four
Our courthouse looks like what you’d expect in a small Ohio town; someone started with ambition and then ran out of energy. Or money. Or both.
The front does everything a courthouse should. It looks serious, imposing, like a brick bastion of justice that fell from the sky. But once I walk through the double doors on Wednesday after school, all the trappings of glory fall away. I’m hit with a mix of mildew and ancient cigarette smoke that only a demolition is going to address. The plaster walls have cracks like varicose veins, small explosions of age. One last holdout of nobility—a grand old wooden staircase—is stripped of its dignity by the orange traffic cone on the landing, draped with caution tape of no specific nature. I can only assume I’m supposed to watch out for the water dripping from the ceiling.
There’s a directory mounted on the wall, white peg letters canted at angles that make me want to reach out and straighten them. The office of vital statistics is in the addition, a polite word for the pressboard square attached to the back of the building. I walk in, worried that my feet might punch right through the linoleum floor, or that my voice will blow the wood paneling from the studs. The waiting room looks sick, badly lit by fluorescent lights, the mismatched set of chairs all clear castoffs. The lady behind the counter glances up at me, her fingers still moving across her keyboard.
“What do you need?”
Mom would call her rude. I call it efficient. This woman speaks my language.
“Birth certificate,” I say.
Her eyes go back to her screen. “Yours or someone else’s?”
“Someone else’s.”
She doesn’t glance back at me. “Birth certificates can only be issued to the parent or spouse. I’m betting you’re neither of those.”
“What about a sister?”
The word feels weird on my tongue, one I’m not sure I’ve said before.
“Sure,” she says, still looking at the screen. “What’s her name?”
I pause too long, and she prompts me. “Your sister’s name?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit, and she looks up at me. I only have her attention for a split second before she’s back on the computer again, our business together finished.
“Adoption records are sealed,” she says.
“Look”—I scan the piles of papers on her desk and finally locate a name plaque—“Jane, I don’t think she was adopted. I don’t even know if she was born.”
The keys stop clicking and I’ve got her. I don’t think Jane gets a lot of high excitement or mystery here in the addition, so I whip out the ultrasound.
“This is me . . . well, one of them is,” I tell her.
“So you’re a twin,” Jane says. “Or you were supposed to be, anyway.” She takes it from me, unfurling the thin paper and holding it up to the light. “Don’t want to ask Mom?”
“No.”
“What about Dad?”
I let silence answer that one.
She sighs and hands the ultrasound back to me. “Like I said, birth certificates can be issued only to parents.” I’m about to argue when she puts her hand up to stop me. “But vital statistics are public record.”
Jane motions me to follow her as she pulls open a flimsy door, a puff of stale air greeting us. She flips a switch and the lights bubble to life, flickering as if they resent it. Racks of heavy books surround us, but Jane goes right for the one she wants, tossing it onto a wide wooden table in the center of the room.
“Name?”
“Mine?”
“Yeah. She’s your twin. She’ll have the same last name and birthdate.”
“Sasha Stone,” I say, more than a little embarrassed I didn’t think of that on my own. My brain has always been a sharp instrument, a pencil with lead that tears through paper. But on this subject I’ve been dull, barely leaving a mark behind.
“Birthdate?”
I tell her, and Jane’s finger trails down a column of Ss. “There,” she taps my name. “Found you.”
I lean over the table, fascinated by this stark representation of my existence. There I am, Sasha Stone, daughter of Patricia (Hall) Stone and Mark Stone. I feel a ridiculous bloom of relief in my chest to see that information, as if I needed proof that I was indeed born.
“No sister, though,” Jane says, her finger moving over to the birthdate column. “See? No other Stones born on November twenty-first of that year.”
“So she was stillborn?”
“Maybe,” Jane says, disappearing in the racks of books for a second, and returning with one titled Deaths 2000–
I don’t like all the possibilities encapsulated after the dash, an endless stream of deaths with no definitive cutoff point.
