“Sit down.” I push him into the living room and yell to him while I root through the cabinets. “Don’t scratch!”
“What the fuck kind of harm is that going to do now?” He shudders and breathes, and I hear every muscle in his throat. I hear the deep, deep whistle in his chest.
My hand freezes on the bottle of Benadryl. “Can you breathe?”
He doesn’t answer, and that’s all I need.
When your little brother’s about to die, for a second it doesn’t matter that it’s your fault and you’re scared to death and you only have one arm. For a second, you turn into a robot.
I snatch the bottle from the shelf and wrench off the cap. I stand over him with one foot on his knee and say, “Open your mouth.”
I pour the pink syrup down his throat. Some leaks through the blue oxygen-starved skin of his lips and dribbles onto his chin. I cover his mouth with my hand. “You will not choke,” I tell him. “You will not throw up. You will drink. You will get this all down.”
He keeps trying to look into my eyes and I keep looking away. He’s crying, but it’s just fear, and it’s just the immune response. It’s not real. We’re robots.
He swallows and I take my hand away.
“Breathe,” I say. “Now.”
He’s coughing. His chest makes noises like a truck.
I’m clutching the EpiPen.
In his high chair, Will positively howls.
“Come on, man,” I say.
And Jesse breathes.
When your little brother looks at you and you almost just destroyed him, you can’t be a robot anymore.
He slumps onto me, more out of exhaustion than affection. His face is so red and hot. I lower the sticky bottle to the table. The guilt is a big ball of yarn at the bottom of my stomach. Breaking bones hurts less than this.
“You’re okay,” I say, and push him away because I might still have milk on me. “But look, man, we’ve got to get to a hospital.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t want to. I’m okay.”
“Jesse.”
He inhales—it’s harsh, but it’s there. “If the reaction spikes again, we’ll go. But I’ll just . . . I’ll load up on Benadryl and I’ll sleep it off.”
“Man—”
“Come on, brother.” He nails me with those teary eyes. “We were just at the hospital.”
I stand up and walk away from him, toward the high chair. I’ve got to give Will a bath. “You’re being ridiculous. I am not going to let you—”
“What will Mom and Dad say?”
I’m quiet.
“If they find out I’m having a reaction because of something you did, they won’t listen to you anymore. They’ll stop taking you seriously when you tell them to clean up. They’ll use it against you all the time.”
I close my eyes and lean over the high chair. “Hush, Jesse.”
“They will never trust you to take care of me. Come on, Jonah.”
“Stop.”
“Come on. Don’t do it. Don’t call an ambulance. I hate ambulances.”
He really does. He always says I could get him there faster.
Not that I could drive him right now. I’m so fucking useless.
“Don’t make me go, Jonah.”
Will screams, and I turn away from him and face Jesse, and I put my hands in my hair. “All right!” I say. “All right. Stay here.”
Jesse stares at his lap, quietly triumphant.
“Stay here,” I say.
I send Jesse up to his room—he’ll bang on the floor if he needs me—and I clean everything and give Will a good bath in the sink. I scrub him so hard I can’t even blame him for screaming. But I do anyway.
It’s a horrible, metallic relief to be away from Jesse. I pick up the phone.
And ten minutes later the doorbell rings and there she is. She stands on my doorstep with a handful of tulips. One red blossom peeks out of her bun.
I say, “Charlotte.”
“I’m right here. Are you all right?”
I want to hold her, but I’ve got the baby. She reaches out and takes him, and the freedom to not be responsible for him anymore is almost as good as a hug.
She shakes the flowers. “Can I bring these or are flowers not good?”
My throat is stuck or I’d say that say flowers are fine, but since I can’t she leaves them in our garden. I stop her before she unpins the one in her hair.
“Where is he?” she says. “Upstairs?”
“Uh-huh. I just checked him. He’s fine. I made him take more Benadryl—”
She kisses both my cheeks and pulls me down next to her on the couch. “Just calm down, honey.”
“I . . . God, I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Of course I’m here. You called.”
“This was all my fault.”
She says, “I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“No. It was. I was making a milkshake and I gave some to Will and Will was a mess, and I just left him there. I just left him there for Jess to touch.”
“Jonah, calm down.”
“I messed everything up.” I wish I could cuss in front of Charlotte because I could seriously use a scream right now.
She holds me, my head against her chest. My face is right next to Will’s.
I make sobbing huh-huh-huh noises to match his cries.
“Jonah, shhhh.” She strokes my hair. “Shh. He’s okay now.”
“It’ll happen again.”
“Shhh.”
“It’s gonna happen again.”
“Oh, sweetheart . . .”
There’s nothing for her to say, but it helps to have my head on her boobs.
I’m hysterical, not unconscious.
“This is not your fault,” she says. “It’s just something that happened. So just take some deep breaths, and tell me if I can do anything to help.”
“Just don’t leave me here alone with Jess and the baby. Just stay, okay?”
“Okay.”
Charlotte makes me tea, and I kiss her.
She imitates her choir director and jokes about her Biology grades, and she laughs, and I laugh, and I don’t know if it’s inappropriate to be happy right now, but she holds me so close and I feel her and I touch her.
