We Were Restless Things Read online

  “Maybe, but it’s a thing that happened too.”

  Jonas shrugged. “I give up. I can’t think of it. How did the drowned man get in the forest?”

  Matt rubbed his fingers through his ashy hair. “What was his name? It was definitely Miller. Forget his first name. Logan, or something like that.”

  His father wasn’t kidding. Jonas had the urge to pull out his phone and search Miller Shivery, MN, drowning, but he thought Matt might feel the same way about phones during dinner or conversation as Sara did, which was, “Don’t use them.” Because this was the longest conversation he could remember having with his father, Jonas erred on the side of caution and politeness. What little good that did. The conversation switched to Jonas’s interest in extracurriculars (he had none), and by the time they returned to Lamplight, Jonas had forgotten about the riddle that wasn’t a riddle.

  Chapter 2

  Noemi

  Noemi hadn’t known anyone who’d been kicked out of high school before, and when Matt had told her that was why his son would be coming to live with them, she’d privately concocted an image of Jonas Lake as a bully and a troublemaker. She didn’t need a reason to dislike him—she assumed the worst of most strangers anyway—but this colorful bit of backstory had helped.

  She imagined he would be something like Gaetan Kelly. It was nothing short of miraculous that Gaetan hadn’t been expelled, so Jonas must have been truly nightmarish to have been ejected from his school. This portrait of her new housemate might have made other people apprehensive, but not Noemi. She wasn’t afraid of a sixteen-year-old boy, no matter how many teeth he’d knocked out of other people’s mouths. Instead, she resolved to make him feel as unwelcome as possible, lest he get the idea that Lamplight was his home too.

  It turned out that Jonas was tall and lanky and didn’t look like he could beat anyone up. He little resembled his pale, bespectacled father but had a similar unassuming air as he stood fidgeting in Noemi’s bedroom when they first met, flushed and quiet. That he failed to be immediately unpleasant or hateable made her dislike him more. He had a lip ring that didn’t make him look tough, which she assumed was its intended purpose.

  After some growing pains, Noemi had made room for Matt in her life: he was there because he made her mother happy. Jonas had been inflicted upon them because of his own childish misbehavior, and she could not forgive him for changing the shape of their lives.

  “I still wanna meet him,” Lyle said.

  Noemi’s best friend, Lyla Anderson, sat beside her on one of the stone benches at a riverside smoothie shop named Blended. The girls ordered the same thing every time—strawberries and banana with yogurt for Lyle, strawberries and kiwi, no yogurt for Noemi—and talked about things that weren’t the Miller drowning…usually people they disliked.

  In the last weekend of summer before school began, this meant Noemi’s new housemate.

  Lyle plugged her straw with her finger and lifted a pillar of pink smoothie out of her cup. “I can’t believe someone as nice as Matt would raise a crappy kid. Who knows why he bashed some guy’s head in? Need I remind you of the black eye you gave Gaetan Kelly in first grade? Maybe he’s a Gaetan-punching kind of expellee.”

  “Need I remind you that Gaetan Kelly is a creep who deserved to be punched for putting his hands on you?” He had jabbed Lyle in the forehead during recess, teasing that her fair eyebrows were “invisible,” until Noemi nestled a fist under one of his dark ones. She had seen him pull other boys’ chairs out from beneath them or put gum in girls’ ponytails, and she wouldn’t let him go that far with Lyle.

  “I’m not criticizing. You cold-clocking Gaetan is one of my most treasured memories.”

  “Matt is a loud chewer,” Noemi said.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “You know how I feel about mouth sounds.” Noemi squeezed her cup a little too tightly, and the lid popped off. “As much as I like Matt, I still have trouble being around him when he eats. Which is a problem when you live with someone. Even if Jonas is a decent person, he’s bound to have some habits that become grating when sharing a roof with him.”

  “You’re looking for reasons to dislike the kid.” Lyle noisily slurped her smoothie through a wide grin.

  “Very mature.”

