The Replacement

  “Do you want to talk about why I got a call from the attendance office this afternoon?” he said.

  “They had the blood drive at school. . . .”

  He watched my face, rolling the pen between his fingers. “Today wasn’t a good day for doing things that could get you singled out. I’m assuming they announce something like that ahead of time?”

  “I forgot,” I said. “Anyway, it’s not like it was some huge crisis.”

  “Malcolm,” he said. “Your entire responsibility is not to make them see.”

  I stared down at the linoleum. “I didn’t.” After a second, I glanced back up at him. “I don’t.”

  He arranged his sermons in a neat pile, lining up the edges. Then he got up and went to the counter. He got out a plastic knife and started using it to cut an apple into slices. I wanted to ask why he didn’t just pick up the apple and eat it like a normal person, but everyone has their own private quirks.

  After mangling the apple for a while, he threw the knife into the sink. It bounced like a pick-up-stick and snapped in half. “Why are there no paring knives in this house?”

  “The good one’s in the cupboard. Above the refrigerator,” I said when he gave me a blank look.

  My mother moves cutlery around like she’s playing chess. Sometimes, she throws it out. Anything that can’t be plastic or ceramic is aluminum. Anything that isn’t aluminum, she hides.

  He opened the cupboard, sorting through the pile of knives and stainless steel flatware, and took the paring knife back to the counter.

  I watched his back as he sliced the apple. His shoulders were tight. He smelled like aftershave and this tense, sharp smell he gets when he’s stressed out.

  “I was thinking,” he said without turning around. “Missy Brandt mentioned that it might be nice to have someone come in and help with the preschool class once in a while. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

  I had a feeling that Missy hadn’t mentioned it, that this was something he’d come up with on his own, and of course she’d said yes because what else can someone say when the minister asks you to babysit his sideshow of a son?

  When I didn’t answer, he glanced over his shoulder. “Is something wrong? I thought it might be a good solution. This way, you have an official place in the congregation.”

  I dug my fingernails into my palms and tried to get my voice under control. “It’s just so . . . messed up.”

  “Well, it might take you a few weeks to get used to being around little kids, but I think you’ll do fine if you just give it a chance.” He sighed, shaking his head. “That’s the trouble with you and your mother. Both of you, you take a situation and start inventing obstacles right away. You never just give things a chance to get better.”

  So, we were back to the sticky politics of choosing sides. On one side, me and my mom—pessimistic realists, always. On the other side, my dad and Emma, glowing with all the ways the world could be good, and I couldn’t just agree with them because I didn’t really believe it. But I wanted to.

  I picked at the tablecloth, then stopped because it was making me look uncertain, and that wasn’t how I felt. I meant what I had to say to him. I just didn’t want to say it. “Dad, this doesn’t have anything to do with giving things a chance. This is just how it is and it’s not going to magically get better. I’m not ever going to be able to just live my life like everyone else.”

  My dad turned toward the window so I couldn’t see his face. “Don’t say that again. None of this is because of you.”

  I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, feeling a deep, pulsing ache in the middle of my chest, like someone was hitting me. “It is because of me. You don’t even treat me the same way you treat Emma.”

  That made him breathe out in a harsh gust, almost a laugh. “You’re nothing like Emma. I try my best to figure out what you need, but it’s hard. It’s never been obvious with you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try. That’s all we can do, really—try to do the right thing.”

  I was about to tell him that the right thing was to go with what worked and not put me in charge of a bunch of little kids when Emma came in. She shuffled across the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I stopped talking and my dad kept his back to both of us.

  Emma rummaged through the vegetable drawer for a while, then looked at us. “You didn’t have to be so rude to Janice,” she said, and at first, I thought she meant me.

  My dad set down the knife and turned to face her. “You know we have rules about unexpected guests.”

  We do have rules. We have a lot of rules. Roswell can come over, but only because my dad trusts him. A random acquaintance might be tipped off by our lack of canned food and metal kitchen utensils.

  My dad raked his hands through his hair. “Both of you, please. This family is an extremely visible part of the community and we need to be conscientious about the image we’re projecting.”

  Emma closed the refrigerator, hard. “What image? We weren’t embarrassing you. She was over so we could go through the seed experiment.”

  “Well, this isn’t really the ideal place for a study session. Could you meet at the library, maybe?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Unfortunately, they have a policy about setting up germination trays at the library.”

  “Well, what about that nice little bookstore downtown? Or a coffee shop?”

  “Dad!”

  They glared at each other, but neither of them said anything.

  They were the loud ones in the family, always shouting or laughing. I thought how strange it was that they were also the ones who’d perfected the art of a wordless argument. They could communicate just by the various ways they breathed in or out.

  My dad made a huffing noise and Emma rolled her eyes and looked away.

  She was standing against the refrigerator, staring at the floor. Suddenly, she leapt forward and hugged him around the waist like she was apologizing. They stood with their arms around each other and I knew that there’d never been any question about whether he’d hug her back.

