Dad slaps the table so hard, the chandelier shakes, tiny music drifting down among us. “Don’t encourage her,” he yells. “We only have one child and I’ll be damned if I’ll watch her go crazy and let you help her.”
“You never mourned her!” Mom shrieks, anything she was holding in check flowing out on the last word, a crescendo that feels like it will break the window.
“She never existed!” Dad roars back, with a volume I didn’t know he had the capacity for. If I combined all the words he’s spoken to me over the years they would not equal those three, words borrowed from a fight they should’ve had years ago.
I look down at my plate, the corn safely tucked to one side, what’s left of the pork chop mangled but not touching anything else. I’ve even taken my knife and scooted the breading crumbs away from the pooling butter from the corn. I didn’t know I was so much like Dad until now, so compartmentalized and factual. His food never touches, either.
They’re still yelling at each other when I throw my plate. All of it’s touching now, smeared on the wall and dripping down to mingle with the plaster dust.
They look at me, mouths both agape at this new person. I might be nasty once in a while, push back from the table too fast and leave the room in a huff. But Sasha Stone is a good girl. Sasha Stone does not throw her dinner across the room and watch it puddle on the floor with something like satisfaction brewing in her gut.
That’s someone else entirely. And they don’t know how to handle her.
“Sasha . . .” Dad’s eyes are still on the floor, not able to meet mine. He says, “Go to your room” at the same time Mom says, “Clean up that mess,” and they look at each other, unsure how to coparent when the child isn’t a perfect ten.
So I don’t do either. I walk out the front door and get in my car, wondering where I should go and who I should see. My hands find my phone, and my sister decides without asking.
There’s a subtle shift Monday morning after the revelation. Mom and Dad are being very careful with me, and each other. Whatever fragile peace they found between the two of them after I left seems to be based on pretending nothing happened. Dad grabs toast and leaves as if work might evaporate if he doesn’t get there on time. I seriously doubt anything so substantial as a tax firm could cease to exist, but if you asked me that about a twin six months ago I would’ve said the same.
Now I know better.
I feel her inside me, beating more quickly when I picture Isaac’s face, responding whenever I say her name mentally. I only thought of her as sister until yesterday. Mom had said her name hesitantly, like a bad word you whisper because you don’t actually know what it means yet.
Like fuck. Except you k(now) what that means.
That’s waiting for me on the Notes app on my phone when I get to first period. I roll my eyes at the parenthetical, but the tingle that I feel all over my body is testament to the truth of Shanna’s statement. When I passed Isaac in the hallway my fingers instinctively clenched Heath’s, earning me a subtle pressure in response that barely registered against the tumult Isaac’s wink sent through me. Her heart reacted, certainly, but I can’t ignore the fact that since I’ve given her some free rein with my body it’s starting to get some ideas of its own, too.
I ignore the blush spreading in my cheeks at the thought of Isaac, the pins and needles rushing through my spine as I remember his naked back in the moonlight, and tell my hands it’s time to prioritize.
Mr. Hunter’s handwriting is sketchy at best, and when there’s a challenge he deteriorates into a first grader with a caffeine buzz. He’s written that word—CHALLENGE—across the white board in red Expo marker, but he was overly excited and made the first letters too large, so the last few are squeezed in like a bowel obstruction. Somebody thought they’d be clever and added a tiny R in the corner, complete with an explosion. Insensitive or not, it’s accurate.
Because somebody is going down.
When there’s a chair challenge, the second-or third-or fourth-chair instrument makes a play for the seat ahead of them. It either ends with someone firmly entrenched in their proper place and an expanding sense of superiority to their immediate right, or a palpable air of embarrassment while the challenged shifts to the left, taking their case, music, and a tucked tail with them. It’s a weird moment, complete with mumbled excuse mes and other pretenses at politeness as the demoted and the promoted switch places, one barely keeping a lid on a victorious smile while the other is probably considering ending somebody’s marching-band career with a solid whack to the back of the knee.
Not that I’ve ever been in that position. I’ve never lost a challenge.
I head back to the cages and spot Charity Newell huddled in a corner with her friends, practicing deep-breathing exercises like there’s a baby on the way. I’ve still got moonlight and back muscles on my mind, so I haven’t put it all together until I spot Lilly standing with the Charity supporters. Our eyes meet and she makes an oh shit face like I just caught her on a couch with Isaac.
I mean Heath.
“Nice,” I say, loudly enough for her to hear. I don’t need Shanna’s foul mouth to shred people; kind words said nastily are sufficiently sharp.
Lilly immediately ducks her head and comes to me as if I called her to heel, but Charity says her name in a way that sounds like she’s half drowned already and needs all the buoying she can get. Lilly stands in between us, a piece of unthinking metal stuck between polar opposites, her eyes loose, swiveling marbles.
“I’m telling you, his dick is the width of my gear shift, and I’ve had my hands on both enough to kn—” Brooke drops the penis lecture she’s delivering to some poor freshman when she sees us, putting together what’s going on much more quickly than I did.
I’m slipping.
I swing my cage door shut at the thought, pinching my index finger hard enough to pop a blood vessel. “Dammit,” I yell, going down on one knee to assess the damage, clarinet case clattering to the floor.
“Not bad,” Brooke says, hovering over me. “You’ve got the tone right, but when it’s pain a nice solid one syllable is the way to go for a swear. Much more satisfying.”
I cradle my hand to my chest, letting the pain sweep up my arm so I can pretend that’s why there are tears in my eyes. Not because I know I’m about to lose first chair, and definitely not because Lilly left with Charity’s entourage. I’m not even going to acknowledge the possibility that tears are pooling because Brooke is still here, offering a hand to help me up, keeping up a steady stream of useful swears for any situation. I’ll pretend the pain is what’s making me cry.
That way she can too.
thirteen
WTF sis? I’m the one who loses things. Your virginity. Your min(e)d.
It’s not funny anymore.