The Unquiet (33 page)

I wake up from a dead, overdue sleep to the sound of car doors slamming outside. Woozy and disoriented, dying of thirst, I grope my way down to the first floor in time to hear Millie whimper, “I’m being punished, Mo. Punished!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Mom objects. From my perch on the steps I hear her fill the tea kettle and drop it on a burner. “You know it’s not your fault.”

“Then whose is it? My child
killed
herself. How can I live with that?” Millie’s wretched sobs drown out Mom’s comforting words. “Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I see it coming?”

“Because you can’t always see it. Didn’t they tell you that at the support group?”

Millie half snorts, half sobs. “Support group, my ass. They have no idea.
You
have no idea.”

“I do have an idea. You know I do.”

Don’t talk about me, Mom. Please—don’t say it.

I creep through the living room, then through the dining room.

“It’s not the same thing. You just don’t know!”

“Then
tell
me, Mil.”

A brief silence. Then Millie asks warily, “Where’s Rinn?”

“I don’t know. Upstairs. Millie, please, why do you think you’re so different? What do you mean
punished
?”

All I hear is mumble, mumble. I tiptoe closer and peek around the edge of the kitchen door. There, I see Millie snuffling into her hands.

And Mom, blanched and rigid, one fist pressed to her mouth.

What did Millie just tell her? Why did I have to miss it?

Mom’s ESP kicks in. She zooms right over. “Rinn! Are you eavesdropping?”

Millie emits a small moan at this. I feign innocence. “No. I just need a drink of water.”

Mom points firmly to the sink. “Then get it and go.”

I snap back, “Well, you don’t have to be so nasty about it!”

“And
you
don’t need to be skulking around, listening in on conversations.”

Embarrassed, infuriated, I spin around and stomp back the way I came. Upstairs, I slam the attic door and run up to my room. There, with a shriek, I dive onto my mattress.

It feels so good to scream that I do it again.

Then again.

And again!

Nobody cares.

Monday, December 8
“Experiment: Day #7”

Once again my unstoppable thoughts keep me awake all night. I roam the house, at a loss for anything to do. I even slip outside and stroll around the block, enjoying the stillness of the dark cold night.

I stop at the school, and sit on the steps to watch the clouds drifting over the moon. But all the same thoughts and memories race through my brain, over and over, over and over—like not one, but a
zillion
songs stuck in your head at the same time. When a car slows at the curb—
rapists, serial killers, scoping me out
—I jump up and run home.

I make coffee, throw on clothes, and blast my radio full volume—
how do YOU like being woken up in the middle of the night, Mom?
—but with no effect. At last I leave for school, earlier than usual to avoid Nate. I’m not sure if I’m mad because he turned me down, or mad at myself for coming on to him. Why did I
do
that? I haven’t the foggiest.

By 11:00 I decide I owe him an apology. At 12:00 I change my mind. By 1:00 I’ve not only changed it again, I’m also seriously considering getting back
on
my meds before I try to jump someone else’s bones. Mr. Chenoweth’s, say.

But after school, embarrassed all over again, I rush home without even looking for Nate.

Hyper in spite of so little sleep, I zip through my homework, blowing off biology, and spend the evening in exile, listening to Frank’s favorite old songs on my iPod. Has he called here lately? If so, Mom never mentioned it.

Call him, Rinn.

What if he hangs up on me?

Take a chance!

I can’t. I’m afraid.

Because you’re a big fat baby. You’re pathetic. Pathetic!

My thoughts spin faster and faster: I think of Frank, and then Nate, and how I took off my clothes—
why did he turn me down? Am I ugly? Is he gay? Does he secretly hate me?—and Mom didn’t care that I didn’t eat tonight, or all day, really, and she hasn’t figured out I’m not taking my meds, does she care, no she doesn’t, and Millie’s being punished, she was mean to Tasha, and I miss her, miss her, and Meg, too, Meg, Meg, and I should practice “My Sweet Lord” but I can’t think straight, oh, crap, I can’t sit still, maybe a Klonopin, no, no, remember Annaliese, Annaliese, oh Nana, where are you and why did you leave me?

By 3:00 a.m. my room’s immaculate, every stitch of clothing meticulously folded and placed in my drawers—no, in
Annaliese’s
drawers. Then I cradle my guitar and sing “My Sweet Lord” under my breath, praying for the strength not to pop a pill.

I hear music again, and it’s Mom, trying to play “Für Elise.” Who’d guess that she studied music in college, that she might’ve played professionally one day if Señor Jay hadn’t knocked her up? She hits the same two notes over and over. I grit my teeth till my jaw aches, then switch on the radio—loud—and haul my biology book out. I read four straight chapters, and, amazingly, absorb every word about autotrophs, heterotrophs, and photosynthesis.

“A
ha!
See?” Jubilant, I kick the book aside. With all those poisonous chemicals purged from my system, I can think more clearly, comprehend things better. Even biology!

