“It’s complicated,” I tell him. “We don’t really know the actual algorithm they use, but when a heart becomes available it’s determined by blood type, greatest need, and proximity of the recipient.”
“Oh.” Heath’s face falls a little bit. He knows I’m O neg because we coordinated the local blood drive for the past three years, the Red Cross volunteers’ faces lighting up when they saw my paperwork.
O is the universal donor, but O neg can only receive from other O negs, which make up about 7 percent of the world’s population. So they’d treat me like a queen and pump me dry. Getting that attention seemed cool then. Now it’s a death sentence.
“How’s Lilly?” I ask, and he has the grace to blush.
“She’s good.”
“Is she?” I say, and Layla makes a noise in her throat. “Well, thanks for bringing my clarinet.”
“Sasha, listen. I . . .” Heath looks around the room. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“I have to meditate in like five minutes.”
Heath’s jaw tightens, something I’m familiar with. “Then give me the five minutes.”
I get up and he sees the LVAD battery pack at my side. “What’s that?”
“Life support.” I slip past him and he follows me to my room, where I close the door behind us. We stand, awkwardly facing each other.
“So Brooke told me about . . . him.” He can’t say it, and I’m not helping him. I stare blankly.
“About who?”
“Seriously, Sash? C’mon. This isn’t easy for me either, you know.”
I’m about to tell him that it isn’t my job to make it easier, but whatever there was between us, no matter how thin the string, it pulls taut in the moment that I see tears standing in his eyes. Somewhere, my heart responds. But I can barely feel it.
“About Isaac?” I provide.
“Yeah,” he says. “I didn’t think you were the cheating type.”
I’ll be sending Brooke a text later. But right now Heath is the one in front of me, and the rational part of me knows he deserves an explanation.
“Do you want to sit down?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “You said five minutes.”
“This will take longer than that,” I say, and motion him toward the bed. He sits and I remain standing, eyes closed, hoping that somehow not looking at him will make this easier.
“I don’t know if this will help at all, but I think it explains a lot,” I say, pushing the chair in front of me and spinning it with my hands while I speak.
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I passed out at school?”
“Yeah, it was your heart.”
“Right,” I say slowly. “Except it’s not mine. I had a twin, Heath. I absorbed her in the womb, but her heart took the place of mine. Her name is Shanna, and I think she knew she only had so much time left. She fell for Isaac.”
I open my eyes to see the strain on Heath’s jaw has only increased.
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” I finish. “I had no say.”
“Are you serious right now?” Heath slams down a hand on the desk chair, and it stops midspin.
“I—I . . .” It’s my turn to stutter.
“Because it couldn’t possibly be your fault, right, Sasha?” His perfect complexion is red, his manicured finger sticking in my face. “You would never cheat on your boyfriend. You would never sneak out of the house. You would never have sex with Isaac Harver, would you?”
The butterfly in my chest is panicked, trying to fly away. I grip the chair in front of me, my knuckles white, my breath coming in short stabs.
“No,” I say, my voice shaky. “I wouldn’t.”
“Jesus Christ, Sasha,” he says. “Wake up.”
“I am awake!” I yell, the rabbit tempo of my heart beating in my ears. “Why can’t you just believe me? Ask my mom; she listens when I talk about Shanna.”
“Does she?” Heath asks, his own voice quiet now, hand at his side. “Or is she trying not to upset you and make you have a heart attack?”
“I guess you’re not worried about that.”
Somehow we’ve changed places. His anger evaporated his tears, while one has come from somewhere, sliding down my cheek, hot and salty. His hand is on the door, and he walks away from me as the chair rolls out from under my hands and I slide to the floor, more tears following me down.
“No,” he says. “I don’t give a damn.”
He doesn’t even look back.
The clarinet is waiting for me by the chair in the common room, a constant that has held for me in even the worst of times. Now, in the great tempest of my life, I am the one that abandoned it. I suspect that’s how it began, me denying music my talent and instead giving that time over to Isaac, forsaking my mind for my body, not knowing that the last did not belong entirely to me. And so Shanna erupted, tearing into my life as she destroyed it.
I walk into the meditation room, ignoring Layla’s questioning glance and Jo’s squeak of alarm as I kick the cassette tape player into a corner. My clarinet slides together reluctantly, punishing me for weeks of disuse. The cork is dry, the reed chipped and broken. I replace it, wetting a new one with my tongue, sucking on it to draw out the familiar taste of resin.
This is me, this is who I am. This is Sasha Stone, who would have graduated as valedictorian and gone to Oberlin, who would have been on a dark stage in a few years, wearing black, unable to see the audience because of stage lights but feeling them there, their eyes on her though an entire orchestra was onstage. Sasha Stone always garnered the attention. Sasha Stone stood out in a sea of stars.
But somehow I am here, not on a darkened stage but in a badly lit room with flickering fluorescents that hum to match the mechanical hearts of my audience members. I am here, with a harsh line down the middle of my face to match the one on my chest, a line that—should I ever make any stage—could never be covered by makeup. The light would seek it out. Illuminate it. All imperfections glare in the spotlight.
I tune up, the B flat scale dancing out of my fingers with ease. I see Layla draw a mat near her own, encouraging Brandy to join her. Jo does too, after a moment, her usual mat in the corner abandoned. I fly through another scale, second nature taking me through the warm-up I have done a hundred thousand times, my fingers happy to dance yet a bit stiff. I glance up to see that Layla and the other two have laid down on their mats, hands at their sides. I turn off the rest of the lights, the only illumination in the room coming from the rectangular window in the door. It lands at my feet, daring me to step inside.