  “Ack!” Lyle clamped a hand over her mouth. “Cold,” she complained, voice muffled through fingers. “My teeth.”

  “Serves you right.”

  “You afraid he’ll forget to refill a Brita pitcher or something?” Lyle folded her legs on the bench. Bony knees poked through large tears in her jeans. “And you accuse me of ‘vigorous chewing’ all the time. Does that mean you hate me?”

  Noemi tsked. “Didn’t say I hated anyone. I’m just not interested in being Jonas’s friend.”

  “Well, that’s nothing new.” Lyle pulled her cell phone from the shaft of her boot and began flicking through photos. “In lighter news, I was thinking about dying my hair this color.” She brandished her screen to show Noemi a picture of a girl with grass-stained hair.

  “Your hair’s light enough. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “That I know.” Lyle fluffed her platinum bangs and rolled her eyes upward. “It’s just that I didn’t know if you had any photos planned soon, and I wasn’t sure if a color change would be a problem.”

  During her sophomore year, Noemi had discovered the thrill of photography. She’d apparently shown enough promise that one of the school’s art teachers had let her borrow a camera far more expensive and professional than anything Noemi or Cesca could have afforded.

  Noemi took mostly outdoor photos, self-portraits, pictures of Lyle or Amberlyn Miller. Even a few of Cesca. The girls would raid Cesca’s closet or page through the racks at a local consignment shop for the right wardrobe. Noemi styled her friends’ hair and makeup, but it had always been collaborative, at least to some degree.

  When Noemi had brought the camera back to the AP art teacher at the end of the school year, the woman told her she could sign it out over the summer.

  “You don’t need my permission to dye your own hair, Lyle.”

  “Right. No, I know. Thought maybe it wouldn’t pop enough in outdoor photos. Just wanted to check.”

  “It’ll look fine. You going to do it yourself?”

  “I was thinking of asking a very crafty and stylish friend of mine to do it for me.”

  “Amberlyn?”

  “Guess again.”

  Noemi’s smoothie was mostly juice now, speckled with a few strawberry seeds.

  “Really, though, can you help me dye it?”

  “Sure. But definitely at your house. I’m sick of Lamplight.”

  “To-mor-row,” Lyle sang.

  A sudden onslaught of rain chased Lyle into her Chevy, but before Noemi could follow, an orange cat darted past her legs to seek shelter under the bench where she had been sitting. Lamplight had two cats, Rosencrantz the calico and Guildenstern the stripy gray tabby, and Noemi considered them to be the only potential rivals Lyle had for the role of her “best friend.” Ignoring the rain—which would probably stop soon anyway, as the sun was still shining—she bent to peer at the visitor below.

  “What are you doing?” Lyle called. She held her plastic smoothie cup above her head as she leaned out the car door, though it wouldn’t be enough to keep her hair dry.

  The cat’s wide eyes fixated on Noemi’s dangling curls. Its pupils unspooled. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern played with her hair often at home, and she’d grown used to having her scalp tugged each time one of them pounced on a curl. She shook her head and made the ringlets dance for the new cat.

  She wanted to bury her nose in its wet, golden-orange fur and breathe in the animal’s smell. There was something familiar about its coat: it reminded her of Link’s hair. If Link had had dark brown hair like Noemi’s, she’d have thought nothing of seeing that color in an animal’s fur. That color was everywhere: the soil in the terra-cotta pots on Lamplight’s porch, the branches of the dogwood in the lawn damp with dew, the Jacobean wood stain stored in the carriage house and how it looked when Matt used it on white oak. Link’s hair color, on the other hand, was not everywhere, and that’s why it was so hard not to notice when she did see it in a fox crossing the road in the early morning or in the white blush of dehydrated carrots.

  • • •

  Although he had died, Link had not stopped texting Noemi. The texts did not come from the phone number he’d had when he was alive. The messages arrived from Unknown.

