The Unquiet (19 page)

I need this to end. The thought swirls about inside my head until it is all I can think.

When something bad happens, my first instinct cannot be to run to Jack.

I will not become weak. I will not turn into him.

“So, tell me,” he is saying again, for the hundredth time, and, without thinking about it, I lean forward to close the
space between us. I press my lips to his warm, dry ones. I stay there for a long moment. Jack pulls away from me, his arms stiff at his sides.

“Lira,” he whispers.

He doesn't say anything else, but I understand the sad look in his eyes. I want to tell him that it was not real, that I only wanted to feel something else for a moment, but I get up instead. He stands, too, saying something about how young I am, how sick he is. “If things were different . . . ,” he says, but I'm not really listening. “To never have a parent or sibling, to grow up completely on your own at the cottages, that's a really fucked-up thing, Lirael.”

“It wasn't that bad,” I say, opening the door and stepping out onto the other side.

“That's the problem. It was, and you just don't know it.”

“You don't think
I
know how messed up I am, Jack?” My voice cracks in the middle of the question.

He opens his mouth, closes it again.

We stare at each other, and I know I have ruined it. Our friendship. Jack looks desperate but mostly sad.

“Look,” he says, not quite meeting my eyes, “you're not thinking straight. You're going to wake up tomorrow and realize that you can do so much better, that I'm just some idiot,
and then we're going to pretend this never happened. Why don't you come back in and I'll make some coffee and we can talk about whatever has happened?”

My grandfather is dead,
I think.

And I broke protocol by coming to see you.

I shake my head. “Bye, Jack,” I say, and leave him standing there.

As I ride back to the orchards, I don't even have it in me to be embarrassed. Part of me cannot believe I rode all the way to the city to kiss Jack. Part of me cannot believe I broke our friendship, but it is a small part. The rest of me, the part that makes sense, understands: I had to. I cannot have a father or brother or friend. I have to be alone.

When I'm home, I lock myself in the bathroom. I turn on the tap to wash my face, but all I can manage is to stare at myself.

It is almost dawn now, and there are bruises underneath my clothes. Every single one hurts when I touch it, and at first I flinch. At first I moan. But as I stand in front of the mirror, I can hear Madame whispering in my ear, now more than ever: “Weak, weak, little girl.” But I add to her words: “This is what the world is going to feel like once you leave this place. This is how tough it is going to get. Like drowning. Like burning. But the only time that you should be worried
is the moment when you start to find yourself caring about anything and anyone but yourself and your people.” That day on the bus she saw this coming. She warned me, but I wasn't listening until now.

A switch flickers inside me. A switch I did not know was there. I hear it, feel it, and then I turn off the bathroom light and sit in the dark.

At different points all the cottage children become exactly the same way. More focused, less frivolous. The smilers will smile in a way that does not reach their eyes. The ones who have to love will love with emptiness, in a way that is no longer obligatory or all-consuming.

Is it brainwashing if we consent to it?

Madame.

We were always going to become like her. She has been inside us this whole time.

A part of me is sad about this. About the new reflection of my eyes in the mirror.

A bigger part of me, relieved.

Gigi dies two months later. There is nothing romantic about this, and no part of me thinks,
At least they went close together, couldn't live without each other
. We bury her in the orchards next to Da, and then Cecily never forgives me
because I let Aunt Imogen sell the orchards to the very first man who offers for them. We pack our things and move to an apartment in the city. I don't have the energy to explain that we are too young—she and I—to have managed the place by ourselves, that no one ever imagined that Da would die so soon, before even Gigi. Aunt Imogen certainly had no interest in the orchards, and I did not know enough about the trees, about my legacy. It was better to leave them to someone who could take care of it than to watch the trees die.

On our last day at the orchards Aunt Imogen had this idea about floating lanterns. You light them and then release them at night and, with them, all your sadness. But she didn't turn up. She told us she was driving to the city to check on our apartment, but I knew she would look for the nearest bar, drink until she felt better. We were lucky to still have Da's truck. In the end it was just me and Cecily standing there. Cecily believed with all her heart that doing it was important. The lanterns floated above us as we drove away.

The next summer, when I ride back on my bicycle to look, the trees are tall, shriveled things with poked branches.

I carry that secret.

A
few weeks after we move to the city, there is a story in the newspaper of a couple who hanged themselves from the balcony of their apartment. Everyone is outraged because the newspaper managed to obtain pictures and had no qualms about printing them. A copy floats on the wind that afternoon and finally settles on the ground. It is covered in oil and dirt and what else, but when my boot grazes the edge of it, I pick it up and read it. They left no suicide note, but the police inspector insists no foul play was involved.

