The Unquiet (9 page)

“I don’t care what you do. Just keep your hands off
me
.”

“Don’t
you
ever lose control? You do, don’t you?” she insists when I hesitate. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t. But I accept your apology.” I hang up hard and turn back to my math book. The phone rings again only a few minutes later. “WHAT?”

“Hey, it’s me—Meg. Why’d you hang up on Lacy?”

Why am
I
being attacked by a posse of cheerleaders? “I don’t want to talk about Lacy, okay? I’ve been in the middle of the same math problem for ten minutes now.”

“Forget her,” Meg agrees. “I want to talk about that tunnel. Look, I know people have joked about it for years. But seriously, Rinn, something’s wrong in there.”

“Why? Because the fence shook?”

“Not just that. I didn’t say anything before, but … remember the first time I took you in there? Something happened that day. Something tried to choke me. I
felt
it.”

“Is this a joke?” I ask bluntly. “Are you guys trying to freak me out?” Maybe Lacy goaded her into it, to pay me back for slamming the phone.

“No joke. And the same thing happened today, only worse. Now my ears hurt. I’m all dizzy and nauseous. Something’s not right, Rinn. It’s scary.”

“Maybe it’s the flu.”

She ignores that. “I asked Lacy if she noticed anything funny. She said no.”

That’s because she was too busy beating me up.

“You didn’t feel anything? Really?”

“It got cold,” I admit. “And I did hear that fence.”

“You’re not messing with me, right?”

“No, Meg. I think you’re messing with
me
.” Though now I’m having my doubts.

“I’m not. I totally swear.” A long sigh. “Look, do me a favor—
please
don’t tell anyone what I said. They’ll think I’m nuts.”

Yeah, they will.
“My lips are sealed,” I promise.

Saturday, October 25

As someone who’s always drawn to the “bad boy” type, I can’t explain my attraction to a certified band geek who’ll probably major in animal husbandry and end up inseminating cows for a living.

Saturday morning, I ignore the banging at the door, figuring it’s someone who hopes to convert me. Next thing I know I hear feet creeping upstairs. “Hey, surfer girl.”

I pull the covers up to my chin, astonished at Nate’s audacity. “Do you always break into people’s homes at the crack of dawn?”

“I didn’t break in. Your door wasn’t locked.”

“That’s highly unlikely.” I refuse to believe Mom would fall back so easily into that dangerous small town habit. Why not put up a sign? homicidal maniacs welcome.

Nate hangs his head. “Okay, I’ve got a key. But that’s what
you get for not changing the locks,” he adds self-righteously. Before I can dispute this, he adds, “I’m off to the stable. Remember? I invited you?”

“Um, I didn’t realize we had, you know, an actual date.”

“Get dressed. I mean it,” he adds when I scoot farther under the covers. “Don’t make me come over there and get you.”

“Okay! Just leave!”

The second he’s gone, I jump up and wrestle into the same jeans I wore yesterday, adding a fresh shirt, a sweater, and clean pair of socks. I brush my teeth and my hair, and roll on a double-duty layer of deodorant. Tiptoeing past Mom’s room, I hear her snoring. No point in waking her. I leave a note by the coffee pot.

“You could’ve warned me,” I complain, yanking on my old Keds while Nate helps himself to some SunnyD.

“You’re not much of a spontaneous gal, are you?”

I pause. “Tell me you didn’t just refer to me as a gal.”

“Sorry. It slipped out.”

Nate drives a jeep. I don’t mean the elegant, overpriced Jeeps you see cruising the sunny streets of La Jolla. I mean a
real
jeep, a muddy, battered green, decades-old relic. We take the hilly roads at a breathtaking sixty miles an hour, which for some masochistic reason happens to be the real speed limit. We turn in at a large white house with a sign—ROCKY MEADOWS FARM: PRIVATE PROPERTY—and roar down a winding drive in a blast of gravel and leaves.

When we jump out, I stand there, inhaling the scent of hay, dirt, and horses. I haven’t been this close to a horse since that terrible episode with Chinook.
I missed this!
“Who owns this place?”

“Friends of my dad. They let us keep Ginger and Xan here for free, plus they pay me for mucking the stalls and turning out the horses. They’re hardly ever here.”

Mud sucks my shoes as we trudge uphill. Inside the L-shaped barn, horses stamp in their stalls and nicker greetings. I wander, quivering with excitement, along the row of stall doors, aware of curious snorts and clunking hooves.

Nate unlatches one stall. “Here’s your big baby. Don’t let his size scare you away.”

I gasp as the huge black horse snuffles my hand. “What is he, a Percheron?”

Nate seems pleased that I knew this right off. “Yep. He’s Dad’s, really, but he never gets out here to ride him. We call him Xan, for Alexander the Great.” He leads the horse out and expertly crossties him in the aisle. “A warrior horse, named after a warrior. Think you can tack him up?”

“In my sleep,” I boast.

I may have spoken too soon; I can barely reach high enough to throw the blanket over his back. Nervously, I eye the bulky Western saddle. “No English saddles?”

“Nope. Sorry ’bout that, Your Highness.”

He lends a hand with the saddle with no rude remarks about my lack of height. The bridle’s easier; Xan obligingly lowers his head for me, while Nate tacks up Ginger. “You sure you’re okay with this? I mean, after what happened …”

How sweet that he remembers. “I don’t scare very easily.”

Nate chuckles. “Fearless Rinn.”

