The Replaced (9 page)

“You never told me about your mom,” I told Natty as she tipped my head back and began running the applicator tip through my hair in sections, squeezing the cold solution into my roots and rubbing it in with the fingertips of the cheap plastic gloves that had come with the kit. “You never
really talked about your family.” The pungent hair-color smell began to overpower the grungy bathroom smell.

Natty just shrugged. “You never asked.”

She wasn’t wrong. In all the time we’d spent together, I’d mostly just felt sorry for myself. It’d been all about me. Me talking about Tyler. Me talking about my dad and his drooly, mutty dog, Nancy. I’d probably even mentioned
my
mom. But I’d never bothered to ask Natty about her life before she’d come back as one of the Returned. “What was she like, your mom?”

Natty’s fingers slowed as she massaged my scalp, her voice drifting. “Pretty,” she said wistfully. “Funny too. The kind of person everyone noticed. When I was little, I would watch while she got ready to go out on dates. I’d sit on the edge of the bathtub while she put hot rollers in her hair and put her makeup on. And every time, she’d spray me with her perfume, while she told me all about whichever new guy was taking her out to whatever new place they were going.”

“So your parents weren’t married?”

She continued to work the dye through my hair. “My dad wasn’t around much. He . . .” She sighed. “He couldn’t keep out of trouble . . . got thrown in jail a lot. Sometimes, when he was out, he’d promise to visit or send presents, that kind of thing. But it never happened. My family wasn’t like one of those TV families.” She didn’t say it like she was sad or anything—instead she smiled a faraway smile. “I always wanted my dad to be like Pa Ingalls.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Who was that?”

Willow did a double take and let out a whoop that passed for a laugh. It was maybe the first time I’d ever heard her laugh and I definitely didn’t hate it. “Are you for real?” She shook her head like she was shocked, or mock-ashamed, by my lack of knowledge. “He was the dad on a little show called
Little House on the Prairie
. Ever heard of it?”

Okay, yes, I’d
heard
of it, but I’d never actually
seen
it. “You know that was before my time, don’t you?”

Natty went back to work, shrugging. “I guess that makes sense. But it was my favorite. I didn’t understand it back then, but I guess
my
dad wasn’t interested in having a family,” she lamented. “Mostly, he just called when he was broke or in a fix. Him and my mom would fight over money, and then we wouldn’t hear from him again until he needed something else.”

I tried to imagine what that would be like, not having a real dad, the kind who was there every day, helping with homework and cheering the loudest at your games, or even being pissed at you when you snuck off campus with your best friend—all the things a dad should do.

Natty had gotten screwed in that department.

“Sorry,” I told her lamely, because what more was there to say?

She just went on massaging the last of the solution into my hair. “We’ve all got a story, don’t we?” She said it like it was a fact, and I guess it was. The Returned were interesting, to say the least.

It made me wonder about Willow—her family, her past
before all this. “What about you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Willow said, showing me her teeth in a flash of white as she smeared the chocolate-brown goo through her already brownish hair. Not much of a disguise, if you asked me. “I watched
Little House on the Prairie
all the time.”

Smartass
. Apparently saving someone’s life wasn’t enough to make her open up to you. Fine. I didn’t regret going back for her; we didn’t have to be besties or anything.

“So what about you and Thom?” I finally asked Natty, and when her fingers stilled, I knew I’d thrown her for a curve.

“What about us?”

A hint of amusement shone in Willow’s eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You know
what about us
. Everyone saw the way he jumped in the car the second you decided to come with us. Dudes don’t do shit like that unless they’re whipped. And, girl, he’s seriously whipped.”

I’d stopped to study Natty, and her lips drew into a tight line. “I don’t know what you mean. He’s my leader. And my friend. End of story.”

Willow laugh-whooped again. “Whatever, dude. Fine, don’t tell us. But we’re not blind.”

I gave Willow a warning look. “
It’s fine,
” I said between clenched teeth. “She doesn’t have to tell us if she doesn’t want to.”

