Break (15 page)

“You’ve been in your room for hours.”

What am I supposed to say? I’ve been sick to my stomach ever since Mom and Dad and Jesse left.

Stephen sits at the foot of my bed. “Leah says your brother’s cute.”

“Yeah. He’s good-looking when he’s healthy.” I stretch my legs out. “I just . . . I don’t know if I should go home.”

“Like now?”

“Like when they let me out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My brother. He never looked that good when I was at home.”

“You can’t seriously think that your being here is making him better. You’ve been here for, like, a day. And aren’t you guys close?”

I shrug, because “close” isn’t exactly the word.

He shakes his head slowly. “Come into the lounge.”

“I’m not feeling really social.”

“Yeah. You’re depressed. You think we don’t know depressed? Come on, Jonah.”

I pull on a pair of socks and follow Stephen to the lounge. All the chairs are abandoned and everyone’s crashed on the floor, flopped on top of one another in a big teenage pile.

“Hey, Jonah,” they chorus.

I crawl into the mess and rest my head on Belle’s shoulder. She pats it like I’m a good dog, and I think about Charlotte.

“Tyler’s telling us a story,” she says.

Tyler shifts. “So, yeah . . . that’s kind of why I hate my stepfather. I kind of blame him.”

“You can’t blame him for your going psycho,” Leah says.

“What, and you don’t hate anyone for your . . . you know.”

“Of course not. It’s my fault. No one made me stop eating.”

Belle’s shirt rides up and I see all the cuts above her hips. My stomach turns flip-flops.

“What about you, Jonah?” someone, everyone asks.

I close my eyes and tell them about the car accident, and after the car accident, and after after the car accident. . . .

They all suck in their breath.

“That sounds fucking awful.” Tyler rolls onto his stomach.

“It’s sort of hard to remember the really bad parts.” Of the accident. Of all of it.

He says, “Doesn’t it hurt? Breaking your bones?”

Talking about it is this weird type of freedom. “Totally, yeah, but there is that adrenaline rush.”

Stephen nods.

“So that’s why you do it?” Tyler says.

I laugh. “I don’t know if I should be giving you guys any self-injury motivations.”

They laugh too.

“Come on, Jonah.”

I shake my head.

Tyler concedes. “But you do have a reason, right?”

“Yeah. Oh, definitely have a reason.” I stare up at the ceiling. My heart throbs as I breathe. “I just didn’t always know what it was.”

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.

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.

“Where’s Leah?” I say.

“Hmm?”

“We haven’t seen her this morning. She wasn’t at breakfast or lunch.”

“I don’t know anything that I can share right now.”

I glare at him and scratch the knee of my jeans.

“So, what are we going to do here, Jonah? Are you ready to start constructing some new behavior?”

I say, “I don’t know anything that I can share right now.”

He writes something on his clipboard, and I hear applause in my head. Jonah: 1. Mental Health: 0.

NAOMI CALLS WHEN I’M IN THE LOUNGE AFTER
lunch. We’re all crowded around the armchairs, worrying about Leah, when
IMOAN
appears on my caller ID.

“Hey, babe,” I say, smiling at Mackenzie as she takes her post behind the desk.

Naomi’s voice is comforting in its coarseness. “Well, you sound cheery.”

I admit that, despite all the shit with Jess and Leah and the psychologist, I feel sort of cheery.

“I heard she’s in the infirm,” Belle announces on her way upstairs.

Tyler groans. “She better not have had a heart attack.”

Stephen throws his hands over his head. “Tyler, don’t say that.”

“Anorexic girls have heart attacks all the time. It happens.”

I try not to listen. “How’s school?” I ask Naomi.

“Fine. And Jess is great,” she adds before I can ask. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him.”

“He’s eating?”

“Yep. He kicked ass in the hockey game, honestly. He’s doing great.”

“That’s awesome.” I cover the mouthpiece and catch Annie’s eye as she comes in from the courtyard, shuffling her feet against the ground. “Any news?”

She shakes her head.

“Jesse misses you,” Naomi says. “Every time I talk to him all he’ll say is how much he misses you.”

“He’s healthy.”

“Yeah. And sad.”

Belle runs in from the hallway. “She’s in the infirmary.”

“What happened?”

Her face is all red. “She broke her arm.”

