Page 39 of This Darkness Mine

“I was close,” I tell her. “Until now.” I point to the flap of skin hanging against the side of my face.

“Sense of humor, that’ll help pull you through,” Faber says, but I ignore him. Everything he says ends with an upbeat, like he’s making a car commercial.

“It’s not me though,” I go on, still trying to catch Jones’s eye. “Whenever I’m not a nice person, or if I make a bad choice. That’s my sister.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, and stabs a button as if that will make the elevator go faster.

“Are you in much pain?” Faber asks.

I don’t answer him, because I am in pain. Rather tremendous pain, if I’m being honest. I’m breathing, but never enough, like a balloon that only fills halfway and then ejects everything in a halfhearted wheeze. My lungs feel like a cheap party favor, my head the piñata that took the brunt of the hit, my heart the soundtrack that keeps skipping.

The only thing still working well is my mind, and whatever part of the body willpower is located in. I won’t lose consciousness again, won’t switch off and let others discover all the hideous things inside of me. I take a deep breath and try to focus, causing a bubbling noise from my side.

The elevator doors open, and we’re greeted by a wall of people in white, and finally, some consistency. There’s a deep thwump-thwump coming from somewhere, methodical and perfect. I relax as it fills my ears, my chest cavity, the hole where my sister’s apology should be, still vacant. Voices are lost, like mutterings in another room that are easily dismissed. I’ve left the elevator music and senseless sounds of the ambulance behind me to come to this point, a helicopter on the roof creating the great, deep pulse of sound, a black mechanical heart to lift me into the sky.

I go willingly, some of the people in white climbing in beside me. Jones and Faber are left behind as we lift off, this feeling of weightlessness so different from my fall to the ground. From the corner of my eye I can just see Jones turn to Faber, spinning her index finger next to her ear.

I’ll have to try harder. Argue louder. Explain better. Maybe someone has to know me before they can see that I would never do these things; use a boy for sex, throw myself out a window to keep him from leaving, have friends who hate me. Sasha Stone is not that person; Shanna Stone is.

But Shanna has been terribly quiet since we landed, as if the fall knocked her into silence. If she’s anything like me at all she’s putting together the right words for an apology—or as I like to call it, an explanation. She’ll find the right things to say, just enough to make it better without actually humbling herself. And when that happens, we’re going to have a long talk about personal safety.

And hopefully punctuation.

I can’t hear anything except the rush of wind outside and the constant thwump of the blades, but one of the women in white looks down at me and rests a hand on my cheek. I smile at her, even though I know there’s blood in my teeth.

I smile because everything is going to be okay.

Shanna will be back.

eighteen

When I wake up things are missing: the branch from my ribs, the hair on the right side of my head, my sister’s voice. There are things to take their places: a chest tube, catheter, stitches, and the serious face of a woman sitting by the side of my bed. She doesn’t know I’m awake yet, and she’s reading a yellow file that’s resting on her crossed legs, her nose crunched in concentration and her eyebrows stuck in a permanent worried position.

I’m not wearing the neck brace anymore but I quickly find out that moving my head isn’t the best option. My scalp feels stretched tight, as if there wasn’t enough skin to make ends meet but they sewed it together anyway. The music of my body is silent, but I can see a heart monitor by my bed, the sonic waves it makes erratic in places.

“Sasha?”

I turn back toward the woman, amending my earlier assessment down to girl when I hear her voice. It’s hesitant and unsure, with none of the conviction of an adult.

“Yes?” I ask, ignoring the feel of the pillowcase against my bare scalp, shockingly cool.

“I’m Amanda Cargrove, with family services,” she explains.

“Oh,” I say, closing my eyes. “That’s nice and everything but my parents have jobs. I’ve got insurance. The hospital doesn’t need to worry about how all this will be paid for.”

I make a small circle with my hand to indicate “all this,” an IV trailing in its wake. But even if I could make a big gesture it wouldn’t be able to cover everything, the squad, the helicopter, all the worried faces hovering over me that need to be compensated for their time.

I’m probably in a lot of trouble.

Amanda clears her throat. “I’m actually with mental health services,” she says.

“Oh,” I say again, but nothing else follows.

“Would you like to tell me about what was going on right before your accident?”

No, I would not like to tell her about the boy I was meeting who is not the boy I am dating, or the friends who called me a bad word. I would not like to tell her about the panic in my chest at the thought of Isaac leaving, angry with me, or the sound of glass breaking when it connected with my skull. I would not like to tell her about losing first chair and who knows what else in the small period of time it took for me to fall twenty feet.

I would not like to tell her these things, so I say nothing and stare at the blank gray screen of the TV mounted directly across from my bed. I can see myself reflected there, badly. I’m amorphous, a vague lump with no clear outlines of where I begin and end. I don’t know how much of that is because of the surface, or because that’s what I really look like right now.