The Replacement

  The Starlight music hall had been a movie theater in the fifties and a regular theater before that. The building was three stories of chalky stucco, trimmed around the windows and the roof with spirals of wrought iron, but now it was rusting like everything else, leaving stains that ran down the front of the building like dried blood. We got in line and gave the bouncer two dollars apiece.

  Inside, the crowd was pushed up close to the stage. The old curtain still hung over the stage in huge velvet swags. There were plaster columns along the walls, and the molding around the ceiling was carved with birds and flowers and leaves. Dollhouse of Mayhem was on, yelling about corporate incentives and the government. Their lead guitar sounded like what would happen if someone wedged a traffic accident into a blender. The whole place smelled like rusting iron and spilled beer, and the bad, shaky feeling that had been looming all day broke over me in an ugly wave.

  Roswell was saying something very analytical about the music scene at any given time being a barometer for civil unrest, but his voice was fading in and out, and my mouth was full of too much saliva.

  “And then you get these bands like Horton Hears,” Roswell said. “I mean, no one would accuse them of being socially proactive, but—”

  I knew suddenly that I was going to throw up and not in some distant, abstract future, but now, right now. I put up a hand to say hold that thought and went for the bathroom.

  Crouched in a doorless stall, I tried to puke over the toilet without actually kneeling on the floor, which was pretty disgusting.

  Behind me, Roswell, stood in the doorway. “Another day in the glamorous life of Mackie Doyle?”

  His voice sounded easy and fake, and I got an idea that he was trying to counteract the moment. That he just didn’t know what else to do. My whole life, I’d been able to count on him to just look the other way and pretend really hard that everything was normal.

  Afterward, I stood at the sink, rinsing and spitting. There was a heavily graffitied mirror above the counter and I tried not to watch myself through the web of black marker. Behind the illegible scrawls, my face looked pale and shocked. I couldn’t help thinking about Natalie. The fact that a body had been buried under her name when maybe it wasn’t even the real body made me feel like I might pass out.

  “You’re shaking,” Roswell said. He stood against the counter while I washed my face and avoided looking at my reflection.

  I nodded and turned off the faucet.

  “You’re shaking really bad.”

  I wiped my mouth with a paper towel and didn’t look at him. “It’ll stop soon.” My voice sounded hoarse, almost a whisper.

  “This isn’t funny,” he said. “Do you think you should maybe go home? If you went easier on yourself, maybe—” Then he just stopped talking.

  I jammed the paper towel in the trash and reached for another.

  He came up behind me. “Mackie—Mackie, look at me.”

  When I turned to face him, he was staring down at me. His eyes were blue, which faded and changed in different kinds of light. I wished that mine were any color but flat, unnatural black.

  “You don’t have to go around acting like you’re okay all the time.”

  “I do have to.” It came out too loud, echoing against the tile walls. I leaned against the counter and closed my eyes. “Please—I need to not talk about it.”

  After a second, he moved closer, and then I felt his hand on my shoulder. It was unexpected, but the weight was reassuring, making me feel solid.

  When I opened my eyes, Roswell was still standing next to me, but he’d let his hand fall. After a minute, he took out a pack of gum. He popped a square through the back foil with the ball of his thumb, offered it to me, and I took it.

  “Come on,” he said, turning for the door. “Let’s go find Drew and Danny.”

  The twins were in the lounge by the bar, playing pool with Tate. Roswell went over to them, but I hung back. Tate was standing with her back to me and I needed to seem like nothing had happened between us. Like I had never stonewalled her in the parking lot and then watched her walk away.

  If I’d thought she would make a big show of being pissed at me, I was wrong. She glanced at us once, then went back to running the table. She made a straight shot. Not difficult, but she made it look impressive and tricky. Her hair was standing up all over the place like she’d just gotten out of bed. Mostly, she looked calm, not like a person who had just buried her sister and definitely not like a person who sought out the weirdest guy in school in order to discuss the theory that what they’d buried was not her sister at all.

  The next shot was fancier, a bank in the corner, and she sank it like a rock. The ball clanged hard in the pocket, but her expression never changed.

  “Nice,” Roswell said as we came up to the table.

  She jerked her head at Drew and Danny. “Yeah, well, these guys suck.”

  Drew just shrugged, but Danny snorted and flicked a crumpled piece of paper at the back of her head. “Get screwed, Stewart.”

  I stood slightly behind her and watched as she lined up the next shot. Compared to the others, it was nothing, but she jerked at the last second and the ball went spinning off in a crooked arc. It just kissed the bumper, then sat balanced at the edge of the pocket.

  Danny punched her shoulder, but he was grinning. “Wait, who sucks again?”

  She tossed the cue at him. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m going to get a Coke.”

  Drew came up next to me, looking uncommonly cheerful. “We’re getting close with the Red Scare. We just got a whole bunch of parts we bought off the Internet, and I think some of them are even the right ones this time. We almost stayed home to work on it.”

