Break by Hannah Moskowitz Page A

moonlight.
    “Shut up.”
    She bristles. “You already broke the hand today. And I’d think you’d want to be at home with Jesse.”
    “It’s the wrong hand. And Jesse’s asleep.”
    Of course he’s asleep. It’s four o’clock in the freaking morning.
    Naomi shrugs and hoists her camera onto her shoulder. “Hell, who am I to stop you?”
    Nobody. Nobody’s anyone to stop me. I swipe my cast under my nose. “Walk me through it.”
    “We’ve got to get inside, first, Evel Knievel.” She leans against the polished SPRING MANOR COUNTRY CLUB sign and cleans the wire cutters on her jeans. “Plan is, I cut any locks, you crash like a true Olympian, and we see how fast we can get in and out.”
    I stretch my arms behind my head and let my ribs pull, making sure everything’s loose. “You sure the pool’s empty?”
    “Trust me, Jonah, I’ve got the janitor’s daughter knowledge. Everyone drains their pools over the winter.”
    “Thank God for your blue-collar background.”
    “I know, right?”
    An owl croons nearby—they’re common here, but the sound’s enough to make me prick with the feeling we’re being watched.
    The
who
sounds almost accusatory.
    I taste cement in my mouth and I have to close my eyes and swallow a few times before it will go away. It’s just nerves. It’s not like it means anything.
    I need to do this one, and I know it in all of my unbroken bones. I need to get stronger. I need to get stronger. This is the way. Face-planting into this empty pool will be my salvation. It has to be.
    It’s even darker when I open my eyes.
    “Nom,” I say.
    She’s hard at work, breaking through the lock on the gate. “Almost got it.”
    “It’s cold as hell out here.”
    She’s wearing a black coat belted around her invisible waist. “Gloves in my pocket. You can grab one for your good hand.”
    I reach into her pocket and pull on a glove. I’m so sweaty that my nose instantly fills with the smell of wet wool.
    She purses her lips and breaks through the lock. “There.” She fixes her baseball cap and shoves her hands under her armpits. “Off we go.”
    We trudge through the wet grass until we come to the biggest pool. It’s deepest in the middle and shallow on the sides, like a gigantic bowl set into the ground. Naomi and I stand at the edge, staring in.
    “Fourteen feet in the middle,” she says.
    I nod. It looks deeper without water.
    She boots up her camera. “That’ll be quite the smack.”
    “I know.”
    She looks at me. “You really want to do this?”
    I chew the inside of my lip. I could go home and listen to the baby scream, listen to Jesse’s cough rattle all the shit in his chest, listen to Mom and Dad trade accusations. Or I could pitch myself off the edge of an empty swimming pool.
    It’s not a hard choice. “I want to do this.”
    “Okay.” Her camera rings. “Whenever you’re ready, partner.”
    She fades into the black and I stand by the border of the pool, planting my feet and swinging my arms like a swimmer on a diving board. The wind spikes the hair on the back of my neck.
    I don’t even know what bones I’m trying to break.
    I guess whatever happens, happens.
    The hard part is actually jumping. There’s this battle between the brain and the body—I never know if I’m really going to go until the last minute. My brain has to defeat my will to live, so, in a way, it really is an accident. Every crash is a biological accident, if not a physical one.
    I always preferred biology to physics, anyway.
    I try to go, but my knees lock. All right. I say, “Count me off, Nom, okay?”
    She’s somewhere to my right, where she can get a good angle. “Okay. On three?”
    I nod. The helmet strap digs into my chin.
    “One. Two.”
    I don’t hear her say three because I’m already falling.
    The air whooshes under my helmet, into my ears, and there it is—exhilaration.
    I hit the bottom. The first pain is just the usual dull ache, the impact slap of my body