The Replaced(51)

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.