When I get home I collapse onto my bed and stare at the clarinet case jammed under my desk. Last Christmas Mom and Dad sprung for a second one so that I could have one at school and one at home. It was the most exciting thing to happen to me since they redesigned The Phantom of the Opera stage, but now it’s resting beside a lone sock I can’t find the mate for and a pamphlet from a second-rate music school I wouldn’t go to even if they offered me a lifetime supply of reeds.
I roll onto my back and check my phone again, spotting the message from Shanna in the Notes app about the crib that ended up on the curb. I’m about to answer her when the phone vibrates in my hand and Brooke’s face—with a hot dog jammed in her mouth and the most innocent expression in the world—fills the screen.
“Hey,” I answer.
“Yeah, hey,” she says. “So listen, you’ve really got to answer Lilly’s texts because she keeps texting me asking why you won’t text her back. And I told her it’s not like I know because you’re not responding to mine either.”
“You sent me poop,” I tell her.
“I sent you a visual representation of my solidarity with you on a crappy day.”
“Only you would interpret it that way.”
“That’s because I speak the language. I’m good at talking shit,” she says, purposefully leaving a pause so I can laugh. I don’t.
“Seriously, Lilly cried her body weight in tears already. She’s been punished.”
“Mmmm . . .” is all I can give on that one, because I’m not so sure. “I’ve got to go,” I tell Brooke, gaze landing once again on the case under my desk. “I need to practice.”
“Atta girl,” Brooke says. “Reclaim that throne.”
“I will,” I say.
Because that’s what Sasha Stone would do. Reclaim what’s hers, planting a flag so deep it grows roots that grip and twine, becoming one with whatever I choose to align myself with until extraction would only kill us both. That’s who I am, and Charity Newell needs to be reminded of that.
Maybe I do, too. Especially after Isaac Harver carved my name next to his in stone.
I snap together my clarinet, wetting a fresh reed and taking a pic of myself with it resting alluringly on my tongue, elbows pushing together my cleavage just enough to make it obvious it’s on purpose, and send it to Heath. It’s not exactly an apology, but there’s enough mixed imagery there to distract him for a while so I can practice in peace.
The music does what it does best, swelling the air around me into a protective bubble, floating though my brain and soothing all the jagged edges that have hooved up lately. I remember this, and miss it. The placidity of Heath and me, the predictableness of Lilly, the assurance that Brooke will offend me at least once a day; all of it is wound up with music, our lives dictated by notes we know by heart, our feet in step.
It has a beauty, this pattern. I lived it so long that the monotony was all I felt, ignoring the stability of the structure underneath. My fingers need little reminder once the stiffness has worked its way out after the first two hours. I’ll hurt tomorrow, and deservedly. My wrists will creak and joints will snap; my fingers will curl into themselves, resting in a loose fist because they’ve wrapped around a clarinet for so long they don’t know how else to be.
Except I like the way Isaac feels in my hand. Suddenly my fingers slip and put a sharp where no sharp should be, the safety of my old life whisked away with one irreverent thought.
“Stop it,” I say, teeth clenched onto the reed even though I know I’ll be picking more splinters out of my gums tomorrow.
But there’s a compulsion in me, buried deep. I check my phone again, not even kidding myself that I’m hoping Isaac has texted me. Instead I’ve got a notification on my Notes app.
Spl-in-ters are bones. I will rise er{up}tion. One day you h{ate} me.
Now you’re not making any sense.
I write back blindly with one hand, the other still on the clarinet as my eyes follow music notes, my mind turning it into music in my head, a Schumann piece that everyone should know and nobody plays anymore. I’ve almost reclaimed serenity when my phone lights up with a text from Lilly that I’m going to ignore. But there’s a response from Shanna in Notes.
Heath’s is not the only bone mINe y(our) mouth. Mine you pull white from pink extr/a-action. I am dEEP. Your teeth have roots in my skeleton. W!ill! find my way to Yo(ur surface), I am her-e.
I toss the phone away from me, but I can’t get Shanna’s words out of my head as easily. Schumann has lost his grace, my fingers are suddenly quite dumb, and my teeth crack down on the reed in frustration, sending fragments across my tongue. I pick away the tiny white pieces, triggering a gag reflex as I go after the farthest ones.
My phone vibrates against the floor, and I can see Brooke’s face from across the room. I wipe my hands on my jeans, wondering what she would say if I told her that it hasn’t been bits of reed she’s watched me tweeze from my gums, but the soft fetal bones of my twin sister, forcing their way to the light.
The truth is she would probably think it was awesome.
I grab the phone, answering just in time. “What’s up?”
“Wanna three-way later with me and Lilly? Skype, that is. I know you’re not into chicks. Or displays of affection.”
I thumb across my screen, erasing the note from Shanna. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Wow, that was simple.”
“Sasha?” Mom’s voice sails up the stairs.
“Gotta go,” I tell Brooke.
I flex my hands as I go downstairs, easing out the kinks that I should have never allowed to settle, weeks without practice ending in my first chair loss. Dad looks up from the table, an attempted smile aborted into a mild grimace when he realizes he can’t quite force it.
“Well, look who it is,” he says, which is a stupid thing to say under any circumstance and particularly confusing in ours.
“Seriously?” I sit in my usual chair, making sure that the back hits the wall so I can see him wince. Instead he reaches out, his hand resting on my wrist. We haven’t touched since I got boobs and it made things weird, so I forget to roll my eyes.
“Sasha, honey,” he says, his voice low like when he used to read to me at bedtime. My heart stutters again, as if Shanna had been listening then too, examining the letters that turned into words that he helped me learn.
“What?” I say it with no edge, an honest exclamation of curiosity, just as Mom’s hip hits the swinging door from the kitchen and she brings in dinner.
“Chicken,” she announces, setting a platter on the table that has more food in it than we could eat in the next three days.
“Mom, I’ve still only got one stomach,” I tell her.
“I know that,” she says, with forced cheer. “I just . . .” She looks over at Shanna’s empty chair, and I wonder if she’s disappointed that I sat here instead.
Dad clears his throat, “How was your day, honey?”
Mom and I are both so surprised we look at each other, not sure which of us he’s speaking to. We’re off script. Dad stopped asking me how my day was after one time in junior high when I answered with a real-time explanation of tuning my clarinet.
“Uh . . . fine,” I say. It wasn’t fine. I lost first chair and a friend defected. But it’s the answer I’m supposed to give, so I do.
Dad sucks in a breath and I wonder if he’s about to ask me how Shanna’s day was, when Mom reaches out and brushes her fingers against my cheek. “Everything okay?”
My phone vibrates and I slide it out of my pocket to see a text from Isaac.
Sorry. See you later?
“Yeah,” I tell her, a piece of reed still jammed inside my cheek. “Everything is good.”