There was a stretched-out silence during which I wasn’t sure who was in more trouble—Willow for prodding Natty, or me for silencing Willow.

Then Natty shrugged and pasted on a phony smile. She stripped off her gloves and tossed them in the overflowing trash can. “Now you do me,” she said, effectively ending the whole are-they-or-aren’t-they conversation.

As I got up, I grinned an
I told you so
grin at Willow.

Catching a glimpse of myself in the grimy bathroom mirror, with my too-giant eyes staring back at me, I sort of looked like one of those characters from a Japanese manga. My head was slicked over with the sludgy-looking gunk that would eventually turn my dishwater-blond hair a deep shade of brown.
My
disguise would be
way better
than Willow’s.

I checked the time on the wall clock as I started following Natty’s instructions. I didn’t want to lose track of how long I kept this stuff on my head because already my scalp was tingling.

Simon was leaning against the wall when I came outside again exactly thirty-seven minutes later. Willow had given up waiting for her hair to process and had rinsed it too soon, leaving it with the kind of coppery sheen that was nothing at all like Mandy Maxwell’s. She’d also given up on letting Thom drive, mostly because, in her words, he “drove like a blind grandmother.” She was in the SUV now, waiting impatiently for us as she thumped her fingers against the steering wheel.

Inside the bathroom, Natty was still crouched beneath the electric hand dryer, trying to dry her newly ebony hair.
I was surprised by how
not
dramatic the look ended up being on her, as if she’d been born for the color instead of being washed out by it. Something about the contrast of black hair against her ultra-pale skin gave her the flawless complexion of a china doll. And even her eyes, which were already striking, seemed less hazel and more the color of golden honey now that her mousy locks shone like glossy ink.

“That was longer than half an hour.” Simon flashed me a smug look from beneath the flat brim of the brand-new trucker’s hat he was sporting. As if I wasn’t totally aware of the time. He pushed away from the wall. “Here. Jett got you these.” He held out a plastic bag.

Inside were powdered doughnuts, one of the few things that
sorta
tasted the same since I’d been returned. Probably because they were coated in a thick layer of pure sugar.

Somehow it was even better that Jett remembered I liked the mini-sized ones.

I was looking around, meaning to thank Jett, when Simon surprised me by taking a strand of my hair between his fingers. “I like it. It’s . . .”

“Dark,” I finished, and self-consciously brushed his hand away.

Unlike Natty, it had been weird looking back at the brunette in the mirror. It was like seeing a stranger, almost like when I’d first come home after my disappearance and I’d scoured every inch of myself for signs I’d changed. This time I most definitely had.

Except, I wasn’t gonna lie, I didn’t hate it. My hair had always been so . . . so
plain
. Boring even. Cat was the one with the cool hair—super blond and fierce. Mine was just . . . there.

But now . . . now it sort of popped. It was brown like on the box, but in real life, in person, it was more vibrant—it had this cool undertone of red or auburn that made it shimmer like bronze. Or fire. And sure, my freckles stood out a little more, but not in a bad way.

I was like Natty—a bolder version of myself.

I would probably spend as much time looking in the mirror over the next few days as I did checking the time.

“It’s a good look on you. It’ll make getting to Blackwater a whole heckuva lot easier.” Only the way his eyes stayed fastened on mine, never actually straying to my hair at all, made my stomach flutter nervously.

I lifted my chin, hoping to deflect some of his unwanted attention. Hoping to fluster him for once. “I’ve been thinking—why Silent Creek? Why’d we go to Thom if there are other camps out there?”

Mission accomplished,
I thought, relishing the way Simon blinked and then sputtered, “Kyra, this really isn’t the time. Don’t you think we have enough to deal with right now?”

I shrugged one of Simon’s
no biggie
shrugs. Seemed like the perfect time to me. “If we’re really in this together, then we shouldn’t have all these secrets.” I challenged him with my eyebrows. “Anyone can see you two have some kind of history. And whatever happened between you, it was
obviously crappy. So, why take us there in the first place?”

