The Replaced (2 page)

“True enough. But if it’s important to you . . . ,” he added, a smile slipping over his lips as he shrugged. “I just need to think. Come up with a plan . . .”

“You’d really do that for Tyler?” I bit my lip and lifted my eyes to his. “For me?”

“I know you don’t believe this, but I want you to be happy, Kyra.”

Regret over the way I’d behaved pricked me, and I had to stop myself from leaning into his arm, which was so much bigger than mine.

Then I grinned, because to borrow one of my dad’s expressions, even though I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth . . . come on. “And what else? I mean, besides getting Tyler back, what are you hoping to gain, exactly? I know you, Simon. You must think you can get something out of going there, or you wouldn’t risk it.”

I expected him to give me some cock-and-bull story about bringing me into his fold, or about teamwork, or . . . I don’t know, how it’s
us
against
them
—the Returned versus the No-Suchers. Instead, he answered candidly, “If we’re lucky, we’re hoping we can scrounge up some classified documents, maybe get our hands on some alien technology they’re hiding in there. Mostly, I wanna know more about these guys. What makes them tick. Figure out the chinks in their armor.”

“What if they don’t have any?” I asked.

Simon’s smile turned up full blast. “Everyone has ’em.”

In the end, it didn’t matter to me what his reasons were. I tried to tell myself not to get my hopes up, but it was almost impossible because I’d seen the email too. It might not have been
from
Tyler, but I’d already committed every word of the classified email to memory, and I was convinced it was
about
him:

       
“Washington State Patrol reported an unidentified male between the ages of 16 and 20 years old at a rest stop just south of Olympia, Washington. . . . Subject was carrying no identification and refused to reveal his name to officials. Subject is currently being held at the Tacoma facility for my inspection.”

But it wasn’t the content of the email, it was the signature line—from NSA Agent Truman, the very same agent who’d ambushed us that night at Devil’s Hole and then had disappeared himself—that had me convinced: the boy in question
had
to be Tyler.

We’d all been looking at that email right before my dad’s message had popped up, and to say that I’d hoped it was Tyler the NSA email referred to didn’t even begin to describe what I felt.

Because here’s the thing: if I could dream, it would be of him.

Tyler
.

But dreaming was one of those things only afforded to those who could sleep. And since I no longer needed much—sleep, that is—it meant dreaming was pretty much a thing of the past. Like the horse and buggy, or phone booths, or floppy disks.

But I missed dreaming so, so,
so
much. I missed the way you could dream about something you’d seen on TV or overheard during that day, even if you barely remembered noticing it. Or the way dreams could be completely-utterly-
totally
random and have nothing to do with anything at all. Like this one time when I dreamed I was dragged onstage during a Wiggles concert, and it was so embarrassing because
what was I even doing at a Wiggles concert in the first place
?

And just like all those million fireflies that had been there that night at Devil’s Hole—appearing right before the flash of light, their sticky feet clinging to my skin and their wings tangling in my hair as they forced their way up my nose and invaded my ears and my mouth—that ache for Tyler crawled over me, making me itch and burn and want to scream for some sort of relief. Even seventeen days later, it was maddening. Exhausting. Every time the sun came up, I got this sharp ache in my gut like I was one day closer to something.

One day closer to missing him more maybe. Or to finding him possibly. Or to never seeing him again . . .

I didn’t know what it was, but it was like a knife twisting my insides each and every morning, and each morning it was worse. As if each passing day the knife turned a notch, tangling into my viscera, becoming so enmeshed it was
almost a part of me, and if I couldn’t relieve it soon, it would eventually rip me apart.

All I could do was pray that finding Tyler would be the cure.

I was desperate to see him one more time. To touch him or taste the mint on his breath. Each night I prayed for sleep . . . just so maybe I could dream of him.

But even without the dreams, I still saw his face every time I closed my eyes, with every blink . . . blink . . .
blink
. It was like my own personal hell, torturing myself with what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. My dreams had been replaced by pacing and journaling and drawing, anything to find some way to extinguish my guilt.

I was haunted by what I’d done, and by all the unanswered questions: What really happened to Tyler the night he vanished? Where had he gone?

Had he even survived?

