Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

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.