I recognize them as dead sleepers almost immediately.

It is something about the way they were found. So much like Margot and Alex. Even the clothes and shoes they wore. Gray clothes, brown leather shoes. Their hands, tied together with ribbons.

The same inspector quickly changes his tune when two more pairs are discovered in exactly the same way. A John and an Alice, a Jessica and an Eric. “None of them knew one another,” the inspector says, baffled, during a news conference. “It is as if their killer found two random people and hanged them together. Anyone who may have seen or heard something that might help us needs to come forward.”

Our sleepers are killing themselves?

Or is this something worse? Are they being killed?

“Stay vigilant,” Miss Odette tells me with a firm smile when I see her next.

I remember Gray's theory. Madame killed Alex and Margot because they broke our rules. “Did they do something wrong?” I ask her. “Are we being sent some kind of message?”

The question surprises Miss Odette. Her eyes study mine for a long moment before she relaxes into a smile. She leans forward as though she is telling me a secret, one friend to another. But her words are not friendly, not to me. “Lirael, if we wanted to punish our own people, we have far more
effective and less public methods of doing so.”

I try not to flinch. “So, something is wrong?” I ask. “Someone is after us?”

But all she says is: “We're taking care of it as quickly as we possibly can.”

But it keeps happening. Their hands are always tied together with small red ribbons.

Not that many people in the world know what happened to Alex and Margot and know what it means, but they don't have to. Even sleepers who did not live in our cottage will recognize the white shirts and gray bottoms and frumpy gray cardigans, the brown leather shoes, patched and repatched over and over again. Most of those things, we made ourselves.

And if Madame was only following protocol with Alex and Margot, then all the other Madames in the other cottages would have done the same with their traitors. So any sleeper who passed through the cottages recognizes that we are in danger. And they, like me, begin to check their apartments carefully before they leave or enter. They carry more blades inside their boots. Worried that they are being watched, they become self-conscious in every way. It is the beginning of the next stage after the Silence, at least for us: the Paranoia. The Fear. Someone knows something. Somebody is sending us a
message. Somebody knows exactly who we are. Somebody who once lived in the cottages but, for some reason, is no longer on our side.

I remember Edith asking me to betray our cause. What does she think of all this?

Is she capable of doing something like this?
The thought makes me shiver, but I cannot help it.

Did she decide that the red ribbons would send a more powerful message than gray ones? Is there a list of people who are going to die?

Am I on it?

I shake my head to clear it.

I have to be more careful. I can't keep thinking about the past. I have to be the perfect sleeper now.

If you want to live through this
, the old man in my dreams warns me,
you'll never look
back again
.

One and a Half Years Later . . .

T
he bravest snowflakes stick heavily to the branches of trees, to the edges of buildings, hoping to stay there forever. But when one person passes or the gentlest wind blows, they rain down on us, glittering like diamonds in the sun. A refalling of the snow, a retelling of yesterday's winter's tale. The whole city is covered in it, and that is what I walk back into once I have delivered a package to a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. A gun and a name inside a paper bag.

The sentimental ones come out of their houses and offices to take pictures; the harried ones do not notice it at all. I could
watch these people for hours, but I am supposed to meet Jack at the café. I pull the hood of my coat down over my eyes, stuff my gloved hands inside my pockets.

And then I walk past Gray.

I do a double take as he passes. I have not seen him or Edith in almost two years. He is looking elsewhere, looking away from me, and then he looks up. For a moment I swear our eyes meet, and even though we do not speak, do not acknowledge each other in the slightest way, I stay where I am. I cannot control it. I watch him walk into the warehouse, and he doesn't come back out, at least not the same way. Still; I wait and wait until it occurs to me that I don't know what I am waiting for.

I finally manage to shake him from my head as I enter the café, where Jack is already waiting for me. He is sitting in front of three empty coffee mugs, and papers that are neatly stacked all over the place. A small space is left for where I might set my things. But I have no things to set but my hands. I drum my fingers on the table. The silence between me and Jack is no longer awkward. We have just accepted that this is who we are now, and I have somehow grown used to it. It is easier now than it was when Da first died. Jack watches me for a moment, orders another coffee, and then asks politely, “How are you?”

“I'm fine,” I say, just as politely, but I can feel the tightness of the smile on my face. Smiling has become even less natural over the past year and a half. Practice in the mirror does nothing for it.

“No sketchbook today?”

I flick a spot of lint from my coat. “Sorry, I forgot,” I say.

This has become my usual lie.

“That's all right,” Jack says, trying to keep his smile from falling. I pretend not to notice.

