The Unquiet (6 page)

Must. Talk. To. Her. Anyway!

But when I stop at the office, Mom’s not there. Some snotty senior is manning the desk, a student assistant name badge—LINDSAY McCORMICK—dangling from a lanyard.

“She’s in a meeting with Mr. Solomon,” Lindsay drones, intent on the book in her lap.

“It’s urgent. I’m her daughter.”

“I know who you are. I can give her a message.”

“I’m sure you can,” I say politely. “But I really need to speak with her myself.”

Lindsay shrugs. “Come back in half an hour, they’ll be done by then.”

I resist the urge to fly over the counter. Instead, I turn and walk, unsteadily, out to the hall. By the time I make it to PE, I’ve come to my senses. If Mom doesn’t know Mrs. Gibbons hung herself in our house—not just in our house, but in
my
freaking bedroom—maybe it’s best she not find out while she’s still on the clock.

By the end of the day I have three official friends: Meg, Lacy, and Tasha. Four, if you count Nate Brenner.

Five, if you count Dino Mancini, who dogs me down the school steps after the last bell. “Hey, Rinn. Can I walk you home?”

It might be nice to have someone to hang out with after school, but I’m not sure that someone should be Dino Mancini. In the old days he’d have my pants off in a second. Why tempt fate? “Well, I just live right over there …”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll walk you, anyhow. Nice boots,” he adds, staring briefly at my feet. Then he raises his eyes slowly, too slowly. And I know that hungry look too well.

I whip my head around when someone touches my shoulder.

“Hey,” Nate greets Dino. “What’s up?”

Dino hesitates. “Nothin’.”

Nate’s hand tightens on my shoulder. Dino notices. He sends Nate a dirty look, me a sad little wave, and slouches off.

“My pleasure,” Nate says, though I haven’t thanked him yet. “How’d it go today?”

“Oh, just lovely. Why didn’t you
tell
me she hung herself in my room?”

Happily, I caught him off guard. “You mean Mrs. Gibbons?”

“Hel-
lo
? You told me she died of old age.”

“No,
you
said she died of old age. I just kind of agreed with you.” I splutter, and he takes my wrist, maneuvering me away from the crowded walk. “Look, my dad asked me not to mention it, because Miss Millie asked
him
not to mention it to your mom.”

“That’s unethical. Can’t he lose his license for misleading people? For lying by
omission
?”

Nate scoffs. “It’s not like the Mansons camped out there.
Some depressed old lady committed suicide. So what? People die everywhere.”

“Then why didn’t Millie want my mom to know?”

“Guess you’ll have to ask Miss Millie that.”

“Oh, stop calling her ‘Miss Millie.’ That’s so, so …”

“Hick?” he suggests. “Hayseed? Yokel?”

“All of the above. Oh, forget it.” I walk away and head for the corner, but he catches up before I make the bend.
“What?”

“Rinn.” He sounds tired. “Do you want me to apologize for not telling you some old lady hung herself in your attic? Okay, I apologize. Now why don’t we go for a walk or something?”

“A walk?”

“A walk.”

The last time I went for a “walk” with a guy I hardly knew, I woke up in City Heights, in a very bad neighborhood, minus my purse, plus the dope I’d just scored. “You just met me, Nate. Why’re you hanging all over me?”

Nate clenches his jaw so hard I’m surprised he doesn’t crack a tooth. “I don’t know what it’s like where you come from. But first of all, I’m not ‘hanging all over’ you—I’m headed the same way you’re headed, and if you’d rather not walk with me, then say so. Second of all, I was brought up to be nice to people, which I guess is a foreign concept to you. Thirdly—”

“Is that a word? Thirdly?” I ask, hoping to temper his tirade. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings if that’s what happened here.

“
Thirdly
, I …” He stares at the whirlpool of leaves circling our feet. “For some stupid reason I guess I kinda like you.”

Startled, I blurt, “Why?”

“Beats me. Maybe because you’re the only girl around
here I haven’t known since kindergarten?” He nods at my un-Mayberry-like boots. “You’re, uh, interesting. Some folks think that’s a crime round these parts.”

I’m ridiculously flattered. “You really like me?”

“If you get down off your high horse and lose the attitude, I sincerely might.” A lopsided grin. “Now, do you want to take a walk or don’t you? I can show you the sights.”

I snicker. “Oh, golly, the
sights
! Sorry,” I add quickly. “Attitude. I know.”

We cross the square, pass the Boxcar Diner—
ooh, I’d like to drop in and dunk Millie’s head into her famous deep fryer
—and circle down Main Street, past the high school football field, and back up Walnut Street, where Nate points out Meg’s house, a cozy green bungalow. It’ll be nice to have a friend who lives so close to me.

As upset as I was earlier to find out about Mrs. Gibbons, spending this time with Nate has calmed me down. Besides, he’s right: people die everywhere. Is it such a big deal that somebody died in my new house?

No, not just somebody.

Somebody’s
grandmother
committed suicide in my
room
.

“Mom’s gonna freak,” I say aloud as we cross Main Street again. “About the old lady, I mean. She knew her. She’ll probably make us move again.”

