All Unquiet Things (19 page)

“I’ll take it home tonight. It’s not very long.” I held out my hand, but Neily refused to give me the book.

“I want to read it first.”

I tried to grab it from him. “No way,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“What makes you think that you have any right to read this?” I challenged. “This is
Carly’s
diary and now that she’s dead it belongs to me. You have no claim on it.”

“We had a deal!”

“I’ll show you anything I find.”

“Audrey, I have—” he began.

I put my hand on his arm. “I know what you’re looking for. But now is not the time for that.”

Neily hesitated, then nodded with resignation and let go of the book.

I slipped Carly’s journal into my bag, then went over to her bureau and took the jewelry box down. It wasn’t long, but it was deep, with a top level separated into smaller compartments that could be removed. Everything in the jewelry box was of the costume variety; I wasn’t particularly interested in keeping any of it. I took the top compartments out and placed them on the desk. In the lower bed of the jewelry box, there was only a small manila envelope on which Carly had written
OLD
in black permanent marker.

The envelope contained pictures. They were mostly of Neily and Carly, but there were some of Carly and me, too, and a couple of the three of us together that had been taken by Miranda. In those pictures, Carly was always between the two of us, her arms draped around our shoulders. I called Neily over to look at them.

“I guess that’s what Paul meant,” I said, pressing them into his hand. “You should keep them.”

He handed them back. “No, that’s okay.”

“You should. You might want them someday.”

Neily took the photos and glanced through them. He had made it about halfway through the stack when I realized something. I snatched one of the pictures from his hand. It was one of the three of us, and I pointed to Carly’s hand.

“You see that?” I asked.

“Carly’s ring?” Carly had a claddagh ring that her mom and
dad had bought for her in Ireland when she was ten. She had worn it on her right ring finger; ever since her mom’s death, as far as I knew, she had never taken it off.

I started rummaging through the compartments of the jewelry box. “I don’t see it in here, and I’m sure it wasn’t in the box of her effects the police turned over after they closed the case.” I grabbed the files out of my bag and found the inventory. “It’s not listed on here.”

“Maybe she lost it.”

“She loved that ring. She was always so careful with it—it’s not something she would just drop down the drain.”

“You’re thinking that the person who killed her took it,” Neily said.

I nodded. “Nobody thought about it because of the necklace—who would notice some cheap silver ring missing when they were all focused on the diamond?”

“Do you think that would be enough to start building an appeal on?”

“I’ll check with Dad’s lawyer, but I doubt it. I guess there’s really no way to prove she didn’t just lose it. Or give it away, or put it somewhere we haven’t found yet.”

“At least we know that the motive wasn’t theft. I mean, the ring is gone, but it’s not the sort of thing you’d steal because you could pawn it. It’s too personal.” He grew silent, shuddering. “It’s like a trophy.”

“What? What are you thinking?”

“Adam. It has to be him. Who else would want something like that?”

I gave him a pointed look.

“I thought you agreed not to do that anymore,” he said angrily.

“I’m just saying.”

“I would never do something like that.”

“
I
know, but you could forgive someone who didn’t know you very well for thinking that you would.” I sighed. “I’m not saying Adam’s innocent—from where I’m sitting, he looks just as guilty as anybody else—but I’m not going to settle for a simple ‘he was her boyfriend, so he did it’ solution, and I know that’s where you were heading, so I thought I’d cut you off at the pass.”

“Who has more of a motive? We know he and Carly fought the night before she died, he has a reputation for having a short temper and getting into fights, and he knew you well enough to get his hands on your father’s gun.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to jump to any conclusions. I’ll read the diary tonight and call you if I find anything.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Go home.”

That night, after dinner with my grandparents, I settled down on my bed and combed through Carly’s diary.

January 10

My mother died thirteen days ago. Harriet says that it could help to write the words, to tell some inanimate object what I’m thinking and feeling. Well, I think and feel that this is a waste of my time, but she’s going to check to see if I’m writing in the journal, so I thought I’d better give it a shot. It honestly isn’t so bad. I’ve had this journal for years, written stupid little-girl things in it, which I don’t read, but
I know that they’re there. It’s easier to write how I feel than to say it aloud. I can’t talk to anybody about this, especially Dad. Mom is the one who died, but he’s the ghost in this house. He stays up until all hours, pacing his study. He can’t work, and he won’t eat. I have to force him, beg him, which is unfair. I’m the child. I miss her too, so much that sometimes I can’t breathe, but I can’t let him see it because I’m afraid that it will just make him sadder. Sometimes I think that she’s coming back, that she caught the travel bug and took off to Mexico, or England, and that next month she’ll show up in Empire Valley. Sometimes I let myself imagine it, before I go to sleep, hoping that maybe I’ll dream it that way. If it’s a dream, I won’t have to feel bad for pretending
.

After a while, these sorts of entries stopped with no explanation. There were a couple of paragraphs written around the time that Carly broke things off with Neily. I was afraid to let him see these. It would hurt him, and Carly had hurt him enough.

I knew that Neily held me partially responsible for their breakup, but I had less to do with it than he thought. It was true that after I started dating Cass I had tried to draw Carly into my new group of friends. It had nothing to do with Neily. Carly was my best friend, and I wanted her around. When Adam started showing interest in her, I encouraged it. Neily thought I had changed her into someone else, but the truth was that Carly’s transformation was her own doing, and her relationship with Adam was a symptom, not the cause of it. I knew Neily resented me for standing idly by while Carly broke his heart and
humiliated him publicly, and I was probably guilty of that. She convinced me that it was the only way to make absolutely clear to him that she wanted to end things, and the plan sounded oddly noble.

