The truth is most of me doesn’t know how it feels to be bad. My sister feels so vibrant inside my body now that I’m aware of her; it’s like everything else about me—skin, hair, teeth, arms, legs, toes, and eyes—are merely part of the vehicle that was made for her, just waiting patiently for the takeover when they got to live too. I’ll fight it as long as I can, my mind the last holdout once everything else has abandoned itself to this new experience.
I ignore my phone during the football game, squeezing out the fight song like it’s the best sixty-four measures that ever existed and avoiding eye contact with the brass section. They don’t even make it into my peripheral.
I drop off the girls, ignoring a weighted suggestion from Lilly that I check my texts and a knowing nod from Brooke when she gets out, shutting the passenger door with her butt and then smearing her face all over the window as I try to back out of her driveway. I laugh, my mouth making the right shape and my throat producing the sound it’s supposed to, but the truth is I can’t wait to get home.
I can’t wait to stop being myself.
Hands that don’t fumble or hesitate, no waiting for permission or asking in the first place. Tree bark scraping across my skin as I slide down to the ground, knees a weak mess of desire. But I don’t feel the pain, don’t feel the hard ground underneath me or the pressure on top now. I can’t feel these things, because it’s not me. Not my body curled in ecstasy, toes pointed at the moon. Not my nails slicing red ribbons down his back. Not my blood rising to the surface of my neck, something I’ll have to hide later, when I am myself again.
There are no words, only sounds, as if my clarinet were jammed down her throat, every breath passing unintelligible sounds that compose a song of victory. She is a feral thing, my sister, long denied and now unleashed. She takes what she wants, scratching, pawing, tearing at him. She’ll have bruises, but so will he.
The three of us will study them later, and remember.
I wake sore, lips swollen as if I’d played for hours. My fingers stray to my face, brushing aside hair somehow laced with dead leaves. The rising sun catches a note taped on the footboard, lined paper bearing a message meant only for me.
Told ya it’d be fun
And underneath me, a smear of blood on my sheets.
ten
I. Things I Know
A. This has gone too far.
1. My sister had sex with Isaac.
2. My sister lost my virginity.
3. I can’t control myself.
II. Things I Don’t Know
A. How to stop
B. If I want to
My mom is always begging me to talk to her more, and that could be kind of a problem. If I open my mouth, all kinds of things are going to come out: accusations, admissions, confessions. I can tell her about my sister, her heart pumping away inside of me, and I imagine my mother’s will respond, picking up a rhythm it believed it lost years ago. Now that I know about my twin, I wonder how I could have discovered her only recently, never spotting her in the perpetual dark circles under Mom’s eyes, whoever the woman is on the other end of Dad’s mysterious calls, the long silences between my parents that stretched out longer over the years.
She’s there between them, a phantom that is not named or talked about, but around and through, their words tearing holes in what’s left of her, a brutality of neglect. I see her in the sidelong glances from Isaac in the halls, hear her in the loud curses tossed by the people who would’ve been her friends, feel her in the lingering soreness between my thighs. I even taste her in the food that didn’t decorate the wall behind my head in the dining room, mashed potatoes not thrown in a fit that never happened.
I chew slowly, as if being hyperaware of my actions will lead me to some form of control over hers. My food is ground to a pulp, saliva running down my throat before I catch Mom looking at me over the rim of her glass, water paused at a perpetual angle. We stare at each other for a moment, Dad’s steak knife grating against his plate while the glass magnifies her lips, drawing out the cracks that years ago she would have balmed away before dinner.
“Mom?”
“Sasha?”
We talk at the same time, a small question in the upended lilt of our voices. We don’t speak the next part, Are you all right? Because it seems that she knows I’m not, perhaps has known for a while. And maybe I knew she wasn’t either.
“Help me with these?” She nods toward the plates, and I follow her to the kitchen with mine in hand, trying not to stare at the mess of bone and gristle that remains. The door swings shut behind us, and Mom leans against the counter, dishes forgotten in the sink.
