“You always do what good people are supposed to do,” he goes on. “But I don’t think you always want to. There’s a little bit of bad in you, Sasha Stone. And I think it needs to get out more.”
This time I take the cigarette when he offers it to me. I have no idea what I’m doing, how to hold it, how much to breathe in, whether to leave the smoke in my mouth, my throat, or my lungs. I end up coughing it all back out in a cloud, and dropping the cigarette as I hack. The ember falls between my feet, its light disappearing long before the river extinguishes it.
“You’ll get better at it,” Isaac assures me. “If you want to.”
I think about the future Sasha Stone in her sensible clothing, her current boyfriend refusing to take her virginity. Pins and needles have taken over my feet, and I sag against Isaac, suddenly tired.
“I want to,” I say, staring down at the black abyss between my feet. “If you’ll be my Virgil.”
“I’m definitely not one of those,” Isaac says, and I smack him again. This time he catches my hand and keeps it.
“Vir-gil,” I clarify. “He was Dante’s guide to the underworld in The Divine Comedy. Have you ever read it?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s bad,” Isaac says, in yet another dead-on impersonation of me.
I want to hit him, but instead I start laughing, the cold night air invigorating. “You read The Inferno and I’ll smoke a whole cigarette. How’s that?”
“Deal,” Isaac says, pulling me closer against him as a gust comes up off the river.
We share heat for a moment, my forehead resting against his tattoo, his pulse beating against my eyelid.
“I had a dream about you,” I say.
“Oh yeah?”
I tell him about taking my shirt off and how it hit the fan, and we ended up on the bed. I don’t explain that I tried to reenact it later with Heath and achieved different results.
Isaac pulls away from me, eyebrows drawn together. “See this is where you start to worry me, lady. ’Cause I had that dream too. But I was actually there and you sure as hell weren’t asleep.”
I sigh and drop my head into his chest.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I say. “Take me home. There’s something I need to show you.”
eight
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.