The Replacement (23 page)

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Authors: Brenna Yovanoff

BOOK: The Replacement
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He met me at the side door, looking like he was about to say something, but I shook my head. He shrugged and pointed toward Smelter Park. We walked the two blocks without talking.
At the park, Roswell headed for a wooden picnic table at the edge of the playground and sat down on the bench, leaning forward with his hood up and his coat sleeves pulled down over his hands. I had an idea that everyone was starting to get used to the weather, and if it went on much longer, we'd all just learn to live like this, no umbrellas and no raincoats. We'd all just be perpetually damp all the time.
I sat next to him, trying to formulate what I wanted to say, but my throat hurt and none of the words were even close to right. "So, what are you still doing up?"
He shrugged. "Working on the phone clock, waiting for a sign that you weren't dead. I tried to call you, but it wouldn't even send me to voice mail."
His voice sounded easy, like classic Roswell, but the way he was watching made me nervous.
He turned and put his hand on my arm, somewhere between hitting and grabbing on. "You scared the
hell
out of me. What happened?"
I looked out at the empty playground, the rusting slide and abandoned swings, trying to act normal. My heart was racing like it did when I got nervous before a class presentation. On the other side of a low fence, the dump hill was just a hulking outline against the dark backdrop of trees and sky.
I could feel Roswell looking at me, watching the side of my face.
"Okay," he said finally. "This isn't like a personal attack or anything, but lately you've been way weirder than usual. Would you please just tell me what's going on?"
My heart was beating so fast that it hurt. I closed my eyes before I answered. "I'm not a real person."
That made him laugh, short and hard, almost a bark. "Yes. You
are
a real person. Whether or not you're a
crazy
person remains to be seen, but I'm not sitting here talking to myself."
Hearing him say it was like being absolved. I was supposed to be happy, but instead I just felt awful. I hunched forward and covered my head with my hands.
"What's it like?" he said. His voice was very low. "Just tell me why you're like this."
Like I was missing some key ingredient that would make me as whole and as normal as everyone else.I looked down at the grass so I wouldn't have to look at Roswell. Then I told him the story in pieces. The open window, the screen, the crib and how Emma wasn't afraid of me, how she reached her hand in through the bars. How, on some fundamental level, I was nothing but a parasite, the same way cowbirds and cuckoos were.
I waited for him to call me a liar or tell me I was crazy. Gentry was good at keeping its secrets, and people were just so used to denying any part of the picture that didn't suit them.
The playground was at one end of the park, past the baseball diamonds and a big rectangle of mowed grass. When I was little, I'd wanted more than anything to play on the playground but had settled for games on the grass, first tag, then later, Frisbee and touch football, and Roswell had never minded that I had to stay far away from the monkey bars and the merry-go-round.
Roswell took a deep breath, glancing over his shoulder at the street. "It's never happened in my family," he said finally. "The stealing, the switching, whatever. It doesn't happen to us."
For a minute, I didn't even know what to say to that. It seemed like a bold statement, given the history of the town. "Are you sure?"
"Unshakably."
"It seems like it's happened to pretty much everyone in Gentry
some
where down the line. I mean, everyone's cousin or father or grandmother or great-uncle has a story about a relative who got really freaking weird and then died."
He grinned, shaking his head. "Sordid, right? But in the Reed household, it doesn't happen."
I stared at him. "Why not?"
He shrugged. "We're charmed." He said it like he was making a joke, but it was the truth.
Roswell was exuberant, indestructible. He was the kind of son a normal family should have. If I could have been like him at all, even a little, my entire life would have been different. I thought about what the Morrigan had said. Intent matters. If you believe you're charmed, capable, likable, popular, then you are.
Suddenly, Roswell's normal smile was gone. He was staring at his feet. "It's not like I feel
guilty
, exactly. . . ."
"But you do."
He nodded down at his shoes, grinning in a bitter way.
"Is that why you hang out with me, do you think? Like, you don't mind how weird I am because when it comes down to it, you're kind of weird too?"
He quit studying his shoes and looked over at me. "It's not like that. I hate to break it to you, but there are other reasons to be friends with someone than mutual weirdness. You
are
actually kind of interesting, you know. And with you, I'm not always having to be happy or funny. I can say what I'm thinking. You pretty much suck at being honest, Mackie, but you're easy to talk to."
It was nice to think that Roswell could have a legitimate reason for being friends with me, besides the fact that our dads both worked at the church, but it didn't change the fact that I was something deceitful and strange. "Mackie Doyle's dead. I'm not anyone."
Roswell leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Look, Mackie is you. I started calling you Mackie in the first grade--
you--
not someone else. I've never known a Malcolm Doyle. If he's dead, then I'm sorry, but it doesn't
mean
anything. He's not you."
I couldn't look at him. "Are you . . . look, if you're dicking me around, I need you to tell me."
"Mackie, don't take this the wrong way, but all my life you've been the weirdest person I've ever met. That doesn't make you not a real person. In fact, it makes you pretty goddamn specific."
