Break(38)

I run the bed sheet between my fingers. “No. No drugs or alcohol.”

One beer on Naomi’s car doesn’t count, right?

“Have you hurt yourself in the past week?”

I nod.

“Are you in any pain right now?”

“Uh-uh.” Just my head and my damn toes, but none of it feels real enough to mention.

“All right, then . . .” He snaps a bracelet around my wrist. “We’re going to have you in for counseling once a day after lunch, all right? You’ll be expected to check in for meals three times a day. Most activities will be downstairs. One of your friends can show you the way.”

Friends?

“Your curfew is eleven—make sure you’re in your room. One of the volunteers will check your vitals before bed and when you wake up. There’ll be nurses around all day and all night if you need anything.”

“Okay.”

“There are activities during the day—arts and crafts, exercise time. You’ll have to report to those. And that’s really it.”

“So . . . what do I do the rest of the time?”

He fiddles with his sleeves. I think he’s more uncomfortable than I am. “Keeping a journal can help. You’ll have visits from your family. Maybe a close friend.”

I imagine Charlotte here, but I know it’s just a dream. “I don’t have to be doing anything?”

“No. This isn’t a jail, Jonah. You’re here for observation and diagnosis, not punishment. You can keep your cell phone, some comforts from home. You’re free most of the day to relax, talk to the other kids. We believe this time for self-reflection will be useful, and that it can motivate one another to get better. Our goal here is to lead you toward self-sufficiency, and that’s why our rules here are simple—take care of yourself, and support the other residents as they work toward their recovery. But you’ll have access to doctors or nurses all the time, if you need anything, and they’ll have access to you.”

He shakes my hand and wishes me a speedy recovery, and I’m so f*cking tired. I’m halfway under the blanket when a girl appears in my doorway. She pauses, her toe pointed in the beginnings of a step.

“Sorry,” she says. “Do you want to be alone?”

She’s dressed like someone from the real world, and I realize it’s Mackenzie, the volunteer from the front desk.

I scoot into the open air. “No, come in.”

She waves a blood-pressure cuff. “Just here for your vitals. They like to know what you’re at when you come in.”

“Okay.”

She wraps the cuff around my good arm and starts to pump it up. “How you feeling today?”

“Okay.”

“Homesick at all? Do you need anything?”

“I’ll be all right. My family’s coming to see me tomorrow.”

She nods. “Your parents looked nice.”

“They are.” Nice isn’t the problem.

“Siblings?”

“Two little brothers.”

“I’m an only child. Always wanted siblings. Are they a handful?”

I smile. “Mine are.”

She stops talking and deflates the cuff, counting seconds on her watch.

“Eighty-two over fifty. You’re really not stressing, are you?”

“I’m not the stress type.”

She studies me, head tilted to the side. “How many broken bones do you have? If you don’t mind my asking . . .”

“Eighteen, right now, if you count toes.”

“Man. How’d that happen?”

I wonder what it’d be like to explain this all to someone who’s never met Jesse.

She keeps her eyes on me, but I just smile and say, “It’s kind of a long story.”

She smiles back. “Well, maybe you’ll tell me someday. You’ve got arts and crafts at three thirty, okay? Downstairs, off the lobby to the left. Don’t be late.”

“Okay, thanks.”

Mackenzie pauses at my door. “Let me know if you need anything.”

I fall asleep on my bed and dream about Charlotte. She’s telling me something, but I can’t hear over the damn baby.





thirty-one


TYLER POUNDS HIS PILE OF PLAY-DOH INTO submission. “I hate arts and crafts,” he mumbles, shaking the table with his smacks. “Arts and crafts is bullshit.”

Annie, next to me, doodles thousands of cottages with smoke uncurling from the chimneys.

Leah’s wrist is about as big around as her paintbrush. “You’re just pissed Mariah’s gone.”

“No, I’m not.” Tyler carves the Play-Doh with his fingernail. “I’m just pissed.”

“You loved her.”

The art room is wicked bright and smells like clay. A sink runs continuously by the window. The kiln sits open, a fake-me-out suicide oven. “I know you wouldn’t, and what’s cool is you couldn’t fit in there anyway,” Stephen mumbled to me when we came in, and it scares me how well he gets me.

Tyler says, “I didn’t love her. I don’t like girls. I told you.”

“Rrrright.”

“I don’t.”

Stephen comes over and observes our progress. “Very good,” he says, like he’s our teacher. “Now, Jonah, why aren’t you arting and crafting?”