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“She likes sex and boys who will give it to her; she likes the smell of cigarettes and beer mixed with exhaust fumes. She likes to be shocking and say lewd things. She likes cold night air. She likes to have her way.”

“Is that the only thing you have in common?” Amanda asks, head still down. I stare at the uneven part in her hair, wondering if she knows it looks bad or just doesn’t care.

“Other than an entire body, yes,” I say.

“But only the heart is hers?” Amanda’s pen scratches away, the pad of paper shifting up and down on her knees.

“Yes, only the heart, but sometimes she uses our whole body for whatever she wants.”

“And she wants things like . . .” Amanda’s pen hovers, ready to record my sister’s dark leanings with cheap ink and a yellow legal pad. It feels good to see it there, an inanimate object about to take witness to my truths.

“A boy. Isaac.”

“Isaac,” Amanda repeats, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth while she writes.

“He’s why she jumped,” I explain. “They got into a fight. I guess. Kind of. He wanted something more from me—her—than I was looking for with him. And then we—I—sent him a nasty text while he was waiting for me down in the driveway and he took off. So she kind of panicked and . . .”

“. . . and took the fastest route down,” Amanda says. Which actually makes my sister sound logical.

“Shanna’s bones come up out of my gums sometimes,” I tell her.

Amanda nods like that’s to be expected. “Tell me more about Shanna’s bones.”

“I used to think they were pieces of clarinet reed,” I tell her. “But then Shanna said it’s actually her bones working their way out of my system from when I absorbed her.”

“Shanna said this?”

I consider my answer for a long moment, wanting to get it right. “She didn’t say it. She wrote it down.”

“That’s how you two communicate?”

“That and when she throws us through storm windows to express dissatisfaction.”

Amanda raises an eyebrow to let me know I’ve violated the sarcasm rule. I have to admit she’s got the eyebrow raise down.

“Yes, that’s how we communicate,” I amend.

“And when did this begin?”

Like everything else it falls somewhere on the timeline of my life where the biggest demarcation is losing my virginity to Isaac Harver. “I think it was after,” I say.

“After?”

“No, sorry—just before.”

“Before what, Sasha?”

I feel a flush, my heart still capable of shoving all the blood up to my face. “I’d rather not say.”

“That’s fine,” she says agreeably. “But if you’re not open with me I’m not going to be a terribly effective therapist.”

I think I’m going to be very open to plenty of people next week when they put the LVAD inside me, so I leave that barrier in place. Amanda allows it, giving me the space of a quarter rest before continuing.

“Do you want to add anything more about Shanna right now?”

There’s a blip on the screen, my heart rate monitor disagreeing with this line of questioning. “No.”

“How about Brooke?”