Break

  Charlotte leans over and whispers in my ear. “My sister thinks he’s cute.”

  “That’s adorable. We’ll have to do something about that.”

  Naomi stands on her tiptoes to be seen. “As precious as this is, looks like I’m going to have to bail before I vomit.”

  Jess hops off Naomi’s car and walks with her toward the building. “You’re both going to be late,” he calls to Charlotte and me.

  I look at Charlotte and shrug one shoulder. “You want to be late?”

  She rolls her eyes at me and hurries to catch up to Jesse and Naomi. I smile and follow her.

  eight

  “WHAT ABOUT YOUR NECK?” NAOMI SAYS, FLIPPING through her Google printouts.

  I spin my combination. “I know. The plan still has a few kinks to work out.”

  “And skull?”

  “Okay. So yeah, there are a couple I’m not real anxious to break.” I open my locker and stuff eight pounds of physics homework into my backpack. My binder explodes and papers pour to the ground. “Shit. You want to help with this, Nom?”

  She fixes her cap and doesn’t bend down. “Look. I’m fine with taking some film of you fracturing a few fingers and toes, all right? Not so anxious to watch my best friend die for a prank.”

  Great. For Naomi it’s a prank. For Jess it’s an attention ploy. They really know how to personalize my actions. For themselves.

  Marten Conway stops and touches my shoulder. “Jesus Christ, McNab. What the hell happened to you?”

  I scoop the papers up in my good hand. “Tripped off Mount Everest.”

  “Yeah, clearly. You’re just a little mess nowadays, aren’t you?”

  “I’m clumsy.” I smile politely, hoping this will be enough to eschew him. I’ve got nothing against Marten, but this whole tragic hero thing can get tiring. Especially when it comes from everyone you know. All day.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” I tell Naomi as Marten saunters off, shaking his head at my state. “Can you drive me?”

  She smiles and looks over my shoulder. “Ask your girlfriend.”

  I know who it is without turning around. I hear the clack of her red flats, and my jaw hurts from trying not to smile.

  But ritual is ritual. I raise my voice and say, “Charlotte is not my girlfriend.”

  “That is so mean.” Charlotte elbows me in the back. “I would never say you weren’t my girlfriend.”

  I turn around. “Hello, not-girlfriend.”

  “Hey, not-boyfriend. Need help?” She scoops my papers off the ground. What an angel.

  “Thanks, babe.”

  She hands me a pile of shit and I cram it in my backpack. I turn to Naomi. “I still need that ride.”

  “Get Jesse.”

  “He’s in practice until three thirty. And I’ve got a shift at three.”

  “Call your mom.”

  “Busy with Will.”

  “Then ask your girlfriend.”

  I shrug my shoulders to Charlotte, wearing my hopeful face.

  She smiles and tips her ponytail over her shoulder. “Yeah, I can take you. Meetcha at my car?”

  “Okay.”

  Charlotte walks away, and I laugh at Naomi. “You thought she’d say no.”

  “Fuck yeah, I did. Watch, she’s going to come in pregnant tomorrow. And you’re gonna be sweaty, and saying, ‘Oh, man,’ over and over again.”

  “Relax, you. It’s a ride home, not a naked romp. You’re like a fucking Desperate Housewife sometimes.”

  She scrunches her mousy little face. “That ‘fucking’ was so out of place.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got fucking-rollover minutes. I’m full to burst, here. I can’t cuss at home, and I can’t cuss in front of Charlotte.”

  “Sure. You won’t cuss in front of her, but you’ll bone her till she bleeds.”

  “She’s a virgin. They bleed, Nom. Not that you’d know.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “We don’t bone.”

  “You think about it.”

  “Of course I think about it.” I blow air inside my wrist cast to quell an itch. “If I didn’t think about it, I’d need to be taken in for hormone testing.”

  “You disgust me,” she says, and stomps away in those ugly-ass combat boots.

