Gone, Gone, Gone (22 page)

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.”

“Relax. I’m not doing any more skateboard crashes.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Enough with the skateboard. We’ve got to be more creative next time, or your video’s gonna get boring.”

She makes that wicked smile. “You okay to stand?” She takes my good hand and pulls me up. My right wrist dangles off to the side like the limb of a broken marionette. I want to hold it up, but Naomi’s got me in a death grip so I won’t fall.

My stomach clenches. I gasp, and it kills. “Shit, Nom.”

“You’re okay.”

“I’m gonna puke.”

“Push through
this. Come on. You’re a big boy.”

Any other time, I would tease her mercilessly for this comment. And she knows it. Damn this girl.

I’m upright, but that’s about as far as I’m going to go. I lean against the grody wall of the Laundromat. “Just bring the car around. I can’t walk that far.”

She makes her hard-ass face. “There’s nothing wrong with your legs. I’m not going to baby you.”

My mouth tastes like cat litter. “Nom.”

She shakes her hair and shoves down the brim of her cap. “You really do look like crap.”

She always expects me to enjoy this part. She thinks a boy who likes breaking bones has to like the pain.

Yeah. Just like Indiana Jones loves those damn snakes. I do begging eyes.

“All right,” she says. “I’ll get the car. Keep your ribs on.” This is Naomi’s idea of funny.

She slouches off. I watch her blur into a lump of sweatshirt, baseball cap, and oversize jeans.

Shit. Feeling number four is worry. Problems carpet bomb my brain.

What am I going to tell my parents? How is this setting a good example for Jesse? What the hell am I

doing in the grossest
parking lot in the city on a Tuesday night?

The feeling that never comes is regret.

There’s no room. Because you know you’re three bones closer.

From
INVINCIBLE SUMMER

S
he’s eleven!” Noah and I protest the entire time Melinda’s patting our sister’s face with powder and dabbing lip gloss on her baby mouth. “Too young for makeup,” I whine, and Noah drops his head onto Bella’s pillow so he can’t watch. But I can’t look away. Bella and I are riveted— Bella by how old Claudia looks, me by the length of Melinda’s fingers.

“I’m only giving her a little, Chasey.” Melinda traces powder over the tops of Claudia’s eyes. “Making her feel just as beautiful as she is.”

Claudia’s positively
beaming.

“She’s going to be swarmed,” Noah says, his voice muffled. “Do you want her swarmed by
men?
”

Claudia laughs, all grown-up in the back of her throat.
Ha ha ha.

“Maybe someone will fall in love with her,” Bella says, and bites her lip and looks at me.

Noah looks at me, telling me it’s my turn to object. “Too young to be someone’s lust object,” I say, then turn to Bella and mouth
Eleven,
to clarify. Bella had her makeup done before we got here, and now she’s studying herself in the mirror, pinching her cheekbones and pressing the skin between her eyebrows.

“You’re all too young to be talking about this love and lust shit,” Noah says.

Melinda is calm, blowing extra eye shadow off her fingers. “The point is not to be loved. The point is to love.” She puts on some kind of accent.
"’For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.
’”

Noah picks up his head. “What’s that?”

“Camus, darling.” Melinda takes a book from the foot of her bunk and tosses it down to Noah. “Only the most summer-oriented philosopher in the book.”

“What book?” says Bella.

Melinda examines her
eyeliner pencil. “The book of life, my dear.”

“Man,” Claudia says. “That’s one big book.”

“Small font, too.” Noah sits up and cracks open the paperback. “He’s French?”

“
Oui,
but that’s supposed to be the best translation.” Melinda gathers her curly hair back in one hand and leans forward, examining Claudia’s eyebrows. “You guys would like him.”

Noah reads, “
’Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus’s motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening’s slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon.
’”

We’re quiet.

“Well.” Claudia flinches at the mascara wand. “That was happy.”

“Shut up,” Noah says. “I’d almost believe he grew up here.”

I look at him, and I know by the way he’s smiling that I’m making the same face I always make when we agree. The one that looks really shocked.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Bella says, quietly.

“‘
No love without a little innocence,
’” Melinda recites, putting on that silly accent again.

Noah says, “Hmm,” and sticks the paperback
in his pocket. “All right. You kids ready to go?”

The Jolly Roger isn’t much of an amusement park, and it’s farther away than we’ll usually stand to travel when we’re down here, but every few years we all get it in our heads that we need to go. We grab Shannon and Gideon from the living room, stuff ourselves into the van, and we’re off to see the creaky fun house and the carousel and the clumsy juggler.

All the windows are down and the wind sounds like someone yelling at us, but we’re laughing so hard we barely hear it. The girls rake their fingers through their hair to keep the tangles out, but it’s hopeless and they know it and it’s okay. The lights on every restaurant, mini-golf-course, icecream stand, and motel rush by just like the people, who are all dressed ten times better than they ever are during the year and trying ten times less hard. I feel like we’re stuck in a movie reel, roaring through as hard as we can and spinning the world into streaks. “‘
Gods of summer they
were at twenty,
’” Melinda says.

