Gone, Gone, Gone(55)

I don’t know how to address the people who were affected by the 2002 Beltway Sniper attacks except to say that I hope this story reaches you if you want it and doesn’t if you don’t.

I’m useless without the Musers, and almost as useless without my magic gay fish.

And I owe a million thank-yous, as always, to you. I do it for you, you know?





ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HANNAH MOSKOWITZ is the author of Break, Invincible Summer, and the middle-grade novel Zombie Tag. She was in Maryland the whole time, and she has owned a total of fourteen pets. Visit her at untilhannah.com.





From

BREAK

THE FIRST FEELING IS EXHILARATION.

My arms hit the ground. The sound is like a mallet against a crab.

Pure f*cking exhilaration.

Beside me, my skateboard is a stranded turtle on its back. The wheels shriek with each spin.

And then—oh. Oh, the pain.

The second feeling is pain.

Naomi’s camera beeps and she makes a triumphant noise in her throat. “You totally got it that time,” she says. “Tell me you got it.”

I hold my breath for a moment until I can say, “We got it.”

“You fell like a bag of mashed potatoes.” Her sneakers make bubble gum smacks against the pavement on her way to me. “Just . . . splat.”

So vivid, that girl.

Naomi’s beside me, and her tiny hand is an ice cube on my smoldering back.

“Don’t get up,” she says.

I choke out a sweaty, clogged piece of laughter. “Wasn’t going to, babe.”

“Whoa, you’re bleeding.”

“Yeah, I thought so.” Blood’s the unfortunate side effect of a hard-core fall. I pick my head up and shake my neck, just to be sure I can. “This was a definitely a good one.”

I let her roll me onto my back. My right hand stays pinned, tucked grotesquely under my arm, fingers facing back toward my elbow.

She nods. “Wrist’s broken.”

“Huh, you think?” I swallow. “Where’s the blood?”

“Top of your forehead.”

I sit up and lean against Naomi’s popsicle stick of a body and wipe the blood off my forehead with my left hand. She gives me a quick squeeze around the shoulders, which is basically as affectionate as Naomi gets. She’d probably shake hands on her deathbed.

She takes off her baseball cap, brushes back her hair, and replaces the cap with the brim tilted down. “So what’s the final tally, kid?”

Ow. Shit. “Hold on a second.”

She waits while I pant, my head against my skinned knee. Colors explode in the back of my head. The pain’s almost electric.

“Hurt a lot?” she asks.

I expand and burst in a thousand little balloons. “Remind me why I’m doing this again?”

“Shut up, you.”

I manage to smile. “I know. Just kidding.”

“So what hurts? Where’s it coming from?”

“My brain.”

She exhales, rolling her eyes. “And your brain is getting these pain signals from where, sensei?”

“Check my ankles.” I raise my head and sit up, balancing on my good arm. I suck on a bloody finger and click off my helmet. The straps flap around my chin. I taste like copper and dirt.

I squint sideways into the green fluorescence of the 7-Eleven. No one inside has noticed us, but it’s only a matter of time. Damn. “Hurry it up, Nom?”

She takes each of my sneakered feet by the toe and moves it carefully back and forth, side to side, up and down. I close my eyes and feel all the muscles, tendons, and bones shift perfectly “Anything?”

I shake my head. “They’re fine.”

“Just the wrist, then?”

“No. There’s something else. It-it’ too much pain to be just the wrist. . . . It’s somewhere. . . .” I gesture weakly.

“You seriously can’t tell?”

“Just give me a second.”

Naomi never gets hurt. She doesn’t understand. I think. she’s irritated until she does that nose-wrinkle. “Look, we’re not talking spinal damage or something here, right? Because I’m going to feel really shitty about helping you in your little mission if you end up with spinal damage.”

I kick her to demonstrate my un-paralysis.

She smiles. “Smart-ass.”

I breathe in and my chest kicks. “Hey. I think it’s the ribs.”

Naomi pulls up my T-shirt and checks my chest. While she takes care of that, I wiggle all my fingers around, just to check. They’re fine—untouched except for scrapes from the pavement. I dig a few rocks from underneath a nail.

“I’m guessing two broken ribs,” she says.

“Two?”

“Yeah. Both on the right.”

I nod, gulping against the third feeling—nausea.

“Jonah?”

I ignore her and struggle to distract myself. Add today to the total, and that’s 2 femurs + 1 elbow + 1 collarbone + 1 foot + 4 fingers + 1 ankle + 2 toes + 1 kneecap + 1 fibula + 1 wrist + 2 ribs.

= 17 broken bones.

189 to go.

Naomi looks left to the 7-Eleven. “If we don’t get out of here soon, someone’s going to want to know if you’re okay. And then we’ll have to find another gross parking lot for next time.”