The Replaced (13 page)

“Actually,” she corrected smugly, “I didn’t say that either. You need to pay better attention. I never said whether we were friends
or not
.” She put extra emphasis on the “or not,” and I got the sense she got off on playing mind games, twisting everything around until you weren’t sure what your original point even was.

I decided to play my own game—the waiting game—and I refused to give her the slightest hint that she was getting to me. Instead of checking my nails, I tapped my foot to a song only I could hear, settling on “Womanizer” by Britney Spears, not because I loved the song or anything but because it was the first beat that popped into my head.

I felt a huge sense of satisfaction, like I’d just won the lottery or something, when Griffin blinked first, saying: “We
were
once—the three of us. We were close. I thought I could trust them back then, that I could count on them.” She made a sour face. “Turns out you can never count on anyone but yourself. They were as undependable as everyone else I’ve ever trusted.”

I tried to attach that word to either of them, Simon or Thom—undependable—but I couldn’t make it fit. They were a lot of other things . . . things she’d said. Simon was secretive, plus he was annoying as hell, and Thom was soft-spoken and reserved.

But undependable? Not in my experience.

“What happened to change things between you?” I asked.

“Did you know they used to be the best of friends?” Griffin asked, her brown eyes glittering like she was telling me something off-limits.

I was stunned, but maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe I should’ve guessed all along. Only people who really knew each other, and who cared what the other thought, could get under each other’s skin so thoroughly.

“They once considered themselves brothers. Better than brothers. They used to say their bond was stronger because it hadn’t been forged by the mere circumstance of birth, something as
incidental
as a shared womb.”
It’s true,
her nod confirmed. “No, they shared something even more important: experiences. They’d
chosen
to be family, to stand side by side and have each other’s backs, no matter what.” My curiosity was ripe. The idea of Simon and Thom once being brother-like was almost as impossible as the idea of sharing DNA with aliens.

Griffin kept going. “They believed those bonds were the hardest to break. Except that wasn’t exactly true. They might not break, but they could certainly be stressed—tested and weathered—and those stresses could cause chinks that ultimately led to fractures.” It was almost as if she were repeating a story, the way she spoke. One she’d repeated again and again, like some twisted fairy tale. She reminded
me of an elementary school teacher reading during story time, dropping her voice for effect and using exaggerated facial expressions.

Griffin was like that: theatrical.

I asked again, “What happened?”

When she blinked, her composure faltered and her vision drifted back into focus, and she seemed surprised to find me sitting across from her, almost as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t alone. “A girl,” she answered haltingly. “It all came apart over a girl.”

It took her a moment to recover, but when she did, her eyes brightened. “You should’ve known them before all that. They were different people then. We all were.” She shook her head longingly. “We used to have so much fun together as recruiters.

“Our job was to go out and find the new Returned and bring them back here,” she explained. “We did that by making them feel safe, special. We were the best at what we did. It wasn’t hard. We each had our own techniques, and we were damn good at it. It wasn’t necessarily intentional, but the girls were always drawn to Thom and Simon. You wouldn’t know it now, but the two of them together were very . . .
charming,
and those poor girls were scared and vulnerable. They needed someone they could lean on. A shoulder . . . or two.”

No matter how uncomplicated Griffin tried to make Simon and Thom’s relationship sound, it
was
almost impossible to imagine. All I’d witnessed were the two of them
avoiding, antagonizing, or barely tolerating each other.

Friends . . . the “best of friends” . . . crazy.

But Griffin just kept talking. “By the time Simon and Thom had explained what had happened to them—where they’d been taken and how they’d been . . .
changed
—those girls were willing to follow Simon and Thom anywhere, to become the newest member of the Blackwater Ranch.
We
had become her new family.” She grinned, her shrug less than coy. “Me, I had different assets. I was in charge of recruiting the boys.”

I thought of the almost-spell I’d fallen under when I’d first met her, the way I’d wanted her to like me, and I could only imagine how unsuspecting boys might feel around her, wanting to please her, to make her notice them. I felt a little queasy thinking of the three of them using their
charms
to persuade people to join their camp.

“And what if someone didn’t want to be part of your
family
?”

Griffin’s smile slipped as her eyes narrowed. “The doors were always open. Franco never forced anyone to stay.”

Franco?
I’d never heard that name before, but it wasn’t tough to guess he’d been in charge back then . . . back when Griffin and Simon and Thom had been “recruiters.” I wondered if Griffin had used her
assets
to scheme her way to the top.

“If everything was so great here, why did Simon and Thom leave?”

