I slip the phone back under the pillow out of habit, not for secrecy. Mom and Dad were pissed to discover it in my bag, under Layla’s favorite coverless paperback and the hospital-issued underwear. But I got to keep it, because as Dad said, “What more can she do?”
Oh, I can do lots more, Dad. Lots and lots more.
But first I need to rest, allow this heart to find its place in the orchestra of my mind and body. I glance over at Mom, who is on the couch, doing the same.
I told her it was okay when I came out of recovery, that I was good Sasha again and everything was going to be fine now that Shanna was gone. Somehow this made things worse. I saw it in the tightening of the skin around her eyes, almost translucent with stress, saw it in Dad’s mouth, now in the constant downturn of three on the pain scale. Mild concern, mixed with discomfort.
There’s a knock on my door, all knuckle, the sound of a person who is not asking for permission to come in but letting you know that they are. Mom stirs on the couch as Amanda shuts the door behind her, her face the sort of calm that only comes after a major storm. I’ve always been impressed with her grim determination, the passive neutral she holds on to by her badly trimmed nails. But right now she’s not calm—she’s empty. Washed-out. Done. She’s been crying, though she tried to hide it.
“That was certainly something, Sasha Stone,” she says, ignoring my sleeping mother and plopping into the remaining chair. Mom mutters something in her sleep, then turns her back to us, no doubt aided into serenity by the Xanax her doctor has been giving her.
“It needed to be done,” I tell Amanda. “Shanna would have killed me eventually.”
She closes her eyes and presses her fingers against her temple and I take the moment to give her a once-over. Something is different, and it’s not just the new posture she’s taken, a slump that collapses her spine and pulls her shoulders inward.
“You’re not wearing your lanyard,” I say, finally spotting it. It had been blue, with smiley faces, the effervescent number one. It used to be clipped onto her ID, a picture with too much flash that had illuminated the oil output of each pore for closer inspection.
“I’m not exactly here in a professional capacity,” she says. “I got fired.”
“What?” I’m honestly surprised. “That’s crazy. You’re good at your job.”
“Yeah, I know,” Amanda says. “Then you came along.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. She tried to heal me with a microwave box and a compact mirror, so I’m not sure this is all on me.
“But it’s kind of a relief too, you know?” Amanda goes on, leaning toward me now, elbows on her knees. “Since I’m not your therapist—or anyone’s—I can say to you exactly what I think.”
“Oh boy,” I say.
“You’re a terrible person, Sasha Stone,” she says, eyes closing down into tiny slits. “There’s an ugliness inside of you that can’t be dug out, not with the knife you used, not with talk therapy, not with anything I know of. You’re so far gone you won’t even acknowledge it, claiming it all comes from someone else, somewhere else, never inside of you.
“You take the people who care about you most and manipulate them. You get your friends to lie for you, cut yourself up, and blame it on a boy who will probably never recover from seeing that, send your mother down an unstable path and your father trying to stop her so that he won’t get in your way. You got me fired and my license is up for review—do you understand what that means? I worked my whole life to help others and now I’m not going to be able to, because of you.”
She’s close to me now, the hot breath of another drive-through meal wafting in my face. I sit up, all my cords coming with me, and lean toward her so that we’re almost nose to nose.
“And how does that make you feel?” I ask.
thirty-nine
To Isaac
I’m sorry about my sister.
She can’t help who she loved.
How are you doing? Do you miss her?
lose my #
To Heath
Thought you might want to know I’m OK.
I really, really don’t give a shit.
I open my eyes two weeks later to find Brooke sitting on the only chair in a room I share with another patient, her constant stream of friends needing it more than my dispirited, short-lived visits.
“Hey,” I say, pulling myself into a sitting position.
“Hey. So tell me about puking down someone’s throat and then cutting your own heart out. I mean . . . I kind of hate you for about forty-five reasons—mostly because your mom totally bitched me out for sneaking you a phone, and your mom is cool and I like her, so that sucked. But you also provide me with front-row seats to the best sickout stories on the planet. I’m like, half Reddit-famous right now because of you.”
And there it is, Brooke being unapologetically Brooke. I smile, the action almost normal now, the slashed side of my face nearly matching the other. “Missed you,” I say.
“Yeah, no shit,” Brooke shoots back. “Wait, let me guess—I’m also your best friend. Which has nothing to do with me being your only friend, right?”
“I wouldn’t say you’re my only friend. . . .”
“Really? Because, dude, I went through your phone earlier and, yeah, I’m totally your only friend.”
“Okay, maybe,” I grant her. I wasn’t allowed to return to the cardiac center after what Dad has forever dubbed “my little stunt.” The last text messages I sent to Layla and Brandy came back as undeliverable, so either they changed their numbers, or they died.
