House Rules: A Novel Read online

  Because I don’t know how to say this to her—and I’m sure she wouldn’t want to hear it, anyway—I reach for the remote control on her nightstand and turn on the TV that’s sitting on the dresser across the room. The news is on, the weatherman predicting a storm sometime next week. “Thanks, Norm,” the anchorwoman says. “Breaking news in the case of the murder of Jessica Ogilvy … Police have arrested eighteen-year-old Jacob Hunt of Townsend, Vermont, in connection with the crime.”

  Beside me, my mother freezes. Jacob’s school photo fills the screen. In it, he is wearing a striped blue shirt and, as usual, not staring at the camera. “Jacob is a senior at Townsend Regional High School and was tutored by the victim.”

  Holy shit.

  “We’ll have more on this story as it develops,” the anchor promises.

  My mother lifts the remote control. I figure she is going to turn off the television, but instead, she hurls it at the screen. The remote breaks apart, and the TV screen cracks. She rolls onto her side.

  “I’ll get the broom,” I say.

  In the middle of the night, I hear noises in the kitchen. I creep downstairs to find my mother, rummaging through a drawer to find the phone book. Her hair is loose, her feet are bare, and there’s a toothpaste stain on her shirt. “Why isn’t it listed under ‘Government,’” she mutters.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I have to call the jail,” she says. “He doesn’t like it when it’s dark. I could bring him a night-light. I want them to know that I can bring him a night-light, if that helps.”

  “Mom,” I say.

  She picks up the telephone.

  “Mom … you need to go to bed.”

  “No,” she corrects. “I need to call the jail—”

  “It’s three in the morning. They’re asleep.” I look at her. “Jacob’s asleep.”

  She turns her face to mine. “Do you really think so?”

  “Yeah,” I say, but the word has to squeeze itself out around the knot in my throat. “Yeah, I do.”

  Here are the things I am afraid of:

  That the subject Jacob loves the most has stopped being an interest and has started to become an obsession.

  That this is why he’s in jail in the first place.

  That when he was last with Jess, something made him feel scared, or cornered, which is what makes him snap.

  That you can love someone and hate him at the same time.

  That age has nothing to do with who is the older brother.

  If you think having a brother who’s got Asperger’s makes me a pariah, imagine having one who’s in jail. The next day I am in school—yes, more on that later—and everywhere I go, I hear the whispers.

  I heard he cut off her finger with a knife and kept it.

  I heard he hit her with a baseball bat.

  I always thought he was creepy.

  The reason I’m taking up space in my classes today—and believe me, that’s all I’m doing, since my brain is too busy blocking the gossip I overhear—is that my mother thought it was the best plan. “I have to go to the jail,” she said, which I had figured would happen. “You can’t stay home for two weeks. You have to go back sometime.”

  I knew she was right, but didn’t she also realize that people were going to ask about Jacob? Make assumptions? And not just the kids. Teachers would come up to me full of fake sympathy when what they really wanted was some dirt they could take back to the teachers’ lounge. The whole thing made me feel sick to my stomach.

  “What am I supposed to say if someone asks?”

  My mother hesitated. “Tell them your brother’s attorney said you can’t talk about it.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I took a deep breath. I was going to come clean, to tell her about breaking into Jess’s house. “Mom, I have to talk to you about something …”

  “Can I take a rain check?” she said. “I want to be there when the doors open at nine. There’s plenty of cereal for breakfast, and you can take the bus.”

  Now, I’m sitting in biology next to Elise Howath, who is a pretty good lab partner even if she’s a girl, when she slips a note to me.

  I’m really sorry to hear about your brother.

  I want to thank her, for being nice. For being the first person to give a shit about Jacob instead of crucifying him like the media and the stupid court already have for what he’s done.

  What he’s done.

  I grab my backpack and run out of class, even though Mr. Jennison is still yammering away, and he doesn’t even comment (which tells me, more than anything, that this is not my life but a parallel universe). I keep walking down the hall without a hall pass, and no one stops me. Not when I cruise past the principal’s office and the guidance department. Not when I bust through the double doors near the gym into the blinding light of afternoon and start walking.

  Apparently in the public schools, if you have a relative arrested for murder, the administration and teachers pretend you are invisible.

  Which, to be honest, isn’t really all that different from the way I was treated before.

  I wish I had my skateboard with me. Then I could move faster, maybe outdistance the facts that keep circling in my head:

  I saw Jess Ogilvy alive and well. Shortly after that, Jacob went to her house.

  Now she’s dead.

  I’ve seen my brother put a chair through a wall and smash a window with his hand. I’ve been in his way, sometimes, when he has a meltdown. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

  You do the math.

  My brother is a murderer. I test the words under my breath and immediately feel a pain in my chest. You can’t say it the way you’d say My brother is six feet tall or My brother likes scrambled eggs, even if they are all accurate facts. But the Jacob I knew a week ago is no different than the Jacob I saw this morning. So does that mean I was too stupid to notice some major flaw in my brother? Or that anyone—even Jacob—might suddenly turn into a person you never imagined?

  I sure as hell qualify.

  All my life I’ve thought I have nothing in common with my brother—and it turns out we are both criminals.

  But you didn’t kill anyone.

  The voice echoes in my head, an excuse. For all I know, Jacob’s got his reasons, too.

  That makes me run faster. But I could be a goddamned bullet and still not manage to outstrip the sad fact that I’m no better than those assholes at school: I have already assumed my brother is guilty.

  Behind the school, if you go far enough, you hit a pond. It’s a community hot spot in the winter—on weekends someone lights a bonfire and brings marshmallows to roast; and a few enterprising hockey dads sweep the ice with wide shovels so that pickup games can break out all across its surface. I step onto the ice, even though I don’t have skates with me.

  It’s not crowded on a weekday. A few moms with toddlers, pushing milk crates as they learn to skate. An old man in those black figure skates that always make me think of Holland, or the Olympics. He’s doing figure eights. I dump my backpack on the edge of the snow and shuffle my feet little by little, until I am standing dead center.

  Every year there’s a competition in Townsend to see when the ice will fully melt. They stick a pole in the ice that’s attached to some kind of digital clock, and when the ice melts enough for the pole to tilt, it trips a switch and records that moment in time. People put money down on which day and hour the ice will melt, and the person with the closest guess gets the jackpot. Last year, I think it was about $4,500.

  What if the moment the ice melted was right now?

  What if I went under?

  Would those kids skating around hear the splash? Would the old man come to my rescue?

  My English teacher says a rhetorical question is one that’s asked even though an answer isn’t expected: Is the Pope Catholic? Or Does a bear crap in the woods?

  I think it’s a question that has an answer you don’t really