The Replaced(54)

“Shut. Up.” But I was already starting to believe it, because she was just standing there, wearing that same stupid grin on her face. “But I thought . . . ,” I stammered. “Don’t you hate him?”

Simon shrugged. “An act,” he said.

“You broke his nose.” Even I had a hard time thinking an ally could do something so brutal.

The corner of her mouth slid up. “Had to make it believable.”


Simon frowned at her and rubbed his nose. “Yeah, well, it was believable, all right. Maybe next time you could take it down a notch.”

She lifted one shoulder. “We’ll see.”

And then Simon did that same chin-lift thing at her that she’d done at the girl who’d taken Natty away. “Can we have a minute, Nyla?”

Nyla.

It was weird not to think of her as Buzz Cut. To give her a name—a real name.

But it was another thing altogether to see her as an ally.

I guess you never knew about people, and where you’d find someone you could count on.

“Sure. But only a minute. I gotta get her back,” Nyla answered, glancing around vigilantly.

“I knew you had a name,” I couldn’t help mentioning under my breath before she’d sidestepped us.

She just curled her lip at me—a very Willow-like response.

Out here, beneath the stars, was about as private as you could get. We were on the edge of their desert camp, where it was dark and isolated and quiet. I breathed deeply, taking stock of the distant landscape of withered trees and rocks and an endless black sky.

“What now?” I asked when Simon came to stand beside me. His relaxed stance wasn’t at all what I expected. “Do we make a run for it?”

His voice, when he answered, was gentle. “I could stand here and look at this forever. It’s easy to think here.”

“And that’s a good thing?” I paused to examine him and he wore a bemused expression.

“Depends.”

Shrugging, I flashed him a wistful smile. “Sometimes it’s worse to think. Sometimes I feel like . . .” I stopped myself because I wasn’t sure how to finish my own thought. That even though I had nothing but time, I still couldn’t sort things out? That being here made me realize how lonely I really was?

Or that even though I missed Cat and Austin, and the way things used to be before I was returned, I’d started to miss Simon even more?

No, I definitely couldn’t say that last part. I wasn’t even sure it was true.

Besides, I still ached for Tyler.

Simon didn’t say anything, and he didn’t move, so we just stood there, staring into the darkness.

When I finally broke the silence again, my voice came out resigned rather than critical. “She’s crazy, Simon. Griffin. I talked to her, and she’s out of her mind. What were you thinking bringing us here?”

He sighed, a breathy sound that only added to the calm of the night. “She’s not crazy, she’s just . . . unhappy.”

“Unhappy my ass,” I said, glancing sideways at him. “I get the sense she’d like to play target practice with your skull. Besides, I’m unhappy too. You know we’ve been in lockdown ever since we got here, don’t you? How long’s this gonna last?” I doubted anyone, not even Nyla, could hear us, but I kept my voice hushed all the same. “And what’s all this about Willow and Thom knowing each other? Griffin says Willow’s the reason none of you are friends anymore.”

I half expected a denial, but he just nodded. “It’s true. But probably not for the reasons Griffin said. She has a way of twisting things around.”

I guessed that much already. Griffin seemed like the type who enjoyed manipulating words and facts until they suited her. “She didn’t say why, just that it was Willow’s fault. That everything would’ve been fine if Willow hadn’t come along.”

Simon smiled sadly. “Of course that’s the way she’d see it. Revisionists have a way of changing history to suit themselves.”

The sound of footsteps interrupted us, and Nyla appeared, wearing a Time’s up expression.

“Please,” I begged. “Just a few more minutes?”

She looked from me to Simon and then rolled her eyes. It was her reluctant way of giving in. “Make it fast. You have five minutes.”

When she was gone again, I said to Simon, “Okay, so what does Griffin have against Willow?”

Simon caught hold of my hand as he dragged me deeper into the desert. His fingers were strong and warm, and as much as I wanted to uncoil my fingers so I could lace them through his, I stubbornly refused, keeping my fist tightly curled.

He spoke more urgently now that Nyla had put us on a clock, and at first his story mirrored Griffin’s exactly as he explained how he and Thom and Griffin had once worked together. “But it wasn’t Willow’s fault,” he insisted at the point where their versions deviated. “Willow didn’t do anything wrong, other than the fact that she was different from the other girls Thom and I were sent after. She wasn’t like anyone we’d ever come across before. She didn’t have that lost-puppy sense about her that most of the new Returned had. She wasn’t freaking out the way most of us do.”

I might have taken offense, if he hadn’t included himself in that description as well.