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And suddenly I have a friend.

Meditation with Melody! turns out to be guided by a cassette tape player, not someone actually named Melody and certainly nothing resembling real music. Layla takes a mat next to mine, and we lie side by side, staring at the tiled ceiling. Another girl joins us, the one who Nadine had been attempting to teach chess. She takes a mat to the right and promptly goes to sleep. A nurse comes in and starts the tape, dimming the lights and clicking the door quietly shut behind her.

Something like a pan flute begins, tripping over a few bars to be joined by a soft male voice that encourages us to picture a safe, quiet place in our minds. Over by the wall, the girl who joined us lets out a long, protracted fart.

“Oh my Lord, Josephine,” Layla says, but the other girl doesn’t respond.

The voice from the cassette player urges us to concentrate on a calm memory, but my entire focus is on the fact that the pan flute in the background wasn’t tuned properly. It’s soon joined by the sound of running water.

“Great. Now I’ve got to pee,” Layla says, and I turn to look at her. “I don’t think I can meditate myself out of peeing.”

“You’re not into this at all, are you?” I ask her.

She sits up, her LVAD cord slipping out from under her shirt. “Nope, but you seemed interested so I thought I’d give it a shot.”

“I thought it would be better,” I admit. “Like with real music.”

“You into music?”

“It’s my whole life,” I tell her, my fingers going to the edge of the mat where some stuffing has poked through. “Used to be, anyway. I played the clarinet.”

“So what happened to your face?” Layla asks, waving away my startled look. “The other girls have a dessert bet going and if I can get the real info and an extra sugar cookie out of the deal, I’ll split the cookie with you.”

“My sister threw me out a window,” I tell her. “And you can keep the cookie.”

Layla lets out a whistle. One that starts high and ends low, like a bomb falling. “Damn girl. Is she your stepsister, half sister?”

I shake my head. “Twin.”

“No shit.” Layla crosses her arms, resting her head on them. “Is she in juvy now?”

I pick at the hole at the edge of my mat where the seams have come apart, digging my index finger inside as I wonder how much to tell her. “I don’t really like to talk about it.”

“Ohhhhhh . . . ,” Layla says, her voice making the same high pitch to low that her whistle had earlier. “She dead?”

“Why would you think that?” I ask.

“Honestly?” She cocks her head to the side like the question is more for herself than me. “Josephine read your visitor’s name badge the other day and we googled her. Didn’t take a genius to put together that a mental health worker coming to talk to a girl who was Humpty-Dumptied back together again means you’ve got issues. That’s still a doozy of an issue though, I’ll give you that.”

“My sister’s not dead,” I say, the warm pulse in my wrist agreeing.

Layla lowers herself back down to the mat, throws an arm across her eyes. “What’s her name?”

I pull my finger out of the mat and blow away some of the stuffing that snagged on my jagged nail. I lay back down next to Layla as the meditation tape switches over to the tide and seagulls, interrupted occasionally by Josephine’s snores. I swear I can feel the hollow bit in the mat under my shoulder blade where I pulled stuffing out.

“Shanna,” I tell her, thinking of darkness and sounds my throat can’t possibly have ever made, but my ears miss hearing.

“So you’ve definitely been in love before,” Layla says, and I start, wondering how she followed my thoughts.

I look over at her and she shrugs. “It’s all over you. Moony looks, vacant stares. You might be in a safe place right now, but I bet it’s not quiet.”

I laugh, causing Josephine to roll over in her sleep, arms covering her ears.

“Sure,” I admit. “I’m probably in love.”

“Nope. It’s you are or you aren’t,” Layla insists. “My mom always says you just know, and you can’t probably know something. You know it or you don’t.”

I think of all my lists of things I know, and things I don’t know. I don’t have a list for maybes, so Layla could have a point.