All Unquiet Things by Anna Jarzab Page B

promises.
    “What can I do?” I asked her.
    She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
    “Come on. There has to be something.”
    Carly looked at me. “Well, maybe you can help me with Audrey.”
    “How?”
    “I have a feeling it’s going to be really awkward with her,” Carly said. “Her dad and my dad have been on bad terms since they were kids, and I haven’t seen her for a really long time. I’m afraid she’ll hate me.”
    “Why would she hate you?”
    Carly shrugged. “I don’t know. People tend to.”
    “People don’t hate you.” It was true, Carly and I didn’t have many friends at Brighton, but that was as much our fault as anybody else’s. Our contact with other students in the program was sporadic. As for the nonprogram students, we knew them from elective classes and cocurriculars, but only in the most casual way. Honestly, on the whole I would’ve said that people hardly gave us a passing thought, and my mother had always told me that people have to care about you to hate you.
    “Do we go to the same school?”
    “People don’t hate you,” I repeated. “They’re intimidated by you. They know that you’re smarter than they are.”
    “Well, I don’t want Audrey to feel that way about me,” Carly said. “I want her to like me.”
    “And how am I supposed to help with that?”
    “Be friendly to her. Maybe punch me in the arm when I’m being too clever or too patronizing,” she suggested light-heartedly.
    I laughed. “I’m not going to punch you.”
    “Pinch me, then,” she joked.
    “We need a signal that doesn’t involve physical violence, or you’re on your own,” I said, kissing her.
    “Okay.” She pursed her lips in thought. “How about if you tap your nose with your finger if I’m being obnoxious?”
    “Sure. That I can do.”
    “Why are you smiling?”
    “No reason.”
    “Tell me.”
    “It’s just very you. Secret gestures and everything.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small blue box. Thewhite ribbon that the woman in the jewelry store had tied around it was a little smashed. “Happy birthday, Carly.”
    She took the present and slipped the ribbon off with excitement. She brought out a little blue velvet bag and dumped its contents into her hand. There, glinting in the fading light, was the bracelet. I had saved up my allowance for several months in order to afford it and had the store engrave it with her initials.
    “Do you like it?” I asked softly.
    She lifted her eyes to mine. “I love it,” she said, putting her arms around me and giving me a soft, tender kiss. I felt a tear fall from her cheek onto mine. She wiped it away with her thumb. “It’s wonderful.” And Carly smiled—for the first time in a long time—a big, genuine smile.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    Senior Year
    T wenty minutes after we arrived at San Quentin, we were seated in a room filled with inmates and their visitors, separated from Enzo Ribelli by a small table and a thick plate of fiberglass.
    “Neily,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
    I jerked my thumb at Audrey. “Ask this one. The last thing I remember was my Coke tasting funny—when I came to, we were pulling up to the gate.”
    “Audrey?”
    “I wanted him to hear your side of the story,” Audrey said.
    Enzo sat back in his metal chair and stared up at the ceiling, letting out a deep breath. I didn’t know him very well.When Audrey and I had been friends, her relationship with Enzo had been in tatters. He was almost never at home, and Audrey spent most of her time at Carly’s house; she even had her own bedroom there. I probably hadn’t seen him more than a half dozen times, but I knew his face from the media—scores of old photos filtered into the local news stations and the newspapers, each one showing a man who, thanks to the ravages of destructive habits and a life of hard knocks, had changed a lot since high school—and during the trial. But prison life seemed to agree with him. His formerly