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“Then how do you know?” I ask.
“According to books I have to tear the covers off of, or according to my own personal experience?” Layla asks. “Because I can tell you anything you want to know about the first. The second . . . guess I need a working heart first.”
“Why’s that?”
“Being near death scares them off.”
I giggle, my noise blending in with the pan flute. I do her the favor of not arguing with her about being near death. I could probably pick Layla up and throw her, and I’m not exactly the picture of health myself.
“So you know by”—Layla takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes—“feeling a little empty if you’re apart more than a day or two, like half your self wandered off without permission. By needing them closer even when they’re right inside you, by knowing the smell of their skin and being able to sort it out from your own, by sharing a glance and saying the world, by feeling like nobody will ever know you like they do, but being a little sad that there’s nothing more you can share. Because in the end it’s just you who has to be enough.”
She opens her eyes and smiles at me, slow and quiet, and I think she’s either read all the romance books in the world or there’s someone out there she needs to say something to before she dies. Either way, she’s put words to something I couldn’t, no matter how many lists I made. And maybe I need to add something to my last column of things I know, and that is that I messed up everything.
Heath didn’t want me by his side; he wanted whoever the girl with the highest GPA was, something to balance his own with. He wanted a girl who wanted the same things he did—to look like the best, the brightest, a clean, shining example of a good teen.
Isaac didn’t care about that. He wanted me, actually me, with the hard edges and all. He wanted it enough to scratch our names in rock next to pictures that had lasted a thousand years. And our names probably would too, for the people after us to read. And the people after them. Isaac and Sasha, next to each other. Forever. It looks like that’s the one bit of me that is going to be around for a while; all the supposedly good things I’ve tried to do are captured on a grade card for a girl who won’t make it to college, while a bad thing a boy did for me is going to say I existed beside him.
And I tried to erase it.
Layla is still watching me, waiting for an answer.
“Yeah,” I finally say. “I think I am in love.”
The words feel heavy, like a deep B flat. They’re powerful and all-encompassing, demanding my throat close up, threatening to make me cry. They matter more than a lot of things, I realize now. More than the bloodred As on my papers or a weighted GPA or Sasha Stone always being number one.
I smile again, thinking of Isaac with his middle finger up in the air, which leads to thoughts of his hands, and my mind wanders further. Future Sasha Stone and all her plans have been derailed, a train gone off the track as surely as if it tried to use the trestle bridge and collapsed into a burning heap of twisted metal at the bottom of the ravine. And if Sasha Stone doesn’t need to worry about being rewarded for anything, maybe Shanna Stone should have her way, in the little time we have left.
My breath catches in my constricted throat, a small sob emerging. Layla reaches over to squeeze my hand in the dim light, and I finally do relax, sliding down into meditation not to the sound of the sea breeze, but the quiet clicking of her mechanically pumping heart.
Will the LVAD hurt you?
Don’t k[no]w
Are you scared?
Not s(ur)e.
twenty-three
“Holy shit balls, dude.”
Brooke’s voice is loud in the cardiac center common room, like it could knock over furniture. Josephine looks up from her laptop, Nadine from a game of solitaire. Layla jumps, almost knocking over her bottle of nail polish. I’m on my feet in a second, highly aware that my friend from the outside is too alive, too vibrant for them. Already the room seems small with Brooke in it, her ponytail thick and healthy, her legs strong and sure underneath her.
“Hey.” I grab her by the elbow and steer her down the hall toward my room.
“I mean, your face,” Brooke keeps going. “Dog turds on a stick. I thought I was ready for it, but . . .”
“Thanks a lot,” I tell her.
“Can I touch your stitches?” she asks as I close my door behind her. “I’ll wash my hands first.”
“Sure,” I tell her. “As long as you brought it.”
Brooke flops onto my bed, her face suddenly serious. “Yeah, we’ve gotta talk about that.”
I cross my arms. “What? It didn’t work?”
Mom and Dad still have me on a no-phone diet, and they’re stricter than even the nurses with our individual nutrition plans. But Brooke’s old cell was the same model as mine, and she should’ve been able to power it up, call an activation line, punch in my number and passcode and voilà—my phone is restored to me without parental assistance or permission.