I dug my fingers into the edge of the picnic table. "This is the defining event of my life and you're treating it like it's normal. Like it's nothing."
He leaned back, looking up at the sky. "Well, maybe it should stop being the defining event. There's a whole lot more to an average life than something that happened before you were a year old."
I knew that he was right, but it was scary. I looked away because I didn't want him to see how lonely I'd been. It was disorienting to think everything that had defined me for so long was only circumstantial.
"I did something so stupid tonight," I said, hearing the catch in my voice.
"I figured. When you went all convulsive, I figured it was something big. Tongue ring, huh? Was it because you just like her that much--I mean, so much you'd kiss her anyway?"
I shook my head. "She . . . acts like I'm
normal
. Nothing different, nothing strange. Like I could be anybody."
Roswell laughed so loud I worried that someone might come outside to see what was going on. "And
that's
your criteria? A girl who makes you feel like you could be anybody?"
"No." I leaned back on my elbows and looked up into the rain. "I just mean, sometimes it's nice to hang out with someone who makes you feel like you're not completely freakish."
We sat on the picnic bench, staring out at the playground.
It was Roswell who spoke next, sounding like something had just struck him as funny and he was trying not to laugh. "Who would you get with, then, if normal wasn't an issue? I mean, if having them think you were ordinary and boring wasn't part of the equation."
"Out of anyone?" I ducked my head and pulled my sleeves down over my hands. "Tate, probably."
I waited for him to laugh, maybe ask if I meant Tate Stewart or if I was talking about some other girl who had the same name but a less dire attitude.
He just nodded and knocked his shoulder against mine. "So do that, then. Don't get me wrong, she's kind of terrifying, but she can be cool. I mean, at least she's not a sorori-whore in training."
I laughed, but it sounded fake, so I made myself stop. "There's no way. I pissed her off like you wouldn't believe. Way beyond repair."
Roswell shook his head. "Nothing's ever beyond repair. Jesus, the fact that the twins made a working snowblower out of two nonworking ones and some dryer parts should prove that. And people are pretty predictable once you know them. They don't change all that much. Do you remember in seventh grade, when we had to do current-issues debates and she and Danny got in that huge thing about capital punishment? She didn't speak to him for like a month, but she forgave him."
"Great. That was over a civics assignment. And she was twelve." I sighed and scrubbed my hands over my face. "Roz, you have no idea how hugely I've already screwed this up. If she's got any judgment at all, she hates me."
Roswell shrugged. "Fine, then she hates you. And if you want to date her anyway, then you suck it up and you tell her you're sorry. If she's a reasonable person, she forgives you. If she's not, you might have to just let this one go and settle for girls who think you're normal. No tongue rings, though."
We sat on the picnic bench, not talking, not looking at each other, but being quiet and okay. The rain was almost gone, nothing but a thin, chilly fog. For now, I just wanted to sit on the picnic bench with him and not be anything but fine and uncomplicated.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE FIGHT
T
he next day was significant, mostly because it was the first day in weeks that it wasn't actually raining. The sky was still overcast, but the air was cold and dry. It was the first indication that the rain couldn't last forever and winter might be coming after all.
Drew and Danny were in a weird mood at lunch, looking pleased with themselves and grinning at each other. When Roswell asked what was so funny, they just looked at each other and started laughing.
I leaned on my elbows, trying not to yawn. "
You
look happy."
Danny tossed a french fry at me. "
You
look like shit."
"We fixed the Red Scare," Drew said. He was smiling, trying to keep it under control and failing. "Last night. It's kind of a MacGyvered mess, but it works."
I wanted to ask how they could stand to know the truth about anything when nothing good could come of it. How anyone could stand to be put on the spot. What it felt like to let someone else know their secrets.
After school, I started home the long way, skirting the edge of the parking lot and studying the soggy ground. I'd only gotten as far as the white oak tree when Tate and Alice came out of the school together. Which was unexpected.
They were side by side, talking as they cut across the blacktop. At least, Alice was talking. Tate was looking off at the blank suburban skyline like she was bored out of her mind.
When they stopped, it had the grim face-to-face look of a gunslinger showdown. Alice was smiling at Tate in a way that looked more like determination than goodwill. "All I'm saying is, you could make an effort. You don't have to go out and join cheerleading. Just be
normal
."
Tate didn't say anything.
Alice leaned closer. "You're just so weird. It makes people uncomfortable, and yeah, maybe no one else is going to say it, but it needed to be said."
"Okay," Tate said. "Okay, so you said it. Now can you go behind the bleachers and make out with someone?"
Alice laughed, and not in a nice way. "God, you're such a
reject
. How you ever thought you were going to wind up with Mackie, I have no idea, but you totally deserve each other."
Tate gave her a long, amazing look. The kind that burns people down. "You are
massively
unqualified to tell me what I deserve. I mean, Jesus, just because you choose to share details of your dating life with pretty much everyone does not make us dear, dear friends. In fact, it mostly just makes you sound like a huge bitch."
Alice slapped her. The sound was very loud and she looked surprised at herself.

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