The Replaced Read online

  Willow just snorted and punched the back of his seat.

  Thom chimed in from the front. “He’s right, though. They don’t do anything in the public eye, not if they can help it. Those guys in the Daylight Division are about as shady as they come. And if there are already roadblocks, it means they’re desperate to get their hands on us.”

  “So, what now?” I asked, wondering which was freaking me out more: the roadblocks or Simon’s blasé mention of lobotomies.

  “Well, we can’t go back to Silent Creek. We can’t risk that the Daylighters either know about the camp already, or that we’d be leading them right to it,” Simon explained.

  “Where, then? We have nowhere else to go.” But as soon as I said it, there was this weird invisible wire that seemed to stretch between Thom and Simon, a look that passed between them that said I might be wrong. “Do we?”

  Thom gave Simon a quick nod, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Simon give one right back. A decision had just been made without a single word being exchanged.

  “There may be a place . . . another camp . . .” But something about the way Thom was stalling made me think this might not be an ideal solution.

  Willow gripped the back of our seat as she shoved her face between ours. “It’s a bad idea. They won’t take us in.” There was a sharp edge to her voice.

  “Sure they will,” Thom assured her, still leaving the rest of us in the dark. “They might not like it, but they would never turn us away.”

  Jett, who apparently was as clueless as I was, squinted suspiciously. “Who we even talkin’ about? What camp?”

  Simon shrugged, like it was no biggie. It was the same kind of shrug Cat used when she was trying to convince me to do something she knew we shouldn’t be doing. Like somehow that gesture would convince me that sneaking off campus in the middle of the day wouldn’t land us in seriously deep shit with our parents, the principal, and coach.

  Fool me once, my dad used to say.

  So, seeing Simon try to pull that move made this whole thing seem like an even bigger deal. Especially since just yesterday he and Thom could hardly look each other in the eye. Yet now they were sharing private looks and making silent pacts.

  They were one step away from secret handshakes.

  “A place called Blackwater Ranch,” Simon answered, finally filling in the blank. He nodded toward Thom. “It’s where we met. A lot of the Returned end up there at some point.”

  A spark of recognition flashed in Jett’s eyes, and he gave a slow nod. “Yeah. I heard’a that place.” His face contorted as though straining to recall more specifics. “Run by a Griffin something-or-other. One of those guys who thinks the Returned should rise up against the man. Give the No-Suchers a dose of their own medicine or something.” He laughed at the notion.

  “What, like some kind of army?” I asked. Sure, it sounded crazy, but who was I to question their ways? As the last of us to be returned, I’d barely scratched the surface of all there was to learn about the camps and alliances, and the scientists and agencies who were after us. I still had about a million unanswered questions about why, why, why this had even happened to us in the first place.

  “Sorta like that,” Jett answered. “From what I hear, they’re like Returned activists. They have a reputation for being a tad on the zealot-y side, but stories tend to get exaggerated as they move from camp to camp.” He glanced from Simon to Thom, still trying to get a beat on their whole look-at-us-being-friends bit. “Does all that sound about right?”

  Simon gave that shrug of his, the one that made everything as clear as dishwater. “I think they just want to be prepared if anything goes sideways, is all.”

  In typical Thom fashion, he remained tight-lipped on the matter.

  “So, where is this place? This activist camp?” I asked.

  “About fifty miles outside Zion National Park. Basically, it’s smack in the middle of the Utah desert.”

  Utah . . .

  Awesome.

  Geography wasn’t my strong suit, but I knew Utah was nowhere near where we were. It was ten hours away. At least. And that was if we stuck to the main highways, which had already been ruled off-limits.

  And we were supposed to get there with the NSA hounding us the entire way. Double awesome.

  On top of everything else, it meant leaving my old life in Burlington even farther behind.

  You’d think after everything I’d been through, and the way my world had been upended while I’d been away, the last thing on my mind would be missing my mom and her new husband and their new son, especially since they’d made it more than clear they didn’t want anything to do with me. But the idea of being so far from them only made me so much more aware of how sick and tired I was of losing people.

