Break(4)

Jesse revs the blender one last time. Will raises his voice to compensate.

Jesse pours our smoothie into two glasses and hands one to me. I get a straw so I can wedge it between my teeth, and Jesse chugs his. His Adam’s apple bobs. He makes drinking look like an Olympic sport.

I gag, which feels sort of dangerous and exhilarating with the broken jaw. “This tastes like crap.”

“You get used to it.” Jesse plunks his empty glass down on the counter and heads toward his room. He strolls past Mom and Dad’s steaming plates of poison, his chin in the air.

Will says, “Bababa,” in that teary voice, and Mom and Dad start arguing again.

So I enjoy my smoothie.





four


IT STARTED LAST YEAR WITH THE CAR ACCIDENT.

Mom was driving, I was shotgun, Jesse was in the back. On the way to a doctor’s appointment.

Mom ran a red light—barely—and we slammed into an overanxious cement truck. Mom was six or seven months pregnant at the time.

To this day, the smell of wet pavement makes me sick.

Mom got a nasty burn on her leg from the airbag, but no problems with the baby. Jesse was, for once, basically fine. I was the one who went sideways and broke through the latch on the door of Mom’s shitty van.

Jesse’s lip bled where he bit it through, and he looked like something from a horror movie when he knelt over me. He said, “Don’t move.” He said it over and over and over, like I’d try to sit up the second he was quiet.

Like I could sit up.

I broke 2 femurs + 1 elbow + 1 collarbone.

I don’t know what bones hit against the door, what I smashed falling into the street. I don’t know why it was me and not Mom and Jesse and Will the Fetus. I’d never broken anything before.

But I’d been in a shitload of ambulances before with Jesse, so that, at least, was normal. If not comforting.

All of a sudden my life was emergency room, splints, surgery, physical therapy. It was like a f*cking Discovery Health special.

At the hospital, everyone thinks about dying. And I’d never been much for romanticizing death—especially not suicide. I’d always been a fan of staying alive.

After all, you basically do all you can to not die. All the time. The search for immortality isn’t just from story-books. Every day you do it. You buckle your seatbelt, you take vitamin supplements, look both ways before you cross the street. And you really think you’re doing all you can. Bullshit. We can lift weights for f*cking hours and we’re still going to die.

And I didn’t truly get that until I was in the middle of a highway with a tailpipe between my legs, slathered in cement.

At the hospital, the answer’s all around you. You have to fight for your life. It’s the only way.

You only get so many chances to be destroyed. Got to make the most of them.

You’ve probably read that broken bones grow back stronger. It’s sort of a natural bionics thing. Break a leg, grow a better leg. Break a body, grow a better body.

The worse you’re hurt, the stronger you get. I see that every day in Jesse Who Will Not Die.

So I was lying in the street, I was broken, and I was fixed.

I was barely through with the mess from the car accident when I crashed my mountain bike during some trick. I’d always been a daredevil. No one was surprised I’d had a spill.

And it was just a spill. Just a mistake.

Of course.

It was a mistake worth 1 foot + 4 fingers + 1 ankle + 2 toes.

Naomi was there for that one. She drove me to the hospital and was catatonic the whole way.

“It was f*cking beautiful,” she finally squeaked while the ER people pulled on my limbs. “The way you just flew . . . it was like art. I wish I’d had my damn camera.”

“Well,” I said. “Maybe next time.”

So the next time, she helped me set up the skate ramp. And I let her film. And we started trying to fall. And four falls later, we got it—1 kneecap + 1 fibula.

“Holy shit,” Naomi said. “You just broke your leg.”

“Anything for art, babe.”

It’s been about six months since I haven’t had something in a cast. Kids at school laugh and call me a klutz. This girl Charlotte carries my books. My parents are baffled. Will cries. Jesse keeps getting sick.

You’re broken, and you’re fixed.

And you’re better.





five


I’M FILLING OUT THE SPREADSHEET WHEN NAOMI CALLS.

“You know each foot has twenty-six bones,” she says. “So just ‘broken foot’ doesn’t really count.”

“It’s good enough for me.” I type in 1 broken jaw. Total = 18. I’m seriously going to need to practice this one-handed typing. It’s almost as annoying as the whole talking-with-my-mouth-closed thing. “Do you have any idea how many bones there are in your fingers? If I tried for every single tiny bone, I’d be insane.”

“Yeah, then you’d be insane. You know your voice is ridiculous. You sound drunk.”

“Wish I felt drunk.”

“So how’d the parents handle it?”

“Oh, the usual. They hate hospitals, obviously.”


“Obviously.”

“They’ve got to realize this isn’t about them. I wish there was some way to keep them out of it entirely. Or to explain it to them without scaring them shitless.”