Break(18)

“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.”

She fades into the black and I stand by the border of the pool, planting my feet and swinging my arms like a swimmer on a diving board. The wind spikes the hair on the back of my neck.

I don’t even know what bones I’m trying to break.

I guess whatever happens, happens.

The hard part is actually jumping. There’s this battle between the brain and the body—I never know if I’m really going to go until the last minute. My brain has to defeat my will to live, so, in a way, it really is an accident. Every crash is a biological accident, if not a physical one.

I always preferred biology to physics, anyway.

I try to go, but my knees lock. All right. I say, “Count me off, Nom, okay?”

She’s somewhere to my right, where she can get a good angle. “Okay. On three?”

I nod. The helmet strap digs into my chin.

“One. Two.”

I don’t hear her say three because I’m already falling.

The air whooshes under my helmet, into my ears, and there it is—exhilaration.

I hit the bottom. The first pain is just the usual dull ache, the impact slap of my body against the concrete. I brace myself for the real pain—it’ll be awful, but at least I’m used to it.

But, oh.

I’m not used to this.

My entire arm is ripping off, and I feel every tendon and every muscle and every bone and my side’s on fire and my body is crushing my body and it’s orange orange orange hurt and it’s awful, it’s worse than anything’s ever been.

As soon as I get air I start screaming.

Her footsteps cascade down the side of the pool and there’s her hand on the back of my neck. “Tell me what hurts.”

“Get me up! Get me up get me up!”

“Jonah—”

I scuffle my legs on the pavement until I can move enough to aim my torso toward Naomi. I grab her stupid coat and hold her, digging my fingers into her sides. I huff air in and out of my nose so I don’t throw up. The nausea comes, but the pain is not gone. I sound like a dog. “My arm—”

“Jonah, wiggle your toes!”

I wiggle them all around and kick my feet, and she lets her breath go. She cradles my head and says, “Breathe. Breathe.”

I whinny. “This is awful.”

“Shh.”

“Make it stop.”

“I will. Shhh.”

The back of my head explodes, and I’m drowning drowning drowning in the empty pool. I bury my face in Naomi and scream, letting the pain take me away.





fifteen


JESSE FLIES INTO MY HOSPITAL CUBICLE, SWEAT ON his stubbly upper lip, hands in the air. “What the f*ck?”

I throw my good hand over my face. “I told Naomi not to call you.”

“Yeah, and I told you not to do this. Seriously, Jonah, what the hell? You didn’t get enough ER fun today?”

I mumble, “Technically that was yesterday.”

He had to drive almost an hour to get here. This is some grody community clinic just out of state—you’ve got to keep switching hospitals in this life.

He had to drive almost an hour to get here.

He paces back and forth, his hands in fists. “This has to stop. Jesus Christ, Jonah. This has got to stop.”

“I know.”

He leans against the yellow walls, staring at the ceiling like he’s trying to think of a solution. The drip of the morphine into my IV is excruciating in its slowness.

Over the intercom, Nurse Glenda’s called to the desk.

I say, “How you feeling?”

“I’m fine, brother, Jesus Christ, but I’m so f*cking . . . God, I’m worried about you.” He sits at the foot of the bed and shrugs off his jacket. “God. Naomi said you were sobbing.”

I move my arm and sit up, pulling my knees to my chest so I have somewhere to put my shaky chin. “My shoulder’s a fracture-dislocation. Those hurt more than just a break.”