Break Read online

  My cell phone starts vibrating. “Hold on.” I pull my phone out of my pocket. NEW TEXT MESSAGE. I swallow. “It’s from Mom.”

  Text messages from Mom are always the same thing. It’s always Jesse.

  I shouldn’t have left. Shit. My chest starts jumping.

  Naomi says, “Does she want you home?”

  I flip it open to read the text message.

  JESSE 911

  Yeah. And I can’t breathe anymore.

  Jesse.

  I left him at home with Mom and the dirty house and the baby vomit and he had hives when I left, he had hives and I left him alone.

  Naomi says, “Does she need you to pick up some baby food for your perfect family—”

  “Naomi, shut up.”

  She bristles. “What?”

  “It’s Jesse.”

  I hear her pause, and when she talks she sounds like a little girl. “Is he okay?”

  I look up. “When I say, ‘It’s Jesse’ in that voice, is he ever okay?”

  “God, Jonah, I’m—”

  “Shit!” I yell, and slap my hands up to my eyes. The cast scrapes me—goddamn cast—so I slam it against the firehouse wall. “Fuck!” I yell, pounding my arm on the brick, punching it, hitting it, asking it why the hell I’m here and not with my brother. “Fuck fuck shit shit shit shit shit! He’s in the hospital, Naomi!”

  “He’ll be okay.”

  My throat hurts so badly and pain explodes from my broken wrist down to my fingertips, but I should have been there I should have been there—

  “Jonah. Jonah.” She grabs me and wraps her arms around me, her chest against the small of my back. “Stop it.”

  I feel her deep breathing against me and it reminds me that this is real. That I’m really here and really this upset, and I really screwed up this badly.

  “He could die,” I say.

  She turns me around and reaches up to my face. Her hands are so cold against my skin. “He didn’t die. Now stop crying.”

  I do, but I don’t feel any better. My nose is running all over my face.

  “Get in the car,” she says. “I’ll take you to the hospital and you can see him. Jesse’s going to be fine. He’s always fine.”

  Of course he’s always fine. If he ever wasn’t fine, this would all be over. He wouldn’t have any more opportu-nities to get sick. Any more near-scrapes.

  They can’t all be near-scrapes.

  She guides me to the car and buckles the seatbelt over my lap. “Get your cell phone out and call your mom. Find out what’s going on.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Jonah.”

  “Just shut the fuck up, Naomi!”

  She turns the key in the ignition and doesn’t talk anymore. I put my good hand and my throbbing cast over my face.

  He will be fine.

  If he wasn’t fine, the message would have said JESSE MORGUE.

  911 just means they called an ambulance.

  It just means he had a bad reaction.

  What did he eat? I try a mental inventory. Apple at breakfast. Protein shake. Rice cake. Coke. Another protein shake.

  I say, “What have you eaten today?”

  She glances up from the road. “What?”

  “What was on your hands when you touched his basketball?”

  “Nothing.” She fixes her cap. “I had pizza, like, three hours ago.”

  I throw my hands up.

  “Three hours ago, Jonah! That is so far-fetched. He could have touched anything! Your Mom’s boobs are leaking all over the house.”

  “You know you have to be careful—”

  “I was careful! I’m always careful with him. Jesus Christ! I was there for two minutes. You really think he got this from me?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “He already wasn’t feeling well. And you were with Charlotte and all the cats—”

  “I changed my clothes!” My ribs feel like they’re getting punched. “This is not my—”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She exhales, shaking her head. “I’m not saying anything.”

  She grew up with Jesse just like I did, and I know this is hard for her, but it’d be easier to honor that if she’d appre-ciate it’s hard for me, too. That I’m not just pointing fingers here. That I’m trying to solve something. That I’m trying to keep my goddamn brother alive, every single fucking day.

  “God.” I put my head back. “God, I hate the hospital.”

  She says, “Call your mom.”

  I give up and take out my cell phone.

  She’s all breathless. “Hello?”

  “What happened?”