“Weren’t you even listening?” Griffin scowled. “Their
friendship, that bond I mentioned, when push came to shove, it all fell apart over a girl.”

“What girl? Where is she now?”

Griffin laughed, but not like I’d said something amusing and she was laughing
with
me. It was more like I’d said something stupid and she was laughing
at
me. “I love it.
Love. It
.” She clapped her hands together. “I can’t believe no one’s told you. All this time, and no one’s clued you in.” She bit her lip, her eyes bright. She couldn’t wait to drop this bomb; it was written all over her face.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, just say it.” I sighed heavily.

“Willow.” She spat the name quickly, like she didn’t want it in her mouth for too long. Then she sat back and waited for my response.

My mouth fell open. “
Our
. . . Willow?” I finally managed, super slowly, because the very idea was so . . . out there. “The one we came here with?” But I already knew it was
that
Willow. How many Willows were there? “I don’t understand.” I hadn’t even realized Thom knew Willow, at least not before Silent Creek.

I could tell Griffin was loving this, having the upper hand. “I figured as much . . . that whole secret-keeping thing Simon does.”

“So, what’d she do, exactly? How did she come between them?”

“In case you haven’t figured it out for yourself, Willow’s toxic. She’s dangerous and she’s toxic. If it hadn’t been for
your Willow,
things might never have changed. We had
a good thing going before she came along. I can’t believe Simon thought he could bring her back here after all these years.”

I frowned. “It’s not like we had a lot of options. We needed your help. Besides, I think you have the wrong idea about Willow.”

Griffin’s jaw tightened and her fists clenched. “And
you
have a lot to learn about who you can and can’t trust,” she stated, leaving little room for argument.

“Where is she?” I asked, thinking of the way Willow had been separated from us from the start. “Where’s Willow now?”

Griffin got up, her brown eyes sending a shiver of warning up my spine. “She’s fine. For now.” Her boots echoed off the tiles as she strode toward the door. “I could be your ally, Kyra—you should remember that.”

NOT
BEING A PRISONER WAS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE
being a prisoner, despite what Griffin said.

The only positive side of my captivity was that I hadn’t been forced into solitary confinement since Natty and I had been assigned to be
not
-cellmates. While that part was awesome, we hadn’t had word from Simon, Thom, Willow, or Jett in two whole days, which felt like an eternity when you hardly slept and were basically under house arrest.

Two new sunrises to endure, both of which felt like they were getting worse. More painful. And two days of letting our imaginations wander. It was a dangerous pastime,
especially when the person detaining you was a gun-toting whack job holding a grudge.

Natty and I had been moved, and our new accommodations were less jail-like and more bunk-like, and now I understood what all the tents here were used for: barracks. Our tent was not what I’d call luxurious, but it was the smell that bothered me most, a combination of dank mold and mildew, which seemed odd considering we were surrounded by nothing but sand.

We were pretty easy to guard, though, since there was only a single tent flap leading inside, with no windows or vents to circulate the stale air.

But at least in the two days we’d been here, I’d had a few opportunities to practice my ability.

“You stand guard,” I whisper-told Natty, in case Buzz Cut, who refused to tell me her real name, was lingering somewhere on the other side of our tent.

Natty hopped off her bunk and positioned herself in front of the inside of our tent flap. “Maybe this time it’ll work,” she said, her eyes gleaming expectantly, and I wondered if this was how she’d looked back when she’d waited for
Little House on the Prairie
to come on.

Half grinning, I turned to the pile of discarded clothes I’d left in a heap on the floor. I tried to tap into that frenzied state of frustration Simon had convinced me was responsible for sparking my newfound skill. But it wasn’t always easy to summon.

The “getting pissed” approach was tough, mostly because
it was hard to find someone to get mad at. I’d already tried Austin, Tyler’s brother and my ex-boyfriend. Austin and I had spent our whole lives falling in love, and when I’d been returned, I’d still loved him. Only that hadn’t been enough for Austin. He’d already moved on. With my best friend.

For me, I’d only been gone one night, so it didn’t feel like he’d waited
long enough
. But in reality, five years was a crazy long time.

Besides, every time I forced myself to think of him and Cat together, some other random memory would bubble to the surface and ruin all hopes of staying angry. Like the one time when Austin’s mom decided he and I should dress like Batman and Catwoman for Halloween, which would’ve been adorable in the fourth grade, except that I’d decided it would be even better if we switched costumes instead. Austin hadn’t even complained, because, back then, he’d done almost everything I asked. And the moment I pictured nine-year-old Austin stuffed into my shiny, skintight black suit with those precious cat ears perched lopsidedly on his head, all of my focus vanished and suddenly I was homesick all over again.