He scowled at me. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

It wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever been called. “If you say so.”

“
Not
a compliment.”

“So . . . why Thom?”

He paused, sweeping his gaze toward Thom, who was at the SUV, impatiently watching the restroom door. I wondered if he was waiting for Natty the way Simon had been waiting for me. “I guess because I knew he would protect us. I might not like him, but I trust him.”

“And does that feeling go both ways? Does
he
trust
you
?”

Simon’s expression darkened, and it wasn’t hard to guess this was still a sore subject for him. “He does. But we have . . . a
complicated
history,” he admitted. “All you need to know is that we’re putting everything in the past. At least for now. Look, that wasn’t what I came here to talk about. Can we have a minute? Alone?”

We were already alone, but I lifted one shoulder. “Go ahead. Talk.”

He reached for my arm, drawing me farther away from the restroom door. My stomach sank because I was pretty sure I knew what this was about, and I suddenly wished Natty would hurry the hell up so we could get on the road again. At least inside the SUV, Simon couldn’t pull me aside.

When we stopped, I ran my hands along my arms, even though I wasn’t the slightest bit cold.

“I should’ve told you. About the DNA stuff,” he said when there was no chance anyone would overhear. “It’s just . . . it’s a hard thing to explain.”

“Yet somehow you managed.” I didn’t wait for a response. “How can you even live with it? How do you not freak out every single second of every single day? Don’t you feel . . . like . . . like a monster?”

“Kyra. Try to understand. You’re still the same as you were before. I mean, yes, we all age slower and need less sleep, but isn’t that what most people dream of?” he said. “Think about it, how is what
they’ve
done to us any different from all the medical techniques and cosmetic procedures people go through to look younger and live longer? People take drugs, get plastic surgery, and inject Botox in their faces to slow the aging process. Pharmaceutical companies do research on everything under the sun to improve health and cure illnesses, and even just so consumers can
look better
.” His eyes ticked skyward. “So . . .
they’ve
perfected it before we have, so what?” His smile was uncertain as he chewed his bottom lip. “It doesn’t change
who
you are.”

I thought of the way Tyler had told me I was the same girl I’d always been right after I told him I hadn’t aged while I’d been experimented on.

Simon took a step forward, and this time, instead of touching my hair, his fingertips skimmed mine. It wasn’t accidental, the touch, and I told myself that the thunderbolt that ricocheted through my belly had more to do with my
own pangs of self-doubt than that momentary brush of his skin against mine. “You’re perfect, Kyra.”

Tyler had said that too, and I had to wonder if he’d still feel the same way now, knowing that those aliens had somehow changed the foundation of who I really was.

I squeezed my fingers into a tight fist. “Don’t,” was all I managed to say back to him.

“And I want to apologize . . . for what I had to do back there,” he said at last. And it was strange because I guess I knew he was talking about the Tacoma facility, even without him having said so. I hadn’t expected him to say he was sorry. It wasn’t like Simon to admit he was wrong, especially since I hadn’t asked for it. “It wasn’t easy”—he squared his shoulders—“leaving Willow behind like that, but I had to do it.”

“Why?” I lowered my voice because even though Willow was all the way across the parking lot in the SUV, there was no way I wanted to risk her hearing us talk like this. “How could you just . . .
abandon
her like that?”

Simon glanced to the vehicle too. He watched it for a long time, and then he blew out his breath. “It wasn’t about abandoning Willow.” He waited for me to return his gaze, and when I finally did, his jaw tensed. “It was about you. I couldn’t let anything happen to
you
.”

He may as well have punched me in the gut. There were only two explanations for his actions back there in that alley.

One, those extra abilities of mine, the ones that the
others didn’t have, made me worth saving.

Or two, and this one was without question more frightening . . . Simon had feelings for me that there was no way I could return.

Neither answer was acceptable.

IT NEVER REALLY BECAME CLEAR WHO THE
leader was, Thom or Simon. Neither was totally in charge, but both of them were in a weird kind of way.

