The Replacement

by Brenna Yovanoff

  They were side by side, talking as they cut across the blacktop. At least, Alice was talking. Tate was looking off at the blank suburban skyline like she was bored out of her mind.

  When they stopped, it had the grim face-to-face look of a gunslinger showdown. Alice was smiling at Tate in a way that looked more like determination than goodwill. “All I’m saying is, you could make an effort. You don’t have to go out and join cheerleading. Just be normal.”

  Tate didn’t say anything.

  Alice leaned closer. “You’re just so weird. It makes people uncomfortable, and yeah, maybe no one else is going to say it, but it needed to be said.”

  “Okay,” Tate said. “Okay, so you said it. Now can you go behind the bleachers and make out with someone?”

  Alice laughed, and not in a nice way. “God, you’re such a reject. How you ever thought you were going to wind up with Mackie, I have no idea, but you totally deserve each other.”

  Tate gave her a long, amazing look. The kind that burns people down. “You are massively unqualified to tell me what I deserve. I mean, Jesus, just because you choose to share details of your dating life with pretty much everyone does not make us dear, dear friends. In fact, it mostly just makes you sound like a huge bitch.”

  Alice slapped her. The sound was very loud and she looked surprised at herself.

  Tate just tipped her head to the side. Then she reached out and slapped Alice right back, soft and quick and mocking.

  Alice swung at her, and Tate skipped back, knocking her hands away. She moved quickly, like she was playing dodgeball or floor hockey and none of this was serious. Like it was all just a big, stupid joke.

  Then Alice hit Tate for real. I don’t even know if she meant to do it. It could have been some freak accident of hand-eye coordination or physics, but it worked. Blood spurted from Tate’s nose, gushing down over the front of her shirt. She did nothing for a second. Then she smiled, which, when someone is covered in blood, is basically the most terrifying thing they can do. Blood was running off her chin, soaking into the collar of her T-shirt. I took my hands out of my pockets and started to walk across the lot. Then, when Tate knocked Alice down, I started to run.

  People were crowding around, making a circle. Alice was on the pavement, and Tate was kicking the hell out of her. The blood was bright on the front of her shirt, dripping off her chin, running down her neck. Her posture was straight and arrogant, like pictures I’ve seen of various British queens.

  “Hey,” I yelled. “Hey, hey, stop!”

  I squeezed between people, trying to get a hand on Tate. I grabbed her by the shirt and she jerked away again. Alice was scrambling backward, trying to get back on her feet.

  Around me, everyone was shouting, pressing close, but they weren’t trying to break it up.

  I elbowed my way into the middle of the circle and grabbed Tate around the waist. “Tate. Tate!”

  Her body arched against my chest, rippling away like a fish. I held on tighter.

  “Tate,” I said against her ear. “Stop.”

  The blood on her shirt was burning my hands. Alice was still on the ground, scooting away on her butt. Her eye makeup made gray trails down her face and she was crying in short little gasps.

  “Tate, stop.” I wanted it to sound hard and authoritative, like someone in charge, but my voice was far away. My ears were starting to ring. “Please stop.”

  Her whole body was shaking against my chest. On the other side of the circle, Alice got to her feet. The look she gave us—gave me—was angry and complicated. Then she bolted into the crowd.

  In my arms, Tate was unwinding, going limp. Suddenly, I had that prickly, floating feeling, like my body was very light. This is deceptive, because what it really means is, you’re about to fall.

  I let her go and staggered back, holding my hands away from myself. For a second, I was almost sure I was going to have to sit down, but it passed.

  I started swiping at the blood, trying to scrape it off on the wet grass, on my jeans, anything just to get it off my skin. It had splattered on the backs of my wrists, but I wasn’t graying out like I had during the blood drive. I walked into the building on my own, with Tate behind me.

  In the entryway, I tripped on the last step and almost fell.

  She put her hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need water.” My voice sounded hoarse and she was standing so close that I could hardly breathe from the smell. “My hands.”

  She grabbed my hands and shoved them under the drinking fountain. The water was freezing, stinging the welts and the raw places. She stayed right behind me, holding me by the wrists, leaning on the press bar with her hip.

  After the blood had run off down the drain, she let me go. I leaned back against the wall. My hands were nothing but nerve endings and a tiny static sea still roared in my ears.

  Tate stood with her arms folded over her chest, squinting at me. Blood was dripping from her nose and getting all over the floor. I watched her face, her mouth half covered in a red smear. Under all the blood, she was beautiful in the most unsettling way, and I smiled without meaning to.

  She sighed and her shoulders relaxed a little. “Are you okay?” she said finally.

  I nodded, patting my hands on the front of my shirt.

  “I should get cleaned up, then.” She turned and walked into the bathroom without saying anything else.

  I sat on the floor and closed my eyes. My hands throbbed and I did my best to dry them on my shirt.

  When Tate came out of the bathroom, she had a handful of paper towels against her nose, already soaked red. She crouched next to me and I turned away, holding my sleeve against my mouth.

  She didn’t seem to notice the way I was trying to avoid breathing her air, or maybe she just figured that was the least concerning aspect of the situation. She was looking at my hands. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

  “It’s okay, it’s no big deal,” I said, keeping my arm against my nose and mouth. “ Let’s just go.”