I tried being mad at my mom’s new husband, Grant, too. But even that failed, because as much as I wanted to blame him for ruining my family, deep down I knew that was all my fault too. If I hadn’t gotten out of the car that night on Chuckanut Drive, I never would’ve vanished and my parents might still be together.

Agent Truman didn’t work either.

Three days had passed since our run-in at the Tacoma facility, which meant the poor schmuck was probably dead by now. And no matter how I tried to look at it, no matter how blameworthy he was for luring us there and trapping Willow, I couldn’t choke down my own guilt for what I’d done to free her—that whole Code Red thing.

I bent down and plucked the paperback I’d stolen from the library back in Columbia Valley from the back pocket of my discarded jeans, my mind drifting to Tyler instead. He would never have chosen Cat over me. He would never have given up on me the way Austin had.

Wasn’t that what he’d written in chalk on the street in front of my house, what he’d promised?

I’ll remember you always
. . .

And to repay him, I’d gone and let Simon kiss me back.

It turned out Simon had been right: getting pissed was the key to my telekinesis. Only I didn’t have to be mad at someone else. Apparently self-loathing was enough.

I was barely concentrating when it happened: when my T-shirt lifted off the tent floor, hovering in midair for several long, and otherwise impossible seconds.

Natty yelped from her spot near the entrance, and a flush of adrenaline coursed through me.

I did it! I totally did it!

My heart was fighting tooth-and-nail to escape my chest as I reached out and stomped on the T-shirt, suddenly worried that someone—Buzz Cut or Griffin or anyone—might bulldoze their way inside and see it there, floating in the air.

When I turned to Natty, her smile grew. “I knew you could do it,” she breathed.

I didn’t know if I shared her confidence or if I was convinced I would be able to do it again, but inside, I was positively giddy. It was enough that I’d made that shirt float like that, and I was claiming it as a giant-exceptional-
ginormous
victory. My little telekinetic thing was gaining momentum.

Morning drifted into late afternoon as I sat on my bunk and paged through the book I’d discovered in my jeans pocket. I’d given up trying to read it hours ago. I hadn’t expected to have such a hard time getting into it, especially since it was about a guy who believed aliens had abducted him. You’d think it would be right up my alley.

Not to mention Tyler had read it, so surely it should have been worth pushing through.

But instead of reading the
actual
book, I found myself flipping to the back, to the tiny paragraph about the author. To where there was this guy with wild, curly hair who didn’t look like such a big deal, even though I knew this book,
Slaughterhouse-Five,
was kind of a huge deal—one of those award-winning books that teachers and librarians loved to shove down your throat and find hidden meaning in.

His bio mentioned his other books, and I skimmed over the list until I got to the part about how during World War II he’d been a German prisoner. That’s where I kept getting stuck, like that was the thing we had in common, he and I,
not stuff about the alien abductions.

That we’d both been taken against our will. That we’d both lost significant chunks of our lives.

And so it goes
. . .

That was a line in his book, something his main character, Billy Pilgrim, says whenever something just was the way it was.

As in,
such is life,
or it was out of his hands and there was nothing he could do about it.

I didn’t know if I could have that same attitude, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t get into the actual book. I wasn’t sure I felt like that:
And so it goes
.

Because, to me, you shouldn’t just accept whatever came your way. I wasn’t willing to have things happen to me, and just shrug and say, “And so it goes.” I didn’t want to be passive.

For my sake and for Tyler’s and my dad’s, and anyone else I cared about, I wanted to be willing to do more. To risk more. To stand up and say, “Screw that. It won’t go that way. I won’t let it.”

So rather than reading, all I’d really done for the past several hours was to use the book as a journal of sorts, since I’d left mine back at Silent Creek. I made notes in the margins—thoughts about my time here, and about Griffin, and everything she’d told me about Simon and Thom and Willow. I wrote random things about Tyler and my dad.

And for the first time in days, I had the chance to draw.

I drew pathways and birdcages and feathers, like the ones
Tyler had drawn for me in chalk—although mine looked more like a kindergartner had sketched them.

I drew fireflies. Everywhere, fireflies. On the inside flaps, on the cover, all over the pages of the book . . . even on the palm of my hand.

And so it goes,
I guess.

The tent flap wavered and Buzz Cut’s voice filtered into our musty space. “Drills.”

I shoved the book beneath my pillow and bolted upright. I was more than ready to get outside, and wished they hadn’t waited so long to come get us. This part of our day, joining the rigid workout routines of the other campers, even if it meant heading out beneath the blazing hot sun, had quickly become my favorite part. A bright spot amid the dull routine of aimless pacing, scratching out games of tic-tac-toe in the floorboard dust, and our one daily trip to the cafeteria, where we ate even if we weren’t hungry because it was more interesting than sitting in our tent.