I drop the phone. “What?”

THE DOCTOR GATHERS US ALL TOGETHER IN THE
common room because he thinks we’re worried about Leah.

“Because of her weight, her bones break very easily. Think of an old woman’s.” He straightens his glasses. “It’s unfortunate, but not shocking, and she’s going to recover just fine.”

God, I’m like the angel of bad health. I leave, and Jesse gets well. I come here, and Leah breaks her bones. I wonder if there’s an angel of bad health in the Bible, and I wonder if he got swallowed by a big fish or shoved from place to place like a pinball.

We’re sitting in a circle in the lounge. I stare at my lap, but I know everyone’s watching me.

Tyler mumbles, “For the good of the group, right?”

I shake my head. “That’s not what I meant.”

I feel so shaky and sore I think I’m going to pass out. My broken hand is throbbing.

“Leah should be home from the hospital tonight. Hopefully she won’t have to coincide with any of those Halloween burn victims.” He smiles, and Stephen and I flinch because we don’t like the words “burn” and “Halloween.”

“You’ve all got exercise period in ten minutes,” the doctor says. “Why don’t you go get changed while I speak to Jonah?”

I clasp my hands between my legs while the others clear the room. Tyler squeezes my good shoulder on his way out.

The doctor scoots close to me. It’s the first time he’s managed to make me feel honestly comfortable. “You know why I want to talk to you, right?”

I nod. “I didn’t tell Leah to do it.”

“But you understand how this looks.”

“Yeah.”

“Could you have said anything? To encourage her to do this?”

“I . . . explained to Mackenzie. She overheard.”

“Mackenzie?”

“One of the volunteers.”

“Right. Right.” He chews his lip. “The principle of this home is that you help each other heal, okay? If there’s a chance you could be interfering with the recovery of another patient . . . you understand that we have to take that very seriously.”

“Yeah.”

“Just . . . be careful, all right, Jonah? We don’t want to have to put you in isolation.”

I look up.

He smiles. “Just watch yourself, all right? Everything’ll be fine. Leah’s gonna heal up nicely, and you’ll be home in no time, all right?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Annie’s waiting for me in my room.

“Hi,” I say.

She hands me a little slip of paper. I read the note:
I believe in you.

I spin from the shoulders up. “Thank you.”

I think.

My nausea claims get me out of exercise period, but they still drag me out of bed for art and dinner. All I want to do is sleep. The psychiatrist lets me out of our session early so I can rest, and I crash until Mackenzie comes in to check my vitals.

“You’re the talk of the nurse’s station,” she says.

“Seriously?”

“Yep. Everyone’s gossiping about your little mission.”

“It’s not a mission,” I slur, my head in my pillow. “Just a few broken bones.”

“Are they hurting you?”

I hold up the hand. “Just this one.”

“Want anything for it?”

I shake my head.

My blood pressure’s low, and I’m staring to wonder if it has anything to do with my stomachache and headache and overwhelming dizziness.

“You’re not feeling well,” she says. “Do you want a nurse?”

“I just want to sleep.”

And I do, and then I wake up to the welcome home party for Leah. I stumble out of my bed into the common room, barefoot, scrubbing my eyes with my pulsating hand.

“Jonah!” Leah throws her broken and unbroken arms around my neck. “Look!” she shows me the cast, the marks where Tyler and Stephen and Belle and Annie have already signed their names.

I sway and they pull me onto the carpet.

“I feel so much better,” she says.

I say, “The point isn’t to
feel
better.”

“But I do.” She flexes her good arm. “I feel . . . stronger. Don’t you guys? I did it for you guys.”

Everyone nods.

Leah’s smile grows. Her mouth is too big and she’s all lit from inside. She looks like a jack-o’-lantern.

“Not feeling well,” I mumble.

“Oh, Jonah.” Leah collects me from the floor and steers me down the hall to my room. The hallway stretches in front of me like a tendon. “You’ll be okay,” she says. “It’s just been a while since you’ve broken anything, yeah? Feeling a little withdrawn?”

“Don’t need to break anymore.”

“Shh. It’s okay.”

I sleep like a tiger and then someone’s hands are on my shoulders, and I just want them to leave me alone. I don’t want to think about this. I’m so sick of thinking.