“Oops,” I say.
She looks up at me, spreading her fingers apart so that I can see her eyes. “Jesus, Sasha. What am I supposed to do with you?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and her head goes back down.
“Seriously,” I tell her. “The other girls got in a fight and I . . . I . . .”
“You held your breath until you passed out because you didn’t want to hear what was being said to you,” Amanda says into her hands.
“No,” I correct her. “That is not what happened.”
She sighs and her arms flop into her lap, like they’re too heavy for her to hold up anymore. “Look, I don’t know if I can make a convincing argument to keep you here, not after what just happened.”
“And what just happened, exactly?” I ask.
“You created a disturbance that upset other patients.”
“Technically my dad created the disturbance. All I was trying to do was talk to my mom after having a medical issue.”
Amanda nods slightly, and I feel myself nodding along with her to encourage the movement. “Okay,” she says. “I might be able to work with that. But you’re going to have to do something for me.”
I’m still nodding so she thinks I’m agreeable.
“Remember the mirror therapy they used with Brandy’s foot, the one you told me about?”
“Yeah,” I say, ignoring the feeling of my phone vibrating under my pillow.
“Do you remember what you said you thought you’d see if you looked into one?”
“Yeah.” The phone gives a last, insistent pulse and falls silent. “I said I’d see Shanna.”
Amanda picks her keys up from the floor, where apparently she’d dropped them at some point in the tussle. “I made a mirror box for you,” she says. “It’s out in my car.”
My throat goes hollow, my neck muscles stiff. I cannot agree or dissent.
“I want you to look into it, okay? If I’m going to put myself out on the line to keep you here I need you to do this for me.”
“Okay,” I say, the word coming from nowhere, an automatic muscle response of agreement.
Amanda stands up slowly, eyes on me. “I’m going to check on your parents and send Karen in here to sit with you.”
“I’m fine,” I say, another gut reaction. There is nothing wrong with me.
“I don’t know if that’s—”
“I said I’m fine, and I said I’ll do it,” I snap.
“I’ll be right back,” she says, and the utter silence of the hallway as she slips away reminds me of kindergarten after the teacher bawled somebody out and everyone else is trying to be really, really good to make up for it.
It’s shock and I know it. Other people’s shock gathers together and quiets them, a comfort of sorts, making it easier for everyone to process what happened, what I did, the cause and effect that probably sent the Civil War reenactors home early and canceled the woolies entirely.
There’s a jingle of keys and Amanda is back, a cardboard box in her arms with a picture of a cheap microwave on it.
“Seriously?” I say.
“I’m working with available materials around my apartment,” she says, and places it on my side table.
“You need to ask for a raise then,” I tell her. “That’s a crap microwave.”
Amanda shakes her head. “Sasha Stone, you have no idea.”
She smiles at me and I take a deep breath, my chest shaky. “Are my parents still here?”
“They’re not far,” she says. “Are you ready?”
I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t ready to fall for Isaac Harver or have my face smashed open or a tree branch in my lung or have my friends tell me I’m a bitch or Heath say he doesn’t care if I die. I’m not ready, but I know what I’m supposed to do. I know what Amanda wants Sasha Stone to do. And Sasha Stone is a good girl, and I am going to be exactly that, again. I run my bed controls so that I’m sitting up as Amanda pulls the side table over next to me, swinging the tabletop so that the box is across my lap.
“Okay,” Amanda says. “You look in that hole there.”
There’s a jagged circle she’s made in the cardboard, a helpful duct tape arrow pointing at it. “It’s just like Brandy’s box with the inverted mirrors. So when you look in—”
“I’ll see my sister,” I finish for her.
“Do you want more lights on?”
I shake my head, the heart monitor beside me sending spiky waves across the screen as I lean forward.
And there she is, staring at me.
