The Unquiet (4 page)

In the nearby town of Westfield, we find a marked-down mattress in a family-owned “value” store, namely, a musty warehouse jammed with the leftover rejects no self-respecting retailer would stock. Mom says I can use the canopy bed if she can get “someone” to drag it up to the third floor. Of course she means Nate, who just hoisted the mattress effortlessly to the roof of the SUV and tied it with rope.

“I don’t want a canopy bed.” That is so not me. “I’ll just put it on the floor.”

We then stop at Walmart for a lamp and an extra phone for my room. Linens, pillows, and other household junk. School supplies. An iPod dock because my computer’s in California. And a fake-wood desk, unassembled in a box, that Nate promises to put together for me.

“Paint,” I remind Mom. “Those white walls have to go.”

Nate objects, “Hey, it took me three days to paint that room.”

I smile pleasantly. “Bet you can do it again in two.”

After I choose a lovely shade of gray called Precious Pewter, Mom tells Nate to pick out a CD to thank him for his help. Nate protests, “Aw, that’s not necessary. It was my pleasure.” I smother a giggle. “What?” he asks crossly.

“You’re just so gosh darn
nice
.”

“Why does that sound like an insult?” he wonders.

Later, after grocery shopping, Mom asks what we want for lunch. What
I
want is to get back home so I can take those frigging pills! Will a few extra hours make a difference?

“Can’t we get something to go?” I ask irritably.

“Fine with me.” Nate, squashed beside me in the front seat, since there’s no room left in back, studies his new CD. I don’t recognize the band. I prefer Frank’s music: classic rock. “I got
chores
to do, anyhow.”

After a Burger King stop, I nibble a french fry and stare at the dashboard. It’s 3:13—unlucky thirteen—and I’m seven hours behind on my meds. “I hope we don’t have to make this trip every week. Isn’t there a grocery store in town?”

“Sure there is,” Nate replies. “Right on the square next to the feed store. But it’s not open on Sundays.”

“People in Hicksville don’t eat on Sundays?”

“A’course we eat,” he agrees in his fake Mayberry drawl. “Matter a’fact, soon’s I git home and rustle up some grits, I got me a big ole hog I gotta butcher.” He taps the back of my head. “Wanna lend me a hand, surfer girl?”

I can’t even smile.
Seven hours late, eight by the time we get home. Do I double up? No, no, that’s a bad idea …

I cross my fingers and stare bleakly out the window.

Home at last, Nate and I lug the mattress to the attic—not an easy task—and drop it on the floor. With only a screwdriver and his bare hands, he throws my new desk together, too. Then he hauls an old chair up from the cellar and wipes it down. Of course I’m grateful, but—
enough already! Go!

When he finally leaves, I gobble my morning pills. No point in taking another dose later, or chances are I won’t wake up tomorrow. Then I settle back with my guitar and strum a while.

My heart’s not in it. My heart hasn’t been in
anything
since Nana died.

Now Frank’s gone, too. Not dead, but he might as well be.

Because I’m dead to him.

I shove my guitar into the turret and Frank out of my thoughts, then crawl under my new comforter that smells like plastic and chemicals. After my eyes adjust, I can make out the shapes of the beams crisscrossing the ceiling.

I imagine one falling on me while I’m asleep.

Did one of them just move? Was that a creak?

My windup alarm clock ticks inches from my head. The only other sounds I hear are a barking dog and a tree scraping the house.

At least I hope it’s a tree.

Stop it! Just go to sleep …

Unnerved, I rub the scar on my neck. How long can I keep it covered before someone notices? In this climate, in the winter, I can live in turtlenecks. But what about when spring rolls around?

What’ll Nate say the first time he sees it?

Oh, who cares? I don’t even know if he likes me.

Scrape, scrape … scrape, scrape.

That tree branch again.
Or is someone breaking in?

Is a beam breaking loose, about to slam down on my head?

