All Unquiet Things (9 page)

She finally looked over at me. “I had to fight with Grandma and Grandpa to come back to Brighton. They think it’s going to be hell, and maybe it will be, but I know this is where the answers are. Do you remember what the psychiatric expert said at the trial?”

“Yeah,” I said grudgingly. “He said that Carly’s murder seemed like a personal crime. He was almost a hundred percent certain that whoever killed her had known her, and hated her.”

“Exactly. And practically every single person who could possibly fit that description goes to our school. Do you see now why it’s so important that I do this?”

I nodded. “Okay,” I told her, after a very long silence. “I’ll help you.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

M
y mother forced me to spend my first weekend back at school with my father. I hated being at his house. The only reason I went at all was because my mother was afraid that if my relationship with my dad disintegrated to the point that we were no longer on speaking terms, he wouldn’t pay for me to go to college. College was my ticket away from Empire Valley, and there was no way I was going to pass up a blank check, even on principle.

My father wasn’t home when I got to his house on Friday afternoon, so I threw down my bags in the foyer and grabbed a beer from the fridge in the garage. The man hadn’t really parented me since I was very young, and I tended to get away with
most things when I was there. At first I tried to push my boundaries, but my father was neither home enough nor interested enough to care, and as long as he could convince himself I still respected him, he pretty much stayed out of my way.

I had just settled down in front of the TV when the doorbell rang.

“I want you to come with me,” Audrey said as soon as I opened the door. Even though I had agreed to consider her argument, we hadn’t really had time to talk since Tuesday afternoon when she drove me home. The first week back from summer vacation at Brighton was called Hell Week for a reason—instead of easing us in gently, the teachers liked to overload us with as much work as possible to “catch us up.”

“How did you know I was here?”

“Your mom told me.”

“Figures. Okay, what do you want?”

“I’m going to the bridge, and I need you to be there.”

“Why?”

“I want you to tell me everything that led up to you finding Carly. I need to be able to see it in my mind.”

I hesitated. Going back on my own was one thing, but going back with Audrey? I had reservations.

“I thought you were in this with me.”

I drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Just let me get some shoes on. I’ll be out in a second.”

When I got into Audrey’s car, she gave me a sympathetic look.

“Are you scared?”

“No. Why would I be?”

“It must’ve been horrible for you. Coming across her body like that.”

“Just drive,” I said, looking out the window so that I didn’t have to meet her eyes.

“I wonder how long it took the police to decide you had nothing to do with it.”

“I’m doing what you want me to do, so stop taunting me.”

“I’m not taunting you, I’m just thinking out loud.”

“You’re trying to get a rise out of me.” I glanced at her. “And you have that look.”

“What look?”

“That Carly look, the look she used to get when she was sure she’d caught you in something.”

“I don’t remember her having any
look
,” Audrey said, but I remained unconvinced. Audrey was far and away the person at whom Carly’s look was most often directed. She and Carly had been like sisters, and, like sisters, they had gotten on each other’s nerves on a daily basis. They had picked fights and argued over stupid things. Maybe
that
was why Audrey needed me around—she needed somebody to fight with.

“You’re trying to figure out if
I
did it. Just go ahead and admit it so we can get this little farce over with.”

“That’s what some people think,” she said carefully.

“What people?” I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear her say it.

“Carly’s old friends.”

“You mean
your
old friends? Those idiot robots don’t think,” I scoffed. “It doesn’t match their outfits.”

“It does make a little bit of sense.”

“How?”

“Carly broke up with you in, admittedly, not the best or most mature of ways,” Audrey said, staring intently at the road.

“You should know.”

She shifted in her seat. “You were angry, rightly. For all anybody knew, you spent the last year of Carly’s life obsessing over her, watching her, fantasizing about her.”

“That’s not how it was.”

“That’s what you say. Carly’s not going to contradict you, she’s dead.”

“Carly and I broke up at the end of freshman year. Why would I wait until more than a year later to do something about it, if that was the way I wanted to handle it?”

“Lack of opportunity?”

“How would I have gotten her down to the bridge?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you convinced her to meet you there.”

“You’ve seen her cell phone—five missed calls from me on the day she died, not one of them answered. How do you think I got ahold of her?”

“Calling the house, e-mail, IM, singing telegram, telepathy? You tell me.”

“If you really believed all this, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me right now,” I pointed out.

“I would if I were stupid.”

“But you’re not. And anyway, that doesn’t explain how I shot her with your father’s gun. Coming from my mother’s house, I wouldn’t have driven down Empire Creek Road to the bridge; I would’ve driven up Argot Canyon. There’s no way I could’ve known your dad was there, let alone had the presence of mind to
frame
him. Because that’s what you’re implying, isn’t it?”

Audrey chewed at her thumbnail. “Yeah, you’re right.” She shrugged. “Oh well. It was just a theory.”

“It was a crap theory.”

