The Replacement

  Danny was watching me with a blank expression.

  What did the guy want? He wanted to take me somewhere, or to tell me something or give me something. He said that he wanted to save me, and I wanted that too, only not in the middle of the Starlight where everyone could see, and not by someone with black, flashing eyes and yellow teeth. I couldn’t shake the way Danny was looking at me, like he was waiting for me to show myself.

  I was saved from answering by Tate. She came back to the tables breathing hard. Her face was shiny with sweat and there was a rip down the shoulder of her T-shirt where someone in the pit must have grabbed her by the collar.

  She pushed herself up to sit on the half wall just as Alice came down the steps behind her. I figured they must be hanging out together, even though I never saw them talk in class, but Alice walked right past Tate and came over to me. “Hey, Mackie! I was looking for you. You seemed kind of rough yesterday. Roswell said you went home. Are you feeling better?”

  I wasn’t, really, but I shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

  She looked up at me, tucking her hair behind one ear. “So, I kind of wanted to ask you—Stephanie’s having that party tomorrow night. Do you think you’ll go?”

  I looked down at her and smiled. It felt good to smile. “Sure, maybe.”

  From somewhere to my right, I could feel Tate’s eyes on my face. It made me want to look at her and also made me want to be someplace else.

  Alice sighed and leaned against the wall so that her arm was touching mine. In the dim glow from the lamp above the pool table, her hair looked like bronze. “So, did you go up by the stage at all? It’s crazy tonight. I mean, some guy actually pushed me into the soundboard—on purpose. I’m not some sweaty hard-core, okay? I’m a girl!”

  Tate slid down off the ledge and gave us both an annoyed look. “Then don’t go in the pit.”

  Alice opened her mouth like she was going to say something back, but Tate just stalked away and yanked Roswell’s cue out of his hand.

  Alice sighed, and when she turned to me, her eyes looked sad. “Wow. She is in so much denial about her sister. I mean, she just keeps acting like nothing happened.”

  I didn’t answer, because that was not actually the case. It was just that the thing Tate thought had happened was different from the thing everyone else thought.

  Tate was racking for eight ball, slamming balls into the plastic triangle. Suddenly, I wanted to apologize. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry for not being brave enough to listen to her, for letting her be the one to stand alone in front of the whole class when it should have been me.

  Alice leaned against me, watching as Tate lifted the triangle. “So, do you know what the deal is with her family? I mean, she should be home right now, processing or grieving or something, right?”

  I shrugged. The twins had been hanging out with Tate since junior high, but the thing was, you couldn’t really know her unless she let you.

  “Hey, Mackie, you want this one?” Drew said, jerking his head at the table.

  I shook my head. Drew shrugged and tossed the cue to Danny, who chalked it and lined up his shot. The break was only okay, and he didn’t sink anything.

  Tate gave me a hard, clever smile and I got the impression that she was imagining how I’d look with a piece of rebar through my chest. “Just so there’s no confusion, I would have destroyed you,” she said.

  I nodded, but there was a nasty little whisper in my head. It went, You wouldn’t have to. I’m dying anyway.

  For a second, we just looked at each other. Then, without warning, she chucked the cue in Drew’s general direction and stalked up to me, looking apocalyptic. Alice must have seen it too because she backed away.

  Tate stood with her toes almost touching mine, staring up into my face. “Okay, I’ve had about enough. You need to start talking to me.”

  I wanted to sound assertive, but I had to look over her head to keep my voice from cracking. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

  She grabbed my wrist and yanked me closer. “Look, maybe you don’t give a shit about any of this, but I’m not going to sit around and act like everything is normal and fine!”

  “Tate, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She shook her head and looked away. “You believed me today. You believed me and it scared you, and now you’re just too much of a pussy to man up and say it.” She was standing with her shoulders slumped and her eyes downcast, but her fingers were digging into my wrist. “Why won’t you just say it?”