“What’s going on with you lately?”
I scrape what’s left of my dinner into the garbage disposal, listen to the grind of flesh and bone being pulped and forgotten.
“What do you mean?”
I ask not in denial but out of true wonder. How do I seem to them, this new daughter erupting forth from the existing one?
“You’ve been . . . different.”
She is careful with me, hesitant. I think of the wall behind my dinner seat, a life’s worth of arguments accumulating in a point of impact that is boring down into plaster. How many times have I stormed away, leaving behind a mother who wonders . . . what if the other one had lived?
I think there’d probably be a hole in the wall, that’s what.
But Mom doesn’t know that. She probably pictures someone like Lilly in my place, a nice girl with my face who is malleable, picking up suggested hobbies that we can practice together, long ponytails overlapping each other’s shoulders as we sit side by side knitting, scrapbooking, journaling.
“I’m fine, really,” I say, any thought of coming clean chased away by the image of this kinder, nicer child that she never would have had.
“That’s my point,” Mom says. “When I said you’ve been different, it’s not a bad thing.”
“Then what is it?” I realize my shoulders are tense, pulled back straight and tight as if I were at attention on the field, waiting for the whistle to release me.
“I think you might be happy.”
I’ve barely talked to anyone in the past few days. Heath’s texts line my phone like bubble wrap that I’ve got to dig past to find anything else. They sit, unanswered. Brooke has never required anything other than an audience, and to watch while I pick splinters from my gums. Lilly is the one who notices my silence. I see her mentally cataloging it, along with every time Isaac and I make eye contact, which always sets ablaze a stolen memory of flesh on flesh, the ground against my bare shoulder blades.
My sister isn’t talking to me either. In the week since my bloody sheets I’ve checked my phone more than usual, sliding past accumulated texts from Heath to see if any from Isaac have come in, but none have. I feign indifference, casually tossing my phone onto my bed as if there were someone watching me, that they might know how little I care. But when I went to finish the abandoned Faulkner paper, my fingers typed something else, a note for my twin, letting her know the consequences of her actions.
Hope you’re happy. He’s not talking to us and my sheets are stained. There’s a word for boys like him, and that’s trouble. You want to live, I know, but at what expense to me?
The paper flowed more easily after that, the words that had been blocking my brain now set aside in a document I refuse to save or name, only minimizing it as I wait for an answer. But there was no response from her that night, or any thereafter. Even the red C+ on my paper, written hesitantly as if the teacher couldn’t quite believe it herself, doesn’t penetrate my thoughts. It takes Brooke’s voice, every word punctuated with a staccato, to do that.
“Shit a brick, Stone,” she says, pulling the paper off my desk before I can hide it in my backpack. “Did you have an aneurysm or something?”
“No, but my parents will,” I whisper. “Could you not—”
“Not what?” Lilly asks, leaning forward in her seat to rest her chin on Brooke’s
shoulder. “Oh my God . . .” She fades out, her hand covering her mouth when she sees my grade.
I swipe it out of Brooke’s hands and crumple it, my face matching the bleeding red of the pen. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”
“Sasha,” Lilly says, eyebrows drawn together like an art project titled Concern. “If you need to talk, or something.”
“Seriously,” Brooke adds. “I mean, you’re like the Hester Prynne of the group, so you can’t tell us there’s nothing going on.”
“Yeah,” Lilly agrees automatically. “Wait, what? Hester who?”
“Cute,” I say to Brooke. “Shame you don’t apply your cleverness elsewhere.”
“Yeah, that one was pretty good, I gotta say,” Brooke goes on. “See,” she explains to Lilly, “Sasha’s like the chick from Hawthorne—only letter you’re ever going to see on her stuff is a big red A.”
“Ooooohhh,” Lilly says, but I’m not sure she actually read The Scarlet Letter, so even the explanation of the joke is probably lost on her.
Brooke’s mouth is suddenly a thin line, cheeks puffed as she tries to suppress whatever drop of comic genius is currently brewing. It’s a Friday, the last few minutes of class dwindling to nothing while everyone huddles in groups.