Leading Xan, I follow Ginger’s shiny hindquarters out of the stable. I hop on a mounting block, step into the stirrup, and throw my leg over a back roughly the size of a speedboat.

“Good boy!” I pat Xan’s glossy neck, considering the distance between my skull and the earth. I’m not used to riding without a helmet. Boots, either. But after Nate’s saddle remark, I keep it to myself.

Sunlight glints through the golden canopy of leaves as we roam, side by side, first along the path, then out into an open field with mist-coated hills in the distance. When Nate clucks Ginger into a canter, Xan takes off, too. Unafraid, I sway comfortably in time to his easy rhythm, gripping his massive sides with my long-unused leg muscles.

“You’re good,” Nate shouts over. “You wanna race?”

I squint ahead, relishing a tingle of excitement. “You’re on!”

Nate wins, but barely. After we cool down the horses and put them up, he asks if I’d like to drive the jeep home. He scoffs when I mention I don’t have a license. “Kids start driving these back roads when they’re nine or ten. Think you can you drive a stick?”

He demonstrates. He’s surprisingly patient as I brutalize his gears:
move, jerk, stop, move, jerk, stop, JERK!
After a couple of miles I get the hang of it.

Back in his driveway, I jump out on wobbly legs and rub my sore butt. I’m
so
gonna pay for this. “Thanks for taking me, Nate. Especially after I told you all that stuff about me.”

“Shucks.” He climbs out, too. “Takes more’n that to scare off an ole country boy.”

Before I can complain that now
he’s
wearing out the joke, Nate unexpectedly touches my cheek. Is he going to kiss me now?

Instead, his fingers move down to trace my scar under my windblown hair. “Just wonderin’. Did the voices tell you to do this?”

Annoyed, I flick his hand away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” he says congenially. “Then let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Like Homecoming.” His lips brush my forehead. “You want to go with me?”

Mom’s eyes bug out. “He asked you to Homecoming? What did you say?”

“Nothing, really …”

“Well, thank goodness.” Evasive, she eyes a spot on the ceiling.

“Wait. Don’t you want me to go?”

“Of course I do. It’s just that … Rinn, do you really
like
him?”

“God, Mom. First you’re all bent out of shape because you think I won’t make any friends. Now you’re bent out of shape because I got asked to a dance?”

“I know, I know.”

“Why do you care that it’s Nate? Is it because of his dad?” A gruesome idea strikes me. “Is Luke my father? Is that the big secret around here?”

“Your dad?” Mom splutters. “Oh my God, no!”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! Luke was a year ahead of me, he went off to college, and I never saw him again. Rinn, I
told
you who
your father is.”
Yeah, that one-night stand.
“I’d never lie about that.”

I relax. “Then why do you hate Luke?”

Mom sinks into a kitchen chair. “I don’t
hate
him. Not really.”

“You never did tell me why he dumped you.”

“Because he found someone else.” Mom whaps the table. “Oh, I could just shoot Millie for not clueing me in. Now I’m living across the street from him. I’m renting his house. My daughter’s dating his son! This is just, just—”

“Ironic?” I offer. Mom covers her face. I can’t tell if she’s laughing or crying. “Mom, if it’s gonna upset you, I don’t have to go to this dance.” Which, after all, means buying a dress, acting all sweet and girly, and hanging out with people I hardly know.

“No.” Dry-eyed, Mom straightens up. “I want you to go. And I want you to have the time of your life. Promise me?”

“Promise I’ll have a good time? Isn’t that kind of a waste? I mean, what about promising not to break curfew, or do drugs, or fool around, or—”

“
Ri-i-inn
…”

“I solemnly promise,” I recite, “to have the best time of my life.”

Monday, October 27

Dino Mancini is stalking me.

Well, sort of. First thing today, I find him at my locker, though he takes off down the hall when he sees me coming.

He watches me so intently during homeroom, he forgets to say “here” when Mrs. Schimmler barks his name.

He says hi to me in the hall no matter how many times we pass. Once or twice might be flattering. Six times is annoying.

In art, he asks me questions about our projects I can’t even answer. He raves about my blob of gray clay that, sadly, still looks like a blob of gray clay. He makes witty remarks to get my attention and finds every excuse to brush up against the back of my chair.

Finally Meg complains, “Will you
please
knock it off?”—prompting Mr. Lipford to threaten Dino with a trip to the office.

“I’m not doin’ anything,” Dino protests, with a conspiratorial smile for me.

“Exactly. Get back to work, or get out.”

“God,” Meg murmurs when Dino slinks away. “He’s, like,
obsessed
with you.”

Is he? Why? Why is he bothering with
me
? Is it because I’m new, so he wants to hit on me before Meg, or anyone else, poisons my mind against him?

Or, worse, does he somehow see through me? Has he already pegged me for a girl who’d consider ditching lunch to smoke some bud, and whatever else he has in mind? Because the old Rinn, the sick Rinn, might’ve done exactly that.

No, she
definitely
would’ve done that. And enjoyed every second.

“Why don’t you like him?” I ask, because it’s obvious Meg doesn’t.

“Because A, he’s a burnout. B, he’s a horn dog. C, he’s trash. And D, he’s Jared’s cousin—which means if I marry him, I’ll be related to the jerk.”

“So,
why
don’t you like him?”

My quip sends Meg into splutters. Mr. Lipford then levels his glare on
us
. Quickly I fake some intense interest in my project, acutely aware of Dino’s eyes on me, too.