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I ask not in denial but out of true wonder. How do I seem to them, this new daughter erupting forth from the existing one?

“You’ve been . . . different.”

She is careful with me, hesitant. I think of the wall behind my dinner seat, a life’s worth of arguments accumulating in a point of impact that is boring down into plaster. How many times have I stormed away, leaving behind a mother who wonders . . . what if the other one had lived?

I think there’d probably be a hole in the wall, that’s what.

But Mom doesn’t know that. She probably pictures someone like Lilly in my place, a nice girl with my face who is malleable, picking up suggested hobbies that we can practice together, long ponytails overlapping each other’s shoulders as we sit side by side knitting, scrapbooking, journaling.

“I’m fine, really,” I say, any thought of coming clean chased away by the image of this kinder, nicer child that she never would have had.

“That’s my point,” Mom says. “When I said you’ve been different, it’s not a bad thing.”

“Then what is it?” I realize my shoulders are tense, pulled back straight and tight as if I were at attention on the field, waiting for the whistle to release me.

“I think you might be happy.”

I’ve barely talked to anyone in the past few days. Heath’s texts line my phone like bubble wrap that I’ve got to dig past to find anything else. They sit, unanswered. Brooke has never required anything other than an audience, and to watch while I pick splinters from my gums. Lilly is the one who notices my silence. I see her mentally cataloging it, along with every time Isaac and I make eye contact, which always sets ablaze a stolen memory of flesh on flesh, the ground against my bare shoulder blades.

My sister isn’t talking to me either. In the week since my bloody sheets I’ve checked my phone more than usual, sliding past accumulated texts from Heath to see if any from Isaac have come in, but none have. I feign indifference, casually tossing my phone onto my bed as if there were someone watching me, that they might know how little I care. But when I went to finish the abandoned Faulkner paper, my fingers typed something else, a note for my twin, letting her know the consequences of her actions.

Hope you’re happy. He’s not talking to us and my sheets are stained. There’s a word for boys like him, and that’s trouble. You want to live, I know, but at what expense to me?

The paper flowed more easily after that, the words that had been blocking my brain now set aside in a document I refuse to save or name, only minimizing it as I wait for an answer. But there was no response from her that night, or any thereafter. Even the red C+ on my paper, written hesitantly as if the teacher couldn’t quite believe it herself, doesn’t penetrate my thoughts. It takes Brooke’s voice, every word punctuated with a staccato, to do that.

“Shit a brick, Stone,” she says, pulling the paper off my desk before I can hide it in my backpack. “Did you have an aneurysm or something?”

“No, but my parents will,” I whisper. “Could you not—”

“Not what?” Lilly asks, leaning forward in her seat to rest her chin on Brooke’s shoulder. “Oh my God . . .” She fades out, her hand covering her mouth when she sees my grade.

I swipe it out of Brooke’s hands and crumple it, my face matching the bleeding red of the pen. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Sasha,” Lilly says, eyebrows drawn together like an art project titled Concern. “If you need to talk, or something.”

“Seriously,” Brooke adds. “I mean, you’re like the Hester Prynne of the group, so you can’t tell us there’s nothing going on.”

“Yeah,” Lilly agrees automatically. “Wait, what? Hester who?”

“Cute,” I say to Brooke. “Shame you don’t apply your cleverness elsewhere.”

“Yeah, that one was pretty good, I gotta say,” Brooke goes on. “See,” she explains to Lilly, “Sasha’s like the chick from Hawthorne—only letter you’re ever going to see on her stuff is a big red A.”

“Ooooohhh,” Lilly says, but I’m not sure she actually read The Scarlet Letter, so even the explanation of the joke is probably lost on her.

Brooke’s mouth is suddenly a thin line, cheeks puffed as she tries to suppress whatever drop of comic genius is currently brewing. It’s a Friday, the last few minutes of class dwindling to nothing while everyone huddles in groups.

“Just say it before you stroke out,” I tell her.

“Err . . .” She glances around and has the dignity to lower her voice. “I was gonna say that you always got As . . . until you started getting some D.”

Brooke regrets it the second she sees that it’s true. I can tell when our eyes meet that whatever semblance of honesty exists in me flashed for a moment, and she caught it. Lilly only gapes, mouth open in what has become her signature expression.

“Sorry,” Brooke says quickly. “I didn’t mean . . . it was just too funny to not say it.”

“Yep. Pretty goddamn funny.”

I hear Lilly’s gasp before the door slams shut behind me, my shoes smearing the tears that fall so that anyone who sees could follow them like bread crumbs, a trail of confusion that leads to the bathroom, where I curl protectively in a stall, waiting for the day to be over.