Brenna Yovanoff - The Replacement

Her gaze was direct, full of a sadness so raw and crystallized that I could see the shape of it. It ringed her pupils in rusty starbursts, but she was grinning—this terrible, ferocious grin. It made her look like she wanted to tear someone’s throat out.

I leaned against the counter, trying to think of something to say that would end the discussion and not drag it out. I needed something definitive that would take care of the problem once and for all. She just finished Danny’s drink in one long swallow, grinning up at me.

I couldn’t work out what she actually wanted. Her sister was dead. Whether being dead happened in a pretty box on Welsh Street or someplace else, it didn’t make a difference. Dead was irreversible. It was permanent. You couldn’t do anything about it, and still, Tate seemed determined to take it back, like with the right answer, she could fix everything.

Her eyes were hard, and glitter showered from her headband, dusting the shoulders of her jacket. “Do you believe in fairy tales?”

“No.”

“Not even the nice, grown-up kind where you follow all the rules and you work really hard and get a good job and a family and everything is happily ever after?”

I snorted and shook my head.

“Good. Then you should be just as righteously pissed as I am that everyone around here loves a nice game of Let’s Play Pretend.”

“Look, you’re taking this way out of context. I’m sorry about your sister, I really am. It’s awful. But for the love of God, this is not exactly my problem.”

Her smile looked frozen on suddenly, and she opened her eyes wide. Her voice was high and mocking and mean. “Oh, let’s play pretend, Mackie! Let’s play the part where you grow a pair and face basic facts and stop acting like everything is sunshine and unicorns! Let’s play that you start treating the girl like she has half a brain and tell her all about how sometimes, nasty little monsters show up in the bed where her sister used to sleep. Why don’t you tell her about that ?”

My cheeks got hot, like I’d just been slapped in the face. “Why?” I said, and the question sounded very loud, coming out in a harsh bark. I brought my voice down to a whisper. “Why should I? What’s in it for me?”

She looked up at me and shook her head, making silver sparkles dance all around her. “You really think that everyone is stupid, don’t you?”

For a second I stopped breathing. Then I leaned close and made my voice as hard and as mean as possible. “So, now I’m supposed to be some kind of expert on why your family’s all tragic? What did I ever do to make you think that any of this is my responsibility?”

Tate’s laugh was short and scornful. “Believe me, if I’d had a choice, I would have picked someone with a little more backbone. You’re kind of all I’ve got.”

I threw the beer in the sink, where it foamed up in a white froth, and pushed myself away from the counter. Away from the kitchen and Tate’s hard, merciless grin.

For the first time since Drew and Danny’s art project, I thought about my locker and for a second, I got the idea that maybe Tate was the one who’d scratched Freak on the door. The idea died a quick death, though. The graffiti had happened the day of the funeral, which pretty much ruled her out, for the simple reason that I hadn’t pissed her off yet.

In the living room, the sound system was louder, the crowd thicker. I made my way between superheroes and slutty witches, trying to find a place I could escape to.

“Mackie!” Alice was sitting on the sofa, smiling, waving at me. “Mackie, come over here.” Everything about her was so effortless, a glossy island, normal, relieving. Just what I needed.

When I sat down next to her, she moved closer, so that her leg pressed against mine. She smelled like tequila and some kind of powdery perfume that made my eyes water.

She was dressed like a cat, which I thought was a very obvious costume. It was easier to think of her in a cotton tennis uniform, far away and spotless. But there was no avoiding the clip-on ears and the waxy black whiskers drawn on her cheeks. Every third girl was a cat.

“Hey,” she said leaning closer. Her hair had come loose from one of the clips and it skimmed my arm in tangled waves. “We should go somewhere quiet.”

Her lips were slick and shiny looking. In her mouth, the barbell still hummed at me—a mean, wicked little song. I wondered if the Most Beneficial Hawthorn was strong enough to protect me from the steel. Whether I even really wanted what I thought I wanted. I wanted to kiss her and not in the pure, longing way you want to kiss someone. I wanted it the way you sometimes want to jump into very cold water, even though you know it won’t feel good. I wanted to go numb. To see what it felt like to be someone else.

She moved so that her chest was against my shoulder. “Do you want to go sit somewhere?”

“We are sitting.” My hands were sweating.

She gave me an annoyed look and tipped her head to one side. “I bet there’s someplace more private, though—upstairs? Bedrooms or something.”

I didn’t know how to answer. Yes and yes and no and yes.

I glanced in the direction of the stairs and then I almost stopped breathing.

Two girls were standing halfway up the stairs, leaning their elbows on the banister and whispering to each other.

One was pretty, wearing a huge, puffy dress, complete with a crown and a silver star wand. She looked soft and pinkish, the kind of girl who gets kissed awake at the end of a fairy tale, but she was short. Really short. Standing next to me, she wouldn’t have come up to my elbow. Also, she had the biggest ears I’d ever seen on a real person.

She was standing up on the baseboard with her feet struck through the slats, holding on to the banister. She was talking up at the other girl, who wasn’t small or pink or cute.

The second girl’s face was shiny, like skin after a bad burn. There was a jagged ring around her neck. No blood, just torn flesh and raw edges. Her grin was lunatic, almost as wide as the gash.

She was looking out over the crowded room, and when she smiled, she was smiling at me.

I turned to Alice. “We should go outside.”

She shook her head. “It’s cold out.”

Across the room, the girl stepped away from the banister and started down the stairs. Even from the couch, I smelled the low stink of something dead. It wasn’t a costume.

I grabbed Alice harder than I meant to, yanking her up off the couch. “Let’s just go outside, okay? Let’s go for a walk.”

Out in the backyard, people were standing around in little clusters on the covered patio, laughing and smoking, drinking beer out of plastic cups. I tried to breathe slower, but my heart was beating hard and fast in my throat.

Next to me, Alice was wrestling with the cat costume. “God, this tail is so obnoxious.”

It was, but not in the way she meant. Suddenly, she was right in front of me, pushing herself up on her toes.

In her mouth, the barbell twanged at me. Her hand on my arm was warm. Her lips were less than three inches away. I swallowed and tried to figure out why this wasn’t the best moment of my whole life.

“What’s wrong?” she said, breathing out another gust of tequila and stainless steel. She put a hand on her hip. “Look, are you gay or something?”

I stared at her. She was beautiful in the porch light and very far away. I shook my head.

“What’s wrong with you, then? Seriously.”

But she’d never really looked at me. She’d never seen me. Here she was, making up some complicated story, when Tate was right—the answer had always been dangerously obvious to anyone who felt like looking.