Break(48)

“What are you doing?”

They rip around to me and their mouths fall open. Jesse’s hat covers half his shocked expression. He says, “Jonah?”

I grab his arm and pull him toward me. “Spit!”

“Jonah—”

“Spit!”

He spits into the grass, and Naomi says, “Hey!”

He looks at her. “Nomy—”

“Shush!” I scream, and I won’t take my hands off Jesse. “Did she wash her mouth out first?”

“What are you doing out of the—”

I grab the pumpkin out of Naomi’s hand. “You’ve got candy in here! You’ve got chocolate and peanuts and—”

She snatches all the Jesse-poison back. “I didn’t eat any of it! Come on, I wouldn’t do that!”

Jesse says, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You can’t just go around kissing girls!”

He exhales. “I can look after my—”

“Do you just want to die? Is that it?” I think I’m going to strangle him.

“Shut up!” He covers his ears. “Shut up shut up shut up!”

He breathes hard. Naomi and I stare at him silently. I check his wrists and neck and cheeks, looking for hives.

Naomi puts her hand on his back.

I snap. “No, don’t comfort him!”

“Jonah, shut up!” she says.

I wave my cast in Jesse’s face like I’m going to hit him. “This is not about your f*cking independence. You can’t . . .” I’m so dizzy. “You can’t just—especially not dirty girls like—”

Naomi takes her hand off Jesse and looks at me. “What did you just call me?”

“I—”

WHAM.

It takes me a second to realize what she hit me with. The damn clay pumpkin. Candy flies to the ground and Jess jumps out the way.

The pressure in my face is unbelievable.

“Fuck,” I whisper, pressing my hand against my cheek.

Jesse whirls to Naomi. “What the hell did you just do?”

“You heard what he said!”

Jesse looks at me. “Are you okay?”

I breathe in and out, slowly, holding my face as tightly as I can. “Did you hear something crack?”

Jesse pulls me into the light and touches the space under my eye. I whine.

“You broke his cheekbone,” he whispers.

Naomi’s chin shakes. “I didn’t—”

“You broke my f*cking brother’s cheekbone! What the f*ck were you thinking?”

“He called me—”

“Yeah, so yell at him! Hate him! Don’t f*cking break him!”

I hold him back because I’m afraid he’s got to hit her. He shakes me off. He might not be on her side, but he’s sure as hell not on mine, either.

I almost fall over, and he says, “Look, you’re sick. I’m taking you home.”

“I have to talk to Charlotte.”

“No. You need to go home and tell me what the f*ck you’re doing out of the psych ward.” He points the way we came. “My car’s in the next neighborhood. Come on.”

We leave Naomi crying under the streetlight.





forty-two


JESS OPENS THE FRONT DOOR, AND I’M HIT WITH baby screams. He pays the frazzled babysitter and sends her home. Then he brings me into the baby’s room and sets me on the floor. “Wait here.”

I huddle in the corner and put my fingers on my cheek. I close my eyes to Will’s sobs.

“Can you open your mouth enough for this?” he says, holding up the thermometer.

I can, just barely, but it hurts. Jesse crams it into my mouth.

“You had no right,” he says, ripping off pieces of his costume until he’s just my brother again. “Absolutely no right to come and f*cking interrupt us, Jonah. That is not your place.”

I was protecting him.

Ungrateful little bastard.

“I’m sixteen years old. I know how my body works, okay? I know what I have to do. I don’t need this anymore.”

And there it is. I f*cking knew it. He doesn’t need me.

“I was worried about you,” I slur.

He looks straight at me and bites his lips. “I know, brother. Man . . . I know.” He pushes my bangs out of my eyes and takes the thermometer out of my mouth as it starts to beep. “103.4. Shit.”

“Yeah. I don’t feel that great.”

He goes to the closet and finds an extra quilt. “Come here.” He brings me to the rocking chair and covers me all the way over my head. The squeak of the chair as I shiver reminds me of him on the rowing machine.

I think that I’m home free.

Then he says, “Too bad for you Mom and Dad aren’t home. They’d probably be too concerned to drill you for information.”

Now I don’t feel hidden well enough at all.

“How the hell did you get out of the psych hospital, Jonah?”

“They put me in isolation. It was awful. The volunteer helped me escape.”

“After you convinced her to break her wrist?”

“I didn’t do it.” My voice shakes with my body. “I didn’t do it.”