Oh, I can do lots more, Dad. Lots and lots more.
But first I need to rest, allow this heart to find its place in the orchestra of my mind and body. I glance over at Mom, who is on the couch, doing the same.
I told her it was okay when I came out of recovery, that I was good Sasha again and everything was going to be fine now that Shanna was gone. Somehow this made things worse. I saw it in the tightening of the skin around her eyes, almost translucent with stress, saw it in Dad’s mouth, now in the constant downturn of three on the pain scale. Mild concern, mixed with discomfort.
There’s a knock on my door, all knuckle, the sound of a person who is not asking for permission to come in but letting you know that they are. Mom stirs on the couch as Amanda shuts the door behind her, her face the sort of calm that only comes after a major storm. I’ve always been impressed with her grim determination, the passive neutral she holds on to by her badly trimmed nails. But right now she’s not calm—she’s empty. Washed-out. Done. She’s been crying, though she tried to hide it.
“That was certainly something, Sasha Stone,” she says, ignoring my sleeping mother and plopping into the remaining chair. Mom mutters something in her sleep, then turns her back to us, no doubt aided into serenity by the Xanax her doctor has been giving her.
“It needed to be done,” I tell Amanda. “Shanna would have killed me eventually.”
She closes her eyes and presses her fingers against her temple and I take the moment to give her a once-over. Something is different, and it’s not just the new posture she’s taken, a slump that collapses her spine and pulls her shoulders inward.
“You’re not wearing your lanyard,” I say, finally spotting it. It had been blue, with smiley faces, the effervescent number one. It used to be clipped onto her ID, a picture with too much flash that had illuminated the oil output of each pore for closer inspection.
“I’m not exactly here in a professional capacity,” she says. “I got fired.”
“What?” I’m honestly surprised. “That’s crazy. You’re good at your job.”
“Yeah, I know,” Amanda says. “Then you came along.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. She tried to heal me with a microwave box and a compact mirror, so I’m not sure this is all on me.
“But it’s kind of a relief too, you know?” Amanda goes on, leaning toward me now, elbows on her knees. “Since I’m not your therapist—or anyone’s—I can say to you exactly what I think.”
“Oh boy,” I say.
“You’re a terrible person, Sasha Stone,” she says, eyes closing down into tiny slits. “There’s an ugliness inside of you that can’t be dug out, not with the knife you used, not with talk therapy, not with anything I know of. You’re so far gone you won’t even acknowledge it, claiming it all comes from someone else, somewhere else, never inside of you.
“You take the people who care about you most and manipulate them. You get your friends to lie for you, cut yourself up, and blame it on a boy who will probably never recover from seeing that, send your mother down an unstable path and your father trying to stop her so that he won’t get in your way. You got me fired and my license is up for review—do you understand what that means? I worked my whole life to help others and now I’m not going to be able to, because of you.”
She’s close to me now, the hot breath of another drive-through meal wafting in my face. I sit up, all my cords coming with me, and lean toward her so that we’re almost nose to nose.
“And how does that make you feel?” I ask.
thirty-nine
To Isaac
I’m sorry about my sister.
She can’t help who she loved.
How are you doing? Do you miss her?
lose my #
To Heath
Thought you might want to know I’m OK.
I really, really don’t give a shit.
I open my eyes two weeks later to find Brooke sitting on the only chair in a room I share with another patient, her constant stream of friends needing it more than my dispirited, short-lived visits.
“Hey,” I say, pulling myself into a sitting position.
“Hey. So tell me about puking down someone’s throat and then cutting your own heart out. I mean . . . I kind of hate you for about forty-five reasons—mostly because your mom totally bitched me out for sneaking you a phone, and your mom is cool and I like her, so that sucked. But you also provide me with front-row seats to the best sickout stories on the planet. I’m like, half Reddit-famous right now because of you.”
And there it is, Brooke being unapologetically Brooke. I smile, the action almost normal now, the slashed side of my face nearly matching the other. “Missed you,” I say.
“Yeah, no shit,” Brooke shoots back. “Wait, let me guess—I’m also your best friend. Which has nothing to do with me being your only friend, right?”
“I wouldn’t say you’re my only friend. . . .”
“Really? Because, dude, I went through your phone earlier and, yeah, I’m totally your only friend.”
“Okay, maybe,” I grant her. I wasn’t allowed to return to the cardiac center after what Dad has forever dubbed “my little stunt.” The last text messages I sent to Layla and Brandy came back as undeliverable, so either they changed their numbers, or they died.
Not sure which option bothers me more.
“So, new heart?” Brooke reaches over and pulls open my gown without asking, eyes devouring the smooth expanse of scar tissue there, the long, lumpy white path of the knife.
“Yeah.” I pull the gown closed again, not wanting to see the slow, steady beat of someone else’s heart. Though she would have been the death of me in the end, I’ve checked my phone once or twice for a message from her.
I miss my sister.
“So what’s up at school?” I ask, and Brooke goes off onto a rant about the freshman who thinks he’s going to oust her from her spot behind the drum set in the pep band, but how she’ll run a flute straight though his eardrum before she lets that happen.
I let her go, closing my eyes and listening to the familiar lilt of her voice, the rise and fall of everything I knew before. If Brooke is still with me, I might be able to find my way back to who I was before Shanna and Isaac, pick my way back through the path to find Sasha Stone.
forty
I walk for graduation, where I accept my GED. There’s not the rising swell I was expecting, the resounding affirmation of the entire town at my endurance against all odds. But I understand that the smattering of applause and one long wolf whistle is maybe all a GED deserves anyway, so I’ll accept that.
I’m learning to accept a lot of things. Heath and Lilly’s long, adoring glances at each other. Isaac’s dropping out of school. Brooke’s new fascination with a guy she met online who makes GIFs of fishing accidents ending in impalements. Mom and Dad’s divorce.
Mom keeps telling me it’s not my fault.