  I had to ask, “How are we supposed to do this? Get there . . . without being caught?”

  Simon sighed, no longer looking bored or vague. “The only way we can. One mile at a time.”

  We drove twenty-four minutes to a gas station that was way, way off the highway. It was also super, super sketchy.

  But just like when we were on the road to the Daylight Division’s Tacoma facility from Silent Creek, we had to assume the sketchier the station, the less likely it was to have security cameras. It also didn’t seem completely implausible that this throwback to the ’70s was getting its mail by Pony Express, which we hoped meant the cashier hadn’t been alerted to be on the lookout for a carload of kids matching our descriptions.

  That was the other thing: our descriptions. There was no way we were getting all the way to Utah looking the way we did.

  To avoid drawing attention, Jett went into the tiny store alone, and when he came back, he held out three boxes of hair color to Natty and Willow and me, like he’d just done us some huge favor.

  “That’s it?” I asked, turning up my nose at the selection. Our choices were jet-black, brown, and dark brown.

  “You’re lucky they had these. It’s not exactly a Walmart in there.” He passed Simon an old-school-style paper map, and Simon unfolded it as he began plotting our course from here all the way to Utah. GPS was out of the question, Simon had declared. It would be far too easy for the NSA to get a lock on us that way.

  Simon glanced at the boxes in our hands. “Better get moving, you only have about half an hour.”

  Willow grabbed a box without even looking. Brown it was.

  I was relieved because the girl on Willow’s box had reminded me vaguely of Mandy Maxwell.

  In the sixth grade Mandy Maxwell had sprouted a good seven inches, and three bra sizes, past the rest of us girls, all within a matter of six months. There was something about the combination of high-water jeans and her brand-new C-cups that had left Mandy foul-tempered. So when I’d beaten her one too many times at tetherball during recess, she’d decided I deserved to have gum squished in my hair.

  My mom had spent hours trying to pick the sticky wad out, but in the end she’d had to resort to scissors, leaving me with an unsightly bald patch. I’d hated Mandy long after the hair had grown back.

  The idea that she and I might be walking around with the same hair color, natural or not, even this many years later . . . well, thanks but no thanks.

  I turned to Natty, who was contemplating the other two options way too seriously, but at least she was putting some thought into it. I put my fate in her hands. “Go ahead, you pick first,” I told her.

  She bit her lip and shot me a questioning look. I shrugged because as far as I was concerned, it was hair. My natural color would grow back eventually.

  But when her fingers clamped around one of the boxes, I was impressed by her bold choice. She’d chosen the one with the cover model who had sleek, cropped, intensely black hair.

  I never would’ve called that one.

  That left me with the darker of the two browns.

  Willow had already gone into the gas station’s restroom with her package, so Natty and I followed, taking the new hairbrush Jet
t had bought us, along with the unopened pack of oil rags we’d be using as towels. Let the transformation begin!

  Willow’s blue eyes sparkled mischievously as she gave us a nod from where she was standing in front of the mirror, already hard at work on her own hair. Apparently she didn’t need anyone’s help.

  I caught a glimpse of my reflection from behind her and was mildly surprised that I hadn’t changed since the last time I’d looked. I still had freckles and eyes I thought were too big for my face—but not alien big, just regular-girl big.

  I didn’t want to be some half-breed alien anomaly. I just wanted to be regular old me again.

  Averting my gaze, I fumbled with the instructions for the hair color. My eyes stung, making it hard to concentrate, but Natty just took the sheet of paper from my hand.

  “Here, let me.” She uncapped one bottle of astringent-smelling solution. Dumping it into the larger one, she shook them together like she’d done this a thousand times before. “I used to help my mom,” she explained when she caught me eyeballing her. She pointed to the single toilet in the restroom, and I sat down on the closed lid.

  “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?”