  Mrs. Corbett was an antiques dealer, which was a politically correct way of saying that she collected a lot of junk. The twins had been picking through her back stock since they were little, taking apart old toasters and radios, then putting them back together. The Red Scare had been their ongoing project for the last six months. It was a 1950s polygraph machine and didn’t work. I didn’t like to be a pessimist, but despite what Drew said, it was probably never going to work.

  A low half wall ran around the outside of the lounge and I leaned against it and looked out over the crowd. On the floor, people were moshing. They slammed into each other, churning in circles, crashing together and pulling apart again. Watching it made me feel tired. I leaned forward so the top of my head rested on the wall and closed my eyes.

  “Why did you even come out tonight?” Roswell said from somewhere above me. His voice was almost buried under the music.

  I took a long breath and tried to sound at least marginally energetic. “Because it was better than the alternative.”

  “Yeah,” Roswell said, but he said it like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

  When I straightened up and looked out over the crowd again, I saw Alice. She was standing with some girls from one of the newer subdivisions.

  I leaned my elbows on the half wall and watched her. The light on her face was nice.

  Onstage, Dollhouse of Mayhem finished their set, bowing off in a way that was probably supposed to be ironic. The silence when they unplugged their amps was so heavy that it made my teeth hurt. I just concentrated on Alice and the colored lights.

  According to Roswell, I had a shot with her. But even if that was true, having a shot was different from knowing how to take it. She was a bright spot at the center of things, while I was destined to spend house parties and school dances standing against the wall with the guys from the Latin club. Except even that wasn’t the right way to describe what I was.

  Roswell was in the Latin club, and the debate club, and the honor society. He did things like collecting bottle caps and unusual pens. In his spare time, he built clocks out of various household materials, and it wasn’t the big, defining core of him. He played soccer and rugby and ran in all the school elections. He smiled. He hugged everyone, all the time, and never acted like there
was even a chance someone wouldn’t like him. He could do what he wanted, hang out with anyone he wanted to and get away with it. When he talked to girls, even pretty, popular ones like Stephanie Beecham, they smiled and giggled like they couldn’t believe he was actually noticing them. He just took it for granted that everything would be okay, while I found a convenient wall and worked hard at disappearing.

  Above us, the curtains opened again and Rasputin Sings the Blues came on.

  The Starlight always had at least five bands on the bill, but everyone knew that Rasputin owned the stage. Everybody else just got to use it once in a while.

  It wasn’t only that other bands couldn’t compete with the stage act and the magic tricks. When Rasputin played, the music was just better. When they covered a song, it was like their version of it was the only real version.

  The lead singer, Carlina Carlyle, strutted onstage with her hair piled in a knot on top of her head. She was wearing a dark-colored dress with a high collar. It looked old-fashioned, except that the skirt was short enough to show her knees, along with about six inches of thigh.

  She grabbed the microphone, striking a cool, superhero pose. Her eyes were huge and too-light blue, black smeared around the lids, making her look crazy.

  They were covering a Leonard Cohen song. The riff was hard and tight and the drums thumped like someone’s aching heart.

  Drew came up to the half wall and leaned next to me, looking out at the pit like it was the most boring thing. “I’m so freaking sick of Leonard Cohen,” he said. “Man, do you have any idea how cool it would be if they did ‘Head Like a Hole’ or maybe some Saliva or Manson? Or the Gutter Twins.”

  Onstage, Carlina was singing repent over and over, not like the backup girls on the album track, but snarling it, screaming with her head thrown back. Down in the pit, the crowd was screaming back at her, pounding their fists at the ceiling in time to the beat. Leonard Cohen could be just as hard as Reznor or Manson if you did it right.

  They launched into an original track called “Formula for Flight” and Carlina took a cigarette from behind her ear. The first lyric was Burning towers down / Sleeping underground. She stuck the filter in the corner of her mouth, sending the audience into a riot.

  Over by the other end of the stage, Alice was laughing with Jenna and Stephanie and some of the other hot girls. They were all wearing bright tank tops and tight jeans. When they danced, they seemed to move in unison, like they’d agreed on the steps ahead of time.

  Onstage, the bassist stopped picking the line and stepped into the spotlight, reaching into his pocket for a handful of matches. The clips on his suspenders caught the light like mirrors.

  “Light her up!” yelled someone from the crowd.

  He saluted and stuck a match between his teeth, lighting it with an easy flick, then holding it out. Carlina put one hand against her collarbone and closed her eyes, bending to the match. He dropped it.

  He lit the second one by striking it on his shirt cuff, but when Carlina leaned in, it went out by itself. The third, he didn’t strike on anything, just snapped his fingers and it flared to life.

  He held it to Carlina’s cigarette and she breathed in, making the flame waver and gutter. She started to pace back and forth and the lead guitarist followed her, playing a solo that made me think of cracked glass and scrambled wires. He was wearing a black top hat and the shadow of the brim made his face look hard and hungry.

  In back, the drummer still kept the tempo, but every time Carlina threw her hips to the side, he’d add a hard double beat on the bass drum. If she arched her back, that got the snare, a sharp rat-a-tat. I was utterly focused on her progress, and so was every other guy in the audience.

