The Unquiet by Mikaela Everett Read Free Book Online Page A

retie the scarf tighter around my neck. The fact that I am fourteen and Edith is nearly sixteen doesn’t matter to her. I like that. I barely remember it myself, even though I am the youngest carrier taking the examination this year.
    Edith swirls the bottle around a bit. She takes a swig before handing it to me.
    â€œThis is probably a bad idea,” I say, but I take a sip, too. Some evenings, when we’ve been very good, Madame will open a bottle of wine for us to share around the table. But it’s the cheap kind, the kind that she herself rarely drinks. Somehow you grow used to the taste, the tanginess of sour grapes. In comparison this expensive wine is too sweet, too rich, as it swirls around in my mouth. I take another sip and whisper to Edith, “I’m pretty sure Gray wants to kill me.”
    She frowns at him and then whispers back, “No, not you.”
    I say nothing.
    Crickets are chirping, and the leaves of the forest rustle. A pair of owl eyes glower down at me from a tree, a group of fireflies sidle past, and the wind starts to sing an eerie song. Now that darkness has fallen, all the things of the night are awake,aware. We should go inside, but I am afraid that I belong here more, to this wind, to this song, than I do to the sound of voices, of people. I always have, even before we left home.
    â€œI’m going to bed,” Gray says quietly after a while. Am I imagining the way he looks at me? He straightens from the shed and inhales what must be his third or fourth cigarette by now.
    Edith startles. “Oh, okay,” she says too cheerily, but I can read the disappointment in her voice. “You want some wine?” He doesn’t answer, so she hands me the bottle, and then she stands. “I’ll be right back, okay?” she says. She walks over to her brother, and though they whisper, I understand that Edith is trying to coax him out of whatever depression he has fallen into. She touches his cheek, but he flinches, as if her touch burned. She wraps her arms around him, but he stands there stiffly, blinking past her at me. Her shoulders are sagging, too, by the time she lets go.
    I leave Edith where she is standing desolately and follow him, and I don’t even know why I do it. “You’re going to be okay tomorrow, right?” I hear myself asking.
    He stops, waits for me to catch up. “Do you care?” he asks, the toe of his shoe scuffing the ground. That question seems like a test. A small test masking a larger one.
    I tell him the truth. “Not really. I don’t think I’ve even really thought of you before tonight. Not since we were kids. But . . . now I can’t stop thinking about all sorts of weird things.”
    â€œLike what?” he asks, curiosity stirring his expression for the first time tonight. His eyes burn mine in an old familiar way. They’ve always been so serious. A cricket hops right onto my left shoe and sits there.
    â€œDo you care?” I say, in the same tone of voice.
    For a moment, silence. Then he shakes his head at me as if he is disappointed, hands me his cigarette, and walks on. Alex is dead. Gray is angry. Edith wants to drink herself to sleep. So much for our lucky group. We haven’t even started our missions, our lives yet, and we are already this small. This tired of ourselves.
    When I come back, Edith is sitting at our spot, still drinking. “Are you afraid you won’t pass the exams tomorrow, Lira?” she asks me.
    Of course I am afraid. I am terrified . And I wish we wouldn’t talk about it now. It will be bad enough trying to fall asleep tonight. My heart is racing, and there is a heaviness that has clawed its way into my stomach. But I refuse to let it show, not even to Edith.
    â€œI saw Jenny throw up three days ago,” I confess instead. “I don’t know whether that was fear.”
    Edith nods. “Jenny has been having little panic attacks all week. She