Break(26)

Jesse stares at his lap, quietly triumphant.

“Stay here,” I say.

I send Jesse up to his room—he’ll bang on the floor if he needs me—and I clean everything and give Will a good bath in the sink. I scrub him so hard I can’t even blame him for screaming. But I do anyway.

It’s a horrible, metallic relief to be away from Jesse. I pick up the phone.

And ten minutes later the doorbell rings and there she is. She stands on my doorstep with a handful of tulips. One red blossom peeks out of her bun.

I say, “Charlotte.”

“I’m right here. Are you all right?”

I want to hold her, but I’ve got the baby. She reaches out and takes him, and the freedom to not be responsible for him anymore is almost as good as a hug.

She shakes the flowers. “Can I bring these or are flowers not good?”

My throat is stuck or I’d say that say flowers are fine, but since I can’t she leaves them in our garden. I stop her before she unpins the one in her hair.

“Where is he?” she says. “Upstairs?”

“Uh-huh. I just checked him. He’s fine. I made him take more Benadryl—”

She kisses both my cheeks and pulls me down next to her on the couch. “Just calm down, honey.”

“I . . . God, I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Of course I’m here. You called.”

“This was all my fault.”

She says, “I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“No. It was. I was making a milkshake and I gave some to Will and Will was a mess, and I just left him there. I just left him there for Jess to touch.”

“Jonah, calm down.”

“I messed everything up.” I wish I could cuss in front of Charlotte because I could seriously use a scream right now.

She holds me, my head against her chest. My face is right next to Will’s.

I make sobbing huh-huh-huh noises to match his cries.

“Jonah, shhhh.” She strokes my hair. “Shh. He’s okay now.”

“It’ll happen again.”

“Shhh.”

“It’s gonna happen again.”

“Oh, sweetheart . . .”

There’s nothing for her to say, but it helps to have my head on her boobs.

I’m hysterical, not unconscious.

“This is not your fault,” she says. “It’s just something that happened. So just take some deep breaths, and tell me if I can do anything to help.”

“Just don’t leave me here alone with Jess and the baby. Just stay, okay?”

“Okay.”

Charlotte makes me tea, and I kiss her.

She imitates her choir director and jokes about her Biology grades, and she laughs, and I laugh, and I don’t know if it’s inappropriate to be happy right now, but she holds me so close and I feel her and I touch her.

Charlotte is a prism for my life. Without her, my existence looks pale and bleak and somewhere near the middle of the suck-meter. But around her, I see clearly that my life isn’t made up of anything mediocre, but instead is some combination of the amazing and the dreadful— my brother who adores me, my parents who want what’s best for me, my brother who’s dying, my parents who won’t understand me. It’s not gray at all; it’s too painfully colorful and fantastic and awful for me to see without her help.

And sometimes I realize all that color is too much.

“Someday it will be better,” I tell her.

She kisses me. “I know.”

“I can’t wait.”

She can, and that’s the main difference between us.

We watch game shows and feed the baby and tuck him in and listen to him cry over the baby monitor. I check on Jesse every hour or so, and he wakes up and starts his homework. Charlotte doesn’t tell me she loves me, but she lets me put my head in her lap, and for the few hours she’s with me, I’m happy. Really.

But she leaves at ten, an hour before Mom and Dad come home. “Where’s Will?” Mom says, setting her dog-eared paperback on the counter. Dad undoes her necklace—I’ll never understand why they dress up for book club.

“I put him to bed.”

“Jesse?”

“He’s in his room.” And my mouth is cottony with worry and I say, “He had a reaction. I think he’s all right now.”

Dad loosens his tie. “How bad?”

“It was pretty bad. He took a lot of Benadryl. But he’s feeling a lot better. And he looks okay.”

“What happened?”

And I know Jesse’s right. I know that if I tell them the truth, I’m risking their trust forever. I’m risking the unhealthy bond they’ve allowed me to have with Jesse.

“It was my fault,” I say, my head down. “I had a milkshake and I didn’t clean up.”

I can leave Will out of it, at least.

Mom crosses her arms, “Jonah—”

“I know.” I cover my eyes. “I know I know I know I know I know.”

“You’ve just got to be more—”

I can’t take this lecture, not now. My stomach is crawling and I can’t take it I can’t take it I can’t take it.

“I’ve got to talk about this later,” I say. “I just can’t do this right now.”