All Unquiet Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

who I was, despiteall the people in my life telling me, and you could see it in my face. That was the part of me that I wanted to hide from Carly, who seemed so sure of herself.
    When I came out of the bathroom, Miranda (who from that day forward insisted that I call her by her first name) was gone and the coast was clear.
    The floors were hardwood, so I removed my shoes, set them by the front door, and padded up the stairs in my socks. I had no idea what I was looking for. In the hall, on a long credenza, there were photos of Carly as a baby—chubby-cheeked, blue-eyed, and, amazingly, blond. By the time she was walking, her hair had darkened; in the photo I picked up, she looked to be about two years old. She was toddling forward, arms outstretched for something uncaptured. As I walked down the hallway, I watched Carly grow from an affectionate child who pressed kisses against her mother’s cheek to a contemplative six-year-old who was most often shown reading a book to a proud nine-year-old holding up a trophy won in a horseback riding competition. Obviously, someone in the house fancied himself or herself a photographer. The most recent spatter of portraits could be most appropriately titled Carly in Nature—Carly picking apples, Carly petting a sheep, Carly reading in a tree, Carly swimming in a lake. They all seemed to have been taken in the last year or so.
    I heard water running in the walls, and took this to mean somebody had flushed a toilet or run a faucet nearby. Not wanting to be caught snooping, I opened the first door I saw. I thought it was a guest room because it was so neat, but in moments I realized that it was, in fact, Carly’s own bedroom.
    Instead of the requisite pink, Carly’s room was done up in hues of light blue and green. Everything was perfect, as if it wasa professional job, which, I reasoned, it probably was. Later, Carly would tell me that before marrying her father, Miranda had been an interior decorator at a well-respected design house in San Francisco. She seemed as proud of that fact as Miranda seemed of her daughter’s fourth-grade dressage trophy—that is, hugely.
    Carly’s bedroom was practically the size of the living room in my mother’s house. She had a large four-poster bed, which was covered with a blue, green, and white patchwork quilt and piled high with pillows. There was a light green love seat pressed up against the wall in one corner, and a matching armchair with an ottoman. Carly had a large white rolltop desk with what looked like a brand-new laptop and state-of-the-art speakers sitting on it, and a smaller white vanity with a large mirror that was littered with female mysteries. The walls were painted sky blue; I’d find out later that it was the only room in the entire house with carpeting.
    “My sanctuary.” Carly was standing in the doorway, shoulder mashed against the doorjamb, arms crossed and eyebrow lifted. “Are you lost?”
    “N-no,” I stammered, trying to think up a good excuse for being in her bedroom uninvited. There really wasn’t one. “Yes. I’m lost.”
    She shook her head and smiled. “I don’t believe you. It’s nice, huh?”
    “Uh, sure.”
    “I hate it,” she confided. “It’s like a Laura Ashley catalog threw up in here. But my mother insisted. She thought it was so me.”
    “It isn’t?” The room was bright and confident and perfectly collected, which was how Carly seemed.
    “Oh, God no. This is Easter on morphine. Pastel paradise.” She shuddered.
    “Why don’t you say something?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “My mother really loved the idea. She designed the whole room. It’d break her heart if I told her I hated it.”
    It struck me how kind and mature that sentiment was, abnormally so for someone our age. I fought with my mother over everything, from school to the intramural sports she was constantly trying to sign me up for to what brand of hot dogs we bought at the supermarket. It never occurred to me to shut up