  I hear all that stomach-throbbing ambulance noise, and I think I’m going to puke on Naomi’s grody upholstery. “We don’t know,” she says. “He took his EpiPen and it looks like one dose is going to be enough.”

  Sometimes we have to keep hitting him and hitting him with epinephrine to keep him conscious. . . . It’s pretty awful. He’ll be jumpy for days after that.

  “Did you see him have anything, Jonah?”

  She’s asking me if I poisoned him.

  “No. He didn’t have anything when I was with him.”

  I ask it right back.

  She just makes all these heartbroken noises. I’m making a habit of underestimating how hard this is for anyone but me and Jesse.

  “Can I talk to him?” I say.

  “No, honey, he can’t talk right now.”

  I wait for Jesse to snatch the phone, but he doesn’t. I say, “Is Dad there?”

  “No, he’s home with the baby. Trying to get a sitter so he can come down here. We’re at the hospital now, Jonah. Are you on your way?”

  “Yeah. We’ll be there soon.” I look at Naomi, who nods and leans on the gas.

  In ten minutes, the gray building rises in front of us like a sick beacon. I’m mocked by the pictures of happy children on the direction signs.

  “Go to the south lot,” I say. “It’s never crowded.”

  We walk into the parking garage and take the ele-vator to the ER entrance. I have to stop when we get inside because I’m shaking too hard.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” Naomi says, and I wish she’d shut up because it’s not like this will ever stop.

  She holds the top of my arms and lets me tremble. People flow around me, respectfully. People who understand, or feel like they should.

  He has a lot of reactions. I don’t usually freak out this badly.

  Naomi eventually nudges me up to the ER front desk. I weave through the bleeding old women and hacking children on benches and find the receptionist behind heaps of clipboards. “I’m looking for Jesse McNab. Probably got here by ambulance. He’d still be on the floor.”

  She checks a sheet of paper in front of her. “Oh, is he the teenager? The cute teenager with anaphylaxis?”

  I bite my top lip to keep it still. “Yeah.”

  “Betty?” She cranes her head back to some hospital nether region. “Where’d the ambulance teenager go?”

  “109,” says some disembodied voice.

  “He’s in 109,” the volunteer repeats. “Down the hall. Odd numbers are on the right.”

  For some reason I keep staring at her and won’t move away from the desk. She clears her throat, but Naomi has to grab my arm before I’ll leave.

  We walk down the hall, pass eight curtained doors. I hear babies crying and bones being set. A hollow-eyed nurse wheels a cart of vomit basins. It’s like this is hell, and it’s been created just for me and Naomi and Jesse. And Mom, I guess.

  When I get to 109, Naomi says, “Look, I’ll leave.”

  “You don’t have to.” He’s yours, too.

  “Yeah, I do. Listen, I’ll go to your house and watch Will, okay? Then your dad can get down here.”

  “Nom, you don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay, really.”

  We shuffle our feet against the linoleum. Part of me is dying for her to go so I can see Je
sse, and part wants to grab her and hold on to her so I won’t have to go into his room.

  I swallow. “Um . . . call Charlotte, all right? Let her know.”

  “Sure.” She gives me a tight-lipped smile. “Give him . . . you know, something from me, all right?”

  I watch her go, drowning in that damn sweatshirt.

  All right.

  I push open the curtain, and there’s Jesse.

  He’s in the bed, curled up, his swollen eyes closed. Hives cover his arms, and he’s got an IV in the back of his hand and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

  Mom is talking to the doctor, saying, “I know, I know,” over and over. She looks up and says, “Jonah.” Then she ignores me, because there’s really not much more to say to me.

  The doctor doesn’t look at me. Probably assumes I’m unimportant.

  “Still no idea what happened?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  It’s usually this way. Usually, we do all we fucking think we can and something gets through to Jesse, and we never know what. Or how. Or what we can do to fix him.

  The doctors always tell Mom the same thing this one’s telling her now. Take this precaution. That precaution. Wean the baby. Cross-contamination. Do this to build his tolerance—he should not still be so sensitive. Consider home-schooling him. Consider a special school for him. Consider anything but a real life for him. Do anything but treat him like a real boy.