  My Jesse-sense is tingling. Half the time it’s bullshit—okay, more than half the time—but I still don’t like to take chances. I take out my cell phone and hit 2 to speed dial him.

  He doesn’t answer. I call back and he gets it on the second ring. “Hello?”

  He’s out of breath, and his voice is muffled through half his hockey gear.

  “What up, brother?” I say.

  “I’m in practice, Jo.”

  “Oh, right.” And I hang up. He’s fine.

  Charlotte leans against her car. The iris she’s stuck into the base of her ponytail droops a little to the side.

  Every day, she puts a fresh real flower in her hair. She wears her beauty like I wear my casts.

  “Pop in,” she says, sliding into the driver’s seat.

  I sit down beside her and prop my backpack on my lap. Some of the Tweety Bird trinkets and sheets of balled-up paper shower down from her dashboard onto me, but I don’t mind. “Thanks for this, babe.”

  “No problem. Consider it thanks for not actually destroying my car this morning.”

  I smile. “That was hilarious.”

  “Hilariously scary. I thought I’d been hit by a meteor.” She starts the car. “Guess you can’t drive with the cast, yeah?”

  “Well, I can. I just can’t steer so well.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I can drive, you know. On sidewalks and over pedestrians and stuff.”

  She giggles, her dark pink lips drawing together over her teeth. We’ve bantered like this since sophomore year and she still always breaks.

  But every time she holds out for longer and longer.

  We didn’t start bantering exclusively until this September.

  “So,” she says, and brushes a curl behind her ear. “So what really happened?”

  “Oh, you mean—” I gesture over my wrecked body.

  “Yeah.”

  “Skateboard. Trying out this tricky jump with Naomi and—bam.”

  Technically, none of this is a lie.

  “Ouch.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How many bones have you broken now?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  Ha, ha.

  “It’s got to be, like, ten,” she says.

  Puh.

  “Man.” She flicks her eyes to me behind her fancy glasses. “You and your brother are just little medical disasters, aren’t you?” She frowns. “Or was that a faux pas?”

  I smile to show her it’s okay and sit back in the car seat. “Nah. He’s way more disastrous than I am.”

  “You think?”

  “But, I mean . . . he’s been okay. He hasn’t had an ER visit this whole month.”

  “And you’re going on how long?”

  “Okay, like twenty hours. Point taken. But it’s not the same.”

  “My sister thinks he’s amazing.” Charlotte glides into the left lane.

  “You know his middle name’s James,” I say.

  “Seriously?”

  “Uh-huh. Jesse James McNab.”

  “That’s wicked.”

  “Yeah. My parents used to like outlaws. Now they’re just middle Americans,” I stretch. “How old’s your sister?”

  “Fourteen. Freshman.”

  “Jess is sixteen.”

  “I know. But he’s . . . relatively innocent, isn’t he?”

  Well, sure. He can’t exactly go mouth-to-mouth. At least not with girls who eat. I should set him up with a nice anorexic.

  “She’d take care of him,” Charlotte says.

  “I know she would. I’m just not sure if what he really needs is another set of hands trying to take care of him. He gets annoyed enough with me sometimes, and
he needs me.”

  “She likes him, Jonah.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to him.”

  “So,” she says. “My choral director gave me this huge solo at our next concert.” We’re getting close to work, now. Damn.

  I smile at her. “That’s awesome.”

  “Right, right, yeah. But it’s the alto solo. He gave me the alto solo. And I’m a soprano.”

  “Oh.” Yeah, I’m not following this at all, but God I could watch Charlotte complain for hours.

  She says, “So now I’m at this weird impasse. ‘Cause if I remind him, Hey, I’ve been a soprano since I was in diapers, I lose the solo, right?”

  “Oh, no, don’t do that.” Possibly the only thing better than listening to Charlotte complain is listening to her sing. And also listening to those little moaning noises she makes when we kiss, like she’s eating chocolate cake. . . .

  Oh, she’s still talking. “. . . keep it, I’ll probably sound awful trying to sing in a vocal range I usually don’t touch with a ten-foot pole.”