We lost each other, stopped understanding each other, the night Da died. But the day things really changed was the first time I demanded payment from him, about six months ago. I don't know why I said it, but once the words were out, there was no taking them back.

“I can't be expected to sacrifice so many hours of my day for you without any compensation,” I suddenly heard myself saying, in a voice I did not recognize. “That's not how all the others do it. That's not what it means to do a job and that's what this is, isn't it?”

Jack went quiet. Before this, all he knew was that my grandfather had died, and that I was a little sad, and that I had moved to the city with my sister. But sadness is a very different thing from callousness, and though some small part of me
knew that, wanted to take it back, the part that mattered said nothing. Jack shook his head, reached inside his pocket, and retrieved a couple of bills and then tossed them at my face, as if they were poisoned. I didn't even flinch. I just counted the money and calmly put it inside my coat. It would buy our groceries that week.

“So, they did it,” Jack muttered. “They always talked about creating perfect soldiers, but for a while then, you were the most imperfect little thing I had ever seen, and that was the best thing about you. Now you are this.” I could tell he didn't like my ignoring him because he suddenly grabbed my hand, pressed his face right up against mine until I could smell everything he'd had for breakfast, laced with whatever medication he was taking for the pain. “But tell me,” he snarled, “what happens after the war? What becomes of their perfect little soldiers then?” Everyone in the café turned to look at us, at the scene we were making.

I snatched my hand from his. “See you next week,” I said, and left.

Now I sit across from him as he types, but my eyes are lost somewhere past the window, somewhere in the snow that has become brown and tired. After only a little while Jack puts his typewriter in its case. “I'm done for the day,” he tells me
tiredly, and when I stand and push him to the bus station, he says nothing, not even good-bye. He tells me I can leave him there, but the moment he thinks I'm gone he turns around and wheels back to the café, retrieves his typewriter, and continues whatever he was doing. As if he could no longer do it properly with me in front of him. I watch from the window until he looks up and sees me, until we're staring at each other. But there is no remorse on his face. He turns away from me, carries on as if I no longer exist. The way I've done to him. He says nothing, but I hear his imaginary words anyway: “I don't have time for you to stop being a child about life.”

I was supposed to be his friend.

He was supposed to undo the thing Edith and her farmhouse did to me.

But he doesn't invite me back in, and I do not offer. I am not good for anyone.

Even with his wheelchair and the way his fingers ache, Jack is better without me.

I leave him to it and go home. I stumble over a basket of dirty laundry right inside the apartment when I enter. The curtains are still closed, and even though it's well past noon, Cecily is sitting in front of the television in the dark with a bowl of milk and cereal. She should be in school, but
she ignores me when I ask what happened. I kick the basket aside, trip over a pair of heels that definitely do not belong to me.

“Where is she?” I ask, gritting my teeth.

Cecily gestures to my bedroom without taking her eyes off the television. “We both know she's only here for the money,” she says knowingly. “Maybe if we give her some more, she'll go.”

“I did give her more,” I answer in a mumble meant only for my ears as I make my way to my bedroom.

On my bed and half naked lies Aunt Imogen. Half naked is a major understatement since the only thing she's got on is a pair of panties that I'm pretty sure are mine. My bed, my panties, my clothes on the floor. Aunt Imogen turned up at the orchards one day after Da's funeral. “I've heard the bad news,” she said, hand pressed against the doorjamb to keep her from falling down. She was drunk, but Gigi didn't seem to notice; she was happy to see her, she said. Her and Da's only living child. The person who would help protect me and Cecily from the world. I think Gigi thought that it was okay to die then. That Aunt Imogen would take care of us.

I grab her shoulders now and try to shake her awake, ignoring the way she groans, the way she asks for a few more
minutes like a child. Cecily is right: she is here for whatever money we might have left. She arrived a week ago, promising change. I assume the dirty laundry left by the door was her best attempt.

“How was work?” she finally groans, opening just one eye. She thinks I'm a waitress at a café.

I ignore her question. “I thought we agreed that you would sleep on the couch and I would sleep here. In my room. And I thought we said that you would drop Cecily at school today.”

She stares at me, as if she has no idea what I am talking about. And then she jumps up from my bed and rushes into the bathroom, where she stays for an hour. Cecily, who does not hide her hatred, turns up the volume on the television to drown out the retching sounds. “I have bad ears,” she explains apologetically when Aunt Imogen screams for the noise to stop. “My teacher says that you might need to take me to the doctor to get me checked. You know what a teacher is, right? It's that person at that place called school that I'm supposed to go to every day.”

“Lirael, make her stop,” Aunt Imogen says.

