The Replaced Read Free Page A

“I’ll do everything I can to help you with this, but I need you to keep quiet about it fornow. At least until I can talk to Jett and Willow and figure this thing out.”
    I nodded once, and he stood abruptly to go.
    “Simon,” I said, stopping him. His hand was on the doorjamb as he raised a dark eyebrow and looked down at me. I suddenly wished I hadn’t been so hard on him all this time. “Thanks.” It didn’t seem like enough to say to someone who was about to risk so much for me and for Tyler, who he’d barely known at all, but it was all I had to offer him.
    “If Tyler’s really there, we’re gonna find him, Kyra. I swear we’ll get him back.”

CHAPTER TWO
    NATTY WAS THE EXACT POLAR OPPOSITE OF CAT , who used to swoop into a room and take up every spare iota of space with her energy until you sometimes felt it would suffocate you because there’d be no air left to breathe. Except, there always was, because Cat just had this way of making room for you.
    Natty, on the other hand, moved like a shadow, to the point that you sometimes missed her if you weren’t paying attention. It probably should have freaked me out, the way she’d just out-of-the-blue clear her throat, letting you know she’d been there all along waiting for someone to notice her.
    This time, Natty made a point of being noticed as she knocked at my door.
    “Oh, hey,” I said, which had become kind of our standard greeting. Like, Hey, I almost didn’t see you . Or Hey, you’re just sitting there, watching me . . . that’s not weird or anything .
    Except, the thing was, it kinda wasn’t, not with Natty. It was just her way. Her quiet, reserved Natty way.
    “Hey. You left this.” She held out the journal I’d had with me in the old church-house dining hall when Jett busted in all bright-eyed, telling me I had to come with him when he’d first intercepted the NSA email about Tyler. Natty had been with me then, doing her Natty thing: making sure I actually ate something. She was like that, the mother hen type. She seemed to know what I needed, when I needed it. Ever since we’d arrived at Silent Creek, Natty had taken me under her wing. She understood me in ways no one else seemed to—knowing to stay quiet when I didn’t want to talk, or talking to fill the space when she somehow sensed the silence had grown unbearable.
    We hadn’t known each other long, and we didn’t finish each other’s sentences or anything, but she didn’t have any expectations of me, and right now Natty was the closest thing I had to a friend.
    “Thanks,” I said, taking the journal from her outstretched hands. I ran my finger along the already worn cover, where I’d written: “I’ll remember you always.” It was the same phrase Tyler had written in bold sidewalk chalk outside my house, right after I’d been returned, when he’dfirst told me he once had a crush on me.
    While I hadn’t aged a day in the five years I’d been gone, Austin’s kid brother, Tyler, had grown up during that time, and while everything else in my life had changed beyond recognition, the change in Tyler had been . . . steadying. I’d finally seen him for who he was.
    Now his words filled my head, reminding me I could never forget Tyler, not as long as I lived . . . even if I never laid eyes on him again.
    Natty watched curiously. I’d never told her what it meant, the saying, or why I’d spent hour upon hour drawing the fireflies, although that part was no great mystery. I’m sure she knew their link to the abductions, the same as any of the Returned. The way they seemed to swarm right before the aliens came.
    She ducked her head, her dark blond hair falling around her flushed cheeks. She glanced up through the wispy curtain and I saw her eyes—sharp the way they were—studying me.
    Natty had explained about the eyes, something I hadn’t realized at first, and still didn’t always recognize.
    On Simon, it was obvious: the shocking copper with the gold flecks. I