Pleased, I dress for school at 4:30 and pack up my book bag and my guitar; Mr. Chenoweth’s holding our first rehearsal for the Christmas concert tonight. As I swipe on lip gloss, I notice in the mirror the reflection of my wall and that ugly chip in my paint job. I remember asking Nate about the new drywall, why he didn’t leave the walls as they were.

He’d said, “It was some pretty ugly wallpaper,” and left it at that.

I drop the plastic tube, crouch on the floor, and pick at the dent. Inside the crack I see a hint of flowered wallpaper, so I dig till it’s big enough for me to notice something else. Is that
handwriting
in there?
I have to see!

Downstairs, I slip past Mom and her mangled Beethoven, and ravage the jumble of tools she keeps under the sink. Armed with necessities, I rush back. After a few pounds with a hammer and jabs from a screwdriver, the crack transforms into a book-sized
hole. Distantly I’m aware of that David Gilmour song—“There’s No Way Out of Here”—drifting from my speakers.

“No way out, huh?” I whack my tools in time with the music. “That’s what you think.”

Pound, pound, pound
with the hammer. Then jab, twist, and flip with the screwdriver. Bit by bit I fling out chunks of drywall, haunted by Gilmour’s words, the same surreal strains of his guitar playing over and over …

When at last I step back to study the hole, made bigger by breaking off pieces with my hands, I can easily read the writing on the faded flowered wall.

Bible verses.

Lyrics to a hymn everybody in the world knows: “I once was lost but now I’m found.”

And
ANNALIESE, ANNALIESE
scrawled a thousand times over.

Behind me, Mom shouts, “Rinn! What’re you doing?” over the deafening music.

I blink.

I’m standing there at the wall, coated in gray dust and flecks of chiseled drywall. Some pop song blasts from my radio—not Gilmour at all—and my bedside clock says 6:07.

“Corinne Katherine Jacobs. Will you please explain why you’re knocking down w
alls
?”

Suddenly, I’m incredibly happy.
This
person sounds
exactly
like my mom—not that sullen, nocturnal stranger who can’t play Beethoven, and smokes, and throws out nasty hints about burning down houses.

I point triumphantly to the mutilated wall. “Mom, look
what she wrote! Annaliese’s name, and all these Bible verses, and—”

Mom steps closer. She’s dressed for school. I smell soap and shampoo, and, from downstairs, the aroma of coffee. “Honey. What’s going on?”

“Nothing! I just wanted to see what was under the drywall.”

Exasperation flashes. “Do you have any idea what it’ll cost to repair this?”

“Mom, don’t you get it? Mrs. Gibbons was trying to
communicate
with her. She did it at school, too. In the pool room, with Miss Prout!”

Screwdriver poised, I move toward the hole—
funny how it’s so much bigger than I thought
—but Mom catches me. “Stop!” She points to the enormous mess on the floor. “You pick up the pieces. I’ll bring up the vacuum. And don’t you dare touch that wall again. Are you five years old, Rinn?”

She stomps downstairs. Confused now, I stand there and stare at the hole.

It’s as tall as me. Maybe three feet across.

What the hell did I just do?

“The goofiness has started,” I murmur to Nate at my locker. “The real deal.”

Thank God he’s speaking to me. “What’d you do?”

“I tore down a wall. Well, not a whole one, but—”

“Which wall?”

I narrow my eyes. “One of the ones
you
covered up.”

“Oh, that,” he says noncommittally.

“Why didn’t you tell me Mrs. Gibbons wrote all that stuff?”

“’Cause I didn’t want you freaking out?” Nate nods at my neck as I gear up to tell him off. “Look, you’re the one who told me about
that
. How was I supposed to know how you’d react?”

Guess I can’t blame him for that.

“Okay, so you knocked down a wall. That’s goofy,” he concedes. “But is it crazy?”

“Well, there’s that time warp.” I explain how I lost two hours. How I heard the same song playing over and over as the twelve-inch hole I’d planned turned into a cavern. “I swear I was only at it, like fifteen minutes. I started at four. When my mom came up it was
six
.”

“Okay. That’s crazy.”

“And what I did …” I falter, knowing I have to face this. “To you. The other day.”

Nate smiles. “Under any other circumstances, I’d definitely take you up on it.”

Cheeks hot, I press on. “Anyway, I think we need to do this now,
today
, before I do something worse. Maybe after school? After rehearsal?” Because Nate’s in the orchestra, he’ll be there, too.

His smile fades. “I guess. But it’s still a bad idea.”

“Well, if you don’t want to, I’ll go by myself, then.” I pray he doesn’t ask how I plan to hang on to both ends of the rope.

“Like
hell
you will.”

Nate waits in silence while I tie the clothesline, around my waist this time since I can’t trust my belt loops. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this.”

I haul the flashlight out of my book bag. “I’ll be okay. Just pay attention.”

Without warning he shouts, “No,
you
pay attention!” He drowns out my
shush
with, “Ghosts don’t exist, Annaliese doesn’t exist, and I have
no—idea
what the hell you’re trying to prove here.”

Shocked by his nasty tone, I retort, “You had ice in your hair. Ice! And you’ve been too damned scared to even talk about that! So don’t lie to me and say you don’t believe in ghosts.”