  She pressed her face against his shirt and said, “You better put that knife back when you’re done. Mom hates it when the kitchen gets disarranged.”

  He laughed and turned to swat her with the dish towel. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to disarrange her kitchen, would I?”

  “Not if you know what’s good for you.”

  She reached out to rumple my hair, but she was still looking at him. Then she turned and danced out of the room. He watched her go. They had an actual relationship—one I could never decipher or duplicate.

  My dad left his mangled apple on the counter and sat down across from me. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but you know how important it is to keep a low profile.”

  “Some people pass out when there’s blood. It’s a known phenomenon.”

  He leaned down so that he was staring into my face. His eyes were pale green, like glass, and his hair was going from dishwater brown to gray. He had a way of seeming so good and so right when you didn’t have to live with him, like anyone else could just go to him and find something warm and comforting there.

  “You don’t have the luxury of being like some people. You have to resemble the majority. I’m not saying they’re bad, but this is a nervous, suspicious town, and it’s going to be a lot worse for a while. A family buried their daughter today. You know that.” Then his expression got softer. “Did you pass out?”

  “No. I just had to go out and get some air.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Roswell.”

  My dad sat back in his chair, linking his hands behind his head, studying me. “Are you sure no one else saw you?”

  “Just Roswell.”

  After a minute, he nodded. “Okay.” He took a deep breath and said it again, like that decided something. “Okay. You’re right—this isn’t a crisis.”

  I nodded, looking at the floor and the shining granite coun
ters. If you assessed our family dynamic based on just the kitchen, you would probably assume it was sitcom quality.

  I leaned my elbows on the table like I was checking to see if it would take my weight. The smell of his aftershave was so strong that it kept getting in my mouth, making it hard to swallow. On the wall, the clock was ticking softly, inching toward eleven.

  No. It wasn’t a crisis. Except someone had scratched Freak on my locker door.

  But there was no way to tell him about that. No way to make him understand that none of his rules and his safety measures mattered.

  The word was still true.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GENTRY AT NIGHT

  Later, I lay facedown on the bed. The sounds of the house were familiar. Refrigerator, central air. The upstairs toilet that never quite stops running.

  Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. Rustle of mail on the hall table, jingling keys. No scuffle of shoes. My mom wears white nurse’s sneakers, rubber soled. Totally silent.

  “Sharon,” my dad called. It sounded like he was still in the kitchen. “Could you come here, please?”

  My mom said something unintelligible. Must have been a no because a minute later, the shower came on. She always showers as soon as she gets home because her job is to splash around in blood. Because all day, she’s been touching stainless steel.

  I rolled onto my back and looked at the ceiling, the overhead light fixture. The way the fan spun, making shadows like dragonfly wings.

  Finally, I pushed the window open and climbed out onto the roof.

  From so high up, I had a view of the neighborhood and the backyard. I leaned forward and propped my elbows on the tops of my knees. The rain had stopped, but the sky was still spitting a fine, chilly mist.

  Down in the street, there were motorcycles, fire hydrants, and parked cars. Trees lined up all the way along Wicker Street. The whole city reeked like iron, but under that, the green smell was alive and bright.

  In the hall outside my room, someone was shuffling along, dragging their feet on the carpet. Then there was a knock, soft and cautious.

  I rolled over and leaned in through the window. “Yeah?”

  Emma opened the door. Her hair was twisted into a knot and she was dressed for bed, wearing her horrible fuzzy slippers. She climbed onto my bed and struggled out onto the roof. With her hands out for balance, she scooted down the slope on her butt so that she was sitting next to me on the wet shingles.

  We looked out at the street and Emma leaned against me, resting her head on my shoulder.

  I leaned my cheek against the top of her head. “So, you and Dad must’ve had a good one.”

  “Difference of opinion. His was that I was breaking a cardinal rule, and in my opinion, he was acting like a crazy person. You kind of got the end of it. Sorry.”

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t mad. He just wants me to be more inconspicuous. Because of that little kid today. Or because of Kellan Caury.”

  “Oh God, I wish he’d stop talking about that. Telling you antiquated horror stories is not helping anything.”

  I slid my fingers along the surface of the roof. The shingles were rough, full of galvanized nails. The burn was just painful enough to be distracting. “He didn’t say it. It’s just what he means. This girl at school—Tate. It was her sister.”

  Emma nodded and picked her head up off my shoulder. The air was cool. She shivered and hugged her elbows.

  “It’s hard for him.” She wasn’t touching me at all anymore, and her voice sounded strange. “It’s hard for both of them. I guess that means it’s supposed to be hard for me too, but I can’t even feel it the right way, you know? You’re the only brother I’ve ever had.”

  I stared at my socks. They were tarry from the shingles, stuck all over with little pieces of grit. “Could we please not talk about this?”

  Emma took a deep breath and turned to face me. “I’m tired of not talking about it. Have you not noticed that everyone in this town is desperately committed to pretending that nothing is wrong?”

  I nodded, but I had to resist an urge to point out that sometimes it’s just so much easier that way. I scraped at the shingles with my fingers and didn’t say anything.