They became co-leaders of sorts, deciding our fate in this almost eerie shorthand that involved nods and meaningful looks that made it seem as if they’d been doing this forever. The rest of us were still in the dark.

More secrets.

Staying clear of the major highways wasn’t as hard as we thought it would be; there were more than enough
lesser-traveled side roads to keep us clear of any potential roadblocks.

Thom wanted to stop at another hole-in-the-wall gas station to pick up a burner phone so we could let the Silent Creekers know we couldn’t come back, but Simon declared it was too risky to contact them or anyone else by any means, even burners. We couldn’t risk anyone’s safety, so, for now, we had no way of knowing if the Silent Creek camp had been compromised, or if the NSA was already on our trail.

We were operating in the dark both figuratively and literally. At least one would end soon.

Even before Thom pointed out, “Sunrise,” I’d felt it, and had to bite my tongue to keep from gasping against the sharp knife of pain.

Within seconds, the stabbing sensation passed, but I realized it was just one more thing that made me different, set me apart from the others.

From the way the deep black sky in the distance was barely transitioning to a murky shade of gray, we probably had less than an hour until the remaining night would no longer be blanketing us. We hadn’t seen many cars on the road, but daylight would bring out more drivers . . . and make us far too visible.

It seemed impossible we’d only just left Silent Creek the day before, and here we were totally cut off from all the other Returned, completely on our own.

On the run.

But I was finally starting to feel better about our
circumstances. To process it and file it away and cope with the realities of everything we’d been through.

True, we’d been lured to the Tacoma facility by Agent Truman, only to discover Tyler hadn’t actually been there at all. And also true, we’d nearly lost Willow in the process.

But the more important thing was we’d gotten her back.

Simon tapped his finger on the map as he leaned over to show Willow. “It looks like there’s a town up ahead. Maybe we can find a place to stash the car and get a room where we can lay low for the day.”

Jett caressed his forearm. “Won’t the six of us together draw attention? Especially if the police here have been notified about us?”

“He has a point,” Thom said, looking decisively at Simon. “We need to split up when we get there. Meet again at sundown.”

Simon had been right about the town being small. And Jett had been right about us sticking together—it wasn’t exactly the kind of place six kids could blend and go unnoticed.

But at least it wasn’t Silent Creek–small, which was damn near invisible.

This little town, just east of the Cascade Mountains, was bigger than Silent Creek, but just barely, and our hopes of finding a motel we could check into, someplace we could hide until nightfall, turned out to be wishful thinking.

There wasn’t a hotel, motel, hostel, or inn for miles and miles, and we needed to get off the roads . . . fast.

Our best hope was that we could make ourselves scarce for the next fifteen hours of daylight.

“How are we planning to split up?” Jett asked.

Simon and Thom did that weird looking-at-each-other thing, and then Thom came back with, “How about Team One and Team Two?”

But Willow’s lips pressed into a tight line. “No offense, but that didn’t work out so well for me last time. How ’bout I take Kyra and Jett?”

Okay, so that wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to spend my day either.

At first I’d thought it was cool that Willow was no longer glaring, or even growling, at me. But what had started happening was almost worse, and it was getting stranger by the mile.

Whatever life debt Willow thought she owed me after I’d shot myself in order to save her had morphed into her strange attempts at girl talk. And frankly, Willow sucked at girl talk.

During this last stretch, she’d asked about my favorite music, and who was my first kiss, and whether I’d ever tried putting chocolate frosting on my pancakes. It was seriously weirding me out.

I sent a
Help me
glance to Natty—a little silent message of my own—thinking I’d rather play third wheel to her and Thom than play another round of
Let’s Be Best Friends
with Willow.

“Sorry,” Natty jumped in. “I already called dibs on Kyra.”

“Fine. It’s settled, then,” Simon announced. “I’ll take Kyra and Natty. Willow, you can go with Thom and Jett.” He glanced around at everyone like he was the coach and we were his team. I half expected him to make us put our hands in for a cheer. “We all good?”

