Break(39)

“I don’t know what to do.”

He throws me a mound of clay.

Our real teacher is a big woman with wiry hair who reads a romance novel in the corner. Every once in a while she shouts out something inspirational. “You kids are doing great!” and “Keep it up.” “Feel the healing.” This place is such a joke.

I wonder what healing really feels like.

The walls are covered in dirty blue wallpaper that’s probably supposed to make me feel calm. It works.

I start shaping the clay into a tree. “This is kind of hard one-handed.”

“So what happened to you?” Stephen says. “Were you in some kind of accident?”

I shake my head.

“I bet he did it himself.” Tyler nudges Amy. “You did it yourself, didn’t you, Jonah?”

The brunette, Belle, says, “You don’t have to sound so f*cking enthusiastic.”

“It’s hard-core. I’m appreciative of his hard-coreness.” Tyler raises his eyebrows at me. “So you did do it yourself, right?”

Ah, what the hell. “Yeah.”

“Intense.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Man, I know.” Tyler slaps my good shoulder. “It’s never like that.”

“No, I mean, it’s not a suicide-type thing. It’s not even a self-injury thing. It’s not like that. I’m not depressed.” I stand up my tree trunk and start adding branches.

“I’m manic-depressive,” Tyler says.

Leah says, “It’s ‘bipolar,’ now, Ty.”

“Fuck that. I like manic-depressive. Belle’s depressed, unlike you. Leah’s obviously anorexic.”

She smiles at me.

“Stephen’s a burner, and Annie doesn’t talk.”

“I talk,” she whispers.

Tyler looks at me, his voice gently urgent. “And you’re what, then?”

“I’m . . . an obsessive self-improver.” I make leaves.

“Looks more like self-destruction to me.”

I shrug at Belle. “They’re similar.”

Stephen smiles. “Yeah. Yeah, they are.”

“You get hurt, you grow back stronger,” I say.

“Yeah.” Stephen nods, his grin widening. “Yeah. Yeah, you do.”

I feel all warm and soft inside despite the air conditioning and the lemon pledge. It’s this comfort of being understood.

“You’re doing great, kids,” the teacher says, and we all turn back to our art projects. Even Tyler. A slow smile spreads across his face.





thirty-two


THAT NIGHT, I TRY TO SLEEP.

“It’s going to be hard,” Tyler warned me earlier. “You’ll have a really rough time with it the first night.”

I thought he was crazy. I never have a hard time sleeping. If I can sleep through the baby noise, I can sleep through anything, right?

Right?

I’ve got a blanket of Will’s and a picture of Mom and Dad and one of Jesse’s hockey pucks. I’ve spread them out on my dresser, like a shrine to my misery.

I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, my arms around my stomach, wondering if I’m going to throw up. Or if my appendix is about to burst or something.

In true melodramatic fashion, there’s a storm outside. I don’t mind the thunder, but the quiet moments in between drill into my skull. If silence could break bones, I would shatter right now, into pieces of stomachache and blueprints and desperation.

I pull on some socks and pad down the hall. The nausea fades the farther I get from my bed. I tap on Tyler’s door and call his name, softly.

He opens up, his hands over his lips like he’s about to yawn, or cough. But he doesn’t do either.

I shake and stamp my feet against the ground to remind me where I am. My toes hate this.

“You’ve gotta stop,” Tyler says. “One of the nurses will come. They’ll hear you up.”

I’m so, so cold.

“Just tell me everything’s okay,” I say.

“Everything’s okay, Jonah.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“And everything’s okay?”

“Yeah. I promise.”

Tyler guides me back to my room. My stomachache is starting to ebb, and I feel content in this quiet way.

Maybe because it’s so. Quiet.

No coughing and snoring and wheezing from stuffed-up Jesse. No parents screaming at each other, or baby screaming back.

Just me.

Here.

Dark room.

Cold mattress.

Cold Jonah.

I sing just to make noise until I finally fall asleep.





thirty-three


AND MY BOY HIMSELF STICKS HIS HEAD THROUGH my door at about four the next afternoon, two days before Halloween. “Knock knock,” he says, like a little geek.

“Jesse!” I drop my book and leap on him. “You’re not supposed to be up here!”

“I snuck up. There’s crappy security in this place, you know that? You could totally just come home if you wanted.” He disentangles himself from my hug and holds me at arm’s length. “How the hell are you, brother?”