  I scoot the chair closer to the bed and kneel next to him. “Hey. You up?”

  He nods and opens his eyes. My stomach swoops like a Ferris wheel.

  “How do you feel, brother?” I say.

  He shrugs and takes the mask off. “Kind of hard to breathe still. Shit, what happened to your hand?”

  I look down.

  “No, the other one.”

  Oh. My cast has cracked open at the hand, and there’s blood leaking out by the fingers. Crap.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I tell him.

  “Man—”

  “Shh.” I glance up at Mom, deep in conversation with the doctor. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I freaked out and punched the wall.”

  He sighs. He’s still wheezing.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say.

  He winces. He hates that too.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t get inspirational speaker on me, Jonah.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He crawls his hand out from under the covers. I lay my cast in my lap and reach out my other hand. My fingers touch his IV.

  “I know I know I know,” Mom says.

  I squeeze Jess’s hand.

  thirteen

  WITHIN A FEW HOURS WE’RE ALL BACK AT HOME. Jesse’s still swollen and totally pissy and ends up collapsing on the couch, bitching at everyone who walks by. “It’s midnight. I have school tomorrow,” he whines whenever we wake him up to check if he’s breathing.

  I’ve got a new unbroken cast that covers my new broken hand. Metacarpal fracture. + 1 broken hand = 19.

  Pretty damn lucky, hmm?

  Naomi refuses money from my dad and gives me a wink on the way out. She squeezes Jesse’s shoulder too, and I hope she washed her hands first.

  Now Dad and I are silent in the kitchen.

  “He’s asleep,” Mom says, walking in from the living room.

  Dad hands me a bag of ice. “Good.” He was only at the hospital for an hour or so, so he still has the sports-jacket-and-tie aura of real life. Mom and I, on the other hand, both look around the kitchen like we haven’t seen it in years.

  She slumps down at the table.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Dad says. He places his hand on the back of my neck. “He cannot keep having these attacks.”

  Mom’s sweaty hair clings to her hands. “He’s been better lately.”

  “Better is not nine trips to the hospital a year, Cara.”

  “Eleven,” I mumble.

  Mom hardens her eyes at Dad. “We shouldn’t discuss this in front of Jonah. Can we think about what the Reverend said?”

  I shrug.

  Dad says, “Look, he’s always better when we’re both home. Maybe I should drop some hours. See if I can spend more time with him.”

  Mom scratches like Jesse. “You make it sound psychological.”

  “I don’t. But the better he’s watched—”

  “I watch him just fine,” Mom says.

  I say, “I do too.”

  Dad raises his hands. “The fact of the matter is I had a sister like Jesse. I know what it takes to raise this type of kid.”

  Dad’s sister died when she was eighteen. Bee sting.

  “He’s not a type,” I say.

  Dad ignores me. “Look.” He turns back to Mom. “There are schools for kids like him. Even peanut-free would be a relief.”

  I say, “No one eats peanuts around him at school. They’re not idiots.”

  Mom sighs. “Jesse wants to be with Jonah.”

  “If Jonah could take care of him—”

  “Paul!”

  I whisper, “It’s okay.”

  We’re quiet for a damn long time.

  It’s sort of against the rules to imply that I don’t watch Jesse well enough.

  Though everyone knows it anyway.

  “All right,” I say, when I get my voice back. “This is not a tragedy. Jesse doesn’t need to change his life. We just need to keep the house cleaner. Just because—”

  “Just because you’re breaking bones every two minutes, Jonah?” Dad throws his hands in the air. “Yeah, I’ll admit that’s weighing on my mind.”

  Will’s screaming shoots from his room to the kitchen. I picture him lying in his crib, his little hands in fists.

  I tell Dad, “Stop. That has nothing to do with Jesse.” I should just leave. But this would get a thousand times uglier if it were just between the two of them.