“I don’t want to torture him by drawing it out,” Carly had told me the day before. “He’ll fight for me—that’s the kind of person Neily is—but he shouldn’t. I’m not worth it. He needs to see that.” The incident was carefully choreographed, and Neily had gotten the message. Even though I knew it was for his own good, when I saw his face, everything changed. I went after him, called his name from the door as he walked away from the party, not knowing what I’d say if he actually turned around.

After Carly broke up with Neily, she’d written only a few entries until August twenty-seventh. “Mams died today” was all that one said. Less than nine months following Miranda’s death, and a little more than a year before Carly’s, Mams had succumbed to a terrible case of double pneumonia. Losing Mams was awful for me. With Mom gone and Dad the way he was, my grand-parents were the only people in the world I could really count on to take care of me, and now one of them had passed away.

But Carly was an absolute wreck. In some ways, I think Mams’s death might have been harder on Carly than her mom’s death had been. After Miranda’s diagnosis, her family was forced to face the possibility that she might not survive. Carly was, in some small way, prepared for what happened to her mom, but Mams’s death was a complete shock. We were in Carly’s bedroom doing the last of our summer assignments when Paul came in to give us the news, and I remember Carly’s expression of utter disbelief. She seemed stunned to find out that one major loss didn’t immunize her against others.

Carly didn’t speak very much at the funeral, but she did say one thing that’s followed me ever since.

“How many people are we going to lose before the universe decides we’ve had enough?” Carly asked me. I didn’t answer, but if I had known what was coming I would have said, “All of them.” Horrible, but true.

As I continued on through Carly’s diary, it amazed me how young we were then, and how stupid. Carly’s decision to get involved with Adam was the biggest mistake she ever made, but of course she couldn’t see it at the time. She dated him for the same reason people jump out of airplanes: because it was exciting and dangerous, and she didn’t seriously believe she could get hurt.

Adam was already notorious for dealing drugs, which at a school like Brighton, where nearly eighty percent of the students had more pocket money than most Americans make in several months, was a very profitable business. Adam played the part admirably, and he had a sinister presence that made every word or movement seem like a threat. He also had Cass, the only person who could control him. Cass brought out Adam’s better side. When it was just the four of us, things were fine, but when Cass was busy with basketball, I knew that Adam wasn’t so benign. Carly thought she could handle him. She was desperate for the sort of attention that she got from Adam, and she became reckless in her pursuit of it.

But it wasn’t until the summer before she died that I started to understand how much Adam had changed Carly, and how little perspective she had on her life.

Sophomore Year—Spring Semester

I
t was the Friday night before finals week, and we were celebrating with the Force, Carly’s favorite party drink. On paper, it’s pretty much the most disgusting thing that’s ever been invented—beer, vodka, and a can of frozen pink lemonade concentrate. In actuality, though, it tastes sort of okay. We mixed up a batch in her bathroom and filled two water bottles, taking them into her bedroom to play a drinking game to the movie
Glitter
.

“Okay, here’s the rule,” Carly said as she pressed
PLAY.
“Every time there’s an aerial shot of New York, we take a drink.”

Fun fact:
Glitter
has about thirty-seven thousand aerial shots of New York in it, so we were pleasantly buzzed by the time the movie was over. When the credits began to roll, Carly turned off the TV and turned on the radio.

“I love this song!” she said, flopping down on her bed.

“Me too! What is it?”

“I don’t know. Adam will—get me my phone, it’s in my bag.”

I was still sitting on the floor near her bed, so I leaned over and dragged her schoolbag toward me. My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and my arms were heavy, as if I had on those weight cuffs that runners wear. I practically dumped the contents of the bag into my lap to find her cell.

“Here,” I said, tossing the phone up to her. Carly dialed Adam and had him listen to the song over the phone. I was slowly putting everything back into her purse when a small square plastic bag filled with white powder fell out of her cosmetics case. I picked it up between two fingers, my mind
scrolling through everything it could be
besides
drugs. All my fuzzy brain could come up with was flour, but I didn’t think Carly was doing any impromptu baking at school.

Carly hung up, laughing. “He was like, ‘I can’t even hear what you’re playing me, but if
you
like it, then it must be horrible.’ What an asshole.”

“Carly,” I said, holding up the bag. “What’s this?”

“Hey,” she cried, grabbing it out of my hand. “What are you going through my stuff for?”

“Is that cocaine?”

“No! Yes. I don’t know. It’s not even mine. Adam told me to give it to Jamie Pierson in trig and I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

“Yes
, and don’t tell Adam, he’ll kill me. I told Jamie I’d drop it off at his house tomorrow morning. Unless you want to come with me tonight?” she proposed, grinning.

“No thanks,” I snapped. “If you want to let your boyfriend turn you into a
drug
mule that’s your business, but don’t you dare even think about getting me involved!”

“Aren’t you a saint,” she said. The look on Carly’s face infuriated me. She was clearly dumbfounded by my reaction, as if I were the one being totally irrational. I stormed out of her room and went right to Cass’s house, but he didn’t respond as I’d expected.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about Carly,” he said with trademark nonchalance. “It is possible to be friends with Adam and do him the occasional favor and not entirely ruin your life. I speak from experience.”

“That’s not the point,” I fumed.

“I’ll talk to her if you want,” Cass offered. “And Adam listens to me. I can make sure she doesn’t become a delivery service.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled close to him. “Thanks, Cass.”