The Replacement

  It’s me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  NEVER TALK TO STRANGERS

  Roswell found me in the courtyard. The two-minute bell had already rung and there was no one on the lawn to watch me. I was leaning against the building with my eyes closed, breathing in long gasps.

  “Hey,” he said, right next to me before I knew he was there.

  I swallowed and opened my eyes. The sky was overcast, still raining that thin, dismal drizzle that was all wrong for October.

  “Hey.” I sounded hoarse and confused, like I’d been asleep.

  “You don’t look great. How are you feeling?”

  I wanted to shrug and shake it off, but the dizziness rolled in and out in waves. “Pretty bad.”

  Roswell leaned against the wall and suddenly, I was sure that he was going to ask what happened or at least ask why I was hyperventilating alone in the courtyard. I wondered if he’d seen my locker.

  I took a deep breath and cut him off before he could say anything. “Nothing like topping off a dead-baby story with some fresh blood.”

  He laughed and knocked his shoulder against mine. “Hey, she can’t help that her brain is constantly misfiring. But I have to play nice with her if I’m ever going to have a shot at Stephanie, and last names aside, she’s mostly harmless. And I know you’re not indifferent to those natural endowments, right?”

  I laughed, but it sounded forced and kind of miserable. I still had a queasy feeling, like there was a chance I might throw up.

  “Look,” Roswell said, and his voice was unexpectedly low. “I know you don’t talk to girls that much—I know that. But she would go out with you. I’m just saying, the opportunity is there if you want it, you know?”

  I didn’t answer. Alice was so incredibly, painfully hot, so perfect for watching from across the room, but the thought of actually going someplace with her made my chest feel tight.

  The last bell rang, screeching out of the PA system on the roof, and Roswell stepped away from the wall. “Are you coming to history?”

  I shook my head. “I think I’m just going to go home.”

  “You want a ride? I’ll tell Crowley you had a family emergency or something.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The look he gave me was unconvinced. He ran a hand over his chin and stared out across the lawn. “I guess I’ll catch up with you later, then. Are you going to be at the funeral?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not.”

  He nodded. I nodded. We were both standing in the courtyard nodding but not really looking at each other. Sometimes Roswell asks very hard questions, but sometimes he has the decency not to. He didn’t say anything else. He went back inside and I left through the outer gate.

  I started feeling better once I got out of the parking lot, away from the school, the cafeteria full of needles, the clanging metal smell of blood. I put up my hood and stared at my feet, thinking, How are you ever going to get a girlfriend? And why would someone like Alice Harms even be interested in you anyway? And what a loser.

  Still, she’d touched my arm.

  The air was clean and damp, making my breath come easier. I felt cold, a little shaky, maybe, but I was okay. I felt okay. Still, I couldn’t get rid of the nagging sense that things were about to get bad. At school. In the world. Alice’s mom was saying Hail Marys and everyone was on edge, looking for the demon in their midst, looking for someone to blame. My whole body felt weak, like I was coming down with something.

  One thing was clear: I needed to do whatever it took to avoid being noticed. The rain pattered steadily on the sidewalk, making me uneasy for no good reason. Maybe things were bad, but they were always bad. I was used to that. The real, fundamental problem was this feeling I had that they were about to get worse.

  In another, earlier life, Gentry was a steel town, but over the span of four or five decades, it had turned into a sea of minivans and lawns and golden retrievers.

  Almost everybody worked at one of the computer plants, assembling boards and packing chips, or else at the dairy farm or the junior college, depending on their level of education. There were plenty of other company towns in neighboring counties—suburbs with no city to spread out from, each with their own factory or tech plant to orbit around.

  Gentry was just more self-contained than most. People were born and grew up and died without ever feeling compelled to leave. Everything you needed was already there.

  The high school was built on the edge of what used to be the Gates refinery. For forty years, Gates had been the beating heart of Gentry, and a lot of local businesses and school mascots were still named after it. When Gates folded after World War II, first the machine shops and then the tech companies had come in with jobs, sponsored bridges and town squares, always deciding that Gentry was a better bet than the other eight or nine small towns in the immediate vicinity. They’d torn the refinery down before I was born.

  Most people at school cut through the Gates property to get home. The residential areas were almost all on the other side of it, separated from the business district and the school by a narrow ravine. There was still all kinds of scrap and debris lying around in the grass, though, and the ground was saturated with iron. I always took a different route.

  Now I walked along Benthaven, skirting the open field where the refinery had sat a lifetime ago, trying to figure out what had just happened. Someone had painted blood on my locker door. But the critical question was, Why? What had I done to make someone want to single me out? Why now?

  Things always got tense around Gentry when kids died. Funerals were a bad subject, but I’d been careful. I’d been close to invisible. I’d done my part.

  And Roswell and I had both known I wouldn’t be at the service, but sometimes you have to play the game, even when there’s no one else around. It puts you in the habit of pretending you believe what you’re saying. When really it’s just two people who know a secret, pretending that they don’t.