Plus, I had my book-slash-journal now too, so there was that.

For a camp of not-troubled teens, Griffin kept these kids in tip-top shape. The drills were brutal. On the first day, after only an hour, I thought the combination of exertion and heat would make me puke, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground, but the athlete in me knew that would only make the cramping worse, so I’d forced myself to take small sips of water and walk it off, until the excruciating stitch in my side had faded to
something closer to a dull ache.

Still, when Buzz Cut had called us to drills again yesterday, I’d jumped at the chance.

I’d do it each and every day we were here if it meant not staying cooped inside this musty tent all day. Or if there was even the slightest chance I might get a glimpse of Willow or Simon or any of the others.

So far, though, they’d managed to keep us separated enough that we never ran into one another. And Buzz Cut refused to answer whether it was only Natty and me who were allowed outside.

I was
this close
to changing her name to Buzz Kill.

Slipping on the athletic sneakers we’d been given, Natty shot me an eager look. We’d been doing our best to speak as little as possible, trying to develop our own silent version of communication in order to avoid being eavesdropped on. But Natty wore her emotions all over her face. Her codes weren’t all that hard to crack.

“Me too,” I told her while I drew my hair back into a ponytail, not bothering to hide my enthusiasm from Buzz Cut.

When we got outside, I leaned my head back, absorbing as much of the sun’s radiation as I could until my cheeks were good and smoldering. According to my pink watch, it was nearly six o’clock, and there wasn’t a whole lotta sun left for the day.

We were passed off to the drill instructor, the same short guy who’d smacked me with his rifle when they’d ambushed
us in the desert. His freakishly developed body made sense now that I knew the workout regimen he put his people through on a daily basis.

He rolled his eyes, making it crystal clear we were a burden he didn’t care to be hampered with, but he stepped aside nonetheless, letting us join the rest of his squad, where they were already on the ground doing push-ups.

Training like this made me feel alive. And if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was back in Burlington, on the softball field with my coach calling out the drills and blowing her whistle. The only difference was
this
coach had a squat body and Popeye-sized forearms.

By the time we were running, I had sweat dripping down the center of my back and stinging my eyes. I was buzzing with energy even while I was wilting from the heat. But from day one it had been obvious Natty wasn’t exactly built for this kind of conditioning, and it was a challenge for her just to keep up. For her the only benefit of the exercise was being outdoors. Watching her run, the way she clomp-clomped along like her feet were made of iron, was almost painful, and the actual act of sweating repulsed her, something she complained about so much I wouldn’t have felt totally guilty to leave her in the dust.

Unfortunately, part of us being prisoners meant we were also bound to the buddy system, and Natty had been assigned as my official “buddy.”

“Look,” she panted. “Look.” The second time she said it, the word came out as an airy wheeze.

It took me a second to follow her rising and falling finger, and eventually see what she was trying to point to.

I almost stopped moving then, which almost surely would have gotten me banned from the daily drills, messing them up like that, but I caught myself in time and found my stride again.

She’d been pointing at Griffin. But not just Griffin—Jett was there too.

I squinted, trying to get a better look from where we were, which was suddenly far too far away from where they were on the opposite side of the field, over near the cafeteria. “What do you think they’re doing?” I asked, never taking my eyes away from Jett, who was walking alongside the Blackwater Ranch leader. He was clutching his laptop to his chest, and from where we were, it looked like Griffin was carrying something too. “Is that . . . ?” I lifted my hand to my eyes, trying to shield them from the sun. “It looks like she has Simon’s backpack,” I told Natty.

Natty saw too, and she nodded. “Yeah,” she rasped. “Think . . . so . . .”

“You think Jett’s helping her? That they finally cracked the codes to those files?”

I glanced quickly at Natty. She lifted her eyebrows and I realized it was her equivalent of a shrug.

“I wish I knew what the hell was going on here. And why they’re keeping us apart.”

Griffin and Jett stopped outside one of the few non-tent buildings here, one with a real foundation and wooden walls
and crisp white paint that I’d noticed on our way to the cafeteria. I watched as Griffin knocked once before letting herself, and then Jett, inside. It was weird that she’d have to knock at all since
she
was the leader here.

I was about to ask Natty what she made of that when I realized we were no longer alone. Our drill instructor had joined us, keeping pace alongside Natty. Unlike Natty, whose cheeks were flushed so red she looked like an enormous sticky tomato, he’d hardly broken a sweat.