Break

by Hannah Moskowitz

  I wonder what Jesse would say. I wonder what Charlotte would say.

  I wonder if she’d realize, finally, that some people are crazier than me.

  I can’t believe they took my cell phone.

  Charlotte. God, I need her so badly it’s hurting in the back of my head and there’s got to be a way I’ve got to have another chance with her there’s got to be a way I can get out of here and—

  A voice says, “Jonah?”

  I snap my eyes open, but it’s just the intercom.

  “This is Nurse Bluser, Jonah. I’ve been assigned to your case.”

  I say, “Hi.”

  “You ready to admit what you’ve done, Jonah?”

  “What?”

  “What did you do to Leah and Mackenzie?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  My teeth are chattering, so I put my shirt on and crawl into the bed. The mattress is ridged and smells like urine.

  She keeps talking, and I cover my ears up tight. I toss back and forward like I really think I can sleep. I sing, badly, to a Weezer song.

  I have no clue how much time passes between the brutal singing and when I hear a key in the lock of my prison.

  But I sit straight up, and the sweaty sheets fall right off my shoulders.

  It’s Mackenzie. She’s out of her volunteer polo and is wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Her wrist’s in a splint. She probably went to one of those corporate hospitals that can’t figure out how to set and cast on the same day.

  She holds her fingers to her lips and then edges the door shut. She takes a screwdriver out of her pocket and carefully disconnects the intercom. It lifts off the wall and hangs from a bunch of wires, and she snips them all with a pair of nail scissors.

  “We don’t have much time,” she says.

  “Hi,” I say, and then I can’t stop saying it. “Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.”

  She comes to my bed and puts her hand all over my forehead and the back of my neck.

  “Is your brother okay?” she says.

  “I’ve got to find out, yeah?” My heart is screaming inside my chest.

  “Uh-huh. God, you’re sweaty.”

  “Mackenzie, Mackenzie. You’re letting me out, right?”

  She leans very close to me. “There are stairs down the hall. Code for the lock. It’s Four-four-two-five. Run down the stairs, three flights, and you’ll get to a back door. Don’t stop running. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  I head toward the door, and she says, “Wait.” I turn around and she hugs me.

  She cuts my bracelet off and says, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  She just smiles, and my stomach churns.

  “No,” I say. “It was an accident. This isn’t my fault.” I bend over and cough, and she puts her hand on my back. “None of this is my fault,” I insist. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  She opens the door, and I run down the hall. My breath rags and threatens to make me cough again. I no longer give a shit about my broken toes. Any second I’m sure I’m going to hear sirens. . . . Any second they’re going to drag me back. . . . They’re going to tie me up. . . .

  4425.

  The door won’t open.

  Oh, God. I’ve been set up.

  She’s working for them. Her wrist isn’t really broken. It’s all an act and I’m screwed I’m screwed I’m fucking screwed.

  4425442544254425

  The latch gives.

  Never mind.

  I almost hit myself with the door, I’m pulling so hard.

  Mackenzie is somewhere and I hear her voice. “Run, Jonah!” and I don’t know why she had to say my name. I don’t know why everyone has to say my name.

  I stop halfway down the stairs so I can breathe. The stairs are dark and wet and awful, and I keep expecting light at the end.

  But it’s night.

  I am Jonah. I spent three days in dark hell and now I’m out. Sputtering and alive.

  I break through the bottom door, out of the home, into Halloween.

  forty

  I WADE THROUGH MUSHY WEEDS FOR TEN MINUTES before I reach the bus stop. I pant and lean against the cubicle and wait for the bus with a witch and some kind of animal-slut.

  When I climb aboard, the bus driver nods. “Cool costume.”

  Since when is a cast a costume? I guess the whole sweaty/lurchy thing helps, though.

