The Replaced Read Free

get my hopes up, but it was almost impossible because I’d seen the email too. It might not have been from Tyler, but I’d already committed every word of the classified email to memory, and I was convinced it was about him:
            “Washington State Patrol reported an unidentified male between the ages of 16 and 20 years old at a rest stop just south of Olympia, Washington. . . . Subject was carrying no identification and refused to reveal his name to officials. Subject is currently being held at the Tacoma facility for my inspection.”
    But it wasn’t the content of the email, it was the signature line—from NSA Agent Truman, the very same agent who’d ambushed us that night at Devil’s Hole and then had disappeared himself—that had me convinced: the boy in question had to be Tyler.
    We’d all been looking at that email right before my dad’s message had popped up, and to say that I’d hoped it was Tyler the NSA email referred to didn’t even begin to describe what I felt.
    Because here’s the thing: if I could dream, it would be of him.
    Tyler .
    But dreaming was one of those things only afforded to those who could sleep. And since I no longer needed much—sleep, that is—it meant dreaming was pretty much a thing of the past. Like the horse and buggy, or phone booths, or floppy disks.
    But I missed dreaming so, so, so much. I missed the way you could dream about something you’d seen on TV or overheard during that day, even if you barely remembered noticing it. Or the way dreams could be completely-utterly- totally random and have nothing to do with anything at all. Like this one time when I dreamed I was dragged onstage during a Wiggles concert, and it was so embarrassing because what was I even doing at a Wiggles concert in the first place ?
    And just like all those million fireflies that had been there that night at Devil’s Hole—appearing right before the flash of light, their sticky feet clinging to my skin and their wings tangling in my hair as they forced their way up my nose and invaded my ears and my mouth—that ache for Tyler crawled over me, making me itch and burn and want to scream for some sort of relief. Even seventeen days later, it was maddening. Exhausting. Every time the sun came up, I got this sharp ache in my gut like I was one day closer to something.
    One day closer to missing him more maybe. Or to finding him possibly. Or to never seeing him again . . .
    I didn’t know what it was, but it was like a knife twisting my insides each and every morning, and each morning it was worse. As if each passing day the knife turned a notch, tangling into my viscera, becoming so enmeshed it wasalmost a part of me, and if I couldn’t relieve it soon, it would eventually rip me apart.
    All I could do was pray that finding Tyler would be the cure.
    I was desperate to see him one more time. To touch him or taste the mint on his breath. Each night I prayed for sleep . . . just so maybe I could dream of him.
    But even without the dreams, I still saw his face every time I closed my eyes, with every blink . . . blink . . . blink . It was like my own personal hell, torturing myself with what-ifs and what-could-have-beens. My dreams had been replaced by pacing and journaling and drawing, anything to find some way to extinguish my guilt.
    I was haunted by what I’d done, and by all the unanswered questions: What really happened to Tyler the night he vanished? Where had he gone?
    Had he even survived?
    Except the thing was, if the NSA really did have Tyler, the way their email said that they did, then they’d had him for weeks, because Jett had given me the numbers—the Returned always came back within forty-eight hours.
    Well, everyone but me, of course. I had to go and be all different.
    March to the beat of your own drummer, my dad always said.
    Simon reached over and gripped my knee. “I need you to do one thing for me.” He leaned closer so I could smell the peppermint on his breath.