  Consecrated ground wasn’t like stainless steel or blood iron. It wasn’t something I could just deal with. If I went two feet inside the churchyard, my skin blistered the way other people get a bad sunburn.

  There were parts of the property that weren’t off-limits to me—storage sheds and the Sunday school addition and an unconsecrated section of the cemetery, reserved for suicides and unbaptized babies—but the idea of going into the churchyard just to stand in one corner of the cemetery and stare at the rest of it was depressing.

  When I was younger, I’d gone to Sunday school. My dad had the classroom addition built on an adjoining lot when I was three or four. It was a reasonable expansion because they really did need the space, but he had an ulterior motive, too. He never consecrated the ground.

  The new building had been a workable solution for a while, but now that I was too old for Bible classes, I had to settle for looking like that rebellious kid who didn’t want anything to do with his pastor father.

  I walked along Welsh Street until I came to the place where the road dead-ended. I stepped over the low concrete divider and started down the footpath toward the slag heap.

  When the refinery was running, they’d just dump the gravel and quicklime into the ravine to get rid of it. It piled up for years, covered in skinny trees and clumps of weeds. It was the only part of Gates that still existed.

  There were dump hills and slag heaps all over the county, but in Gentry, the elementary school kids never climbed the fences. Other towns’ slag heaps were fenced for liability reasons. They were low and gray and not very interesting. Ours were so black they looked burned. They were fenced because it was better to stay away.

  The stories people told were the campfire kind, possessions and hauntings. Grinning, rotting things that rose from the dead at night and walked around deserted streets. None of it was believable, but that was irrelevant. It didn’t matter if the stories were just stories. You still didn’t want to go there.

  Partway down the side of the hill, the pa
th split and followed a footbridge across to the other side of the ravine. A man was standing in the middle of the bridge, which was weird because it wasn’t the kind of place grown-ups usually hung out. He was leaning on the railing, staring out with his chin in his hands. He looked familiar in a way I couldn’t place.

  I didn’t really want to go any closer, but I had to walk past him to get home or else climb back up the hill and go all the way around to Breaker Street. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket and stepped out onto the bridge.

  “You look awful,” he said as I came up next to him. It was a strange thing to say because it was rude and he was a stranger, but also because he wasn’t looking at me.

  He had on a long coat with frayed cuffs and military stripes sewed onto the sleeves. There was a row of holes down the front, like someone had cut the snaps out.

  “Your eyes,” he said suddenly, turning to stare at me. “Your eyes are black as stones.”

  I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure there was no one else on the path before I nodded. My eyes were always dark, but iron made it worse. The dizziness was nearly gone, although I still felt sweaty and pale.

  The man leaned closer. The skin around his eyes was bruised, oily looking. His complexion was an unhealthy shade of yellow. “I could help you.”

  “I’m not an expert or anything, but you look like you need a little more help than I do.”

  That made him smile, which didn’t improve his appearance. “My face is simply a result of my poor breeding, but you, my friend, are in bad shape. You need something to get you back on your feet.” He pointed across the bridge to the other side of the ravine, my quiet suburban neighborhood and my house. “That way lies misery. It’s what you’re going home to, and I think you know it.”

  Rain pattered on the bridge. I glanced over the rail and down at the slag heap. It was so black that you could almost see other colors. My heart was beating harder than was comfortable.

  “I’m not interested,” I said. My mouth was dry.

  He nodded gravely. “But you will be.”

  It didn’t sound like a threat or a warning. His voice was flat. He took a watch out of his coat pocket and turned away from me, flipping the lid open but staring down at the slag heap.

  After a minute, I edged past him, careful not to let our shoulders touch. I crossed to where the path climbed the other side of the ravine and came out at the intersection of Orchard and Concord. I kept going, trying hard to fight the panic in my chest. A small, fearful part of me was convinced he was following, he was coming up behind me, but when I turned back toward the bridge, there was nothing.

  On Concord Street, all the houses were two stories high, with big wraparound front porches. Three houses down from ours, Mrs. Feely was out in her yard, nailing a horseshoe to the porch railing. Her hair was gray, arranged in tight poodle curls all over her head, and she was wearing a yellow rain slicker. She glanced over her shoulder and when she saw me, she smiled and gave me a wink.

  Then she went back to nailing up the horseshoe, like the iron would protect her from something big and scary. I headed home, with the clang of her hammer following me down the street.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HEARTBEAT

  In the front hall, I dropped my book bag and yanked off my hoodie. There was blood all over the sleeve, and I debated just throwing it away, but I figured my dad would have something to say about that.

  The laundry room was in a little alcove off the hall. I didn’t like to go in there. The washer and dryer were both stainless steel and the room was so small that the air always had a dense, poisonous smell to it. For a minute, I considered running the washer anyway, but even just standing with the door open was making my pulse hammer in my ears. I wadded up the hoodie and made a mental note to ask Emma if she’d wash it for me. In scalding water. With bleach. Then I shoved it in the hamper and headed for the kitchen.