  She stood in the spotlight while the guitar player circled around her, panting like a dog. She winked and put the cigarette out on his tongue. The whole time, he kept up that same complicated progression, and in the pit, the punk rock kids were slamming like it was the end of the world.

  Carlina gripped the microphone and sang the bridge, Going low, going down, going to burn the spires / No one in this sleepy town wants a race of monsters.

  Behind her, the guitarist spit out a mouthful of ash, making the solo climb. When the crowd stopped thrashing and started screaming for him, he raised his head, smiling up into the spotlight like he’d just found sunshine.

  The chill started at the top of my head and poured down through my chest and arms. I knew him.

  The angle of the stage made it hard to see his eyes, and the top hat shadowed his face, but even in the dark, I knew him. I’d seen him on the footbridge. He’d called me out on my dark eyes, sneered at my shaky hands and my blue mouth.

  I stood in the crowd, looking up at a scary man with a scary smile.

  I knew his secret and he knew mine.

  After the Rasputin set, they tore their equipment down, and Concertina came on. The lead singer’s voice was decent, but their arrangements were sloppy, with too much distortion, and without the expert stage presence of Carlina Carlyle, the Starlight was back to being dusty and run-down. Just rented space.

  Alice still stood in a little herd with her friends, and I had an idea that I might feel better if I got a drink of water. It would be an excuse to go over to her. I could walk past. Maybe say something, or maybe she’d say something to me. I started for the bar.

  The guitar player from Rasputin appeared without a sound. One minute, I was alone, edging my way along the wall toward the fire door. The next, he was right beside me, glowing weirdly under the green exit sign.

  He nodded to where Alice stood, smiling like he knew something funny. “She’s lovely. But you need to watch out for girls like that. She might ambush you in the parking lot. Kiss you with that cold iron tongue.”

  I took a step back and he grabbed me, catching me by the jaw, digging his fingers into the soft place under my chin. He pulled me close so that my neck was bent at an awkward angle. His breath was hot and smelled like burning leaves.

  We stood in the green glow of the sign, staring at each other. His grip hurt, but I let him hold on. Maybe he was camouflaged onstage, but down on the floor, it wasn’t smart to be so exposed. I could pass most of the time, but his eyes were too dark. His teeth were sharp and narrow, crammed close together. I kept still, ready to do whatever it took not to make a scene.

  He leaned over me so the brim of the hat shadowed us both. “You’re pale and you’re cold, and you reek like steel.” His voice sounded tight, like the words were getting stuck behind his teeth. “Don’t pretend you’re not infected or that it doesn’t hurt. It’s on your breath and in the whites of your eyes. It’s in your blood.”

  I stood there, helpless to look away as he leaned in closer. He tightened his grip on my jaw and whispered hoarsely, “Do you really need a wretch like me to tell you that you’re dying?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DYING YOUNG

  My pulse hammered and I put out a hand to steady myself. The whole building seemed to surge in on me and then roll out again. I just kept my eyes on the guitar player and my hand on the wall. I didn’t want to do anything that might suggest to him that he was right. Dying? The idea was so enormous it was disorienting. I might be sick, but dying?

  Deep down, though, I knew the declaration had some truth to it. I thought about all the times I’d had a bad reaction to a car ride or the steel counters in the science wing, how it was always a little worse than the time before. When you got down to facts, I wasn’t actually supposed to be alive. Under ordinary circumstances, I should have just worn out my welcome, buried years ago like Natalie Stewart.

  No. Not like Natalie—like the thing that had been buried with her name.

  The air was cold suddenly, and I started to shake. The man hunched over me and smiled—almost kind. His nose was uncomfortably close to mine. “I could change your life,” he whispered. “Come with me tonight and I’ll save you.”

  But on the stage, Concertina was playing a song called “Kil
l All Cowards,” and no one had saved Kellan Caury. It didn’t matter that county justice was just murder with a different name or that he was harmless. You couldn’t go around associating with strangers. If you did, you might wind up swinging.

  I put my hand on the man’s wrist and twisted away.

  His eyes were just dark pockets of shadow, but suddenly they burned ferocious and hot under the brim of his hat.

  I turned around fast, before he could grab me again, and went back the way I’d come.

  My heart beat hard and panicky as I shoved my way through the crowd, back to where Roswell laughed too loud and waved his hands around when he talked and could almost always make me feel normal.

  But I knew that this time, it was going to take more than pretending everything was fine. I could still hear the guitar player’s voice. It reverberated in my head like a tinny echo, You’re dying.

  When I came up to the pool tables, Drew was terrorizing Roswell at nine ball, sinking numbers one after another, then starting another round and doing it all over again.

  “So, what was going on over there?” Danny asked, jerking his head in the direction of the floor and leaning on his cue.

  “Nothing,” I said, clearing my throat. “Just a misunderstanding.”

  Danny gave me a hard look. When a situation started to get too weird or too bad, he could generally be counted on to turn it into some kind of joke, but he wasn’t smiling now, not even close. “Kind of a strange place to have a misunderstanding, though. What did he want?”

  You’re dying. You’re dying.

  I glanced in the direction of the fire door without meaning to. The doorway was empty and the green exit sign still glowed over it, flickering a little.