The Replacement (9 page)

Authors: Brenna Yovanoff

BOOK: The Replacement

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"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 so 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.

I closed the drawer and turned to face her. "You can come in, you know."

She took a couple steps, then stopped again.

"Janice--my lab partner, Janice--she gave me something," she said. She was holding a paper bag. "She said it was a special kind of . . . holistic extract." The sound of her voice was weirdly shrill, like I was making her nervous. "She said--she just said it would be good for you." She crossed the room to my desk.

"Thanks," I said, watching as she set the bag down and backed away. "Emma--"

But she'd already turned and walked out of my room.

I picked up the bag and opened it. Inside, there was a tiny bottle made of brown glass. It had a paper label, and someone had written:
Most Beneficial Hawthorn. To drink.

Instead of a cap or a cork, the bottle was sealed with wax. When I cracked the seal with my thumbnail, the odor of leaves was sharp, but it didn't smell spoiled or poisonous.

I trusted Emma. All my life, she'd made it her mission to take care of me, to make sure I was okay. But drinking something unidentified was a very sketchy thing, and while I trusted Emma, I wasn't at all sure that I trusted Janice.

But more insistent was the feeling that if something didn't change, if things just kept going on the same way they had been, I was going to wake up one day and not be able to get out of bed. Or, more likely, I was going to go to sleep and not wake up at all.

I touched the mouth of the bottle, then licked the residue off the tip of my finger and waited. After a few minutes of rummaging through old homework assignments and laundry, I figured Janice's hippie voodoo hadn't killed me yet, so I took a good-sized drink and then another. It wasn't bad. It wasn't
good
, but it wasn't bad. It kind of tasted like Everclear and dirt.

I put the empty bottle back in the bag and found a shirt with a collar and not too many wrinkles. I was pulling the shirt down over my head when I realized that I suddenly felt better--all-over better. I'd been exhausted for so long that I'd sort of forgotten I felt exhausted until I didn't anymore. I stretched and the muscles in my shoulders felt good, flexing restlessly.

In the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror. My eyes were still dark but not freakish. They were just normal, black at the pupil and a deep, muddy brown in the iris. My skin was still pale, but it would be called "fair" instead of "terminal." I looked like a regular person, going out on a Saturday night. I looked normal.

I went back into my room and studied the bottle. The label was plain, heavy paper, with nothing else written on it besides the mysterious notation
Most Beneficial Hawthorn
and the instruction to drink it. I knew that hawthorn was a low, thorny tree that grew out along the country roads, but the label gave no other indication about what the drink actually was.

My head was cluttered with questions. What was it really, and how did it work? Was feeling better the same thing as a cure? Had Emma saved me? Even while my first instinct was to doubt it, I felt the grin spreading across my mouth. Huge, relieved. I hadn't felt this good in weeks.
Months
, maybe.

I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to do something that took a lot of energy. I needed to jump around the room or laugh uncontrollably or find Emma and hug her until she started laughing too and we both couldn't breathe and had to sit down on the floor. I wanted to do handstands or backflips, but there wasn't enough space. I wanted to run. I turned off the light and went out into the hall.

"Emma." I leaned my forehead against her door, then when she didn't answer, I pushed it open. "Emma, what is this stuff? It's
amazing
."

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