  I sit down and try not to look at the freaky people who ride the bus on Halloween. Before, bus passengers always looked narcoleptic. Now they’re so antsy I’d believe they’re all on speed, and I have a hard time convincing myself that they’re not psych-ward spies, hiding cameras and tape recorders behind the masks and provocative costumes.

  I swallow and brush dirt off my jeans. Concentrate.

  Charlotte lives right by the school.

  Right by the bus stop.

  It’s not hard.

  Really, it’s my best option. It’s not as if I can go home. Please. When the police are looking for you, the last place you can go is home. I assume it’s the same for psychopathic psychologists.

  You can never go home.

  You’re a mental health outlaw.

  My broken hand grinds with every speed bump.

  This might not be the worst thing. I’ll miss Jess, and Will, but they’ll do better without me. Charlotte and I could run away together. After I convince her I’m not crazy.

  We could have kids and name them Jesse and Naomi.

  I get off the bus and walk across the parking lot to school. A few freshmen in stupid Scream masks are egging the science lab. They startle when they see me.

  “Don’t throw eggs, you idiots,” I say.

  They bristle. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  “I’m the fucking police. Some people are allergic to eggs, assholes. Clean this up.”

  One kid actually does. What a fucking loser.

  The deeper I get into the residential areas, the crazier the crowds get. I pass Frankensteins and ballerinas and zombies. I pass people much, much too old to be dressed up. More teenagers who use Halloween as an excuse to get naked.

  The cold air is like my mother’s hand on my cheek when I’m sick. I stumble on my toes and scrape my palm when I catch myself. My broken hand explodes like fireworks.

  Get up.

  No one heads toward Charlotte’s neighborhood except these two teenagers, a pirate and a fairy. I watch them from a few feet behind. She has a clay pumpkin full of candy dangling from one tiny pink hand, and holds his white glove with the other.

  They don’t know I’m following them, and that makes me happy and sad all in the pit of my stomach.

  Then they stop and kiss under a streetlight, and my knees almost fall off.

  The tiny little fairy, with the purple dress and eyeliner and delicate tights—it’s baseball-cap-hardass Naomi.

  And the pirate.

  The pirate with Naomi’s tongue in his mouth.

  It’s Jesse.

  forty-one

  MY STOMACH’S ABOUT TO COME OUT MY NOSE.

  “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 gi
rls!”

  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 fucking 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 fucking brother’s cheekbone! What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “He called me—”

  “Yeah, so yell at him! Hate him! Don’t fucking 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 fuck 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 fucking 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 fucking 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.”

  “Jonah, what is going on?”

  I say, “I did it for you.”

  His voice finds me through the quilt with intense clarity. “No! This isn’t about me! Stop pretending your whole life is about me!”

  I think I’m crying but I can’t tell.

  It’s so humid and sticky under these sheets. I throw them all off.

  “I’ve got to go,” he says.

  “Where are you going?”

  He’s pacing back and forth, his hands in his hair. “I’ve got to try to make things okay with Naomi, man!”

  Will picks up his screaming.

  “She hit me!”

  “Jonah.”

  “I’m sick!”

  “Shhh.” He stops pacing and heads for the crib.

  “Don’t hold him,” I say.

  “SHUT UP! Stop telling me not to hold him! It’s not like you’re going to help him if I don’t! You talk all this shit about family and then you . . .”

  “What are you—”

  He covers his ears with his palms. “God, man, I can’t do this right now, all right? Having you around when I’m sick is not worth you making me think I’m sick when I’m not, okay? I want to be a fucking human, and I can’t keep arguing the same fucking things with you, Jonah! You have a fuckload more family members you could worry about, and this is not my life!” He tightens his hands. “This can’t be my life.”

  “I’m trying to keep you alive, you asshole!”

  Jesse, stop covering your ears. Jesse, listen to me.

  I start to recoil under the quilt but Jess yanks me back into the room, back into life. One of his muscular hands grabs the front of my neck and pushes back on my throat. I am choking on my own vocal cords.

  It is a relief not to breathe.

