I sat at the table, eating cereal in little handfuls. I wanted to put my head down on my arms or ask what time it was, but I couldn’t think of how to phrase the question. My joints felt brittle.
“Where’s Emma?” I said, staring into the open cereal box. It was dark inside.
“She said something about a lab project. She was going over to campus to meet a friend. Janet, I think it was.”
“Janice.”
“Maybe that was it.” My mom turned to look at me. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You’re very pale this morning.”
I nodded and closed the folding tabs on the cereal box. When I shut my eyes, I could still hear the gravelly voice of the guitar player. You’re dying. You’re dying.
“Mom,” I said suddenly, feeling reckless and exhausted. “Have you ever thought about what happens to the kids who get taken?”
At the stove, she stopped flipping the potatoes. “What do you mean?”
“Little kids. I mean, if they get replaced by . . . people like me, there’s a reason, right? That can’t be the end of it. They go somewhere. Right?”
“Not anyplace good.”
Her voice sounded so quiet but so definite that for a minute, I almost couldn’t bring myself to ask. “Are you saying that because you know I came from someplace really bad—because of how I am?”
“No, I know because it happened to me.”
I sat at the table, feeling groggy and stupid. “Happened to you how?”
Her eyes were impossible, too wide and too clear. They fooled you into thinking she had no secrets, but she looked away before she answered my question, and I knew she was telling the truth. “They took me, that’s all. It’s not exciting or glamorous. It’s just something that happens. That’s all.”
“But you’re here now—you’re here in Gentry, living a normal life. I mean, took you where?”
“This is not an appropriate topic of conversation,” she said sharply. “I wish you wouldn’t bring up ugly things at the table, and I don’t want you to mention it again.”
Then she got out an onion and started chopping it into little cubes, humming softly under her breath. I shut my eyes. The information was awkward and unwieldy. I had no idea what to do with it.
My dad came in, completely oblivious to the way the two of us were managing a very uncomfortable silence. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and I tried not to wince. “Malcolm, any big plans for the day?”
“He isn’t feeling well,” my mom said with her back to him. She bent over the onion, chopping it smaller. Smaller. Microscopic.