  I stared down at her with my mouth open. Her jaw was hard, but I knew without a doubt that she wasn’t nearly as mad as I was—not even close.

  You don’t get to tell me what I should do. That’s what I should have said. You don’t get to be self-righteous, because you have no idea what it’s like to be me. People get beaten to death for being me. People have close, personal relationships with lynch mobs for being me. I am on the outside all the time, with no chance at a normal life, no way to be average or to fit in. Free weights in PE constitute a medical emergency, food poisoning means anything that comes in a can. Oh, and by the way, there’s a really good chance I’m dying, so that’s pretty awesome.

  I just looked at her, and when she didn’t say anything else, I jerked my arm out of her hand. Alice was standing against the half wall, watching us with a stunned look. I wanted to tell her I was sorry for the interruption, that my life was not usually this bizarre, but my throat was so tight I knew I’d never get the words out. I just walked out of the lounge and into the crowd to find Roswell.

  He was over by the bar with Stephanie and Jenna. I grabbed him by the back of his jacket and pulled him away from them. When he didn’t shake me off or ask why I was acting like a lunatic, I thanked God and started for the door.

  My getaway wasn’t clean. It should have been a speedy, decisive exit, but I didn’t have that kind of discipline. I glanced back—just once. But it was enough. Tate was standing in the lounge where I’d left her, with a pool cue in her hands and the most painful look on her face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IN NEED OF SAVING

  When Roswell dropped me off at home, I waited until his taillights had disappeared around the corner. Then I sat down in the driveway and put my head between my knees. The air was cool and I sat there breathing it and listening to the rain.

  My heartbeat was pounding in my ears and the look Tate had given me as I left the Starlight felt caustic, like it had left this huge raw spot in my chest. After a little while, I stumbled my way inside and tried to hang my jacket on a wall hook. It fell and I left it there because picking it up again seemed way too complicated. I had to stop halfway up the stairs to rest. The dark was lonely but familiar, and I fell into bed without pulling back the covers or taking my shoes off.

  The dreams were worse than they’d been in a long time. Dreams of being left alone, leaves brushing the window screen. The curtains snapping on a sharp, dry breeze.

  My joints ached, and even half asleep, I was uncomfortably aware of my heartbeat racing, lagging, stuttering. Slow, slow, fast. Nothing.

  I dreamed about Kellan Caury. I dreamed that the Gentry lynch mob broke down the door to his little downtown apartment and dragged him out into the street. The picture was fuzzy and overexposed, like I was getting it confused with the windmill scene in Frankenstein. The townsfolk all had torches. I dreamed about the outline of his body, hanging from an oak tree at the end of Heath Road.

  In the morning, I woke up late, feeling thirsty and worn out.

  I dragged myself down the hall to the bathroom and got in the shower. After standing under the water for fifteen minutes without actually reaching for the soap or lifting my hands, I toweled off, got mostly dressed, and went downstairs.

  In the kitchen, my mom was rattling a copper pan back and forth on the front burner. The sound made me want to climb out of my skull.

  I watched her as she opened a drawer and dug for the spatula.
Her hair was fine and blond, slipping out of its ponytail. Her expression was the same one she usually had, calm, patient. Completely unconcerned.

  “Did you have breakfast yet?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder. “I’m frying potatoes, if you want some.”

  I shook my head and she sighed. “Eat something.”

  I ate dry cereal out of the box and my mom rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything.

  Outside, it was gray and rainy, but in my current state, the light seemed indecently bright, coming in the windows like a flash bomb. Fall leaves jittered and twitched, reflecting the slow, incessant rain.

  I sat at the table, eating cereal in little handfuls. I wanted to put my head down on my arms or ask what time it was, but I couldn’t think of how to phrase the question. My joints felt brittle.

  “Where’s Emma?” I said, staring into the open cereal box. It was dark inside.

  “She said something about a lab project. She was going over to campus to meet a friend. Janet, I think it was.”