Thom looked like he might argue, but it was Willow who looked downright dejected. I almost felt bad for her.

Almost
.

On the other hand, spending an entire day with Simon, away from the others, sort of defeated my whole not-wanting-to-be-on-Team-Two plan, since he was one-half of the reason I didn’t want to be on that team. Willow might be weirding me out, but not knowing how Simon felt still made me uneasy.

I ignored the frenzy in my stomach as we parked the SUV in a church parking lot. Ours didn’t stand out among the rest, so hopefully no one would give it a second glance. With any luck no one would notice our out-of-state plates or call the police, and when we came back, it would still be here.

Just in case, we gathered our necessities.

I cringed when I realized my jeans were still shredded, and disgustingly bloodied. “Someone will for sure notice if I walk around in these.”

From out of nowhere, Simon produced a box cutter and tossed it to me. “You’ll have to turn them into shorts for now.” He counted out some cash and divided it out. “We’ll try to find a place to get you something else to wear.”

There wasn’t time for modesty as I hid behind the SUV and stripped out of my jeans. I did my best to hack through the denim with the box cutter, but it wasn’t pretty. The legs weren’t even close to even, and there were still spots of blood visible above the hemline. But at least without the gaping hole, it was unlikely anyone would guess what the splatter was. When I came out again, I raised my hands. “So? Can I rock the cutoffs, or what?”

Natty giggled while Simon passed out our fake IDs, and not for the first time I found myself staring at my face on Bridget Hollingsworth’s driver’s license. It was the same ID Simon had given me before, when I’d been on the run from Agent Truman and the No-Suchers.

Thom signaled to me that he wanted a minute alone. I followed, wondering what this could possibly be about. “I almost forgot,” he told me when we were out of the way of the others. “I got you this . . . at the gas station we stopped at.”

I stared down at his offering in surprise. Thom had always been nice enough to me, but this was different, and all of a sudden I saw him the way Natty must—handsome, sweet, thoughtful.

I shook my head. “I can’t . . .” I tried to wave him off as I blinked furiously. “How . . . how did you
even know
?” My last words came out squeaky, like someone had pinched the end of a balloon and was letting the air out super slow.

“Natty’s not your only friend at Silent Creek, you know? Besides, you’re a little obvious—always checking the time. This’ll make things easier for you.” He nudged his hand
closer. “Here. Take it. I don’t think the place I got it from has a return policy, so if you don’t accept it, then
I
have to wear it.” He glanced meaningfully at the pinkness of it, letting me know which option was out of the question.

I wasn’t used to being embarrassed, but his gesture took me totally off guard. Thom wasn’t my friend, and he wasn’t my leader either. I was just someone who’d landed on his doorstep in need of a place to stay. If it wasn’t for the fact that the present was calling to me, I would have held firm in my I-can’t-accept-it stance. But I seriously wanted it, so I held out my wrist, trying not to be all wigged out by the fact that my obsession had been so obvious.

Thom wrapped the rubbery pink band around my wrist and secured the clasp. It wasn’t fancy or anything, but the time had already been set.

Dragging my eyes from the rhythmic advance of the second hand as it ticked around the face of the watch, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot. “It’s perfect,” I told him.

“Do me a favor, will ya?” he asked. “Keep an eye on Natty today. Don’t let anything happen to her.”

I frowned, because of course I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, not on purpose anyway. “Yeah. Sure.”

The scrunched muscles between his brows softened, just a tad. “Thanks. It’s just . . .” He shrugged. “Well, you know . . . thanks,” he finished, running his hand through his black hair. Then he put his watch beside mine so I could see that the two were in sync. “Seven o’clock,” he told me,
and something as seemingly insignificant as having a plan to meet—
a set time
—made me feel . . .
right
. As if I had a purpose.

And then Thom, Willow, and Jett wandered away from us, leaving me alone with Simon and Natty. I grinned at my new team, feeling a sense of determination to make the best of our forced time together. “Now that those losers are gone, what should we do?”

Bowling.