“If she died at birth, she’ll be in here,” Jane says, finger once again slicing through columns of ink. I wonder if she has calluses on her fingertips like I do, mine from making music, hers from trailing over lives begun and ended.
“She’s not here,” Jane announces.
My hand goes back to my pocket to reassure myself that the ultrasound is still there, the only thing in the world that says I have—or had—a sister.
A sister who wasn’t born and never died.
When I see Isaac in the hallway I take an impulsive step backward, the heels of my shoes knocking against the door of the vital records office. He looks up from the bench he’s sitting on, a solid expanse of wood that belongs in a church, not a common hall with pictures of child-support nonpayers posted above it. Still, he looks comfortable, arms spread across the rolled back like he belongs here. Our eyes meet and he smiles like there’s nothing surprising about the situation.
I look away quickly, to the words on the door next to him. Parole Officer. So I guess he does belong here.
“I’m starting to think you might be following me,” Isaac says.
“You wish,” I say, anything more cutting than that lost to me. I’ve been demoted to monosyllabic words.
He smiles again, gaze traveling over me in a way I definitely don’t like . . . except I feel a subtle shift, muscles loosening or tensing ever so slightly, and somehow I’m angled toward him, like Lilly was with Cole, one shoulder dropped just enough that my shirt gapes a little. Isaac senses it, rising from the bench to cut the space between us, his body a knife that mine wants to be cut by. Because I’m moving forward too, and soon we’re indecently close, my heart hammering so hard I’ve got spots in my vision again.
“I got your text,” he says.
“I didn’t text you,” I shoot back, my mouth the only thing I still have control of. But even that feels slippery, as if it might jump the last few inches between mine and his without permission.
“Huh . . . ,” he says. “That’s funny ’cause . . .” and he holds up his phone, showing me a text that came in early this morning at three fifteen—
What r u doing?
“One”—I hold up an index finger, hoping it’s an effective barrier between us—“I was asleep at three. Two”—another finger goes up, adding a board to the wall I’m building—“I use real words when I text. And three”—last one, to hold it all in place—“that text came from someone named Lady, not me.”
He flips it back open, pulls up his contacts and shows me the entry for “Lady.” It’s my number, sure and true, a dark rendering of facts as concrete as the books in Jane’s office.
“You’re a lady, all right,” Isaac says, his voice husky in my ear as he leans closer.
“I . . .” My voice fails me, my hand trailing up to his neck to touch the tattoo there rather than push him back like I told it to.
“Something’s wrong,” I say, sidestepping away from him, my hand leaving his chest and going to mine to feel the pace of my heart. Very allegro.
“Yep,” he agrees. “And I know what it is. You like me . . . but you don’t like that you like me.”
“Based only on that sentence, you’re an idiot,” I say just as the parole officer’s door opens and a man sticks his head out.
 
; “Sounds like she’s got your number, Harver,” he says, gesturing for Isaac to come inside.
“Uh-huh . . . ,” Isaac says. “And I’ve got hers.”
And then he winks at me.
And I like it.
five
“I asked Melanie if she knew what color the carpet was in her brother’s room, and she said green.” Brooke brings the wooden mallet down on the skull of our fetal pig, sending some cartilage onto my safety goggles.
“So taking that and the toe of the shoe I spotted in the pic, I’m guessing that is Cole’s dick. Hardly worth Instagramming.” She gives the pig another whack.
Lilly perches on a stool, elbows resting on the black countertop of the biology room. “Dammit,” she says. “It is a little dick.”
My friends have been plumbing the depths of the mysteries of the size of Cole Vance’s dick for a few days, not coming up with any solid evidence as of yet.
“Hmmmm . . .” Brooke watches Lilly carefully. “You could always ask Charity.”
Lilly flushes. “No way.”
“I can find out for sure,” Brooke says, pressing her thumb on the cranium.
“Excuse me?” Lilly says, her embarrassed pink kicking up to an angry red.