Empire Creek Bridge, where I found Carly’s body, was down the hill from my father’s house, and as Audrey had no respect for stop signs we reached it in very little time. It was just as quiet as always, only the ambient noise of cars rushing past one another, past the town’s four freeway exits, on their way to other parts. Rush hour started early in the Bay Area, and everybody was aching to get home. I thought of those signs you sometimes see on apartment buildings near the freeway, signs that read something like
IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME BY NOW.
They had always seemed more like a threat to me than an enticement.

We were both silent. After all, what were there to say but insubstantial things? Audrey bent down, perhaps looking for some blood that had been carelessly left behind, or maybe a clue of some kind. But there was nothing, of course. It had all been washed away, cleared up, cleaned out by the police. I wondered why she hadn’t been here since Carly died, but then I reminded myself that such a grim pilgrimage isn’t exactly everyone’s preferred way of remembering the dead. It wasn’t as if Audrey was here to erect a memorial or say a prayer; she was looking for insight. For her, this was business. I couldn’t help but admire that a little, and envy it.

Audrey stood up and brushed her palms together. She squinted into the sun, shading her face with her hand. “I guess there’s nothing here.”

“What did you expect to find?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. I just wanted to be able to picture it.”

I nodded, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Can we go now?”

“Not yet. I want you to tell me how you found her.”

“Is that really necessary?” That night played itself over and over again in my dreams. I had no desire to relive it in my waking hours.

“Yes.”

“You were at the trial. You heard my testimony. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember most of that. It was … unreal.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Come on, Neily.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly. The air was uncomfortably warm. The hills behind Audrey looked like dunes, and for a moment they ceased to appear solid. The light and the shadows cast by shifting clouds made them seem soft and shapeless, mountains of sand. I lowered my eyes to Audrey’s face, which was ripe with expectation. That she was relying on me was strange, that she seemed to trust me even stranger. I wondered if maybe she hadn’t come to me reluctantly, and out of necessity, simply because it wasn’t in her nature to be alone in the world. I could see the weakness in this need to be liked, to be an integral cog in a group dynamic or even just one person’s life—it was something I had long suppressed in myself—but I pitied Audrey for feeling it and especially for betraying it to me, so I did what she asked.

Sophomore Year—End of Summer

A
t two-thirty a.m. on Friday, Carly had called me. I didn’t even have to look at the screen to see who it was; I knew it was Carly because she had programmed my phone to play Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” when it recognized her cell and home numbers, and I hadn’t changed it. I was up reading, but I let the call go to voice mail. It took all my willpower to do so. Audrey was right about one thing—at the time that Carly died, I still had her under my skin, but I knew better than to get drawn into all that again. I thought I was protecting myself, but I was also punishing her. If I was expendable to her to the point that she hadn’t even tried to preserve my friendship, then she had no right to call or talk to me. I had made that clear to her, or thought I had. So I went to bed and tried not to think about it, failing miserably.

Later that morning I broke down and listened to the message.

“Neily—Neily!—why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve done something terrible and I need you to pull me out of it—I need you to tell me what to do. I know you hate me—you have a right to hate me. It’s my fault you do and I’m
sorry
, but I’ve gone and screwed everything up. I said I would keep a secret for a friend, but I didn’t. You have to understand, I just didn’t know, and everything blew up at the party, I finally know the truth and I have to do something. Somebody has to pay for what happened to us. You have to tell me what to do. Please—”

There the message cut off, whether by her own volition or the arbitrary nature of cell-phone technology—or by someone else’s doing—it was difficult to say. Carly’s voice was garbled, and I thought maybe she was messed up on something. Later I
learned from the police that Lucy Miller had thrown an End of Summer party that Thursday night (her parents were coming home from Europe on Saturday), and Carly had been in attendance. Her set drank heavily, and I knew that she had at least toyed with drugs—provided oh-so-generously by Adam Murray—so she could’ve been high as well. I couldn’t really parse the message, but I figured it had something to do with her friends. She had told a secret, started a fight, and in her state she thought I could help her figure out what to do about it. This was probably just a drunk dial she would regret after she sobered up. I kept telling myself to ignore it, but the tone of the message worried me. Carly seemed frantic and upset. Against my better instincts, I gave up pretending not to care and tried calling her.

I phoned Carly four more times that day, but every time it just went straight to voice mail. I became increasingly concerned for her as the day wore on and possibilities ran through my head. I had once promised her that I would always help her if she asked, and I had ignored that promise earlier. The guilt I felt about not answering her call out of some sort of frigid pride weighed heavily on me. After everything, I still wasn’t capable of abandoning her.

The fifth time I called her, around nine p.m., was no different. She didn’t answer. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me that she might be avoiding my calls; I came up with all sorts of other explanations, like she’d left her phone in the car or at the party the night before. Finally, I decided that the best plan was just to see her. At least then I could tell if she was all right. If she didn’t want me around, she wouldn’t be shy about it, but at least I would know.