“Yeah.” He sighs as if this thought has crossed his mind excruciatingly often. “I know.”
That’s it for Jonah, I think. I’ve sucked the energy right out of him—sapped his remaining ability to put up a cheerful front. If you want to push someone away, I strongly recommend rambling about death and theology. That oughta do it.
I watch the waves swell and break down the coastline, swell and break. My chest threatens to crack on the left side.
The heart is such a strange little beast—a lump of thick muscle with pipes sticking out. Sometimes I think my heart is made of rubber, and the world stretches it and twists so that it writhes in my chest and aches. This is why I have spent most of my time on this planet here but hurting. Sometimes I think a heart of porcelain would be easier. Let it drop out of my rib cage and break on the floor, no heartbeat, the end. Instead, I get a bouncy heart that bleeds when the world claws at it but keeps beating through the pain.
Near us, Sylvia sniffs the wildflowers. I scoot over to where Jonah’s sitting and position myself on his lap. I climb right in like a little kid, and he puts his arms around me, and I press my face into his warm neck. No matter what heaven you believe in, your time on this earth will end. What I’m saying is that you should listen—really listen—to the slosh of the waves and the distant call of Pacific birds. You should feel a boy’s pulse against your cheek; you should fill your lungs with ocean air. While you can, I mean. You should do these things while you still can.
“Hey, Jonah,” I whisper. “Can you sneak over and sleep in my room tonight?”
He thinks for a moment. “Yeah. Just tell Sylvia not to sound the alarm.”
That night, I let him in after my mom has closed her bedroom door, and we lie beneath tangled-up sheets. Sylvia’s fluffy body rises and falls at the end of the bed, where she is curled up like a powdered-sugar doughnut. Jonah and I are restless as we drift off—on a bumpy road to a peaceful destination. We curl together like heat rising from a teacup—swirls and arcs moving over each other, under each other, fluid and never still.
My head is against his shoulder, so I feel it when his breathing slows, and his lips barely part like a sleeping child.
“Jonah,” I whisper, just to check.
“It’s okay,” he says, eyes closed. He’s not even awake. “It’s okay.”
He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it’s his mouth’s default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider—wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it must take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.
In slumber, his arm stays wrapped around me, encasing me for safekeeping. He would protect me even in his unconscious state, as we lie beneath my ceiling’s half-painted sky.
This thought is enough to swell my heart—to swell, and to break.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jonah
I return home from the lunch shift to find Felix sitting at the kitchen table with my mom. They’re chatting over coffee in the easy way of old friends. My mom is wearing jeans and a button-down.
So apparently I’ve walked through a portal to the past. Like, almost eight months ago when I had a mom who showered and walked among the living.
Two months ago, I would have thought, This is a good step. But she’s psyched me out too many times. I know she’s putting on a show for Felix. It’s a show she can’t bother to perform for us, not even for one day.
“Hey, pal,” she says, sensing me in the doorway.
“Hey.” A single syllable from me could disturb the balance. That’s what it feels like, anyway. There’s this movie Leah loves. In it, the sorceress makes herself look like a princess. Except when she looks in the mirror, her true self reflects back. If I held up one of the stainless steel pots near my mom, she’d reflect back in pajamas with swollen eyes.
“I took my daughter’s good advice, Maní,” Felix says, gesturing at the papers laid out across the table. “Called your mama this morning for help with the books.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask. Even though I know he wouldn’t tell me anyway.
“It will be,” my mom says. “We’re going to head down to the restaurant and go through some papers there. Can you stay with the littles? Silas and Naomi should be home from work in an hour or two to take over for you.”
I narrow my eyes. I resent her telling me this like I don’t know. She’s not the captain around here, but she’s grabbing the wheel for Felix’s benefit. “Sure.”
Felix gathers up the papers, and my mom pecks me on the cheek as they pass me. I steel my body to resist jerking away. I don’t want her to pretend to get better. I want her to actually get better.