  From the back of the house, I could hear the clack of the keyboard. My mom was in the office, tapping away at her computer.

  “Mackie,” she called, “is that you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t let your father catch you skipping class, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I got a glass of water and sat at the table, looking at the tablecloth and trying to figure out the plaid pattern. It went red, black, red, white, green, and then I lost track.

  When Emma came in, I was so out of it that her hand on my shoulder made me jump. I started to ask about the laundry but stopped when I realized there was someone else with her. The second girl was tall and serious looking, with a long, bony face.

  Emma got a jar of peanut butter from the pantry and took out a plastic picnic knife.

  “Hey, ugly,” she said, reaching to tousle my hair. “You’re home early.” She glanced across the hall at the office door, then said so quietly she was almost mouthing it, “Are you feeling okay?”

  I wiggled my hand in a so-so gesture. “Aren’t you supposed to be in botany?”

  Emma was nineteen and not the kind of person who skipped class. She was taking every science course the junior college offered and her dedication was kind of scary.

  “Professor Cranston gave us outside time to work on our group project.” She waved her plastic knife at the other girl. “That’s Janice.”

  Janice sat down across from me and folded her hands on the table. “Hi,” she said. Her hair was muddy brown and hung in wild snarls on either side of her face.

  I nodded at her but didn’t say anything.

  She was looking at me like I was a laboratory specimen, one of those bugs with the pins through it. Her eyes were huge and dark. “Why does she call you ugly?”

  Other people could make pretty much any situation seem normal just by saying the right words. But I wasn’t like that. I stared hard at the backs of my hands and waited for Emma to ride in and take over the conversation.

  Emma, the master liar. Queen of my-brother-is-normal, my-brother-is-shy. My brother is sickly, has allergies, mono, food poisoning, the flu, the biggest, messiest lie of all: My brother.

  Reliably, she came up behind me and leaned her chin on the top of my head. Her hair was fine and limp. Stray pieces had come loose from the rubber band and hung down so they tickled my face. “When he was a baby, he was the ugliest thing you ever saw in your life. All yellow and wrinkly. And he had these teeth.” She let me go and turned in the direction of the office. “A full set—right, Mom?”

  “Just like Richard the Third,” my mom called back.

  Janice was still looking at me, crouched at the table like she was hungry. “Well, he’s not ugly now.”

  “I’m going upstairs,” I said, and pushed my chair back.

  In my room, I lay on the bed but couldn’t get comfortable. I felt restless, like little bugs were crawling around under my skin. The man on the bridge had been waiting for me—me, and not some random kid cutting across the bridge. He’d stared right into my face like he was looking for something. I was still cold and shaky from the blood, worse than I’d felt in a while and worse than I used to feel, ever.

  Finally, I got up and went over to my closet. I got out my bass and my amp and plugged in the headphones.

  The bass was strung with Black Beauties, and I’d pulled off the metal frets. If the song was fast, I used a pick, and when I didn’t, the lacquer coating on the strings kept the steel from burning my fingers. But even if I had to play with bare strings, I’d probably do it anyway, just to get that low, humming sound, that feeling. Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps. Anything that scares or worries you is suddenly a hundred miles away.

  I played the lines to songs I knew and to songs I made up. I played progressions full of high, clear notes that hung forever and heavy tones that thumped and doubled back on themselves again and again and again.

  After a long time, I started to get a strange feeling. Like someone was listening. Not the feeling of the house or even of Emma standing
out in the hall. It was more like the warm, anxious rush of playing for a stranger. When I took the headphones off and went to the window, though, the backyard was empty. More time had passed than I’d realized and it was starting to get dark. I stared out at the lawn and the bushes, but it was ridiculous to think that someone had been listening. Completely ludicrous, when I was sitting there with the sound filtering through my headphones.

  I sat back down on the edge of the bed with the Gibson propped across my knees and played a walking bass line that peaked and dropped and grew until I could feel it in my own heartbeat.

  When I woke up a while later, someone was calling my name.

  I rolled off the bed, untangling myself from cables and cords. I’d dozed off with my headphones on. From the floor, the amp hummed softly in the gloom and I felt hazy and numb. Outside, the sky was dark.

  The house was very bright, which meant my dad was home. He has this thing for electric lights. If a switch can be flipped, he’ll flip it. When I stepped out onto the landing, I had to shut my eyes against the glare.

  “Malcolm,” he called from the kitchen. “Come in here, please.”

  I went downstairs, blinking and shading my eyes with my hand.

  He was at the table, and I could tell from his expression and his necktie that he’d just gotten back from the church. From Natalie Stewart’s funeral. His face was round and generally friendly, but right now it looked sort of raw. I wanted to ask about the service but didn’t know what to say.

  He was flipping through a pile of old sermons and making notes on them. His suit coat was slung over the back of a chair. He glanced up when I came in but didn’t put his pen down. He looked tired and sort of exasperated, like he could hardly wait for the day to be over.