Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

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.

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?”