The Unquiet by Mikaela Everett Read Free Book Online

because of them, less prone to falling ill. If we pass our exams and become sleepers, vulnerability is not a risk we will be able to afford.
    Now that night has fallen, a sense of sentimentality in the air threatens to tear us open, spill us out onto the carpet. For just this night, we smile shyly at one another again as we pack. Tomorrow . Tomorrow everything changes, but not today, not yet. And so we regress. Hover on the verge of being children again. Watch a film crowded on the living room floor together, braiding one another’s hair.
    It becomes too claustrophobic for me, and I wrap a scarf around my neck, follow the scent of cigarettes to the old toolshed near the vegetable garden. On the other side of it, Gray leans against the wall and stares up at the sky, and I suddenly don’t know what to do. I do not know how the boys are commemorating tonight in their cottages, not to mention the fact that I humiliated this one just hours ago. He doesn’t turn to look at me, but he knows I am here. I take a step forward and then a step back.
    â€œIt’s much cooler out here,” I say, but he ignores me still.
    I am not Alex, after all. I turn around to leave and walk into Edith. “Oh,” she says.
    I do not know whether she followed me or she was here before, but she offers me a guilty smile just the same. “I’ve stolen Madame’s best bottle of wine,” she says, holding it up to the light. “Not to get drunk, of course, but just to know. The way she hides it, you would think it was worth her weight in gold.” She laughs shortly. “Actually, it probably is.”
    She sits down, and after a moment I join her. My uniform will be dirty from the rusted nails poking out from the shed, but I pretend it does not matter. Edith fiddles with the bottle, one eye on me and the other on Gray, where he stands ignoring us. This is the single thing that reminds me that he is her brother. Like us, Edith has been good about ignoring the boys; perhaps in a way tonight she hopes to make amends for that. Or, I think suddenly, maybe this is something they do all the time, sneaking out to stare up at the moon together. Maybe they’ve been close all this time, and we’ve just never seen it. Like Margot and Alex. Secrets make everything else so unsure.
    I cross my legs and pull my skirt down over them. “Won’t you know after tomorrow anyway?” I say, gesturing to the bottle. “I mean, surely your alternate drinks.”
    â€œYes,” Edith says, popping the cork out, “but it will be a different type of knowing. And besides, you won’t be around to drink with then, will you?”
    I stare at her until she adds, “Not that it matters.” She sighs. “It’s not supposed to matter.”
    â€œNo,” I agree, looking down at my arm. At the scar from breaking it. My memory of our friendship, of our time in the trees won’t leave me tonight. It’s Alex’s fault. I see a tree and automatically associate it with laughter, with all of us, and then suddenly before I know it, the memory turns gory. I see the boy and girl hanging from that tree. And my arm hurts, as if it were snapping in two again. As if I have weighted our whole history on a single fleshy branch. And when Madame cut it off as she removed their bodies, she cut off a piece of me, too.
    I ignore my arm. I look at Edith instead.
    In this one moment of weakness I can admit that it is still strange to me. How we’ll never be friends again. The four of us. I used to feel as though we were meant to know one another forever.
    Tonight I shake my head to clear it, to end the looking, and smile at Edith. Her ponytail is loose, the top two buttons of her shirt are undone, and her socks rolled down low, asclose to her shoes as possible, as if she meant to hide them altogether. It is fashionable, I suppose, the reason why the boys flock around her and why we are so different for it.
    I