“Chill,” Brooke says, “I’ll just ask him to whip it out sometime.” The skull gives way underneath the pressure with a distinct pop.
“Does it matter how big it is?” I ask Lilly. “I mean, do you like him or not?”
“It matters,” Brooke says with conviction.
“It matters more if you like him,” I say, putting a reassuring hand on Lilly’s shoulder.
Lilly’s face scrunches up a little bit like she might cry at the unexpected support. “Thanks, Sasha.”
It’s not something I’d usually say, but I’ve come to the realization that while I might be the alpha of our group and Brooke the firm beta, Lilly can’t ever decide which one of us to please. She’s a toddler getting conflicting advice from her parents, and watching her confusion is solid entertainment. I’ve learned that if I can veil my words in something like kindness she tends to respond better, and I could use the distraction of being a good friend right now. Isaac gave me a knowing nod in the hall this morning that sent my stomach plummeting but my pulse skyrocketing.
I checked my phone the second I got to my car yesterday. No texts had been sent in the middle of the night—to anyone. None had come in either. I’m chalking it up to some semiliterate trying to connect with Isaac for God knows what and an errant radio wave identifying it as my number.
“I definitely like Cole,” Lilly says. “But I don’t want to end up in a micropenis situation.”
“You’re not the only one who enjoys a guy with a ’boner, Sasha,” Brooke adds.
I roll my eyes. “Do you have that brain exposed yet?”
“Ohhhhh yeah,” she says, ignoring the tools on the tray and cracking bone away with her gloved fingers. “Nervous system, here I come.”
“Also endocrine,” I say.
“You need to get out more.”
A sudden shriek makes everyone jump; Lilly almost topples off her stool.
“Mrs. DeBrau,” Charity Newell yells from across the room. “I think my pig is totally pregnant.”
“Like it could be only kind of pregnant,” Brooke says under her breath. I think of gray shadows and twining umbilical cords, one baby born, one forever in limbo.
“No, that’s not possible,” I say, and Brooke makes a duh face because she thinks I’m talking to her.
“Not possible at all,” Mrs. DeBrau echoes me. “It’s a fetal pig, Charity, only a baby herself. However, you’ve done excellent work here.”
She leans over Charity’s tray to inspect the splayed animal, skin pinned around it like a macabre cape. “You preserved the reproductive system while dissecting. You have a deft touch.” Mrs. DeBrau looks at Brooke pointedly.
“I prefer my mallet,” my friend says, spinning it in her fingers.
“Mrs. DeBrau,” I ask. “At what point can a fetus stop existing?”
She looks up from Charity’s table, a cautious look on her face. “What do you mean, Sasha?”
This is exactly the problem. I don’t know what I mean. Last night I did search after search on my laptop, ruling out the obviously wrong answers right away. Mom’s stance on abortion has always been unwavering, so that’s out. I have no way of knowing if a miscarriage occurred, but we both seem healthy and whole in the ultrasound.
“I mean . . .” Everyone is looking at me now, because Sasha Stone not knowing what to say is an event worth noting.
“Can there be a fetus, no miscarriage or abortion, and then . . . suddenly no fetus?”
“Sure,” Mrs. DeBrau says, leaning back over Charity’s fetal pig. “That’s called resorption. It happens alongside a miscarriage, and the mother’s body reabsorbs what’s left of the material. Typically she won’t even know she was pregnant.”
That doesn’t work. Mom definitely knew. There aren’t ten fingers in that ultrasound. There are twenty.
“But what about twins?” I blurt, and Mrs. DeBrau looks back at me. “What if there are twins and then . . . then there’s not?”
“Aahhh.” She smiles. “You’re talking about vanishing twin syndrome.”
I smile back. That sounds about right.
Vanishing twin syndrome: also known as fetal resorption, is a fetus in a multi-gestation pregnancy that dies in utero and is then partially or completely reabsorbed by the twin.
“‘Partially or completely reabsorbed,’” I say to myself, tapping a fresh pencil against my lip.
