(I never was) kidding.
I close out the Notes on my phone as I walk in the front door. My whole day at school was spent either pretending not to cry or pretending I didn’t want to kill Charity Newell, and do serious structural damage to Lilly as well. Heath did his best to comfort me, which means that he kept rubbing my shoulders in a platonic way that only made me want to drive a pencil in between his ribs just to get some kind of passionate response out of him. Brooke would usually offer to mortally embarrass whoever the problem was, but since Lilly factors into that equation, she was oddly silent about balancing it. Judging by the exchanges with Shanna on my phone, she’s completely unapologetic about her part in making me lose first chair.
The only good thing about my day was when a text came in from Isaac that read, Found a better chair, and had a pic of something designed so that the user could get into all sorts of weird sex positions. I wasn’t even really sure if you were supposed to sit in it or what, but I was smiling when I deleted the text.
Mom is coming down the stairs as I close the door behind me. “Sasha?” she asks.
Usually the question in her voice would mean she’s asking who just came home, and technically I suppose it still does. But we both know there’s more to it.
“It’s me,” I tell her, silencing my phone in case Isaac tries to cheer me up with anything explicit.
“Okay,” she says, but the smile on her face stretches a little too tightly, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s disappointed. “We need to talk,” she says.
I follow her into the living room, ignoring the buzz of my phone in my jeans even though I’m highly curious about whatever perverted furniture Isaac may have found.
“Your dad,” she begins, and I’m already rolling my eyes in reflex. Years ago we silently agreed to ban each other in some way, a revolt of one of the five senses; his ears don’t work when I’m around, and my eyes roll at the mention of him.
“Your father is worried about you,” she goes on.
“A nicer way of saying he doesn’t believe me.”
“It’s a lot to take in,” she says. “You have to understand how Shanna’s—”
She hesitates, as if saying death might stop the heart patiently beating inside of me. I stare at her, whatever chamber of Shanna’s heart that has mother written on it hardening as we wait to see how she’ll finish. Mom goes on, skipping the word entirely, leaving a blank space in her sentence like the one that sits across from me at the dinner table every night.
“—affected us. We’d already bought two cribs . . .”
Mom fades out again, her face collapsing inward like there’s a vacuum in her throat. At the rate she’s producing words it’s a distinct possibility. I watch, wondering where the other crib ended up. Later, on my phone I’ll find:
on the c( )b (ur) (ri)
“Your father,” she says, and I’m starting to think we’re just going to keep identifying family members all afternoon, which honestly might have avoided a lot of confusion if it had happened sooner. My phone buzzes in my pocket again, and Mom’s eyes cut to it.
“Could you turn that off so we can have a conversation without interruption?”
She’s barely finished a sentence yet and my phone isn’t the reason, but I slip my hand into my pocket anyway. “Dad’s worried about me,” I prompt her.
“Yes.” She nods. “He’s afraid that the issue isn’t with your heart so much as your mind.”
More like the problem is with my mind being sharp enough to know he’s been stepping out on Mom for the last two years, and his heart not catching on to the whole monogamy thing. Or maybe his heart doesn’t factor into it at all and it’s just his . . . ew.
“And what do you think?” I ask, rerouting my mind away from that particular thought. Getting Mr. There’s a Sense of Calm to Be Found in Numbers on board with my twin sister living inside me was always a long shot, but with Mom I wonder if I’ll see that light of hope that flashed so brightly when she first thought maybe . . .
“Well, I know that you’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.”
She says it delicately, as if maintaining a polite tone while inferring insanity will soften the blow. It’s the inverse of my approach of saying nice things in a horrible way, so I give her the benefit of the doubt and let it settle in my ears, slipping into my possibly unstable mind to be absorbed by the bloodstream, the course of my veins carrying it to my heart.
Which revolts.
It stutters at first, fluttering like eyelashes in a sharp wind, then drops the beat completely, leaving my body empty, waiting for something that doesn’t come. I’m still, not breathing, hoping it will pick back up. When it doesn’t, my hands go to my unmoving chest, no rise and fall of breath, no deep thrum of a pulse.
“Sasha?” Mom’s hands join mine, our fingers interlaced over my sternum. “Sasha?” This time the concern has elevated to worry, and the last reiteration of my name comes at a full-blown panic, but I hear only the first syllable as darkness fills my vision. It’s not a fade to black, but an explosion of dark pinwheels that burst across my mother’s face. My whole body is liquid and it’s so soothing, I give in to it. I slide from the couch to the floor, pooling into the form of a bass clef before Mom smacks me across the face.
I pull in a breath reflexively, lungs telling heart the point has been made. It picks back up, the steady beat in my chest Shanna’s silent agreement.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” Mom says, hands on both sides of my face, the hardwood floor pressing my bra clasp deep into my back. I take another gasp of air, this one so deep I hear vertebrae popping. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’m okay,” I tell Mom. “I’m okay now.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I’ve blacked out a few times lately. I don’t think Shanna—”
“Please don’t.” Mom raises a hand to stop my words. “Let me talk to your father,” she says as she helps me from the floor, a protective hand on my elbow. “I don’t want him upsetting you, or honestly you upsetting him either. Bringing up . . .”
“Shanna,” I supply, and her hand tightens on my arm.
“Bringing up your sister isn’t going to be easy.”
“Being her isn’t easy.”
fourteen
I disentangle myself from Mom with a little difficulty, making an excuse about homework so I can go upstairs and check my texts. There’s a string of apologies from Lilly, more mundane kindness from Heath, and a few pile-of-poop emojis from Brooke.
And one from Isaac.
Want to see something?
I definitely do. Preferably not my parents’ faces. I text him in the affirmative.