Charlotte is a prism for my life. Without her, my existence looks pale and bleak and somewhere near the middle of the suck-meter. But around her, I see clearly that my life isn’t made up of anything mediocre, but instead is some combination of the amazing and the dreadful— my brother who adores me, my parents who want what’s best for me, my brother who’s dying, my parents who won’t understand me. It’s not gray at all; it’s too painfully colorful and fantastic and awful for me to see without her help.
And sometimes I realize all that color is too much.
“Someday it will be better,” I tell her.
She kisses me. “I know.”
“I can’t wait.”
She can, and that’s the main difference between us.
We watch game shows and feed the baby and tuck him in and listen to him cry over the baby monitor. I check on Jesse every hour or so, and he wakes up and starts his homework. Charlotte doesn’t tell me she loves me, but she lets me put my head in her lap, and for the few hours she’s with me, I’m happy. Really.
But she leaves at ten, an hour before Mom and Dad come home. “Where’s Will?” Mom says, setting her dog-eared paperback on the counter. Dad undoes her necklace—I’ll never understand why they dress up for book club.
“I put him to bed.”
“Jesse?”
“He’s in his room.” And my mouth is cottony with worry and I say, “He had a reaction. I think he’s all right now.”
Dad loosens his tie. “How bad?”
“It was pretty bad. He took a lot of Benadryl. But he’s feeling a lot better. And he looks okay.”
“What happened?”
And I know Jesse’s right. I know that if I tell them the truth, I’m risking
their trust forever. I’m risking the unhealthy bond they’ve allowed me to have with Jesse.
“It was my fault,” I say, my head down. “I had a milkshake and I didn’t clean up.”
I can leave Will out of it, at least.
Mom crosses her arms, “Jonah—”
“I know.” I cover my eyes. “I know I know I know I know I know.”
“You’ve just got to be more—”
I can’t take this lecture, not now. My stomach is crawling and I can’t take it I can’t take it I can’t take it.
“I’ve got to talk about this later,” I say. “I just can’t do this right now.”
I start up the stairs. Mom starts to call me but Dad says, “Let him go,” like he’s some sort of parenting expert.
I sit on my floor with my ear against Jesse’s wall, trying to listen to his breathing around Will’s cries.
That hammer is still here. I pick it up and hold the cold head in my palm. My mind is an explosion of Naomi and Jesse and Charlotte and Mom and Dad and Miss Marlin and I can’t do this right now, and I don’t know what I want but I know it’s definitely not this.
Will’s voice gets higher and higher. Soon, only dogs will hear him and our ears will get a break.
Jesse coughs and my heart jumps with electricity.
I take off my shoe and, through my sock, smash each toe individually.
It doesn’t hurt as badly as you might think. Each toe takes only one or two smacks to really snap.
I try to time my hammering so it matches Jesse’s gasping. Every time I hear his breath snag, I swing the hammer.
Eight toes are broken in no time.
2 femurs + 1 elbow + 1 collarbone + 1 foot + 4 fingers + 1 ankle + 2 toes + 1 kneecap + 1 fibula + 1 wrist + 2 ribs + 1 jaw + 1 hand + 1 shoulder + 1 elbow + 3 ribs + 8 toes = 32 total.
174 to go.
I fall asleep in some painful, drunken state, Will’s screams and Jesse’s coughing lulling me into submission.
twenty-one
THE NEXT MORNING, MY FEET ARE SHARDS OF glass in a sock. I listen to Jesse on the rowing machine and Will sputtering in his crib until the dizziness tapers enough for me to crawl to my computer.
I Google “broken toes.”
I Google “food allergies.”
I Google “I’m so dizzy I can’t see straight.”
I Google “child abuse.”
I Google “Am I going to die?”
None of the answers are helpful, although the last one takes me to some creepy links that at least distract me for a minute.
The windows flash on the screen, and Jesse’s rowing gets faster and faster. I click on my Favorites folder and bring up one of my beloved Confucianism websites. When that Chinese music starts, I lie down on my floor and close my eyes. Begging to sink in, zone out, ignore the baby.
He shouts something, his eight-month-old version of speech, and I wrinkle my nose.
Shut up shut up shut up everyone just shut up.
Mom yells, “Damn it, Will, stop crying!”
That’s it. I need to do something about these toes. “Jesse!” I bang my cast against the floor. “Jess, come up here!”
The rowing stops. I picture him listening, straining his ears over the baby.
“Jess, come here!”
I picture him considering.
My door opens and there’s Mom, her tawdry pink robe washing her whole face gray, Will propped on her shoulder. “Need something, hon? Why are you on the floor?”
I raise my head. Mom spins. “Just need to talk to Jesse.”
She crosses her arms. “Do you need to talk about last night?”
“I screwed up.”
“I know it was just an accident. And you’re so good with him.”
But . . .
She says, “But you just need to be more careful, Jonah. How are the injuries?”
My voice feels glued somewhere near the crown of my head. When I talk, I sound more like Dad or Jesse than myself. “I’m fine.”
Will starts screaming again, and she says something I can’t hear.