“I hope not.”

“Me, too.”

Even though I’ve only been here three days, the idea of leaving—of packing all those stupid boxes back into the SUV, of abandoning that big turreted room I’m in the middle of
painting, not to mention the first friends I’ve made in years—makes me wants to rip out my hair.

“Let’s find out.” I break into a run.

Mom’s home from school by the time we make it back. Nate and I hear her before we even hit the porch.

Yes, she knows. How could she not? Probably the whole town is discussing it by now:
Guess who moved into the old Gibbons house? The new school secretary and that spooky daughter of hers.

“Dammit, Millie, you had no business keeping that from me!”

I don’t hear an answer, which means the phone must be working.

Mom shouts, “I’m talking about Rinn, not me. You know what I’ve been through with her! Do you have any idea what this might
do
to her?”

Crap, crap. And triple crap.

Nate, riveted, yelps in surprise when I almost knock him off the porch. “Go.
Go!
”

Reluctantly, he follows me to the sidewalk. It’s too late, of course. He heard enough. “I’m guessin’ there’s more to you than meets the eye,” he ventures.

“I’d say you guessed right.” No point in denying it.

“Care to elucidate?”

I force a smile. “That’s a mighty big word coming from you, farmer boy.”

“Yup, four whole syllables. I amaze myself.”

I fling down my skirt as a gust of wind shoots under my hem. It’s terrible to keep such desperate secrets inside you. Worse, how long can these secrets stay secret in a town the
size of a San Diego mall? Millie probably knows every sordid detail. It’s just a matter of time before she opens her mouth. She’ll tell Tasha first, and then Tasha will blab it, and so on and so on.

Unless people already know.
That’s
occurred to me, too.

I like Nate. I’d like to be able to trust him.

“I’ll tell you about me,” I bargain at last, “but only if you tell me what
you
know first. No fudging it.”

“Well.” Nate fingers his chin. “I didn’t hear all that much.”

I wait.

“Um, I know your mom and dad are separated and that’s why you moved here.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s it.”

I blow out a sigh of relief.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks.

No, yes, no, maybe.

“My dad hates me,” I say softly.

Just as expected, he argues, “Parents don’t hate their kids.”

“That’s what you think. You don’t know Frank.”
Or what I did to him.

“You call your dad Frank?”

“He’s my stepdad.”

“Even so. I mean, c’mon, Rinn. How could he hate
you
?”

The way Nate says “you” melts the core of my heart. “You called it,” I say weakly. “I’m a pain in the ass, remember?”

Mom’s distant shrill reaches us again. Nate takes my hand and leads me across the street, the imprint of his fingers warming me. “You want to come in?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Am I allowed?”

“Why not?”

Because your dad’s car isn’t here? And my mom’s got a suspicious mind?
“Okay.”

Nate’s house is orderly, and masculine to the hilt. A set of drums takes up the dining room instead of a table. “Those yours?”

“Yep. I’m in the orchestra. Marching band, too. You’re taking chorus, right? Guess we’ll be seeing each other at rehearsals.”

I point to the mangy deer head displayed over the fireplace. “That is
the
most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I shot it myself.”

“Are you bragging or confessing?”

“Uh, I’ll take the Fifth on that one.”

On the mantel I see a photo of a woman holding a baby on her lap. The baby looks like Nate right down to the spiky hair. “Your mom? Where is she?” Not hanging out in
this
macho abode.

“New York. My dad met her in college. They moved back here when I was born, but my mom hated it. She left right after that picture was taken. Now she’s remarried, has a whole ’nother family and everything.”

“You ever see her?”

“Nope,” he says distantly. I finger the picture frame, hating the woman who dumped baby Nate, and set it back on the mantel when Nate changes the subject. “So why are you such a pain in the ass that they threw you out of California?” Unexpectedly, he lifts the hair off my neck. “Is it because of this?”

“Don’t.” I push him away and smooth my hair back down.

“Are you a cutter, Rinn?” he asks gently.

“No.
God
, no. I only did it that one time.”

“Why?”

I’m not sure I want to tell him. Then again, shouldn’t I be the one to lay it all out, before he finds out from, say, Millie? Or the local paper?

Nate waits. I flatten my hair over my neck and stare at the fireplace, gathering up enough courage to answer his question.

And, when I do, I tell him the truth. “Because I murdered my grandmother. So I wanted to die, too.”

They diagnosed me as bipolar when I was fourteen.

At first Mom thought I was ADHD. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t concentrate, could barely sit through a movie. I couldn’t finish a book unless I found it interesting, and whatever did interest me instantly became an addiction: ballet, guitar, astrology, you name it. World religions for a while; I was Jewish for six weeks, a Buddhist for two days. Frank drew the line when he caught me chanting on the basement floor inside a perfectly drawn pentagram.

They started me on medication. Ask me if I took it.

I loved the “high” part of being bipolar. I loved being able to research, write, and print out a term paper in one evening, not that anything I wrote made sense. I loved staying awake for days on end, talking to anyone about everything. Of course, nothing I
said
made sense, either. But you couldn’t tell me that.