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“Want to talk about what happened?”

“Some of the other girls got into it,” I say. “Stupid stuff. I tried to stay out of it, but Nadine said that I’m crazy and Shanna didn’t like that.”

Mom’s face stays neutral, but I feel the tiniest tremor through the washcloth as she pulls it away from my face. “Uh-huh,” she says in a tight, controlled tone.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I ask, my voice cracking on believe. It’s like practice sessions from when I was a sixth grader, but now it’s my vocal cords, not my clarinet, that squeak because I don’t know how to handle them.

Mom folds the washcloth into a square, as if having some form of geometric shape in this room can alleviate the situation.

“Honey, I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist, and Dr. Zhang thinks—”

But she doesn’t get to tell me what Dr. Zhang thinks because there’s an all-encompassing sound in the room, the moan of the low end of the B flat scale and it’s spiraling upward, not missing a note. It’s coming from deep inside of me, my own body the instrument and despair the musician. My own mother does not believe me anymore.

Our mother.

The door opens and Dad pulls Mom away from the bed as I grab for her hands, her fingers still cool and wet from the washcloth.

“Stop it, stop,” Dad is yelling, and I think it’s at me. “This was not a good idea. You shouldn’t be alone with her.”

I’ve got a good grip on Mom’s wrist, and I’m not giving her up so easily. I yank her back toward me, and she knocks into my IV tree. It crashes to the ground, tearing the needle out of the soft inner flesh of my elbow and sending a spray of cold fluid and warm blood across all of us.

“You’ll get sick, you’ll get sick, you’ll get sick,” I’m screaming now, up on my knees on the bed, swiping at Mom’s face with the washcloth, trying to get her clean so that she’s not infected by me, by Shanna.

“Goddamn it, nurse! Nurse!” Dad is yelling as he pulls Mom, who has become a bag of flesh and bones that drags at his feet, out into the hallway.

Amanda pins my wrists above me on the bed as Karen rushes in, slamming the door behind her. I glimpse faces in the hallway, Brandy and Layla have their arms around each other, Jo’s mouth is hanging open, and Nadine is standing on her tiptoes to get a better view.

“What the fuck?” Karen says, which goes so far against everything I know about her that I start laughing.

“Sasha,” Amanda puts her face down to mine, her voice calm and steady. “You need to listen to me. If you want me to let go of you, you’ll have to calm down. I cannot let go of you until you’re safe and everyone around you is safe.”

She readjusts her grip on my wrists and leans in closer. I can tell she had a cheeseburger with onions for lunch, and I can’t even be disgusted by her breath because I’m so jealous of the fact that she got to eat it in the first place.

“Got her?” Karen asks, and Amanda nods, not looking away from me.

There’s a brush of coolness against my bicep as Karen swipes me with an antiseptic pad, and I get a glimpse of her frown as she stabs a needle in. I close my eyes as the sedative takes hold, not wanting to see how she’s gone from a zero to a five on the pain scale, and I’m the cause. Usually I get a warning before the poke, but I must have really messed up this time because she didn’t say a word, just jabbed me.

“It’s not my fault,” I tell Amanda, but her grip on me doesn’t let up.

“She’s causing a scene and—” Karen begins, and I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter.

“Stop,” Amanda cuts her off, and the bones in my wrist are ground together a little bit but I don’t complain. She’s the only person on my side now.

“She’s upsetting my other patients—”

“Stop,” Amanda says again, leaving no room for argument. Karen makes a noise in her throat, and I wish I could close my ears too. I hear the door open, the sound of Mom’s muted crying from down the hallway, and then it clicks closed again.

“Sasha, can I let go of you now?”

I lick my lips and nod. The pressure is gone, and the feeling of warmth emanating from her over me disappears.

“You can open your eyes,” she says, and I do, peeling them open to see her sitting in the chair at the foot of my bed, her head in her hands.

“Oops,” I say.

She looks up at me, spreading her fingers apart so that I can see her eyes. “Jesus, Sasha. What am I supposed to do with you?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, and her head goes back down.