I wish there were more holes so that Amanda could see her too and know I’ve been right all along, so that my parents could look in and see their dead daughter, so that Isaac could see her face light up at the thought of him. I wish Nadine could stick her head in this box, see this face and deny her existence. I wish that Brooke could meet her and be her only friend. I wish Layla could meet her and convince her there is such a thing as love and that she was in it.
Shanna is gaunt, eyes sunk into deep hollows, her cheekbones starkly prominent. Her teeth have shredded her lips, her hair limp and lax around her face. I’m looking at a life unlived, one passed entirely in darkness, her skin hanging from bones like loose clothes.
“Sasha?” Amanda asks.
“I see her,” I say. “She’s dying.”
“Okay, I want you to stop now,” Amanda says, but I can’t. Shanna has locked eyes with me and won’t be moved. She’s angry about messages left unread, unanswered, a cord kicked loose by my foot, no matter what everyone else tries to say. I see it in her eyes. Eyes just like mine.
“That’s enough.” Amanda moves the box, and I scrape my chin on the edge of the cardboard. “Sorry,” she says, but she’s moving too quickly for it be a real apology, shoving the table out of the way and taking me by the hands.
“What are you doing?”
“I need you to get up now,” Amanda says, as if it’s perfectly reasonable. “I need you to come into the bathroom.”
“I don’t think—”
“Sasha, listen to me,” she interrupts. “You said you don’t want to leave this place and you said you would do this for me. Now it’s time to get up and come into the bathroom.”
I didn’t say that; I told her I would look into the box and that was all I promised. But she wants more from me now, and Sasha Stone would do the right thing, would do what she was being asked, would be a good girl.
And I am Sasha Stone, so I get up, the floor cold on my bare feet. Amanda grabs the IV tree and follows me, one wheel squeaking as I pull the bathroom door open. She reaches past me and flicks on the lights, my eyes closing automatically in response.
“Open your eyes, Sasha,” she says.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to, but she’s asking me to so it must be what I’m supposed to do. It must be the right thing, so I do it.
I do it and I see.
Shanna is here too, in the bathroom. She looks like death in this lighting, the hollow at the base of her throat deep like a gouge. Her eyebrows are even thinning, tiny hairs gone entirely where the scar passes through her face, a red, heavy scar with pinprick dots still healing on each side of it where she’s been sewn together again like a quilt.
My scar.
My face.
“Oh my God,” I say, hand reaching up to brush against cheekbones close to the surface of my skin. “It’s . . . that’s me.”
“Yes,” Amanda says, her eyes holding mine in the mirror, our reflections honest and true with each other. “It’s always been you.”
thirty-two
The word breakthrough has been very important in the past few days, one that Amanda keeps repeating and saying forcefully, even though she treats me like I might shatter while doing so. She’s been doing a lot of explaining, told me how I’ve used Shanna to allow myself a little room to “act out” without the guilt. She even said that the white things I’ve been pulling out of my gums aren’t reed splinter
s or my twin’s fetal bones—they’re mine. Apparently when your wisdom teeth are super deep your jaw gets chipped a lot while they’re digging the teeth out, and those bits work their way up to the surface. Amanda has an answer for everything; she even explained away whatever Nadine thought she heard when I was talking to Heath, asking the staff if they want to know what a conversation between a teenage boy and girl that uses the word absorbed is really about.
Nadine has kept a safe distance, Jo retreating back across whatever line exists between those two and the rest of us. Layla and Brandy have been supportive in the best way they know how—by keeping me up to date on deaths in the area.
“Shooting on the east side,” Layla says, scrolling on her tablet.
“Read it to us,” Brandy says, and Layla does, all of us getting a little excited when she gets to the part about it being execution style.
“Head shot, good for us.” Brandy pulls out her phone. “There a name?”
Layla finds it and Brandy shoots a text off to her buddy at the DMV. “What are our odds, Sasha?”