  “Janice.”

  “Maybe that was it.” My mom turned to look at me. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You’re very pale this morning.”

  I nodded and closed the folding tabs on the cereal box. When I shut my eyes, I could still hear the gravelly voice of the guitar player. You’re dying. You’re dying.

  “Mom,” I said suddenly, feeling reckless and exhausted. “Have you ever thought about what happens to the kids who get taken?”

  At the stove, she stopped flipping the potatoes. “What do you mean?”

  “Little kids. I mean, if they get replaced by . . . people like me, there’s a reason, right? That can’t be the end of it. They go somewhere. Right?”

  “Not anyplace good.”

  Her voice sounded so quiet but so definite that for a minute, I almost couldn’t bring myself to ask. “Are you saying that because you know I came from someplace really bad—because of how I am?”

  “No, I know because it happened to me.”

  I sat at the table, feeling groggy and stupid. “Happened to you how?”

  Her eyes were impossible, too wide and too clear. They fooled you into thinking she had no secrets, but she looked away before she answered my question, and I knew she was telling the truth. “They took me, that’s all. It’s not exciting or glamorous. It’s just something that happens. That’s all.”

  “But you’re here now—you’re here in Gentry, living a normal life. I mean, took you where?”

  “This is not an appropriate topic of conversation,” she said sharply. “I wish you wouldn’t bring up ugly things at the table, and I don’t want you to mention it again.”

  Then she got out an onion and started chopping it into little cubes, humming softly under her breath. I shut my eyes. The information was awkward and unwieldy. I had no idea what to do with it.

  My dad came in, completely oblivious to the way the two of us were managing a very uncomfortable silence. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and I tried not to wince. “Malcolm, any big plans for the day?”

  “He isn’t feeling well,” my mom said with her back to him. She bent over the onion, chopping it smaller. Smaller. Microscopic.

  My dad leaned down to look into my face. “Is that so?”

  I nodded and didn’t say anything. I wasn’t feeling well, but from roughly two minutes ago, I had started feeling a whole lot worse.

  My mom was humming again but louder now, faster. Her back was to both of us as she chopped, the knife flashing down, and then she gasped. The smell of blood rushed out into the room and she crossed to the sink, running her cut finger under the faucet.

  I put both hands over my nose and mouth, feeling the room slosh in and out like the tide.

  Without saying anything, my dad went to the cupboard above the refrigerator and took down a box of Band-Aids.

  They stood facing each other at the sink, and then she offered him her hand. My dad dried the skin with a paper towel and applied the Band-Aid. She was always cutting her fingers or bumping her arms and legs. I’d never heard of her having any kind of accident when she was in surgery, but at home, she was constantly running into things, like she forgot that they took up space in the world and so did she.

  When her finger was bandaged, my dad stepped back and let go of her wrist. On the stove, the potatoes had started to burn and they smelled like toast.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He kissed her on the forehead and then walked out. My mom just stood at the sink, gazing out the window. After a second, she reached over and turned off the burner.

  I smeared my hand over my face and took a breath. The smell of blood drifted lazily, filling the kitchen. There was a dim, pulsing ache that came and went behind my left eye. “I think I’m going to go back to bed.”

  In my room, I yanked off my T-shirt and pulled the shades down. Then I lay down with my face to the wall and pulled the covers over my head.

  I woke up with a bad jolt. It was dark. My phone was buzzing on my bedside table, and I rolled over. In the gloom, I could see the shapes of bass and amp and furniture. I wanted to go back to sleep. The phone just kept buzzing.

  Finally, I reached over and answered it. “Yeah?”

  “Whoa, don’t sound so excited.” It was Roswell.

  “Sorry. I was sleeping.”

  “So, Stephanie’s having that party tonight, and there’s maybe going to be one at Mason’s. You want me to come get you?”

  I rolled onto my back and squeezed my eyes shut. “I don’t think so.”