  It first happened in June, not long after Link’s funeral, which she had not gone to. Gaetan Kelly had come into school with an expletive shaved into the side of his head. If that was Gaetan’s way of grieving his friend’s death, Noemi didn’t understand it. She stood amid a crowd of other students and watched as two teachers dragged him to the principal’s office, while he shouted drunkenly about how the dress code made no mention of what words students’ hair could or could not say. Gaetan had friends besides Link, but Link was the most important and the only one who’d been a sobering influence. Noemi wondered if, without Link around, Gaetan had finally snapped.

  That was when Unknown first contacted her, as though he too had been watching this scene unfold.

  UNKNOWN

  Keep an eye on Gaetan.

  Noemi looked around her, searching to see who nearby was on their phone.

  Who is this?

  I would ask him to keep an eye on you too, but he already does.

  Your number is blocked. Who is this?

  I miss you.

  She should not have thought of Link because, of course
, it was impossible. But she did.

  Stop screwing around.

  Noemi was disappointed when no one answered.

  In art class, she was reprimanded for being on her phone. She could not help but take surreptitious glances at it, which turned into not-so-surreptitious moments spent reading and rereading the few texts exchanged that morning. Then, as the school bus carried her home, and though Unknown had not contacted her since 8:00 a.m., she asked again:

  Who are you?

  Link.

  She pressed her thumb beside his name and stared at the letters until they didn’t look like anything. Someone wanted her to think Link was texting her, but it was probably not anyone who had access to his cell. After all, if this person wanted to impersonate Link, texting from his number would have made better sense. That ruled out his sister, Amberlyn. This kind of nonsense had Gaetan written all over it, but he’d been detained by the teachers when she’d gotten the first text.

  Who are you really?

  Sorry.

  Whoever was texting her was an asshole, and she told them so.

  This is messed up. What do you want?

  Someone killed me.

  You going to tell me it’s my fault Link’s dead?

  I would never say that.

  The police had interviewed her, even though Noemi had been in Minneapolis for an art festival with her mother during the weekend Link had died. When the cops had told her what happened, she actually fell to her knees like someone in a movie. Noemi hadn’t believed emotions could be powerful enough to overwhelm her legs until it happened.

  The bus arrived at her stop, and she disembarked. Instead of walking home, Noemi cut across the field and headed for the woods. She hadn’t stopped going even though Link had died there, though the visits were shallower and less frequent.

  Then whose fault is it?

  Hard to explain.

  Noemi googled “texts from unknown numbers,” but her cell data slowed, then dropped off entirely as she got farther from the road.

  You should stay out of that forest.

  She stopped.

  Where are you?

  Here and not. I don’t know.

  Noemi turned from the woods and ran back to the road, relieved her choice of shoes was more practical than usual that day. Once home, she knelt in the rose garden and set the phone in the soil. A green caterpillar explored the edge of it, then turned slowly away when the cell buzzed once more.

  I’m sorry.

  I wanted you to know I’m near. I feel like you’re mad at me.

  I don’t even know who you are!

  Her heart thrashed against her chest, and her skin prickled.

  I drowned in the lake.

  Noemi ran into the house. Matt washed paintbrushes in the sink, and Audrey sat in the living room with the television on. Noemi ignored greetings from both of them and ran up the stairs and into her room. The door slammed behind her. Though it was daytime, she flicked on the lights, then drew the sheer curtains across her windows. Finally, she looked again at the screen once she was tucked behind the gauzy drapes of her bed. A message was waiting.

  The lake in the woods.

  There is no lake in the woods.

  Don’t pretend.

  She wondered if Link had told anybody about the impossible lake. It had just appeared one day, fully formed, lighthouse and all. Some days it stretched so far it looked more like an ocean, and she couldn’t even see the trees on the opposite side. He’d promised to keep it a secret, but she could imagine him absentmindedly telling Amberlyn or Gaetan. Yet Gaetan couldn’t have texted—not this morning.

  Is this Amberlyn Miller?

  No.

  Gaetan Kelly?