I glance over at them from the window, where a solid inch of snow has fallen to top off the three that settled from last night. “It’s impossible to say. There are just too many variables: blood type, Rh factor, tissue match, distance from donor to recipient, plus we don’t know where we fall on the donor list, so—”
“Yadda yadda, blah blah,” Brandy says, mimicking a hand puppet at me. “It’s a game. You don’t have to be right.”
That’s the thing though, I kind of do. All the time. But my friend wants me to say something so I’ll do what I’m supposed to. I’ve learned that.
“One in eight,” I say, making up anything to get her off my case.
“I’ll take those odds,” Layla says.
My phone vibrates in my lap, and I tilt it so I can read the message against the glare coming from the windows. It’s a new message from Brooke, waiting underneath the one that came in right before Amanda made me find my soul in a microwave box.
Assuming yu r dead. Pls spectrally instruct yur parents to give me my old phone back.
I’m here—doing better.
Snow day 2day. BORED. Send invasive procedure pics.
Snowing here too.
My thumbs hover over the screen, wanting to say more, thank Brooke for being a real friend. I’m not good with those moments though, even when they’re not face-to-face. Maybe I’ll get a transplant and ask them to film my surgery for her instead.
A piece of paper slides under Layla’s door, and Brandy snatches it up, waving it in the air. “Oohhh, TODAY AT THE CARDIAC CENTER!” she announces.
I groan, not even turning my head away from the storm outside. Snow is piling on the window ledge, each flake distinct until it smears into the next.
“There’s not a whole hell of a lot going on,” Brandy says, scanning the page. “‘Scrappy Over Scrabble,’” she reads. “‘Come to the common room to outwit fellow wordsters’—oh Jesus, never mind.”
“‘Outwit fellow wordsters’?” I repeat. “That’s a mouthful.”
“This bit must be in there just for us,” Brandy says, still reading. “‘Note: Please no actual scrapping.’”
“Sounds more like Karen’s scrapbooking class,” Layla mutters, scrolling through her news feed.
“Ooooo, burn,” Brandy says, followed by, “Oh my actual God.”
“What?”
But Brandy doesn’t answer me, and her silence gets my attention as well as Layla’s. Brandy is holding the agenda out so we can read it, because she’s incapable of speech.
TODAY AT THE CARDIAC CENTER!
2:00 p.m.—Two Girls, One Cup! Join junior jokesters Paula and Mei as they entertain us with their stand-up routine. Note: The girls say audience participation is welcome, but bring your own cup! Can’t wait to see what these krazy kids have up their sleeves!
“They can’t possibly know,” Brandy says.
“They don’t know,” Layla agrees.
“Two girls one cup is—”
“I KNOW,” I stop Brandy before she can get far.
“We’re definitely going to that,” Layla says. “Those junior jokesters sound like some funny fillies.”
“Punny preteens,” I add.
“Clever cu—Ow!” Brandy yells as I throw a pencil at her. “You could’ve put my eye out.”
“She’s just trying to even you up. You’re top heavy with two eyes and one foot,” Layla says, and my phone vibrates again.
From Isaac
That wierd girl said you’re doing better? Why don’t you answer me?
I try to ignore the fact that he must have misspelled weird enough times that autocorrect gave up on him.
“Be right back,” I tell the girls, unfolding myself off Layla’s couch. “And I think the Scrabble thing could be cool.”
Brandy makes a face. “For you, maybe.”
I cross the hall to my room, shut the door behind me, and call Isaac. He picks up on the first ring.
“Hey.” He’s guarded, fences up in his voice that I’ve never heard there before. That’s on me, ignoring his texts while I sort out Sasha from Shanna. But I can’t explain, not right now, so I’ll pretend I don’t notice.
“Hey. So . . . you talked to Brooke?”
“The blond one?”
“Yeah.” There’s a hot spark of jealousy in my gut that he would even notice her hair color. What else did he notice? Her scarless face? No wires coming out of her torso?
“She told me at school you had some kind of attack but you’re okay now, or something?”