  Dad says, “It all comes down to a lack of supervision. Broken bones, allergy attacks—”

  “You’re really going to blame me for this?” Mom slams her palms on the table. “What, so I’m beating up Jonah in between poisoning Jesse, that’s it? I guess I’m making Will cry, too!”

  I say, “Mom.”

  Dad says, “Damn it, Cara!”

  Jesse appears from the living room, rubbing the red around his eyes. “What’s going on in here?”

  We all shut up.

  He pads in, his socks making scuffle noises against the ground, pulls me up, and takes me out of the kitchen with him.

  “What is it?” I say.

  “Shh.”

  “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

  He brings me to Will’s room and says, “Something’s wrong with him. Pick him up.”

  Will gasps in air and keeps screaming.

  “It might just be colic,” I say.

  Jess wearily pushes me toward the crib. “Jonah, pick him up.”

  He stands by while I hold our brother and bounce him on my shoulder. Jesse recoils his hands into his sleeves, afraid to touch.

  fourteen

  I SNAP MY HELMET UNDER MY CHIN, FLINCHING, like always, at the thought of the skin catching in the buckle. “Camera ready?”

  Naomi says, “Just so you know, we don’t have to do this.” She twirls the wire cutters in her left hand. They glint in the moonlight.

  “Shut up.”

  She bristles. “You already broke the hand today. And I’d think you’d want to be at home with Jesse.”

  “It’s the wrong hand. And Jesse’s asleep.”

  Of course he’s asleep. It’s four o’clock in the freaking morning.

  Naomi shrugs and hoists her camera onto her shoulder. “Hell, who am I to stop you?”

  Nobody. Nobody’s anyone to stop me. I swipe my cast under my nose. “Walk me through it.”

  “We’ve got to get inside, first, Evel Knievel.” She leans against the polished SPRING MANOR COUNTRY CLUB sign and cleans the wire cutters on her jea
ns. “Plan is, I cut any locks, you crash like a true Olympian, and we see how fast we can get in and out.”

  I stretch my arms behind my head and let my ribs pull, making sure everything’s loose. “You sure the pool’s empty?”

  “Trust me, Jonah, I’ve got the janitor’s daughter knowledge. Everyone drains their pools over the winter.”

  “Thank God for your blue-collar background.”

  “I know, right?”

  An owl croons nearby—they’re common here, but the sound’s enough to make me prick with the feeling we’re being watched.

  The who sounds almost accusatory.

  I taste cement in my mouth and I have to close my eyes and swallow a few times before it will go away. It’s just nerves. It’s not like it means anything.

  I need to do this one, and I know it in all of my unbroken bones. I need to get stronger. I need to get stronger. This is the way. Face-planting into this empty pool will be my salvation. It has to be.

  It’s even darker when I open my eyes.

  “Nom,” I say.

  She’s hard at work, breaking through the lock on the gate. “Almost got it.”

  “It’s cold as hell out here.”

  She’s wearing a black coat belted around her invisible waist. “Gloves in my pocket. You can grab one for your good hand.”

  I reach into her pocket and pull on a glove. I’m so sweaty that my nose instantly fills with the smell of wet wool.

  She purses her lips and breaks through the lock. “There.” She fixes her baseball cap and shoves her hands under her armpits. “Off we go.”

  We trudge through the wet grass until we come to the biggest pool. It’s deepest in the middle and shallow on the sides, like a gigantic bowl set into the ground. Naomi and I stand at the edge, staring in.

  “Fourteen feet in the middle,” she says.

  I nod. It looks deeper without water.

  She boots up her camera. “That’ll be quite the smack.”

  “I know.”

  She looks at me. “You really want to do this?”

  I chew the inside of my lip. I could go home and listen to the baby scream, listen to Jesse’s cough rattle all the shit in his chest, listen to Mom and Dad trade accusations. Or I could pitch myself off the edge of an empty swimming pool.

  It’s not a hard choice. “I want to do this.”

  “Okay.” Her camera rings. “Whenever you’re ready, partner.”