  It’s Link.

  Link is dead.

  Yeah.

  Can you call me?

  No.

  Link was never so difficult.

  I’m sorry.

  And I was a little difficult.

  • • •

  The morning before the new school year started, after a weekend of avoiding Jonas as best she could, Noemi had entered the kitchen only to discover Matt Lake’s son drinking milk directly from the carton. Jonas stood in front of the fridge in sweatpants and a white crewneck T-shirt. He looked surprised when he saw her, though not as embarrassed as he should have been to be caught defiling a shared food item with his saliva.

  He wished her a good morning and she responded by saying, “That milk is for everyone in this house to share.”

  Jonas wiped his mouth on his wrist and gave the carton a look of earnest curiosity, as though searching for the words DO NOT DRINK WITHOUT GLASS on its surface. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m used to living with my mom. She doesn’t drink milk.”

  Noemi had been considering inviting him to ride to school the next day with her and Lyle, and though she had not yet mentioned the option, she now considered him uninvited. She huffed and made a great show of loudly slamming cabinets and thrusting the faucet on at full blast as she made her oatmeal with water.

  As Noemi dressed for school the following day, she relished knowing that Jonas, having been sentenced to taking the bus, would have had to wake and leave much earlier. On her way downstairs to wait for Lyle, she stuck her head into his room. Rosencrantz lay in a pile of T-shirts on his bed, the traitor. She woke the sleeping cat and called her as much, then plucked her from the quilt and carried her out to the hallway on principle.

  Only Matt was awake at this hour, even though he worked from home and had the most flexible schedule of anyone in the house.

  “Hey, kiddo. Didn’t you miss the bus?” His brows arced over the rim of a Louvre coffee mug that Cesca had purchased during a semester abroad in college.

  “Juniors can drive, so Lyle is taking me.”

  “That’s right.” He set his coffee back on its coaster and spun the two of them together along the woodgrain in the table he had made. “I guess Jonas didn’t know that,” Matt mused. “He left to catch the bus a little while ago. Could have hitched a ride with you two.”

  Noemi avoided his eyes. She bent to unearth the toaster from one of the lower kitchen cabinets. “Well, he’ll meet more people this way.”

  “True. By the way—do you know why our milk is sorry?”

  “What?” Noemi stood, still empty-handed. On the table in front of Matt, alongside a near-empty cereal bowl, sat a carton of milk and a box of Shredded Wheat.

  “Not this one.” He nodded toward the table. “There’s an unopened one apologizing in the fridge.”

  Noemi tugged at the stainless-steel door. Sure enough, there was a fresh container of 2 percent milk on the top shelf, identical to the soiled one Matt had used in his cereal but for its expiration date, presumably. It proclaimed in black Sharpie, I Promise I’m New Sorry! with every word capitalized as though it were a title. A very round smiley face hovered beside the exclamation point. Noemi didn’t need to recognize Jonas’s handwriting to know who had written it.

  “No idea. Probably Diana. You know she anthropomorphizes everything.” Noemi would not be drinking from this milk. Rightfully, Jonas should have replaced the old one, but something about the fact that he had actually done so didn’t sit well with her. She’d ended up being the brat.

  • • •

  Because the school year had just started, even the seniors and juniors who had driven were at school early enough to join the bus riders in the gymnasium. That’s where everyone waited until all buses were present and accounted for, at which point they were dismissed to homeroom. Most students who drove timed their arrivals so that they wouldn’t have to wait with the underclassmen, and by this time next week, that’s exactly what Lyle and Noemi would do. But today they had arrived earlier than necessary and fended off compliments on Lyle’s dip-dyed hair and Noemi’s handmade jewelry (which had been assembled out of parts from old Barbies).

  She led Lyle to a stretch of bench that was just two rows behind where Jonas sat. They filed in next to Tyler Olsen, who, during sophomore year, had begun wearing a shirt and tie every day. He brightened when he saw them and shifted his guitar out of their way.