  “This needs to stop,” he says. He bites down on his tongue.

  My eyes water.

  “I am not going—” he stops and swallows. “I am not going to die. I have shit to take care of and you stop making me think I’m going to die.”

  Will’s room spins and the baby is upside down. I latch around Jesse’s wrist and try to pull him off me, but he won’t budge. I try to cough and the pressure makes my broken face explode.

  Jesse’s going to kill me.

  “Stop telling me I’m going to die,” he says.

  I blink and he releases me, returns to his pacing. I rub my chest and cough without fanfare. My face aches.

  When I’ve stored some breath, I say, “Stay here. We can talk about this.”

  “No! Jesus, I can’t talk about this anymore, okay? I’ve got, like, life. And you need to back off. Okay.” He stops and faces me. “Okay. You’re sick. So you stay here. And you listen to the fucking baby cry, okay?”

  “Jess—”

  “Maybe you’ll try to help him! Who the fuck knows?”

  “I am trying!” I close my eyes against the fuzziness and snap my hands over my head. “I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying.”

  But Jesse’s gone.

  He left me here.

  I curl up and hum, but none of it helps. I hug my quilt and my chair and I try to be happy that I’m home, but I know any second I’m going to hear a sort of dog-whistle siren that only crazy people can hear, and the men in white coats will come and take me away.

  And Jesse’s gone, and now I have nowhere to go but Charlotte’s.

  And I can’t walk that far.

  In fact, about two minutes later I throw up on the floor.

  I’ve thrown up a few times before, but it never hurt like this. With the wires in my jaw, I’m very nearly choking.

  “Ohhh my God,” I groan.

  I consider calling Jesse. He’s thrown up enough times that it doesn’t both
er him anymore.

  Or I could call Mom and Dad.

  But I don’t want them.

  I just want the girl with the white teeth and the flowers in her hair. Is that so much to ask? Is it so incre-dibly more than I deserve?

  Yes.

  Will’s screams tumble into my ears. The smell of my vomit burns the inside of my nostrils like my brain is being cauterized.

  A smell-lobotomy.

  Jonah, think.

  Fever + broken bones = infection.

  What’s that word?

  Oh. Right. Osteomyelitis.

  Symptoms: pain and swelling at the infection site.

  I look at my fucking broken hand.

  Fever. Nausea.

  Treatment:

  IV antibiotics.

  Amputation.

  Death.

  So this is it. This is a moment. This is an I-have- nothing-to-lose moment.

  I stand up and my knees click with my shaking.

  “Wait,” I say. “Wait.” I go to the crib and look down at Will, look at his purple baby face.

  “You can come with me, if you want,” I say.

  He cries. I’ll take that to mean yes.

  “We’re a family, right?” I talk to him all the way out of the house. “Come on, Will. It’s cold. You need a coat, okay?” I pull his purple coat over his arms. “I have a fever, so I’m all right, but you need a coat. Stay warm, okay, Will?”

  I take the cordless phone. “I need to call Charlotte,” I tell him as I shut the front door behind us. “Oh, look. It’s raining.”

  I dial her number as Will and I walk down the street. The raindrops are so heavy and thick like hail, or God-spit.

  A girl’s voice says, “Hello?”

  “Charlotte?”

  “No. This is Ellie. Her sister.”

  Oh. Mini-Charlotte. I guess she does have a name after all.

  Ellie’s voice reminds me of Charlotte’s, and it’s like a milkshake on my sore throat.

  “Is Charlotte there?”

  “Uh-uh. She’s at a party. Who is this?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Oh. Hi, Jonah.”

  “Hi.”

  She’s quiet and I hear her breathe. She’s got these loud inhales like Jesse, and I wonder if she has asthma.

  “How are you doing?” she says.

  I shift Will against my chest. He’s getting wet. I should have brought his hat. I shouldn’t have taken him out. He’s supposed to stay in the house, my parents say. What if he gets sick?