Except the thing was, if the NSA really did have Tyler, the way their email said that they did, then they’d had him for weeks, because Jett had given me the numbers—the Returned always came back within forty-eight hours.

Well, everyone but me, of course. I had to go and be all different.

March to the beat of your own drummer,
my dad always said.

Simon reached over and gripped my knee. “I need you to do one thing for me.” He leaned closer so I could smell the peppermint on
his
breath. “I’ll do everything I can to help you with this, but I need you to keep quiet about it for
now. At least until I can talk to Jett and Willow and figure this thing out.”

I nodded once, and he stood abruptly to go.

“Simon,” I said, stopping him. His hand was on the doorjamb as he raised a dark eyebrow and looked down at me. I suddenly wished I hadn’t been so hard on him all this time. “Thanks.” It didn’t seem like enough to say to someone who was about to risk so much for me and for Tyler, who he’d barely known at all, but it was all I had to offer him.

“If Tyler’s really there, we’re gonna find him, Kyra. I swear we’ll get him back.”

NATTY WAS THE EXACT POLAR OPPOSITE OF CAT
, who used to swoop into a room and take up every spare iota of space with her energy until you sometimes felt it would suffocate you because there’d be no air left to breathe. Except, there always was, because Cat just had this way of making room for you.

Natty, on the other hand, moved like a shadow, to the point that you sometimes missed her if you weren’t paying attention. It probably should have freaked me out, the way she’d just out-of-the-blue clear her throat, letting you know she’d been there all along waiting for someone to notice her.

This time, Natty made a point of being noticed as she knocked at my door.

“Oh, hey,” I said, which had become kind of our standard greeting. Like,
Hey, I almost didn’t see you
. Or
Hey, you’re just sitting there, watching me . . . that’s not weird or anything
.

Except, the thing was, it kinda wasn’t, not with Natty. It was just her way. Her quiet, reserved Natty way.

“Hey. You left this.” She held out the journal I’d had with me in the old church-house dining hall when Jett busted in all bright-eyed, telling me I had to come with him when he’d first intercepted the NSA email about Tyler. Natty had been with me then, doing her Natty thing: making sure I actually ate something. She was like that, the mother hen type. She seemed to know what I needed, when I needed it. Ever since we’d arrived at Silent Creek, Natty had taken me under her wing. She understood me in ways no one else seemed to—knowing to stay quiet when I didn’t want to talk, or talking to fill the space when she somehow sensed the silence had grown unbearable.

We hadn’t known each other long, and we didn’t finish each other’s sentences or anything, but she didn’t have any expectations of me, and right now Natty was the closest thing I had to a friend.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the journal from her outstretched hands. I ran my finger along the already worn cover, where I’d written: “I’ll remember you always.” It was the same phrase Tyler had written in bold sidewalk chalk outside my house, right after I’d been returned, when he’d
first told me he once had a crush on me.

While I hadn’t aged a day in the five years I’d been gone, Austin’s kid brother, Tyler, had grown up during that time, and while everything else in my life had changed beyond recognition, the change in Tyler had been . . . steadying. I’d finally seen him for who he was.

Now his words filled my head, reminding me I could never forget Tyler, not as long as I lived . . . even if I never laid eyes on him again.

Natty watched curiously. I’d never told her what it meant, the saying, or why I’d spent hour upon hour drawing the fireflies, although that part was no great mystery. I’m sure she knew their link to the abductions, the same as any of the Returned. The way they seemed to swarm right before the aliens came.

She ducked her head, her dark blond hair falling around her flushed cheeks. She glanced up through the wispy curtain and I saw her eyes—sharp the way they were—studying me.

Natty had explained about the eyes, something I hadn’t realized at first, and still didn’t always recognize.

On Simon, it was obvious: the shocking copper with the gold flecks. I thought they were just unusual at first, but Natty told me his eyes weren’t just strange, they were unnatural.

Natty had them too, maybe the only thing on her that was striking at all, her eyes. They were hazel, which sounded ordinary enough to say: hazel. A color that could never
decide whether it was green or brown or gold or even blue. On some people, it was almost muddy-looking.

On Natty, that mixed-up blend somehow managed to be arresting.

