m fine. Really.”

Gently, she hangs up.

Nate answers the door to my frantic pounding. As he savagely scrapes ice from the windshield of his jeep, we hear the approaching sirens.

I freeze. “Forget the car!” And I race off, my feet skidding in yesterday’s slush that turned to ice overnight.

Taking the well-plowed streets instead of the treacherous sidewalks, it takes us less than five minutes to reach the Carmodys’. By then, the police and ambulance are there.

Nate hauls me back, trapping me in his arms. “Wait!”

Hugging him to me, I watch in horror as paramedics carry a stretcher out of the house. At first I think it
must
be Meg, then realize it’s not—it’s a woman bundled in blankets, oxygen strapped to her face. “Is that her mom?”

Nate nods, rigid with disbelief.

“What happened?” I cry out as a police officer shuffles us out of the way.

The cop ignores me and mutters into his walkie-talkie. I struggle, but Nate grips me tighter. As they load Meg’s mom into the ambulance, the front door opens again.

It’s Meg. In handcuffs.

Trees and houses and cars spin around me. I lunge again, taking Nate by surprise, breaking free of his arms. I dodge the officer and stumble up the icy drive. I’m an arm’s length away from Meg when another cop grabs me. Close up, I notice the blood on her clothes, on her arms, even on her face. “Meg! What—what happened?”

Meg rolls her heavy-lidded eyes toward me. “I told her to stay away from me. I
begged
her to. But she just wouldn’t listen.” She balks as the cops hustle her toward the squad car. “No! Wait! I have to tell her something.”

The cops pause. The guy holding my arm lets me move an inch closer. Meg looks right into my face and smiles her old familiar smile, though her eyes remain flat, devoid of any life.

“The buzzing’s gone. I’m okay now, Rinn.”

I spend the afternoon on the sofa with my head in Nate’s lap. Mom doesn’t mind. She and Luke sit pretty close themselves.

Why did she do it? Why?
The question pecks at my brain with a ragged beak.

“Maybe we need more coffee,” Mom suggests, probably to break the silence.

Luke objects, “Maybe we need something stronger.”

“Wine?”

“That’ll do.”

He follows Mom into the kitchen. I hear the clatter of glasses, the pop of a cork, hushed voices, and the scraping of two chairs. I hear the click of a lighter, once, then twice. Mom’s having a cigarette? I’m too upset to care.

Nate tucks hair behind my ear. “You okay?”

“I just wish I knew why she did it.”

“People snap,” he says, like I don’t already know this.

I sit up and scooch back till we’re side by side on the sofa. “She said her ears hurt. She was crying, Nate, crying with pain. But then, after she did it, the ringing went away.” I hug myself.
Like that’s what it took. Like hurting someone was the only way to get it to stop
. “The way Lacy’s headache went away after she wrote that letter.”

“What letter?”

I tell Nate about the letter, and about Lacy’s miscarriage.

He doesn’t say I’m crazy. He says nothing at all.

Sunday, November 23

The headline in the
River Hills Journal
reads: LOCAL GIRL ARRESTED IN DOMESTIC DISPUTE. I skim it only for the facts I care about: that Meg’s mom is in serious condition, but there’s no question that she’ll recover. And that Meg’s in jail, on suicide watch. She hasn’t been charged yet.

Millie has a cell phone. Nobody gets a signal around here, but Tasha says they use it when they’re out of town for practice or competitions. Mom tries the number this morning, fearing the Luxes might read this and find out about Meg before anyone can tell them in person.

I can’t imagine how Tasha’s going to take this.

But Millie’s phone flips right to voice mail. “I don’t get it,” I say as Mom hangs up a second time. “Regionals were yesterday. You’d think Millie’d be calling CNN, at least.”

“It’s strange,” Mom admits. “I thought for sure she’d call last night and let us know how Tasha did.”

Personally I’m glad we can’t reach them by phone. Some things
need
to be said face-to-face, and I think telling someone her best friend’s in jail is one of them. Especially when you have to tell her why.