  Tate was still snuffling into the wad of paper towels. The smell of the blood was red and wet. “Go? I’m not going anywhere with you. Look, I’m sorry I had to punch your girlfriend in the face, but sometimes white-trash moments are necessary, okay?”

  “It’s not like that. I just need to talk to you.”

  Tate stood up. She looked much scarier standing over me. “About what? How you insist on panting around after Alice despite the fact that she is mean as shit and hasn’t figured where she left her brain? No thanks. I know that story already.”

  “Tate, please, just give me a chance. Just listen.”

  “Why?” she said, giving me the hardest, nastiest look. “As a certain selfless champion once said, what’s in it for me?”

  It wasn’t the place I would have picked for a revelatory moment, sitting on the floor in the west entrance with Tate standing over me and narrowly avoiding dripping blood on my head. When I spoke, the words came out muffled against my sleeve. I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  Tate fidgeted and sighed. “I’m sorry, is my disdain making you nervous? Do you need some friendly reassurance? Do you need someone to tell you how you’re doing great? That’s it, Mackie—keep mumbling into your coat! I don’t mind that you have this condition where you find it necessary to act like a huge douche!”

  I clenched my jaw and said it louder. “Your sister isn’t dead.”

  The change was instantaneous. Her hand dropped from her bleeding nose and she stared at me. Her eyes were wide and blood was running down over her lip, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Cover your face,” I said into my sleeve, holding my breath, turning away.

  She pressed the paper towels against her nose again, looking down at me over her hand. “Say that again.”

  “She isn’t dead. At least, I don’t think so. Not yet.”

  Tate took a long, shuddering breath and her eyes were so lit up she looked like she was carrying an electric char
ge. “I think you better tell me what that means.”

  “Look, let’s not talk about this here.”

  “Oh,” she said. “We are going to talk about it.”

  I pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “You were right, okay? You’re right about this town. There are these . . . people. These weird, secret people.” People like me. “They took Natalie, and they’re keeping her alive until Friday.”

  “Okay. So, how do I get her back?”

  I took my hands away from my face but didn’t look at her. “I don’t know.”

  Tate made a harsh, breathless noise, not a laugh. “That’s great. That’s beautiful.”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll come up with something.”

  She stood over me, eyes hard and paper towels bloody. “And why would you do that now? What would I have to do to earn the noble assistance of Mackie Doyle?”

  I looked up at her. Her desperation showed on her face but just barely, like she was trying to hide it. “Please, can I walk you home?”

  For a minute, I thought she was going to tell me I was disgusting, appalling, that I could go straight to hell, but then she nodded and started for the door.

  Tate’s house was older than mine, with a small, scrubby yard full of trash and dead leaves.

  Inside, a skinny girl was sitting on the couch, watching TV—some rainbow-looking cartoon with a spaceship in it.

  She glanced away from the screen when we came in, staring at Tate’s handful of bloody paper towels. “Oh my God, are you suspended?”

  “Connie, shut up.”

  The girl slid off the couch and went prancing down the hall to a closed door. “Mo-om, Tate’s been fighting.”

  Tate took a deep breath, pointing to the stairs. “Go to your room. Now.”

  Connie stomped back into the living room and up the stairs. The door in the hall stayed closed.

  Tate sighed and I followed her into the bathroom. She went straight for the medicine cabinet, scraping through tubes and prescription bottles with one hand and holding the wad of paper towels against her nose with the other. She found a bottle of peroxide and some cotton balls and slammed the cabinet shut. Then she dropped the paper towels into the sink and the smell rushed out into the room.

  I grabbed for the shower curtain to keep from falling and the sound made Tate swing around. “How you doing, Mackie?”

  “Not great.”

  “You don’t have to stay here. Sit down or go outside or something while I get cleaned up.”

  I went out into the kitchen and opened the freezer. There wasn’t much in it—a few plastic containers with no labels and some toaster waffles—but there was an ice cube tray, about half full. I popped the ice and dumped it into a plastic grocery sack that was sticking out of the trash.

  I filled the tray and put it back in the freezer. Then I sat outside on the front porch with my head in my hands and the bag of ice sitting next to me.

  After a few minutes, Tate came out onto the porch and stood over me. Her nose had stopped bleeding, but she had a mess of scratches all over one cheek. Her hair was wet, sticking up like a hedgehog, and she’d changed her shirt. I had an amazing, torturous picture of her washing the blood off her neck, her bare chest. In my scenario, her bra was black and made of something lacy, but I couldn’t really imagine Tate going into a store and picking out something like that.

  She sat down next to me and held out a hand, still not looking over. I offered her the ice and she took it. Her hands were shaking a little, but her face was hard.

  “Are you okay?” I said, but not very loud.

  She ran her fingers through her hair. There was a small red mark just under her left eye. “No, but I’ll live.”

  I wanted to smile because her voice was so tired and because her wrists looked unbelievably small compared to mine. We sat next to each other, not touching, not talking.