It takes Noah a few minutes to find this quote in his book. “‘
Gods of summer they were at twenty by their enthusiasm for life, and they still are, deprived of all hope. I have seen two of them die. They were full of horror, but silent.
’”

Melinda takes her eyes off the road to examine us all in the rearview mirror. Claudia, for a minute, stops punching Gideon and looks at us, her artificially enlarged eyes artificially sparkling. She’s beautiful—just normal, unscary beautiful— without all the makeup, but she never carries herself like she is.

“Which two?” Claudia asks.

Noah’s glued back to the book. “It could be an exaggeration.”

“I need to get a copy of this book,” I say.

Noah nods. “You so do, Chase. And so do I. . . .”

“What’s mine is yours,” Melinda says softly. “As long as I eventually get it back.”

We park and wait by the ticket booths, calculating how much money we have and how many rides we need to go on. I’m trying to track everyone with my eyes; I feel older than the twins but younger than Claudia, who’s standing with Melinda, tossing her matted hair, while Bella and Shannon shriek and climb on each other’s backs. Gideon falls down. “Everyone needs tickets,” I say. “Someone has to watch—”

“I’ve got it.” Noah gives me one of those rare, reassuring smiles. “Melinda and I will take Gideon, okay? And you stay with Claude and the twins.”

I yank Gideon off the ground and
sign
Noah stay.

Noah run
Gideon says, and I try not to concentrate on that.

Stay me?
Noah signs.

I realize that we never try to do anything to Gideon without asking his permission. Even though he’s six, and I don’t think considering a six-year-old’s opinion usually comes with the territory. Some parts of being deaf are pretty sweet, I guess.

Gid spins around for a little while, then falls down again and signs
OK.

“C’mere, you.” Noah hauls Gideon onto his back and smiles at Melinda. “We’ve got him.”

This finally hits me. “Yeah, and what are you going to do with Gideon while you’re with Melinda?”

“Cover his eyes.”

“Oh, ha ha,” I call to their backs.

Claudia and Shannon want to ride the log flume, so we walk across the park, crunching the gravel beneath our sandals. Every few steps Bella will look at me and smile. Whenever a girl from school is nice to me like this, I’m always tripping over myself figuring out how far I’m going to try to get with her and freezing
up before I can do anything. But here, I have this feeling that I can’t screw this up, and there’s no point in planning anything, because what’s going to happen is going to happen. It’s as predictable as the carousel.

She doesn’t want to get splashed, so we stand under the pavilion while Shannon and Claude get in line. Bella’s wearing a pink skirt, and the breeze sometimes hitches it above her knees. Her legs are starting to tan, or maybe it’s that brown lotion girls use to pretend. Either way, I like it even more than I would have expected.

“Really nice night, isn’t it?” she says.

“Mmm-hmm.”

She revolves, looking at the lights from the Ferris wheel bouncing off the water for the paddleboats. “I love it here.”

“I love everywhere here.” I rub the back of my neck. “I seriously wish we could live here, even in the off-season. Like, even when it’s cold, this has got to be good.”

“We come down in the fall and winter sometimes. I almost like it better. No people around, everything so gray . . . It feels really old. Like you’re looking at this town a hundred years ago.”

“When our forefathers ran around barefoot.”

She smiles at me. “Exactly.”

There’s no one else under the pavilion, and with the amusement park bouncing
off Bella’s eyes and the dusty pink of her skirt, I can almost pretend we are a hundred years old and we know everything. When, really, the only thing I know is that I’m going to kiss her, but I’m not going to try anything more. And she’s smiling because she knows it too.

It’s not really that we’re old so much as we’ve existed forever. We’re in a black-and-white photo. The only color comes from the Ferris wheel lights and her skirt.

We’re eternalized in the film. Forever kids. We are our forefathers today.

I kiss her, and her mouth tastes like wax and peppermint.

It’s not my first kiss, but it
feels
like it. Like I’m watching a movie of my first.

She pulls back, laughing. “Chase, you bit my lip.”

Or a blooper reel. “I did? Sorry.”

She giggles and turns, and I smell the powder on her cheek. I want to kiss her. I want to bake cookies with her. I want to watch her put on her makeup like I got to watch Claudia.

“Look.” She points to the top of the flume. “They’re going down.”

“Shannon looks
terrified.”

“He’s just hoping Claudia will hold his hand.”

We watch Claudia and
Shannon take the plunge, and I wrap my fingers around Bella’s palm.

“Chase.”

I look up from Camus. “Shh shh shh.” I jerk my head to Noah, crashed on top of his covers, shoes still on. “He’s asleep. And still, for once.” Noah’s always waking me up by thrashing around when he’s sleeping. It’s the worst.

Claudia tilts from one foot to the other, doing the same little dance that Gideon does. I close the paperback and say, “You’re supposed to be asleep, beautiful.”

“Mom and Dad are fighting.”

“Come on. Don’t let that worry you.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

I scoot over on my bed and she sits down, her nightgown pooling around her knees. She’s washed all the makeup off and she got sunburned today, so she looks like my little sister again. It’s something about winters and nighttimes that makes me remember how young Claudia is. It’s when she’s quiet. Her voice is old; she’s always confused for our mother on the phone.

“Is this Camus stuff really any good?” she asks.

“He definitely knew his summers.” I flip to one of my dog-eared pages. “‘
Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping
with stars. I was alive then.
’”