I throw back my comforter and turn my Walmart lamp back on. Shadows dance. I can’t sleep under these beams, not tonight, maybe not ever. I drag my makeshift bed over to the turret, the stony cubby I’d hoped to reserve for books and rainy days. No ghostly beams here, but the mattress doesn’t fit.

Resigned, I drag it back. Then I move to the window on the other side of my room. From here, at the top of the house, I see the outline of my new school in the dark. A row of windows near the ground glows with murky yellow light. Then, while I watch, they blink out one by one.

Not a power failure; my own lamp burns behind me. A safe electric lamp that can’t cause any fires.

A Debussy tune floats up through the heat register. I tiptoe downstairs and watch my mother’s hands dance across the yellowed piano keys. Noticing me, she pats the space beside her. “Can’t sleep?”

I shake my head, slide in, and rest my head on her shoulder. “You’re not gonna tell them I’m crazy, are you?”

“I told them about your illness in my phone interview.” I stiffen. “Honey, I had no choice. If you need a Klonopin during the day, you’ll have to see the nurse. I’ll give her some to keep on hand. You can’t carry drugs around, especially stuff like that.”

“Thanks a lot. Now everyone in school will know my business.”

“It’s confidential,” she promises. “It’s the law, Rinn. The nurse doesn’t know your diagnosis. The paper from Dr. Edelstein just says ‘for anxiety.’ ”

“
You
work in the office. Why can’t I get them from you?”

“We have to follow the rules. Do you want your friends to think I’m playing favorites?”

What friends? I may not make a single one.

Mom kisses my cheek. “Go back to bed. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

The melody starts up again before I reach the stairs. Keys tinkle beneath her expert fingers, and she pumps the pedals in her socks, nodding dreamily.

Instead of climbing back to my attic room, I curl up on the landing, on the newly sanitized floor, and listen to the music till I drop off to sleep.

Monday, October 20

The principal, Mr. Norman Solomon, peers curiously at Mom. “Well, Monica Parker. Seems like only yesterday you and Millie were making out with boys under the bleachers.”

“Well, thank you very much,” Mom says tersely. “Anything else about my sordid past you’d care to share with my daughter?” As if I don’t already know how wild she was. Am I not living proof?

Thankfully, Mom and Mr. Solomon lapse into pleasantries. Bored, I yawn into my hand, and then jump when someone raps on the office door. A girl with a blond ponytail pokes her head in. “Sorry, Mr. Solomon, but Ms. Faranacci told me to hand this to you
personally
.”

“Thank you, Meg.” Mr. Solomon tosses the folder on his desk and scratches his heavy beard. “By the way, do me a favor? This is Miss Parker, er, Mrs. Jacobs. She’s taking over for Miss
Prout. And this is her daughter, Corinne. How’d you like to show her around? I’ll let Ms. Faranacci know.”

“Sweet! Thanks!” Meg smiles with perfectly straight teeth, while I self-consciously poke my one crooked canine with my tongue. Still, glad to escape, even with a miniversion of my mom, I leap to my feet. She confides on the way out, “Let me tell you something, that Miss Prout was a bitch. If you called in sick? She’d call your house all day long to make sure you were there. And if you didn’t answer, she’d march over and
check
.”

Less leery of her now that she used the word “bitch,” I follow her down a hall flanked with bland beige lockers. Big classrooms, I note, peeking into one, with real blackboards and wooden desks bolted to the floor.

Meg slaloms along, arms widespread. “Where’d you go to school before this?”

“California.”

“Really? Why’d you move here?”

“It was my mom’s idea.”

“What about your dad?”

Questions already. It’s not even officially my first day.

“I guess they’re getting a divorce,” I say slowly.

“That sucks. But who picked
this
place?” Meg persists as we clatter up a flight of steps. “I mean, nobody moves
to
River Hills. You live here and die here, or else you leave and don’t come back.”

“Well, my mom grew up here, and she kept in touch with her best friend—”

“Who?”

“Millie Lux?”

“Oh, Miss Millie, the Onion Ring Goddess. Her daughter Tasha’s my best friend.”

Unsure why I’m telling a perfect stranger my business, but pleased to have someone to talk to who isn’t, well, Mom, I continue. “Anyway, Millie told her about this job, so Mom called up that same day and they hired her over the phone.”

Meg snickers. “That’s ’cause nobody else wants it.”

“Next thing I know she’s throwing crap into suitcases.” Quickly, while I’ve got the chance, I ask a question of my own. “What happened to Miss Prout?”

“Beats me. She didn’t show up for work one day. She just disappeared.”

Interesting
.

I follow Meg through the doors into the second-floor hall, and I literally trip over someone slouched on the floor. He glowers up at me through long, messy hair, iPod wires trailing from his ears.

“Whoa!” Meg feigns surprise. “Thrown out again? I bet you set a new record.”

Yanking off one earbud, the guy locks onto my face with eyes blacker—and redder—than a TV vampire’s. “Greetings, earthling.” Sinewy, sinister, with stubble on his chin and his black hair hiding half his foxy face,
this
is the kind of guy I normally end up with. Certainly not with studly farm boys in flannel like Nate Brenner.

Meg’s nudge disrupts my fascination. “Meet Dino Mancini, class idiot. Dino, this is Corinne. She starts tomorrow.”

“Rinn,” I correct her. I smell marijuana. I doubt it’s coming from Meg.

Dino bares his teeth. “Welcome to the Underworld,
my precioussss!
Lucky for you, you missed the virgin sacrifices.” He nods at Meg. “You’re next, babe.”

Meg flicks out her tongue. “Don’t you wish?”

He pinches Meg’s calf. “How come
you
get to cut and no one gives
you
a rash of shit?”

She kicks him away. “I’m not cutting. I’m showing her around.”

“Cool. Don’t forget to show her where Annaliese hangs out.”

“Yeah,
right
.” Abandoning Dino, Meg pulls me down the hall, pointing left and right. “Okay, classroom … and another classroom … and, oh, look, another classroom!”

Surprising myself, I fall into the game. “Wow, show me more!”

“Oh, if you insist. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we can find
more
rooms downstairs!”

I like this girl!

We reach the first floor again in a fit of giggles. I hug the banister, gasping for breath. “Who’s Annaliese?”

“You’ll find out.”

Meg leads the way into a cavernous, currently unoccupied cafeteria. Neck and neck, we race across the room and burst through a pair of doors into a gym. Running through that, too, we hit another set of doors that open to an auditorium.

“We’re not allowed to do this,” Meg says breathlessly. “Cut through the gym like that. We’re supposed to use the tunnel. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

We gallop down the aisle to a stage with shabby red curtains. Off to the side, because the stage area is so low, four steps
lead up to the mysterious tunnel. Not a
real
tunnel, it turns out—just a narrow corridor running parallel to the auditorium, gym, and cafeteria. But the stone walls and dim lighting give it a creepy, claustrophobic effect.

Meg points to a second door directly across from the auditorium door. “The pool’s in there. But they’re gonna tear it all out and build a media center soon.” She kicks the door open. “It’s supposed to be locked, but people break in all the time, so nobody bothers to fix the lock. But if King Solomon catches you in here, you’re screwed.”

Snickering at the nickname, I follow her in. She flips a switch but nothing happens; the only light comes from the small windows along the far wall.

“They added on this room back in the seventies. For the pool,” Meg explains.

A chain-link fence prevents us from walking more than six feet into the room. When Meg shakes it, the sound cracks the air like shattering glass. I squint through the metal links and spy the dark slash of the empty pool. “Why the fence?”

“Duh, so we don’t fall in and sue?” The rattling links shiver into silence. A funny chill penetrates my sweater. “By the way,” Meg whispers, “don’t ever come in here alone, or even go through that tunnel. Always take someone with you.”

I force a straight face.
Hello, slasher movie!
“Why?”

Meg points through the fence. “Because of Annaliese.”

“What is she, a rat?” Because I definitely hear scrabbling.