The Unquiet

by Jeannine Garsee

  Speechless, he waits till I drop my jeans. Then he leaps off my mattress as if jabbed by a branding iron. “Stop.” My hands falter. I can tell he’s trying hard to concentrate on my face, not my thong. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea to jump into this. Y’know, like it’s nothing special.”

  Hotly I ask, “Who said it’s not special? You were all over me last night.”

  “Yeah, I—” He steps forward as I yank up my jeans, but stops at my warning glare. “Look, don’t get mad. But when you told me to watch out for ‘goofiness,’ you weren’t all that specific. So I did some research and, uh … this is one of the signs.”

  “What is?”

  He flips one finger to me, to himself, and back at me. “You know. This.”

  I flap my shirt at him. “Whatever. Thanks for your help. You can go home now.”

  “Rinn—”

  “Good-bye, Nate.”

  If I were a crier, I’d be bawling my eyes out. I can’t believe he said no! How could he say no? Facedown on my mattress, I dig my nails into my pillow, hating Nate.

  Hating myself more.

  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.

  5 MONTHS + 3 DAYS

  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.

  “Aha! 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 walls?”

  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.”

  He stares me down, speechless with fury. That’s how I know: he’s hiding something.

  He’s been hiding it since the last time we were here, when he came out of the locker room with frozen hair.

  Nate shoves me. “Do it, then. You get five minutes this time.”

  I stick out my tongue and test the door. Still unlocked. Nobody’s been here.

  I step over the threshold into the pool room. At first I notice nothing different; it’s as dark and as cold as the last time I was here. Now, though, it’s perfectly silent. No clanking furnace. No whistling wind.

  I inhale slowly, experimentally. The air reminds me of a muggy summer night. Much colder, of course.

  A scent brushes my nostrils with my next deep breath.

  Chlorine.

  I didn’t smell this at the séance. Everyone else did, though.

  As I nervously aim the flashlight at the black pit—through the fence this time; I’m not going near Dino’s hole—the tickle of chlorine evolves to a bitter sting. I rub my nose and glance back, searching for Nate’s shadow. I think I see it. At least I hope it’s him.

  My tongue toys with my lips, all slick and greasy like—baby oil? I tilt my head, acutely aware of the foul, heavy air caressing my face.

  Is this really happening? Is it?

  When I first hear the sound, I automatically suspect Nate.

  He’s messing with your head. He wants you out of here.

  When I hear it a second time, I know I’m wrong.

  A human sound, part sigh, part wail, drifts up from the dark hole. Soft and insistent, the haunting cry curls around my head, stirring the mysterious substance that, unbelievably, feels like it’s seeping into my ears. I swat wildly at the air, shooting circles with my flashlight.

  The floor vibrates under my feet as the muted wail blossoms to a menacing howl.

  Something’s happening, something bad—but when I try to shout a warning to Nate, the oily substance chokes me off, slithering down my throat, cutting off my air.

  A cloud of something dances nearby. Not smoke, not exactly. More like a fog.

  A thin, pale fog rising from the edge of the pool.

  My knees buckle and I sink by degrees, floating through a barrel of bitter molasses. Pressure flattens me. I can’t breathe.

  I can’t breathe!

  I’m going to die in this horrible room like Dino and Tasha.

  “There’s no way out of here,” David Gilmour sings inside me.

  Nowayoutnowayoutnowayoutnowayout …!

  The unearthly howl peaks, and then cascades into a torrent of hysterical laughter.

  I should’ve listened to Nate.

  Why didn’t I?

  Why …?

  I open my eyes to the fluorescent lights of the locker room ceiling. Four rows of lights, when there should only be two.

  “Are you awake? Can you hear me?” A bolt of pain stabs my head when Nate crushes me, kissing my face, my hair. “Oh God, oh God, I thought you were dead! You hit your head when you fell.” He offers me his bloody hand as proof.

  “I—I think I’m okay,” I squeak.

  “You passed out!”

  My head hurts worse when I force myself up. I touch my wet hair, look at my hand, and whimper. For someone who slashed her neck in a Jacuzzi, I don’t do well with blood.

  “How many fingers do you see?”

  I push him away. “You didn’t go in, did you?” It all rushes back to me. “Please say you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t. I dragged you out with the rope.”

  Thank God! “Did you hear it?”

  As soon as I ask this, I’m sorry. What if he says no? What if those hideous sounds and that funny fog were nothing but the hallucinations of a crazy girl who ditched her meds for the past seve
n days?

  Nate presses his cheek against mine. His face is wet, and not from my bloody hair.

  “Yes, I heard her,” he says, all muffled against me.

  Her, he said. Not it.