I shake my head. “But it's really not that loud, not for me at least.” I frown. “Are you feeling okay, Aunt Imogen?”

The bathroom door slams again, and Cecily pretends to walk past me, but our hands meet in the air in a secret high five. Our aunt is predictable. She dresses quickly and storms out of the apartment. We don't know where she goes. “Thank the Lord!” Cecily shrieks, and bolts the door quickly behind her and turns down the television and opens the curtains. We both know, though, that later tonight our aunt will return with tears, with promises and that eventually it will be Cecily who breaks first, who says, “Gigi said she was family
,
” as if that means something. Da is gone. This is the best we get now.

I go to the flower shop more frequently than ever before. I told Miss Odette that I wanted more and more jobs, and she was only too happy to give them to me. Now, no matter when I go, there is always a mission, always a delivery. Today I stand in front of a knitting shop until a man I do not know walks up to me and says, “It's a pretty day, isn't it?” He gestures around to all the melted slush, which contradicts him, and I pass him the piece of paper with a name on it. These Safes are the worst ones, the ones who kill anything and anyone without blinking. I can see it in his hollow eyes. If I pick up tomorrow's newspaper or maybe the one the day after or listen to the radio, I will hear of someone who died or is in the
hospital under strange circumstances, with the same name as on my paper. Some important politician, some lawyer or professor. But I never do. Those things matter even less with me now.

My only interest in newspapers is in the hangings. In the past year and a half there have been fourteen different instances, and those are just the ones reported. They are less frequent these days, once every few months, but I am still uneasy. Something is happening behind our backs. Something that even Miss Odette cannot explain to me. Whatever that thing is might one day get me killed.

I walk home feeling as though I am being followed. Once I walked around my block three times before entering my building. I train every night when Cecily is asleep. My gun is always ready, and then for weeks nothing happens. The newspapers are empty, and I think,
Maybe it's okay.

Then the following day there is another story about two people and their red ribbons, found hanging.

The rest of the world believes in serial killers.

But what I believe is worse.

I see Gray again a few weeks later. I am sitting alone on a bench in a small park when he walks up to me, and this time he meets my eyes immediately. At first I think he's only here
to say hello, but then he says the words: “It's a pretty day, isn't it?” As I pass him the note, I don't know why I am surprised. I knew this was his job. He stuffs the note inside his pocket, nods at me. He is eighteen now, closer to nineteen than not. Right away I start to notice things about him that I compare back with the cottages and with the last time I saw him: He is taller; his voice is deeper; his eyes have grown dimmer, no longer full of that fire from when Alex died. There is an underlying confidence about him, as if he understands the world perfectly now, and his place in it. I hope that I look exactly the same way.

“Thanks,” he says, his voice a quiet rumble.

By the time I realize that he was waiting for me to say something, acknowledge him in some way, I am standing alone. I try to name the last look he gave me for days and for weeks. Shame. Shame was written all over Gray's face, and that baffles me. What is there to be ashamed of? Did we both not turn out the way we were meant to? Maybe there is a rule about the ones who take lives and the ones who only help do it, but then which one of us is the better person? The one who provides the knife and the name or the one who uses them?

In my mind, Gray leads to Edith. What happened to her plan after I left? Were they all part of it?

Worse than that, did she ask Gray and Robbie to carry out the hangings?

I told myself I wouldn't care, but I am suddenly terrified of the answer. I have to believe that this is the only reason why, the next time I see Gray, I follow him and watch him kill a person without so much as flinching. As if it has become second nature to him. Gray, with the eyes, with the emotions, the same little boy who was kind to animals once upon a time. Afterward he stands outside the building and smokes, staring down at the ground, one bloodied hand stuffed into his coat pocket, the other holding the cigarette.

Suddenly I understand his shame, although not why he offered it to me like that. Why he let me see.

No
, I decide as I walk away.

Gray wouldn't hang sleepers.

Once I notice Gray, I start to recognize others from the cottages just like him whom I deliver packages to. I must have been seeing them for months without ever realizing it. A girl named Poppy, who had the worst giggling fits at the most inappropriate times. A boy named Bennett with dreadlocked hair. Another boy, named Dylan, who wet the bed until he was ten, who sat with the girls because the boys teased him so. And more, and more, and more. I am sure that there are other
Safes like me, who only deliver the names and the weapons, whom I will never know and never remember because we are careful not to be seen. Careful to remain invisible, but we all are here. An invisible network of seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds who grow older and colder and crueler every passing second. Two sides working together, each telling itself that it is better than the other.

But I
am
better. I am.

I think about whoever is out there hunting down sleepers.

I have to believe that somehow, somewhere there are worse monsters in the world than me.