Not sure which option bothers me more.
“So, new heart?” Brooke reaches over and pulls open my gown without asking, eyes devouring the smooth expanse of scar tissue there, the long, lumpy white path of the knife.
“Yeah.” I pull the gown closed again, not wanting to see the slow, steady beat of someone else’s heart. Though she would have been the death of me in the end, I’ve checked my phone once or twice for a message from her.
I miss my sister.
“So what’s up at school?” I ask, and Brooke goes off onto a rant about the freshman who thinks he’s going to oust her from her spot behind the drum set in the pep band, but how she’ll run a flute straight though his eardrum before she lets that happen.
I let her go, closing my eyes and listening to the familiar lilt of her voice, the rise and fall of everything I knew before. If Brooke is still with me, I might be able to find my way back to who I was before Shanna and Isaac, pick my way back through the path to find Sasha Stone.
forty
I walk for graduation, where I accept my GED. There’s not the rising swell I was expecting, the resounding affirmation of the entire town at my endurance against all odds. But I understand that the smattering of applause and one long wolf whistle is maybe all a GED deserves anyway, so I’ll accept that.
I’m learning to accept a lot of things. Heath and Lilly’s long, adoring glances at each other. Isaac’s dropping out of school. Brooke’s new fascination with a guy she met online who makes GIFs of fishing accidents ending in impalements. Mom and Dad’s divorce.
Mom keeps telling me it’s not my fault.
I know that.
I also know where that one wolf whistle came from, a mouth that knows what to do to mine, likes to crush and bite a little. I know because he’s her boyfriend, the girl whose heart I have. I found her name with a little research, asked some questions, met her parents. They were nice people who only wanted to hug me, tell me they were glad she could save a life.
Her friends wanted other things, after I pushed a little, worked them past the reservation of speaking ill of the dead. There was a relief for them in saying stuff they weren’t supposed to, the dirty things I already knew because I had started doing them myself. I’ve only slipped a few times, let her have her way—and him have his—in the dark of night once, in a hotel bed Sasha Stone would never dream of sleeping in, let alone doing what they did. And the
n once, my face in a mirror, a line of white following the pale pink of what remains of my scar. And then it was gone, her heart rejoicing, my nose burning.
I won’t let those things happen again, I think as I close my fingers around my GED, shake the principal’s hand and return to my seat, ignoring the way her boyfriend’s whistle sent a shiver down my spine and made my mouth water for his.
I sit down, cross my legs at the ankle, adjust my mortarboard.
I am Sasha Stone.
I will try to be good.
Acknowledgments
Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but the final product of a book has many fingerprints on it. My agent, Adriann Ranta Zurhellen, always takes it in stride when I throw something slightly heinous on the table. The same can be said for my editor, Ben Rosenthal, who appears to be unflappable. As always, Erin Fitzsimmons delivered a beautifully designed cover that also captures the content of the pages.
Many eyes saw this manuscript before it went to my team at Katherine Tegen. Demitria Lunetta and Kate Karyus Quinn deserve much credit for the existence of this book, as they encouraged me to embellish upon a short story that appeared in our anthology Among the Shadows. As usual, R. C. Lewis kept me honest (and possibly sane) while drafting. Thanks to Stephanie Kuehn for a helpful eye, as well as Lydia Kang and Matt Sinclair, who were incredibly patient with my detailed and macabre medical questions.
For a long time I referred to this book in my head as Fight Club in the Band Room. This is my band-geek book, written with my band-geek friends in mind: Mel, Erin, Debbie, Amanda, Jeremy, Jim, Joe, Mandy, and Betsy.
We will always walk in step.
Back Ad
DISCOVER
your next favorite read
MEET
new authors to love
WIN
free books
SHARE
infographics, playlists, quizzes, and more
WATCH
the latest videos
www.epicreads.com
About the Author
Photo credit www.amyparrish.com
MINDY McGINNIS is the author of Not a Drop to Drink and its companion, In a Handful of Dust, as well as The Female of the Species, Given to the Sea, and the Edgar Award–winning novel A Madness So Discreet. A graduate of Otterbein University with a BA in English literature and religion, Mindy lives in Ohio. You can visit her online at www.mindymcginnis.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Books by Mindy McGinnis
The Female of the Species
A Madness So Discreet
In a Handful of Dust
Not a Drop to Drink
Given to the Sea
This Darkness Mine
Credits
Cover photograph by Greta Tuckute
Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THIS DARKNESS MINE. Copyright © 2017 by Mindy McGinnis. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.epicreads.com
* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017932878
ISBN 978-0-06-256159-6
EPub Edition © September 2017 ISBN 9780062561619
* * *
17 18 19 20 21 PC/LSCH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada
www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
Mindy McGinnis, This Darkness Mine
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends