Having Isaac Harver in my bedroom should be awkward, but instead it feels totally comfortable. And so does he. He takes off his jacket and puts it across the back of my desk chair, turning it around backward and resting his chin against the top.
I’m pressed against the far wall, arms back to being crossed over my chest. We snuck past Dad, asleep on the recliner, Isaac picking his way up the staircase like he knew exactly which steps creak, and closing my door with the only motion that ever works without squeaking—a swift push until it rests in the frame, followed by a soft pressure as the latch clicks.
“All right. What’s up?” he asks.
As if I could answer with one sentence, a satisfactory explanation that sets my world right. I exhale quickly, aware that I’m going to have to approach this the same way he did the bedroom door, mercilessly fast with a tender coda that doubles as an apology.
I cross the room, reaching past him to unearth the ultrasound on my desk and trying to appear unaware of our mingling body heat as I do. His eyes follow my motion and he goes stiff as a bass drum player’s spine when he sees what’s in my hand.
“That’s not . . . yours, is it?”
“In a sense,” I tell him as I sit on the bed, leaning forward enough that I know my tank is gaping slightly. “That’s me,” I say, choosing one of the fetuses.
“Okay,” Isaac says, watching me closely for whatever cue I might give on how he’s supposed to react.
“So who’s this?” I ask him, sliding my finger to the other one like a teacher prompting a student who might be a little slow on the uptake.
He shrugs. “Don’t know. Sister. Brother. Something.”
The animal magnetism that I can’t quite corral when we’re near each other isn’t enough to override my irritation. “Obviously,” I shoot back. “Except I don’t have any siblings.”
“Okaaaay . . . ,” he says, dragging out the last syllable so I know I’m going to have to close the logic loop for him.
“Here’s what I know—” My hand instinctively goes up to tick off facts, but Isaac’s fingers close over mine before I can start.
“We’re not in school. Just talk to me.”
I’ve got a sharp answer, but it folds under the pressure of his hand on mine, where I let it stay. “I had a sister,” I say, all the edge out of my voice; the low notes of a secret slipping out throb in my chest. “She was never born, and she never died.”
“Okay,” Isaac says again, but there’s no mocking in it, or disbelief. He accepts the irrational the moment I say it. My lips are dry, so I lick them, the cracked surface of my lower callus rubbing against my tongue. I touch it quickly with the tip, a constant in my supposedly ordered life that reassures me before I tear what’s left of normality out of my grasp.
“I absorbed her in the womb. It occurs in up to thirty percent of multi-fetal pregnancies, typically because the absorbed twin had chromosomal abnormalities,” I tell him, the precise language of the hundreds of web articles I’ve read in the past week stripping the fact of any emotion.
“There was something wrong with her, huh?”
“Probably,” I agree, watching as his thumb starts to rub hypnotically across mine, making the trip from first knuckle to second at a slow, steady pace.
“Not to go all court-appointed therapist or whatever, but . . . how does that make you feel?”
“It’s not what I feel that’s the problem,” I tell him. “It’s what she feels.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I echo. “See, my body was the stronger, but her heart stayed true. She’s been quiet all this time, growing with me, staying in step. Until . . .” I finally look away from our entwined hands, eyes locking on the ultrasound so that I can reassure myself of the truth that I came to earlier.
“Until she fell in love with you.”
Isaac isn’t like me and Heath—practiced looks with even the most miniscule muscles kept under control—or even Brooke with every expression so exaggerated I’m not able to judge what’s honest and what’s for flair. On him everything flickers, from the vibrant light of his eyes when I say love to the five o’clock shadow undulating as his temper flares.
“Chromosomal abnormality, huh?” he says, flinging my hand away from his. “Must be, for her to fall for a guy like me.”
“Shh,” I shush him, ignoring the drop of my heart as he pulls his jacket on. “Wait—are you leaving?”
“Why the fuck would I stay?”
“Because I just told you the biggest secret of my life,” I say. “Maybe the only one I’ve ever had.”
“Right, the one about how your evil twin is making you wet for the bad boy.”
“Don’t you ever speak to me like that,” I say, righteous indignation vibrating my vocal cords and stopping him in his tracks as he heads for the window.
“Jesus, really? I’ve heard worse out of you when we’re—”
“Shut your mouth! Shut your filthy mouth,” I yell, crossing the distance between us and covering his lips with my hand. He steps back against the wall, grabs my wrist, and pulls it away from his face, all the while hissing at me.
“Sshhh . . . Christ! Okay, all right already.” His eyes shoot to my door, which remains closed, the silence that fills the rest of the house in stark contrast to my room, which feels like the inside of a timpani, noises rolling off tight surfaces to bounce back from the next.
“Could you not get me arrested, maybe?” Isaac says, but I’m not really hearing, the continued roar in my ears feels like the pulse of something new and different, a creature I’ve just become aware of that can exist only here, between the two of us.
We’re pressed against each other, anger faded, but blood still up, our potential energy about to unload on each other in a frenzy of action that must be spent in one way or another. I move away quickly, until the back of my knees hit my bed and I crumble onto it, all fight gone.
I’m about to cry, tear ducts that haven’t been used in years perking painfully at the very thought. I cover my face with my hands so Isaac won’t see it happening, all my control slipping out from under my eyelids in a river of salt. I want him to go, want the smell of cigarettes out of my house and the feel of rough hands off my face. I open my mouth to say so and instead I ask: “Do you believe me?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re pretty smart, right? Sasha Stone. She’s number one. If you say that’s the deal, then that’s the deal.”
Whatever resolve I have breaks completely, a sob shaking my body as someone tells me I’m right, that I’m not crazy, that all this darkness inside me isn’t my fault.
“Sasha . . .” My name has never sounded so much like music, every step he takes toward the bed a note leading me closer to a measure that can’t be played.
“You need to go,” I say, dropping my hands to meet his gaze.
He holds mine for a second before shaking his head. “You’re—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupt, scrubbing away the tears as they fall. “I’m a mess.”
“I was going to say addictive,” he tells me, before throwing open my window like he’s done it a thousand times before. He’s got one leg out, one in, before he turns back to me. “And that means you’re not the only one that’s got something wrong with them.”
And then he’s gone, the black emptiness of my window staring at me as if I’d done something I shouldn’t.