My desk is a mess of papers and scribbled notes, half-drawn illustrations of various stages of embryo development with question marks penciled on the sides. I’ve been fending off texts from Heath all evening, responding with nonanswers and varying degrees of meh when he tried to invite himself to dinner. He’s usually good about respecting my space, but when he calls I capitulate and answer.
“What?”
“Well, hello to you too,” he says.
“I’m kind of busy,” I tell him, my pencil sketching a version of myself in the margin, bored and on the phone.
“Do you have a minute to talk to your boyfriend about this rumor that you’re pregnant?”
My pencil skids across my notes, jerking the whole paper sideways and exposing the pig-heart diagram I’m supposed to be studying. The tip of the lead shakes along with my hands, the stuttering of my heart dotting Morse code across the aorta.
“Wait, what?”
“I don’t know what you said in biology today, but Charity told Cole you were asking about abortion.”
“Resorption,” I clarify. “It’s when one twin absorbs another in the womb.”
I expect a sigh of relief, Heath’s usual noncombative tone restored so I can handle him and go back to what I was doing. Instead I get: “Why were you asking about that?”
“Why does it matter?” I shoot back. “It’s not like I’m pregnant. We don’t have sex.”
“Just because we don’t have sex doesn’t mean you can’t be pregnant.”
Lead punches through sheets of paper down to the wood of my desk.
“Heath.”
It’s one word, his name. But I know how to use it. I’ve heard girls adopt the cajoling tone to calm down their man, an upward lilt with a flirtatious accent that changes the subject. I say his name like a brick wall. One he can run into and break his damn face on. Heath is still talking, but I’m not listening, my brain derailed by the fact that I just swore. Only in my head, but it counts.
What is wrong with me?
I can’t get Isaac Harver—who is a total scumbag—out of my head. I practically stuck my tongue down his throat right in front of his parole officer for the love of God. I’m arguing with a perfectly nice, useful boyfriend over gossip. I’m using bad words and . . . my foot nudges my clarinet case, safely stowed under my desk.
As in, put away. There’s a thin
film of dust across the top.
I realize I haven’t practiced all week.
This is not who I am. This is not me.
“This is not me,” I say, interrupting Heath.
“What? Sasha? What do you mean?”
“I have to go.”
I hang up, my phone dropping to the floor next to my clarinet case as my eyes devour chambers of the fetal pig heart, so similar to ours, the colors of the diagram—red, blue, purple—vibrant against the dull grays of my ultrasound, still half curled, hiding in shame. One corner touches my notes, the sketch of myself, bored with my perfect boyfriend, now surrounded by a heavy script, all caps, vicious lines meeting at sharp angles to create a message I didn’t write.
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?
I think of Isaac Harver and bad words, my heart racing.
This is not me.
six
“Mystery solved,” Brooke announces as she drops her stuff on our breakfast table. “Cole has a little dick.”
Lilly stops peeling her banana. “You didn’t seriously do it?”
“Sure did.” Brooke tosses her ponytail off her shoulder as she swipes an orange off my breakfast tray. “I put in my run this morning, and he was working on sprints. I asked him to satisfy my curiosity, and while that may be taken care of, it’s the only thing he’ll ever be satisfying.”
“You are unbelievable,” I say, taking back my orange and tearing off some segments for her.
She shrugs. “The funny thing about dicks is that we never get to see them limp, you know? It was chilly this morning, Cole was a sweaty exhausted mess, and I’m all, ‘Hey, pull down your pants,’ and it’s like boom—erection.”
Lilly nods like this is an AP class and Brooke is spouting high wisdom.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I reassure Lilly, worried she’s going to take too much direction from our less-than-modest friend. “The female G-spot is typically only three inches deep, so as long as he’s past that it’s a perfectly serviceable penis.”
“Thank you for the medical analysis, Sasha,” Brooke says, squishing a piece of orange. “When you’re making out with Heath do you instruct him to create a vacuum on your areolae?”