“That’s a bit of an overstatement. I’ve been running a fever, and they can’t pin down the source.” I take a deep breath, steadying myself to tell a lie. “They took my phone away because I’m supposed to be resting a lot. I just got it back but I didn’t text you because I’m not supposed to”—I pitch my voice low and sexy—“get overly excited.”
He doesn’t say anything for a second, and I think either I really screwed up the vocals or we got cut off.
“Wouldn’t want that,” he finally says, sounding pacified. “Smart move.”
“I am smart,” I agree.
Smart enough to have taken apart Amanda’s crappy do-it-yourself psychology project to find only one mirror when she left to talk to my parents after my supposed breakthrough. Smart enough to know it wasn’t an inverted image because Shanna’s scar was on the same side of her face as mine. Smart enough to pretend like I fell for it. Smart enough to say what Sasha Stone was expected to say.
“Smart, but a little effed too, you know?” Isaac goes on. “And I kinda like it.”
“A little effed?”
“Yeah, you know. With a shaved head and scars, the wild part of you is on the outside now too. We match.”
“Yeah, match,” I say, pulling a hangnail.
“So I been meaning to tell you . . .” His voice fades out like he’s about to admit something heinous and my breath catches in my throat. Isaac Harver defaced petroglyphs without blinking so what he’s about to say must be pretty awful.
“I read The Divine Comedy.”
It’s so unexpected that I burst out laughing, the sound so unfamiliar to my throat that it catches there, a jagged thing.
“What did you think of it?” I ask.
“It’s not very funny,” he says, which sends me into another bout of laughter. I consider explaining to him about how the ancient Greeks use the word comedy differently than we do, but since my life is currently measured by an unknown increment of time I decide not to bother breaking it down for him.
“So listen,” I say. “If I called you suddenly and said I needed you here right away, would you come?”
“You know the answer to that.”
I do know. And I know the sex is only part of it. There’s a lingering in his touch that goes past sensuality into affection, an edge of panic in his unanswered texts that is more than the loss of his go-to booty call.
?
??Good,” I say. “Keep your phone close.”
I hang up and slide my hand under the mattress to double-check that the knife I nicked from the kitchen is still here. I suck my lip in when the blade snags under my thumbnail, yanking my hand back to inspect the bloody half-moon forming. In my other hand, my phone buzzes with a text from Isaac, something he didn’t have the guts to ask me over the phone.
The sister thing, is that bullshit? Is your heart yours or what?
. . . maybe it’s yours ☺
Like the sound of that.
Talk later. Call whenever.
I drop the mattress, pressing down on my thumb until the drop of blood squeezes out the tip, my skin angry and purple. I wipe my finger on the clean sheet, leaving behind a streak of red, and glance back at the text.
Yes, this is probably going to hurt him.
But it’s going to hurt me a hell of a lot more.
I. Things I Know
A. This will work.
II. Things I Don’t Know
A. N/A
thirty-three
“Four-car pileup! Four-car pileup! Jackpot!”
I hear Layla yelling as I cross the hall, and open the door to find Brandy spinning a throw pillow over her head and making siren noises.
“Shut your hole. I’m trying to read,” Layla says.
I move Brandy’s foot to make room for me on the couch, but she promptly puts her legs back up once I’m sitting, her prosthetic a surprisingly heavy weight across my knees.
“Nice,” I say, and she shrugs.
“Okay, breaking news,” Layla says, while scrolling. “Four-car pileup on the eastbound . . . resulting in—wow—looks like two were life-flighted, three in critical condition . . . no names yet though.”
Brandy puts her phone away. “Can’t really know anything then.”
“No,” Layla agrees. “But, like, statistically speaking our odds have to go up the more people involved, right?”
She looks to me for confirmation.
“Sure,” I say. “But—”
“No buts,” Brandy says. “You still want to do Scrabble?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I’m not feeling all that great.”