  “I really don’t think you sounding awful is within the realm of possibility.”

  “These are ill-timed compliments, Jonah.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes! You are supposed to be helping me plot my next move, not making me blush. Tsk tsk.”

  “You’re not blushing.”

  She is smiling, though. “Clearly I stay on task better than you do.” She pulls up to the curb. “What time are you off? We can continue our brainstorming. I’m thinking poisoning my choir director might be the best solution?”

  “Don’t get off until seven, sadly.”

  “Do you need a ride home?”

  “Nah. Jesse’ll pick me up.”

  She tilts her head to the side. “So can you kiss me with your jaw like that?”

  I do the best I can.

  The door jangles as I nudge it open. Max and Antonia are behind the counters, feet on the sensors that make sure no one runs away with the DVDs. Antonia tosses gummi worms into the air and catches them in her mouth three at a time. No one eats gummi worms like Antonia.

  “Hey.”

  They turn around and freeze. “Holy mackerel,” Max says. “What tree did you fall out of?”

  Antonia coughs and scoots her ass off her knee-length blond hair. “Ugly tree, clearly.”

  I sign in. “Thanks, Toni.”

  “Shit, give him some java, Max. He’s going to need it. Seriously, what happened?”

  I catch the bag of coffee beans Max hurls over. “Skateboard accident. I’m fine.”

  “What’d you break?”

  “Two ribs, wrist, jaw.” I take out two coffee beans and swallow them like pills. The bitterness burns the hardware in my mouth.

  Antonia decapitates a gummi worm. “You break more bones than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That’s not a compliment, Jonah.”

  That’s what you think.

  “How long are you in the cast?” Max asks.

  “Probably, like, three weeks. So, enough. What have you guys been up to?”

  Max clears his throat and Antonia straightens her little string vest.

  “Oh.” I clear my throat. “Never mind.”

  No one comes to the store this early, so Antonia and Max use it as a personal kissing booth when I’m not around. It would be irritating if they both weren’t so damn cute. They’re like Martians.

  “Come on.” Antonia dives into the candy display, her pale lower legs flailing about like fish from her denim skirt. “I was just about to dig into the malted milk balls.”

  I step behind the counter and plop down beside the cash register. “So you guys remember Charlotte?”

  Max and Antonia go to this hippie private school down the street. All they know of real life is what I tell them. They’re my science experiment.

  Antonia’s eyes light up. “She’s the one with the puff-paint flowers on her license plate,” she chimes.

  “Right.”

  Max gestures big boobs with his hands. Antonia throws a malt ball at him.

  “So all’s not right in wonderland?” Antonia licks chocolate off her fingers.

  “It’s not that. She’s got this little sister she wants to set up with Jesse.”

  Max looks up from the late returns. “Isn’t Jesse, like, dying of AIDS?”

  Antonia’s mouth drops open. “Max!”

  “He does not have AIDS,” I say.

  Max hands Fight Club to Antonia. “Well, he’s dying of something, isn’t he?”

  “Food allergies,” I say. “And he’s not dying. But if he dates Charlotte’s little sister, isn’t that practically incest?”

  Antonia says, “I thought you and Charlotte weren’t dating.”

  “We’re not. Hush.”

  “Then it’s not incest.” Max stamps two movies. “It’s merely two brothers enjoying the company of two girls who happen to be related.”

  “Yeah, but . . . enjoying to what extent?”

  “Ew.” Antonia picks up a few movies and shoves them under her arm. “Come on. I’m bored of dissecting Jonah’s love life.”

  “Not-love life,” I correct.

  She rolls her head around. “Whatever. I’m going to the back. Let’s go have a screening.” She grabs Max’s hand. “Coming, Jonah?”

  I shake my head. “I’ll watch the register.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. Who knows. Someone might come.”

  I spend almost an hour at the register trying not to think about Jesse and Mini-Charlotte and trying not to listen to Antonia and Max make slurping noises. Eventually, customers start to trickle in, and I go through the motions.

  See, the whole job is fucking worthless. I come here for a few hours after school a few days a week and slog through movie advice and cash-register Olympics like I actually know anything. At least it gets me away from my family for a little while. But I wish I were with Charlotte.

  At about four thirty, I point a girl toward the docu-mentaries and rescue my ringing phone from my pocket.

  “Can you come home?” Jesse says. “There’s milk everywhere and I’m throwing up.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I’ve thrown up four times in the past, like, twenty minutes. Can you get home?”

  “Where the hell is Mom?”

  “Took Will to the doctor. Jonah, seriously. I’m sitting outside so I don’t have to smell it, and it’s fucking cold.”

  “Did you take Benadryl?”

  “Yeah. It stayed down for a good thirty seconds.”

  This is as close as Jesse ever gets to angry, and I think he’s pissed-off more seriously than he’s sick. That’s easier to deal with, at least, though I still feel bad for the kid. “I can get out of the shift if you need me,” I say, “but do you think you could pick me up? I don’t have a ride out of here.”

  He makes exasperated-disbelieving noises.

  I say, “It’d probably do you good to get away from the house.”

  He coughs and says, “I’m going to throw up again.”

  “All right,” I relent worthlessly, as his footsteps rush away from the phone. “I’ll get home.”

  I finish checking out the last customer and venture into the back for Max and Antonia. They scoot away from each other as soon as I open the door, like they’re afraid their cuddling will bruise my eyes.

  I say, “So you know my brother who’s dying of AIDS?”

  Max cleans his glasses on his shirt. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s having, like, an AIDS attack. So I need to get home.”

  He looks at me critically. “Everything okay?”

  “He’ll be fine. But he’s home alone and I need to get to him. So—”

  He waves his hand. “Take the shift off. Antonia and I can handle.”

  “That’s not it. I sort of need a ride.”

  He chews his cheek, studying me, then turns to Antonia and speaks t
o her in some sort of romantic hippie language. She nods, pulls her hair over her shoulder, and traipses out to the front desk.

  “I’ll drive you home,” Max says, shoving his arms through the sleeves of his denim jacket.

  “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”

  He shrugs.

  Max’s van has a bench seat at the front and endless empty space in the back. I climb in and sling my backpack onto the dirty floor. He starts the engine. His feet barely reach the pedals. I push back against the headrest like I’m on one of those carnival rides and the floor’s about to drop out. I don’t know how to tell him to drive faster without sounding like a nervous wreck. So I just wait until he gets to my house, then smile and thank him and shake his hand.

  “Jesse?”

  He’s throwing up. I hear it through the bathroom door. My stomach squeezes, but it’s hard to be too squeamish when you’ve got a brother who throws up as much as he does.

  I lean against the door. “How you feeling?”

  He runs the tap, probably to drown out the noise.

  I say, “How is there anything left in your stomach?”

  He shouts, “Guess I’ve been saving up!”

  “I’m going to clean.”

  He retches.

  “You okay? You didn’t touch any of it, did you?”

  “If I touched it, I wouldn’t be breathing.”

  Good point. The boy’s unbelievably allergic to milk. It’s dramatic even for him.

  The kitchen is a wreck. The refrigerator’s propped open—great—and one of Will’s overturned bottles drips onto the floor. There’s a saucepan full of milk on a burner that’s still hot.

  “Solved the mystery,” I yell to Jesse. “There’s milk on the stove in here.”

  He steps out of the bathroom, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “Great.” He’s covered in pink nickel-size spots—calamine lotion over the hives.

  I make my responsible older-brother face. “Go into the living room and lie down, all right? I’ll clean up in here.”

  I take the pan off the stove and rinse it in the sink, watching all the milk run down the drain. I put the bottle in the refrigerator, close the refrigerator, and give the countertops and floor a good scrub. Wash my hands. Open all the windows. The October wind stings the back of my throat.