It happened sometimes, she’d told me, to the Returned. Our eye colors were . . . enhanced. The same, but brighter. Bolder.

Unnatural.

Like Jett’s, which almost looked like stained glass pieced together, or a kaleidoscope.

I didn’t see it on Willow or Thom. Their eyes just seemed ordinary, but maybe that was only me. Maybe if I’d known them before, I’d notice it now. Maybe their eyes were more vibrant now than before either of them had been taken. When they’d both been . . .
normal
.

It took a while, but I could see it in the mirror once I knew what I was looking for. I almost couldn’t believe my parents hadn’t noticed it too. Or if they had, that they hadn’t said anything.

Five years, I had to remind myself. It was a long time. Maybe they’d just wanted me to be the same so badly that they’d been willing to overlook anything that made me different from the way I’d been before.

“Thom says you got a message,” Natty said hopefully. I’d forgotten how quickly news traveled in a camp of fewer than a hundred people.

But because there was still this strange divide between Simon’s people, which I was considered part of, and
their
camp, the Silent Creekers, which Natty belonged to, I wondered how much she’d actually heard through this strange grapevine of gossip. Sometimes I wondered if it was like that game Telephone we played as kids, where someone started a rumor, but by the time it reached the last person, it had been repeated so many times the meaning had been jumbled and it was something else entirely.

I thought of the way Simon had asked me not to say anything about our plans just yet. “I—uh . . . yeah.”
Way to be subtle,
I thought. I glanced at the clock and my heartbeat settled. It always calmed me to know the time.

At first, back when I’d realized I had a problem, I’d tried to convince myself that my preoccupation with the time was just idle curiosity, a way of grounding myself in the present. But I couldn’t lie, at least not to myself, anymore. This thing, whatever it was, had gone way past idle curiosity. It consumed huge chunks of my day. I went out of my way to find clocks and cell phones and microwaves—anything that had the time—so I could set my mind at ease.

My fixation was teetering on the brink of neurosis.

It was as if each second that passed meant one more second of my life lost . . . one more second without Tyler or my dad.

Or maybe . . . maybe I was just delusional.

When I felt like I could look at Natty with a decent poker face, I cleared my throat and nodded, trying my best to look earnest. Simon never said I couldn’t mention the message. “We did.”

“So? You think the message was from him. That he’s alive?” Natty’s poker face sucked, and instead of trying to hide her eagerness the way I had, she plopped down next to me, searching my face.

She didn’t mean my dad, she meant Tyler, because even though I hadn’t told her everything, I’d told her that much at least, that I was waiting for word he’d survived. That he’d been returned the way the rest of us had.

“Maybe,” I answered hesitantly, evasively.

But this was Natty. It was ridiculous to pretend I didn’t care, or that there wasn’t anything to be hopeful about.

I reached for her hands. “God, I hope so, Nat. I want it to be him so badly. Simon says it could be a trap, and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up. But how can I not? What if it
is
him? What if he’s back and we can rescue him?” I squeezed, probably too hard. Definitely too hard.

“Are you? Gonna try?”

Simon’s words echoed in my head:
Don’t tell anyone
.

I held back my automatic yes, and instead bit my lip. “I don’t know yet.”

But Natty wasn’t so easily dissuaded, and her eyes shone, reminding me that she, no matter which camp I belonged to, was on my side. “I’ll do anything I can to help.”

“I know you will.” And even knowing she was telling the truth, I still didn’t mention the other message—the one that maybe, hopefully, was from my dad. I just couldn’t bring myself to share everything.

After Natty had gone, Thom was waiting for me when I finally came down the front steps of the tiny house we’d been set up in. I thought about ditching him again, if only to avoid talking about the message or any possible plans Simon might be working on to try to breach the Tacoma facility, but it seemed pointless since he was blocking my way, and there was no one else around.

“Wanna talk?” His simple two-word question cut right to the chase, and encompassed more than just concern for my well-being. It was Thom’s economical way of letting me know he didn’t miss anything inside the perimeter of his camp. He was like that, always using his words sparingly, like they could be banked for a rainy day.

It was only one of the million differences between him and Simon, the two camp leaders—that spare use of words of his.

