The Replacement Read Online Free PDF

noticed that everyone in this town is desperately committed to pretending that nothing is wrong ?"
    I nodded, but I had to resist an urge to point out that sometimes it's just so much easier that way. I scraped at the shingles with my fingers and didn't say anything.
    Emma crossed her arms over her chest. "You looked a lot like him."
    I hunched my shoulders without meaning to. She was talking about the brother she should have had, and everything about him, even the little things, made me feel heavy and sort of numb.
    She just went on in a soft, dreamy voice. "He was blond, I think, like you. I know that he had blue eyes because you did too, for a while. But then it was like the blue just wore out. Or trickled off or something. Maybe there was a spell or a charm, but it faded, and one day the blue was gone, and there you were."
    "But you don't actually remember what he was like?"
    Emma looked down at the backs of her hands, scowling like she was trying hard to picture something. "I was really young," she said finally. "I can't always tell the difference between before and after. I'll remember some detail and I can't even tell if I'm remembering him or you. The thing I remember best is a pair of scissors. Mom had a pair of scissors that she tied on a ribbon over the crib. They were pretty."
    I thought about all the Old World superstitions. Tricks to guard the livestock and protect the house. It was obvious, more and more. They didn't work.
    Emma sighed. "I guess I don't remember him at all," she said finally. "I just remember the things Mom did to keep him from being stolen."
    She pulled one knee up so she could hook an arm around it. Her hair was starting to come down from the knot and she tugged at it, looking lonely and sad as a lighthouse. Sad as a nun.
    I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.
    She sighed and glanced over at me. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"
    I shrugged. The feeling was easy, but the words wouldn't come.
    She looked at me a long time. Then she touched my cheek. "Good night, ugly."
    She flopped headfirst through the window, landing on the bed with her feet sticking out over the sill. Her slippers were grimy from the shingles and I almost reached out and tweaked her ankle, but I didn't.
    Below me, the neighborhood was sleepy and still. I leaned on my elbows and looked down into the street.
    Gentry was two different things, and at night, I could always see that second thing better. The town was its green suburban lawns, sure, but it was also its secrets. The kind of place where people double-checked the locks at night or pulled their kids closer in the grocery store. They hung horseshoes over their front doors and put up bells instead of wind chimes. They wore crosses made from stainless steel instead of gold because gold couldn't protect them from people like me.
    Maybe the brave ones buried quartz and agate in their gardens or left a saucer of milk out for luck--a little backyard offering for whatever might be waiting in the shadows. If someone called them on it, they'd shrug or laugh, but they didn't stop doing it because hey, we lived in a place where people kept their porch lights on and didn't smile at strangers. Because when they set out a few pretty rocks with their marigolds, early snow never took the branches off their trees and their yards looked nicer than other people's. Because mostly, more than anything, night was about shadows and missing kids, and we lived in the kind of place where no one ever talked about it.
    After a long time, I climbed back into my room and got into bed. I left the window open so I could breathe. The house wasn't bad, but still, it was hard to sleep with the air smelling like screws and brackets and nails.
    When the breeze came in, I shivered and crawled deeper under the covers. Crickets were shrieking out in the yard, and the trees