  Emma crossed her arms over her chest. “You looked a lot like him.”

  I hunched my shoulders without meaning to. She was talking about the brother she should have had, and everything about him, even the little things, made me feel heavy and sort of numb.

  She just went on in a soft, dreamy voice. “He was blond, I think, like you. I know that he had blue eyes because you did too, for a while. But then it was like the blue just wore out. Or trickled off or something. Maybe there was a spell or a charm, but it faded, and one day the blue was gone, and there you were.”

  “But you don’t actually remember what he was like?”

  Emma looked down at the backs of her hands, scowling like she was trying hard to picture something. “I was really young,” she said finally. “I can’t always tell the difference between before and after. I’ll remember some detail and I can’t even tell if I’m remembering him or you. The thing I remember best is a pair of scissors. Mom had a pair of scissors that she tied on a ribbon over the crib. They were pretty.”

  I thought about all the Old World superstitions. Tricks to guard the livestock and protect the house. It was obvious, more and more. They didn’t work.

  Emma sighed. “I guess I don’t remember him at all,” she said finally. “I just remember the things Mom did to keep him from being stolen.”

  She pulled one knee up so she could hook an arm around it. Her hair was starting to come down from the knot and she tugged at it, looking lonely and sad as a lighthouse. Sad as a nun.

  I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.

  She sighed and glanced over at me. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I shrugged. The feeling was easy, but the words wouldn’t come.

  She looked at me a long time. Then she touched my cheek. “Good night, ugly.”

  She flopped headfirst through the window, landing on the bed with her feet sticking out over the sill. Her slippers were grimy from the shingles and I almost reached out and tweaked her ankle, but I didn’t.

  Below me, the neighborhood was sleepy and still. I leaned on my elbows and looked down into the street.

  Gentry was two different things, and at night, I could always see that second thing better. The town was its green suburban lawns, sure, but it was also its secrets. The kind of place where people double-checked the locks at night or pulled their kids closer in the grocery store. They hung horseshoes over their front doors and put up bells instead of wind chimes. They wore crosses made from stainless steel instead of gold because gold couldn’t protect them from people like me.

  Maybe the brave ones buried quartz and agate in their gardens or left a saucer of milk out for luck—a little backyard offering for whatever might be waiting in the shadows. If someone called them on it, they’d shrug or laugh, but they didn’t stop doing it because hey, we lived in a place where people kept their porch lights on and didn’t smile at strangers. Because when they set out a few pretty rocks with their marigolds, early snow never took the branches off their trees and their yards looked nicer than other people’s. Because mostly, more than anything, night was about shadows and missing kids, and we lived in the kind of place where no one ever talked about it.

  After a long time, I climbed back into my room and got into bed. I left the window open so I could breathe. The house wasn’t bad, but still, it was hard to sleep with the air smelling like screws and brackets and nails.

  When the breeze came in, I shivered and crawled deeper under the covers. Crickets were shrieking out in the yard, and the trees creaked against each other. Down by the road, in the tall stands of grass, there were mice rustling, night birds chirping
away like spinning gears.

  I put my pillow over my head to shut out the sound. The noises from the yard were muffled, and I wondered if this was what things sounded like to Roswell. To anyone who wasn’t me. He could walk into class and not get distracted by the rustle of paper or the ventilation system. I had to remember not to flinch when someone closed a door or dropped a book, in case the sound hadn’t been loud enough to startle anyone else.

  This was life in Gentry—going to school every day, blending into a world where everyone was happier to ignore the things that didn’t fit, always willing to look away as long as you did your part.

  Otherwise, how could they go on living their neat suburban lives?

  Maybe it wasn’t that hard. Kids died. They got sick and then sicker, and no one could figure out what was wrong. Someone somewhere lost a son or daughter. Maybe they measured pollution or blamed it on the groundwater. Lead, maybe, or toxic seepage from the slag heap.

  Natalie Stewart was just another casualty, buried in the Welsh Street graveyard with my dad standing over her, and that was a sad thing. I knew the script, the normal responses, but when I tried to feel some kind of sorrow or grief, even the polite kind, I just saw Tate sitting alone in the cafeteria. And when I thought of her there, the feeling I got wasn’t sadness, it was loneliness. When I pictured the circle of empty seats around her, I wasn’t mourning for her sister. It was just the same dull ache I felt every day.

  The simple truth is that you can understand a town. You can know and love and hate it. You can blame it, resent it, and nothing changes. In the end, you’re just another part of it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE SCARLET LETTER

  Friday was chilly and gray. The blood-draw station had been cleared away, but I was still feeling kind of rickety and made it a point not to go in the cafeteria. In the atrium at the main entrance, rain coursed down the windows so that the glass looked like it was melting.

  I spent the morning avoiding things. Crowds and conversations and anyone who might ask me why I was wandering around like a zombie—so, mostly Roswell—but by fourth hour, I was running out of excuses for my lack of school supplies and had to go by my locker. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to.