The Replaced
Page 50

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.
I drew fireflies. Everywhere, fireflies. On the inside flaps, on the cover, all over the pages of the book . . . even on the palm of my hand.
And so it goes, I guess.
The tent flap wavered and Buzz Cut’s voice filtered into our musty space. “Drills.”
I shoved the book beneath my pillow and bolted upright. I was more than ready to get outside, and wished they hadn’t waited so long to come get us. This part of our day, joining the rigid workout routines of the other campers, even if it meant heading out beneath the blazing hot sun, had quickly become my favorite part. A bright spot amid the dull routine of aimless pacing, scratching out games of tic-tac-toe in the floorboard dust, and our one daily trip to the cafeteria, where we ate even if we weren’t hungry because it was more interesting than sitting in our tent.
Plus, I had my book-slash-journal now too, so there was that.
For a camp of not-troubled teens, Griffin kept these kids in tip-top shape. The drills were brutal. On the first day, after only an hour, I thought the combination of exertion and heat would make me puke, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the ground, but the athlete in me knew that would only make the cramping worse, so I’d forced myself to take small sips of water and walk it off, until the excruciating stitch in my side had faded to something closer to a dull ache.
Still, when Buzz Cut had called us to drills again yesterday, I’d jumped at the chance.
I’d do it each and every day we were here if it meant not staying cooped inside this musty tent all day. Or if there was even the slightest chance I might get a glimpse of Willow or Simon or any of the others.
So far, though, they’d managed to keep us separated enough that we never ran into one another. And Buzz Cut refused to answer whether it was only Natty and me who were allowed outside.
I was this close to changing her name to Buzz Kill.
Slipping on the athletic sneakers we’d been given, Natty shot me an eager look. We’d been doing our best to speak as little as possible, trying to develop our own silent version of communication in order to avoid being eavesdropped on. But Natty wore her emotions all over her face. Her codes weren’t all that hard to crack.