That’s how we spent the better part of our afternoon, in a noisy bowling alley where we watched the Thursday afternoon leagues fill up the lanes—a lot of old men, and some women too, who wore matching shirts and had fancy, shiny, and even colored bowling balls that they polished before they threw them and then again when they plucked them off the automatic return. They razzed each other about gutter balls, and even more when someone got a strike or a spare—
Lucky shot!
someone would yell almost every time—and in general they gave the impression that they’d known one another for a very,
very
long time.

The whole thing made me homesick for Cat and all the girls from my softball team who I’d spent hours and hours on the field with. I was even a little nostalgic for Austin, since he and I had grown up together.

But most of all, I missed Tyler.

I picked at the deep-fried cheese sticks and onion rings we’d ordered while we waited for a lane to open up for us.
Unlike the doughnuts Jett had gotten for me, this food tasted the way almost everything had since I’d returned: bland. But it gave me something to do with my hands and it made us look like normal teens, which was our primary goal. To blend.

There hadn’t been any real stores in town, not like a Target or a Walmart, a superstore that had racks and racks of clothes I could choose from. There wasn’t even a grocery store that carried clothing, like a Fred Meyer. I hadn’t planned on being choosy; I just wanted something not of the cutoff variety, preferably without chunks of my own flesh stuck to it.

But obviously, in a town without a flashing stoplight, that had been too much to ask for.

We’d walked through the miniature-sized “downtown” area, which consisted of a gas station, some old-fashioned-looking buildings that housed a bakery–slash–coffee shop–slash–hardware store, a butcher shop, and a liquor store that was, not surprisingly, the biggest shop of them all.

It was in this section of town that we also came across a small consignment shop.

The place was jam-packed with all kinds of clothes, hats, shoes, and purses that smelled vaguely like disinfectant. The racks were arranged by clothing type, and I was starting to think I was either going to be stuck with my cutoffs or something of the polyester variety, since that’s what they mostly had, when I actually managed to find one pair of jeans in exactly my size. And bonus, not only did they fit me, but
they only had to be rolled at the hem one time.

Plus, we’d killed nearly an hour and a half in the process.

When the bowling lane we’d requested, the one farthest from the door and away from the bar and the check-in counter, finally came available, we traded our shoes for the well-worn rentals and picked our not-fancy-or-polished balls from the racks against the wall. I bent down and laced my shoes as I watched Simon try to explain to Natty the finer points of knocking pins down with a ten-pound ball.

Her first approach was comical, and her release was less than impressive. She took three awkward steps and launched the ball as hard as she could, which was also entirely too late, resulting in a loud, and totally attention-grabbing, crash against the hardwoods.

She definitely wasn’t a natural.

Nervously I glanced around, but only a few disinterested gazes even drifted our way, and it was clear it wasn’t the first time someone had mishandled a bowling ball in this place.

Her ball rolled listlessly toward the gutter, and as if she’d expected a strike her first go-round, Natty stomped her foot and muttered, “Darn it!” which was probably the equivalent of a swear, coming from Natty.

“Really?” I scoffed, because how could she not have known that thing was headed to the gutter?

She shrugged, and we both sat on our bench and watched as Simon took his turn. He was actually pretty good. A million times better than Natty, and he probably could’ve given some of the leaguers a run for their money.

His first roll wasn’t a strike, but on his second, he bowled a split, sending one of his two remaining pins careening into the other and clearing the lane. Even if he’d done it by accident, he was taking full credit for the maneuver as he strolled back confidently, his chest all puffed up. “Time to see what you can do, Hollingsworth.”

Natty nudged me, reminding me that
I
was Hollingsworth, and I sprang into action.

I doubt it would surprise anyone to know I was competitive . . . or at least that Kyra Agnew, all-star pitcher, was competitive. There wasn’t a chance in
H-E-double hockey sticks
I was letting Simon one-up me, not if I could help it. And the fact that I’d grown up in Burlington, Washington, where sometimes the only thing to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon was go to the bowling alley with your parents, probably didn’t hurt any.