“I’d rather not,” I answered. But I kinda liked that he’d come here to check on me. And I especially liked that there wasn’t the slightest trace of pity in
Thom’s
eyes—only concern. And there was a huge difference between the two.

Pity meant I was someone to feel sorry for.

Concern meant I mattered . . . that I was important.

“Fair enough. If you change your mind . . .”

I blinked against the unwanted sting of tears. I damn sure wasn’t about to cry just because Thom made me feel like I mattered.

Full-on crying in front of people was a definite
don’t
in
my book. It always seemed so staged. Like those pageant girls who theatrically fanned their faces when they won, even though you knew they’d rehearsed their tears in front of the mirror a thousand times before.

I didn’t cry the pretty kind of tears that came from practice, either. When I cried, it was ugly crying, with snot and swollen eyes and blotchy cheeks. If Thom did that to me—made me cry—I would have to be pissed at him too.

I reminded myself that all he’d done was be nice.

“You don’t have to go with them,” Thom told me. And in case I wasn’t certain what he was referring to, he added, “When they leave—Simon and the others. You’re welcome to stay at Silent Creek, Kyra.”

A knot formed between my shoulder blades. “Why? What have you heard?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. At least not yet. I just want you to know you have a place here, with us, if they decide to move on. Make camp somewhere else.”

I relaxed. He didn’t know about our plans to go after Tyler. But his invitation to stay at Silent Creek wasn’t entirely unexpected. Natty had been hinting at it for the past two weeks. She’d made her feelings about me jumping ship from Simon’s camp more than clear.

Still, I wasn’t sure how
I
felt about it.

I didn’t even think I belonged with Simon’s camp, at least not officially, despite the fact that everyone else seemed to believe I did. Whatever claim Simon had on me was like
this weird Finders-Keepers kind of claim—like I was some toy he’d found on the playground, and since no one else had seen me first, I belonged with his camp.

The thing was, today was the first day I’d really even talked to Simon since the day we’d arrived here at Silent Creek, which meant I hadn’t had the chance to explain I wasn’t playing in his sandbox, and that I’d make my own rules,
thankyouverymuch
.

Then again, hadn’t Simon just offered to help me find Tyler? I couldn’t exactly deny I might be at least somewhat important to him if he were willing to take such a risk.

But until we had that conversation, about which camp, if any, I was going to set my roots down with, I planned to keep my options open.

My uncertainty over Thom’s offer must’ve been written all over my face, because he let me off the hook with a relaxed smile. “You don’t have to decide now,” he told me. “There’s no rush. But consider this,” he added, his expression growing decidedly more somber. “Sometimes those close to Simon get hurt.”

There was some definite history between the two camp leaders, and I still hadn’t figured out what it was exactly. It made me wonder why Simon picked this camp, when he’d once explained there were others out there—places like Silent Creek and the camp we’d fled, where the Returned banded together to stay safe from the reach of the No-Suchers and anyone else who sought us out. Because this feud, or
whatever it was between them, made them both so obviously uncomfortable.

All I knew for sure was that whenever they accidentally bumped into each other, everyone around them got all quiet, like they were waiting for something to happen. It was as if a timer had just been set on a bomb, but instead of running away, they all just stood around, waiting for it to detonate.

It always ended the same, though, with Thom and Simon taking off in opposite directions. As if being near each other was physically painful.

We did this science experiment in junior high, where we learned that some magnets attract other magnets, while others repel each other. Simon and Thom were the repelling kinds.

I understood, because that’s how I’d been with Simon too, ever since the incident up at Devil’s Hole.

And now here was Thom, warning me against Simon.
Awesome
.

Whatever it was that had happened between them, my dad had been wrong: time
doesn’t
heal all wounds.

I tried to look contrite. “Look, I get you don’t like him, and I appreciate the warning. Really, I do. But I think I’ll just keep my options open for now. No offense.”

Thom smiled a knowing kind of smile, his brown eyes warming. “None taken.” And then he pushed his hands into the pockets of his neatly pressed slacks, yet another difference between him and Simon. Simon wouldn’t be caught
dead wearing slacks. I noticed the way Thom’s hair, black and shiny, slipped sideways across his forehead, refusing to stay in place, defying his tidy exterior. “I just want you to know, I’m here.” He shrugged. “If you need me.”