“Just say it before you stroke out,” I tell her.
“Err . . .” She glances around and has the dignity to lower her voice. “I was gonna say that you always got As . . . until you started getting some D.”
Brooke regrets it the second she sees that it’s true. I can tell when our eyes meet that whatever semblance of honesty exists in me flashed for a moment, and she caught it. Lilly only gapes, mouth open in what has become her signature expression.
“Sorry,” Brooke says quickly. “I didn’t mean . . . it was just too funny to not say it.”
“Yep. Pretty goddamn funny.”
I hear Lilly’s gasp before the door slams shut behind me, my shoes smearing the tears that fall so that anyone who sees could follow them like bread crumbs, a trail of confusion that leads to the bathroom, where I curl protectively in a stall, waiting for the day to be over.
“Sasha?”
It’s the last voice I expect to hear bouncing around the girls’ bathroom, echoing with a vibration much lower than what these walls are used to.
“Heath?”
I’m so surprised I lower myself to speaking to him, even pushing open the stall door. We’re alone, the long mirrors on the far walls reflecting back an endless line of Sashas and Heaths, none of them knowing what to say. We look at each other for a second, him breaking away first to inspect the tampon dispenser like it might have a suggestion.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” I tell him. “You’ll get in trouble.”
“I put a sign on the door,” he says. “‘Caution. Wet Floor.’ You know, Cuidado piso mojado.” He cracks an old joke, bending his body into a ridiculous position.
“Thanks, Captain Accident,” I say, a small smile tugging on my lips at the name we gave the anonymous silhouette of a man who always seems to be falling on floors, jamming his hand into tight spaces, and dropping hair dryers into bathtubs.
But it’s no accident that Heath has followed me here, and I know it. I’m trapped, the stall door against my back, myriad copies of myself staring me down. Heath leans against one of the sinks, the tail of his shirt dipping into more STDs than he’ll have a chance of catching in the next twenty years.
“You didn’t answer my texts,” he says. It’s not sad or accusing. It’s a statement of fact; typical Heath. I don’t tell him that I never read them in the first place.
“I’m sorry,” I say. And I kind of am. Maybe. He might be boring, but that doesn’t mean my salacious sister gets to skewer him for entertainment. “I’ve got a lot going on.”
He holds my gaze for a minute, and I wonder if he’s going to call me out on the fact that I’ve always had a lot going on. Instead he studies the puffed skin around my eyes, the dark circles underneath.
“I’m worried about you,” he says.
“I’m fine.” These words are stockpiled for me within easy reach. Always locked and loaded, both a weapon and a defense. But Heath has heard them too many times and familiarity reduces their effectiveness.
“You’re not fine,” he shoots back. The endless line of Heaths on both sides of the bathroom are an army now, one I know I can’t hold off for long. The tail of his shirt is wet, hanging against his jeans to spread a dark oval there. “Something’s . . . off, Sasha,” he says. “Something is wrong.”
How can someone who knows me so well not realize?
Sasha Stone is not off.
Sasha Stone is not wrong.
But Sasha Stone is closing the distance between us, watching as thousands of Sashas and thousands of Heaths find some comfort in the nooks of each other. And while these places are not a perfect fit, they are at least familiar.
He smells like Tide, because heaven forbid his mom ever buy generic. I’m simultaneously repulsed and attracted to his cleanliness, the fact that he’s not Isaac both a magnet and a mark against him.
Newton says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, but lately everything that happens inside of me ripples out in twos, my love and hate doled out equally between Isaac and Heath, satisfying no one.
“We okay?” Heath says into my ear, his breath moving a lock of my hair.
It’s so normal, so deeply programmed into who I am that I lean forward just enough that his lips are against the soft skin of my neck. “Yeah,” I say. “We’re good.”
And that’s the thing. We are. Heath and I are good. Good the way sugar cookies with no sprinkles and white cotton undies and organic deodorant are good.