  Roswell sighed. “Come on, you don’t want to miss this. ’Tis the season for girls to dress like hookers. We’ll catch up with the twins, get a little socially lubricated. I have this feeling that Alice is particularly looking forward to your company.”

  I scrubbed my hand over my eyes. “I’m not ditching out on you. Okay, I am. But not like that. Jesus, what time is it?”

  “Almost nine.”

  On the other end of the line, a door opened and Roswell sighed. I could hear his mom in the background, telling him that someone needed to feed the dog and it had better be him. He said something back, but it was muffled, and I heard her laugh from somewhere far away.

  The idea came to me that I’d gotten up for a little in the morning and that I’d had a really awful conversation with my mom. The whole thing was like a bad dream, though, and I couldn’t pull all the threads together.

  Then Roswell was back, talking into the receiver. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s fine. I’m just not into going out right now. Not tonight.”

  After I hung up, I put the pillow over my head and was just starting to drift back into a pleasant state of oblivion when the phone rang again.

  This time, I checked the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. I answered anyway, thinking it could be someone from school, calling about homework or something else just as improbable. I was thinking, but not admitting, that it could be Alice.

  If I’d had any trouble recognizing Tate’s voice, the lack of formal greeting would have tipped me off.

  “Mackie,” she said, “I need you to listen to me.”

  I took a deep breath and flopped back down on the bed. “How did you get my number?”

  “If you didn’t want me calling, you should have told Danny not to give it to me. Now, where can we meet, because I really need to talk to you.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Yes, you can. Okay, fine. I’m coming to your house. Are you at home? I’ll be at your house in ten minutes, so you’d better be home.”

  “No!—I mean, I won’t be here. I’m going to this party with Roswell and I’m just about to leave.”

  “Party,” she said. Her voice sounded cold, and I could picture the look on her face suddenly—this weird mix of frustration and hurt. I had a miniature daydream, just a half second, where I imagined touching her, running the ball of my thumb over her cheek in an attempt to make her stop looking s
o sad, but it guttered out the next second when she said, “Something is disgustingly wrong, and you know it, and you’re going to a party? You’re unbelievable.”

  “I don’t know anything, okay? I’m hanging up now.”

  “Mackie, you are such a—”

  “Goodbye,” I said, and hit End.

  Then I called Roswell back.

  He answered on the first ring, sounding easy and cheerful. “What’s up? Are you calling to wish me luck in my quest to rescue Stephanie from the tyranny of clothing?”

  “Is it okay if I come with you?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. Not with the clothing thing, though, right? I mean, that’s kind of a one-man job.”

  I laughed and was relieved to find that I sounded almost normal.

  Roswell went on in a fake-conversational voice. “So, you remember that I called you fifteen minutes ago, right? And during the course of that conversation, I asked if you wanted to go to a party and get chemically altered and possibly ravish Alice—I mean, I think I really sold the ravishing—but you said no? I mean, you do remember that, right?”

  I cleared my throat. “I changed my mind.”

  He was quiet on the line for a long time. Then he said, “You sound like shit, though. Do you feel okay?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “Mackie. Are you sure you actually want to go to a party?”

  I took a deep breath. “All I want right now is to get out of the house.”

  After I hung up, I closed my eyes and tried to get my head together. Then I rolled off the bed and stood up. If I was going to go with Roswell, I needed to do something about the rumpled state of my hair and also put on a shirt. I crossed the room and started going through my dresser. Usually, sleeping all day would be enough to get rid of the spins, but every time I turned my head, the room seemed to execute a lazy half turn, and I had to keep my hand on top of the dresser for balance.

  “Mackie?”

  When I glanced over my shoulder, Emma was standing in the doorway watching me. She was wearing sweats, and her hair was twisted into its customary knot. It looked soft and messy, like it had since we were kids. She didn’t go out much, and it looked like she was all set for a night of reading.