I end up sleeping through the time it takes Mom and Will to leave and Jesse to arrive. He wakes me up with one hand on my chest. “You look like crap.”
“I think I’m sick.”
“I think you’re in pain.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“So what’d you do?”
I point toward my feet. “They need to be taped up. I am so nauseous.”
“Okay. Hold on.” He handles my feet, and I grit my teeth. He starts talking, probably just to distract me. “I did five reps,” he says. “And an hour of rowing. I’m really building up my stamina. I think it’s going to make a difference for hockey. You’re coming to my game tonight, right?”
I try not to moan. “Of course.”
“So . . . what are you doing for Halloween?”
When I was little, I always got mad at Jesse because he wouldn’t come trick-or-treating with me. I don’t know how it took me so long to figure out that it would kill him, but ever since, Halloween gives me a sour sort of taste.
I say, “Will I be able to walk?”
He inhales as the socks come off. “Shit. Yeah, don’t worry. We can work this out. Hold on.”
He rushes to the bathroom and I get my first good look at what I’ve done. My toes look like raw chicken nuggets sewn into my foot. They’re purple and stick in incorrect directions. One of my nails is falling off.
Jesse returns with a shitload of gauze and medical tape, as if we really have the supplies to fix all of this.
“When did you do it?” he asks, ripping a piece of tape with his teeth.
“Last night. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”
He starts taping the toes together. I dig my fingers into the floor. He says, “I don’t think you’ve ruined anything, here.”
This is a funny way of putting it.
“They should heal okay.”
“I know.
“I’m worried about you. This is beginning to look more and more like one of those suicide cry-for-attention things.”
I start hitting my head against the ground. “You’re not supposed to just ask me that. You’re supposed to dance around the subject and call a hotline if you’re so fucking concerned.”
He lowers his voice. “Jonah, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” I flap my arms over my face. He tapes me and it hurts. “What’s up with you?” I snap. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I am eating.” Rip of more tape. “This one might hurt.”
I chew my tongue. “Is this like an eating disorder?”
“I’m allergic to everything. It’s already like the ultimate eating disorder.”
I throw my hands away. “Look, if you don’t eat, you’re going to get worse. You’re going to lose tolerance and you won’t be able to eat anything. If you think starving’s fun now, wait until you don’t have any choice.”
“I’m eating.”
“Stop blowing me off.”
He pulls one of my toes and I swear. “I am not blowing you off,” he says, “but you have some nerve to lecture me about how to take care of myself. Now shut up and let me finish here.”
I exhale. “We’re gonna be really late.”
“It’s okay. I’ll drive fast.”
I say, “I don’t know what to do with you.”
“You’ve done enough.” And it doesn’t sound like a compliment.
“What?”
“Jonah, relax, okay? Just let me tape.”
I could throw up.
He finishes, and I examine his handiwork. My toes are secured in a wonky line like drunk soldiers.
“All right. Here we go.” Jess takes my good arm and hauls me off the ground. “You all right?”
My head’s about to split open, but my feet feel okay. “Yeah.”
“Just keep your weight on your heels and the tape should hold up.”
“Thanks, brother.”
; “Uh-huh.” He pulls his sweaty hair back in his fist. “I’m gonna shower. Get yourself a granola bar or something and let’s get out of here.”
“Okay.”
He starts to go, then pauses with his hand on the door frame. “Jo.”
“Problem?”
He shrugs. “Can you try to do something about the baby before we go?”
There’s this desperation in his voice.
“I’ll try,” I say.
twenty-two
NAOMI’S WEARING MY SWEATSHIRT AGAIN, AND the cuffs are folded over but still cover her hands. She grumbles in the back of her throat. “I can’t believe you did this without me.”
“It was impulsive. Barely intentional.”
“You couldn’t have waited?”
I wiggle my shoulders. “No, I couldn’t.”
“You’re like an addict.”
“Hush. This isn’t about you. Look, I have to stop doing this. For real. It’s bothering Jesse.”
“What’s up with Jesse?”
“I don’t even know.” I lead her down the south hallway. “Ever since his reaction he’s been all weird and combative. He never used to argue with me, and now it’s like . . . I don’t know.” My eyes feel like they’re coated in sandpaper.
She crosses her arms. “I’ll talk to him.”
“He’s not your responsibility.” We arrive outside the AP Bio classroom just as the kids start pouring out. I watch them, one by one, each of them an Ivy League–bound robot. Except my girl.
“He listens to me,” Naomi says. “What the hell are we doing here, anyway?”
Charlotte emerges, her hair pinned up in a Spanish orchid.
My girl who knows real life like it’s one of her songs.
Naomi fixes her baseball cap. “Oh.”
I do my best to wrap up our conversation before Charlotte gets to me. “Just leave Jess alone. He’s got enough on his plate. Figuratively.”
“Fuck you.”
I leave her to be pissed off and go bear-hug Charlotte. She giggles inside my arms, like a chorus of tiny violins.
“You smell fantastic,” she says.
“Hey, backatcha.”
I hear the smattering of combat boots and unbury my face from Charlotte’s curls. Naomi is stomping away, making as much noise as she can.
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