We’re good.
I’m good.
Sasha Stone is good.
I repeat this as I walk into the hallway, my hand in his, my heart a dead thing in my chest.
eleven
What. The. Fuck. Wait, I k(no)w this one. DON’T tell me. He’s so n-ice. So gòÓd. What if he k(new)? I said out with the old—you remember the IN part. These boys . . . your FEELings. Equal and opposite erection. HA. What Would Jesus Do? What Will Mom Say? Will Dad Even Notice?
I owe you something but not everything. The one for you is not the one for me.
Love y(our) choice of w(or)ds. The 1 4 you is not the 1 4 me. Paradigm shift, sister—Now 1 + 1 = 4—Math is hard. You + Heath = Good, Me + Isaac = Bad, You – Me = ?
I look at my sister’s response on Saturday night and sigh. I’m going to have to make some hard and fast rules about punctuation if we’re going to continue to communicate like this. I can feel my GPA slipping as I read her embarrassingly inaccurate blocks of text. I minimize the doc and scroll down on the browser to discover that my crack about the GPA isn’t just a turn of phrase.
The Faulkner paper I turned in and subsequently crumpled before dissolving into a hot mess and hiding in the bathroom did not do me any favors. Neither did the take-home government test where I answered the essay section with a series of exclamation points and unhappy faces—or, somebody did. If my sister insists on sharing this body she’s going to have to agree that it’s going to Oberlin next fall, or else.
My phone vibrates on the laptop, mercifully sliding across the touchpad and relegating my grades to a folder labeled To Improve, alongside an app I’d downloaded to brush up on my Italian and an online course covering the musical history of the baroque period. It’s a text from Lilly, whose been monitoring my relationship status like she’s a cardiologist and it’s got a pacemaker.
So you and Heath are back together?
Don’t know that we were ever apart.
What does that mean?
And while I acknowledge the inherent bitchiness in my statement, it’s also technically true. I didn’t break up with Heath, I simply told him he could choose to not have me for a girlfriend and then never read the texts that may have held his decision.
And then I had sex wit
h someone else.
“Shut up,” I say. Unfortunately my fingers are working in tandem with my mouth and I end up texting exactly that to Lilly, who for once didn’t deserve it.
WTF?
Sorry. Not for you.
She texts me back but I ignore it, the low purr of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway drowning out the vibration of my phone. It’s one in the morning, and I should be asleep, reading, studying, improving—doing anything other than what I’m doing, which is pulling on a pair of shoes and a jacket and sneaking downstairs to talk to the boy who I lost my virginity to last week and haven’t spoken to since.
I put on my pissed face as I walk out the door, considering if I’ve got it in me to slap him. Even if I do, most of the anger that’s fueling me has morphed from steam in my head to bubbles of anticipation in my stomach. I don’t know whether I’m going to hug him or hit him until I see him leaning against his bike, the bobbing ember of a cigarette in his hand.
And it’s a hug. A full-out, body-to-body, squeeze-me-please hug. One that goes from soft squishy to hard angles in a second, our mouths finding each other and his cigarette dropping to the ground. A tendril of smoke finds its way to my nose as my heel crushes it out, and I pull away.
“Hi,” we both say at the same time, breathless. I swear he’s blushing.
“So, uh . . .” His eyes go to the crushed cigarette. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“I was mad,” I tell him. The words sound funny coming out in the shape of a smile, the dichotomy of my sister and I fighting for control. “I still am.”
“You don’t look mad,” he says, thumb tracing my lips, which are stuck in a grin I can’t wipe off until I summon the image of my bloodstained sheet.
“Looks can be deceiving,” I say, taking his hand away from my face but leaving our fingers intertwined. A little for me, a little for her. 1 + 1 = 2, sister.
“Why didn’t you call me? Text? Something?”
He looks away from me again, like the broken cigarette might be able to offer up some sentence structure that’s escaping him. I squeeze his hand, aware that I’m going to have to wash mine later in order to get the lingering nicotine smell off.