  “I wish I could be like you,” I said, and it was weird, saying the thing that I meant more than anything. I didn’t just mean normal. She was sad and angry, but she knew exactly who she was.

  She laughed. “Why would anyone—especially you—want to be like me?”

  “You’re always so good at acting like you know exactly what you’re doing all the time.”

  Tate smiled a small, tricky smile. “What makes you think I don’t?”

  We both laughed, then stopped again just as fast. She’d slicked her hair back like a boy, but even wet haired and scrubbed pink, even on the sagging porch, she was beautiful.

  “Tate.”

  She glanced over and the plastic bag rustled and crunched. “What?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She stared out over the yard and sighed. “I know.”

  “No, you don’t. At least not all of it. It’s . . . it’s not like you think it is.”

  That made her set down the ice pack and turn to face me. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “Mostly? A whole lot of personal experience.”

  She turned and reached for me, pulling my head down. Then she kissed me, shallow and slow. It caught me completely off guard. I hadn’t really bothered to hope that she’d let me anywhere near her again, but her arms were around me, her mouth was pressed against mine. And I’d given her nothing but the substantiation of something she already suspected.

  I raised my hand, touching her cheek, the side of her neck. When she pulled away, her eyes were deep and alert. Her hair was damp under my fingers.

  “What is it?” I said, letting my hand rest at the base of her neck.

  She reached up and held on to my wrist. “Do you want to go up to my room? Come up to my room. Just for a little while.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

  “Look, do you want to or not?”

  I nodded, feeling electric and out of breath, trying to decide if we were back to the system of rewards or if she meant something more sincere. If a kiss could mean anything besides the acknowledgment that I’d given her what she wanted, I followed her inside because her hand in mine was warm and I could still taste her ChapStick.

  Her room was a mix of personalities. She had posters all over the place, Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie and Sammy Sosa. Everything was neat, but not really how you’d think of a girl’s room. The dominant color scheme seemed to be communist gray, except for a ludicrous flowered bedspread.

  When Tate sat down on the bed, I stopped in the doorway, crossing my arms over my chest. She leaned over to unlace her shoes.

  “Tate?”

  She raised her head and looked at me. “Yeah?”

  “Why are you doing this? I mean, is this just what happens when I tell you what you want to hear?”

  She was shaking her head as she peeled off her shirt. “No one tells me what I want to hear.” She had on a very generic bra, off white, plain. Her body was thinner and harder than I’d imagined, but the tops of her breasts curved up soft and round like fruit. God, God, God.

  She dropped her shirt on the floor and held out a hand. “Come here.”

  I sat next to her, feeling awkward and too warm, and she put her arms around my neck. Then she kissed me and I was kissing her back and nothing was awkward at all anymore. Outside, there was a flash of lightning. The storm was moving in, whipping up in gusts as the sky got darker.

  Tate was yanking at my hoodie, sliding my T-shirt up. I elbowed it over my head and got stuck in it and then unstuck. We were both laughing and I knew my hair must be all over the place because she smoothed it down.

  I reached behind her to unhook her bra. The clasp was wire and it stung my fingers, but after a few tries, I got it. She slipped out of the straps, leaning into me, letting me slide my hands along her ribs and back.

  When I touched her, she sucked in her breath. Her skin was prickling all over with little goose bumps. My heart was beating like crazy and I couldn’t tell if I was more excited or more nervous, but it didn’t matter. Both feelings were equally satisfying.

  The
wind picked up and branches rattled against the window. There was another flash of lightning, followed immediately by thunder.

  Tate’s eyes were squeezed shut, like against bright sunlight. I leaned down and kissed her along her jaw, just below her ear. She turned her face against my shoulder, my bare skin, and I had the feeling of rightness again, like I could just be this, now, and everything was where it should be.

  There was a flurry of banging on the door. “Tate?” The knob rattled. “Tate, open the door.”

  Tate sighed and pushed me away, sitting up, reaching for her bra. Then she turned toward the door. “Is it an emergency?”

  “Tate, I mean it—just let me in.”

  “Connie, is this an emergency?”

  “Yes!” Her voice sounded high and panicked. The next words were almost lost in the rising wind and the thunder. “Smoke—at the church! Something’s on fire!”

  Tate was already hooking her bra, wriggling back into her shirt and throwing mine at me. I put it on in a fumbling rush and we pounded downstairs and out onto the porch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  OUR TRESPASSES

  The smoke was oily black. It rose in a column, a hundred feet, two hundred feet over the town, like the Israelites’ pillar of fire.

  “Shit,” I said, and my voice sounded completely flat. “Shit. The church is burning.”

  Tate was on the porch next to me. She put her hand on my arm, but I barely felt it. Thunder rumbled above us and the wind gusted, but under it, I heard the low roar of flames. I bolted down the steps and took off toward the blaze.

  On Welsh Street, the whole block was in chaos. Even as I turned the corner, I could feel the heat pulsing out in waves, smell the sharp, dry smell of smoke and ashes. The street was full of lights and sirens, trucks parked at angles blocking off traffic. The church was a surging ruin of flames. They licked up the sides of the building in orange tongues, blackening the brick. There was a jagged hole at the base of the steeple, and smoke was pouring out in billows.