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That doesn’t work. Mom definitely knew. There aren’t ten fingers in that ultrasound. There are twenty.

“But what about twins?” I blurt, and Mrs. DeBrau looks back at me. “What if there are twins and then . . . then there’s not?”

“Aahhh.” She smiles. “You’re talking about vanishing twin syndrome.”

I smile back. That sounds about right.

Vanishing twin syndrome: also known as fetal resorption, is a fetus in a multi-gestation pregnancy that dies in utero and is then partially or completely reabsorbed by the twin.

“‘Partially or completely reabsorbed,’” I say to myself, tapping a fresh pencil against my lip.

My desk is a mess of papers and scribbled notes, half-drawn illustrations of various stages of embryo development with question marks penciled on the sides. I’ve been fending off texts from Heath all evening, responding with nonanswers and varying degrees of meh when he tried to invite himself to dinner. He’s usually good about respecting my space, but when he calls I capitulate and answer.

“What?”

“Well, hello to you too,” he says.

“I’m kind of busy,” I tell him, my pencil sketching a version of myself in the margin, bored and on the phone.

“Do you have a minute to talk to your boyfriend about this rumor that you’re pregnant?”

My pencil skids across my notes, jerking the whole paper sideways and exposing the pig-heart diagram I’m supposed to be studying. The tip of the lead shakes along with my hands, the stuttering of my heart dotting Morse code across the aorta.

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t know what you said in biology today, but Charity told Cole you were asking about abortion.”

“Resorption,” I clarify. “It’s when one twin absorbs another in the womb.”

I expect a sigh of relief, Heath’s usual noncombative tone restored so I can handle him and go back to what I was doing. Instead I get: “Why were you asking about that?”

“Why does it matter?” I shoot back. “It’s not like I’m pregnant. We don’t have sex.”

“Just because we don’t have sex doesn’t mean you can’t be pregnant.”

Lead punches through sheets of paper down to the wood of my desk.

“Heath.”

It’s one word, his name. But I know how to use it. I’ve heard girls adopt the cajoling tone to calm down their man, an upward lilt with a flirtatious accent that changes the subject. I say his name like a brick wall. One he can run into and break his damn face on. Heath is still talking, but I’m not listening, my brain derailed by the fact that I just swore. Only in my head, but it counts.

What is wrong with me?

I can’t get Isaac Harver—who is a total scumbag—out of my head. I practically stuck my tongue down his throat right in front of his parole officer for the love of God. I’m arguing with a perfectly nice, useful boyfriend over gossip. I’m using bad words and . . . my foot nudges my clarinet case, safely stowed under my desk.

As in, put away. There’s a thin film of dust across the top.

I realize I haven’t practiced all week.

This is not who I am. This is not me.

“This is not me,” I say, interrupting Heath.

“What? Sasha? What do you mean?”

“I have to go.”

I hang up, my phone dropping to the floor next to my clarinet case as my eyes devour chambers of the fetal pig heart, so similar to ours, the colors of the diagram—red, blue, purple—vibrant against the dull grays of my ultrasound, still half curled, hiding in shame. One corner touches my notes, the sketch of myself, bored with my perfect boyfriend, now surrounded by a heavy script, all caps, vicious lines meeting at sharp angles to create a message I didn’t write.