Break(42)

Belle squeezes me.

I’m in my room by curfew, but the rest of everybody is wandering the halls. Some nurse starts yelling, and they yell right back. I smile into my Confucius biography.

“Good day?”

I look up and Mackenzie’s grinning at me, blood-pressure cuff dangling from one hand.

“It got better kind of suddenly.”

She tightens the cuff, then lets it go. I’m aware of my heartbeat again. She says, “Eighty over fifty. Still low. Are you sick? You’re kind of pale.”

I shake my head. “Feel like listening?”

She sits cross-legged at the foot of my bed. “It is in my job description.”

“I saw my little brother today, and just . . . I don’t know. Started thinking.” I pick up my book. “Do you know anything about Confucianism?”

She shakes her head.

“Oh. Well, I’m kind of into it. Anyway, there’s this idea—the main idea, actually. It’s that the family is the smallest possible unit of measurement. Like, you can’t divide a family into the individuals. Not really. Because every decision, every problem . . . it’s all within the family. It’s all shared. You’re born, and you’re born into part of this organism. You’re like parts of a cell, working to make the whole thing better.”

She says, “You can kind of divide everything into that.”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Family. Friends. School.” She shrugs. “Here. You’re always a part of something. It’s never just you. Anyway. You were talking.”

“It’s okay.” I tighten my lower jaw, and the wire pulls. “For me . . . see, I’ve got this really sick little brother.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t want to make it sound like this is all about him, like he’s messed me up or something. And I don’t want to make it sound like this is sudden. He’s sixteen now. . . . He’s been sick since he was born. But he’s done all he can to keep himself healthy. He avoids what he’s allergic to, and he works out all the time, and he tries to have a normal life, like, he tries really hard. He does all he can to make himself stronger. He’s reached his limit. He’s done his part—for himself, for the whole family unit.”

“He can’t get well?”

I shake my head. “No cure.”

“That’s awful.”

I swallow. “Okay. But. If our family is really the smallest unit, then every time Jesse’s sick, we’re all sick. His pain is our pain. So if he can’t get better . . .” I wave my broken wrist. “I’m the next best thing. I get hurt, and I heal. And I get stronger. And my strength is Mom’s strength. Is Dad’s strength. Is Jesse’s strength.”

“That’s . . .”

“I know it’s kind of crazy.”

“It’s adorable, Jonah.”

I rest my chin on my knees. “I miss him.”

My eyes flick toward my door and there’s Tyler, Belle, Leah, and Annie, their mouths all popped open in surprise. Or understanding.





thirty-five


WHEN I REPEAT THIS EXPLANATION TO THE psychologist the next day, he’s less impressed.

“But, Jonah,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Small-minded Western thinkers.

“There’s got to be something else you can do, if you want to support your family,” he says. “Something that doesn’t involve self-injury.”

“I try,” I insist.

“I know you do.”

“No, you don’t.”

I stare above at the wall over his ergonomic chair. The clock on the wall is exactly the same shape as his head, but the face is less serious. More interesting.

I wait until I’m calm enough to speak, and I say, “I’ve tried everything.”

“I know it must look like—”

“No. I’ve tried everything.”

“Breaking your bones is obviously not the answer, Jonah.”

“Yeah. I’m aware. I’m aware that it didn’t work.”

“So what’s your new plan?”

This is a snide question, so I don’t tell him about how I have to leave my family organism, break out firmly and finally. I don’t tell him that I’m a parasite, and I’m ruining them. That my functionality is tearing them to pieces.

He doesn’t deserve to know. And it’s not as if I want to talk about it.

He’s back to his shrink speech. “The trouble with self-injury is that you develop a pattern of behavior. It’s not enough to simply say that you’re going to stop hurting yourself. What we need to do is construct an alternate outlet—a separate pattern of behavior that you follow instead.”

“I can stop breaking,” I say, fully aware that I sound like an alcoholic. I can stop drinking whenever I want. . . .

He says, “Jonah.”

People do this—say my name strong and forceful, like the two syllables and a serious look will give them some sort of power over me. It’s just a name. It’s not like it means anything.

He says, “Jonah. You can’t go home until you work with me.”

He’s working off the assumption that going home is my goal.