House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “I didn’t touch your stupid toothbrush.”

  But I don’t believe him. I glance at the old fish tank he uses for a fuming chamber, but it’s not there—it was seized as evidence.

  Abbott’s and Costello’s voices are so faint, I can barely make out the words. “Can you even hear that?” I say.

  “It’s loud enough.”

  I remember once, at Christmas, when my mom got Jacob a watch. She had to return it because the ticking noise drove him crazy.

  “I’m not crazy,” Jacob says, and for a second I wonder if I’ve spoken out loud.

  “I never said you were!”

  “Yes, you did,” Jacob says.

  He’s probably right. His memory’s like a steel trap. “Considering all the shit you steal from my room for your fuming chamber and your crime scenes, I think we can call it even.”

  What’s the guy’s name on first base?

  No. What is on second.

  I’m not asking you who’s on second.

  Who’s on first.

  I don’t know.

  He’s on third, we’re not talking about him.

  Okay, so I know some people find that comedy routine hilarious, but I’ve never been one of them. Probably the reason Jacob likes it so much is that it makes perfect sense to him, since the names are taken literally.

  “Maybe it got thrown out,” Jacob says, and at first I think it’s Costello’s line, until I realize that he’s talking about my toothbrush.

  “Did you do it?” I ask.

  Jacob stares at me. It always gives me a jolt when that happens, because he spends so much time not looking me in the eye. “Did you?” he replies.

  Suddenly I’m not sure what we’re talking about, but I don’t think it’s oral hygiene. Before I can respond, my mother sticks her head in the doorway. “Which one of you does this belong to?” she asks, holding up my toothbrush. “It was in my bathroom.”

  I grab it from her. On the cassette deck, Abbott and Costello are arguing over the canned laugh track.

  Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right.

  I don’t even know what I’m talking about!

  “I told you so,” Jacob says.

  Jacob

  When I was little, I convinced my brother that I had superpowers. Why else would I be able to hear what our mother was doing upstairs when we were downstairs? Why not say that the reason fluorescent bulbs made me dizzy was that I was so sensitive to light? When I missed a question Theo asked me, I told him it was because I could hear so many conversations and background noises at once, that sometimes it was hard for me to focus on just one sound at a time.

  For a while, it worked. And then my brother figured out I wasn’t gifted with extrasensory perception. I was just strange.

  Having Asperger’s is like having the volume of life at full blast all the time. It’s like a permanent hangover (although I admit I have only been drunk once, when I tried Grey Goose straight to see the effect it would have on me and was dismayed to learn that, rather than giggling, like everyone on television who’s drunk, I only felt more displaced and disoriented, and the world only got more fuzzy and indistinct). All those little autistic kids you see smacking their heads against walls? They’re not doing it because they’re mental. They’re doing it because the rest of the world is so loud it actually hurts, and they’re trying to make it all go away.

  It’s not just sight and sound that are ratcheted up, either. My skin is so sensitive that I can tell you whether my shirt is cotton or polyester just by its temperature against my back. I have to cut all the labels out of my clothes so they don’t rub because they feel like coarse sandpaper. If someone touches me when I am not expecting it, I scream—not out of fear but because it sometimes feels like my nerve endings are on the outside rather than the inside.

  And it’s not just my body that’s hypersensitive: my mind is usually in overdrive. I’ve always thought it strange when someone describes me as robotic or flat, because if anything, I’m always panicked about something. I don’t like to interact with people if I can’t predict how they are going to respond. I never wonder what I look like from someone else’s point of view; I would never even have thought to consider that if my mother had not brought it to my attention.

  If I give a compliment, it’s not because it’s the right thing to say, it’s because it’s true. Even routine language doesn’t come easily to me. If you say thank you, I have to rummage around in my database brain for you’re welcome. I can’t chat about the weather just for the sake of filling up silence. The whole time I’m thinking, This is so fake. If you’re wrong about something, I will correct you—not because I want to make you feel bad (in fact, I am not thinking of you at all) but because facts are very important to me, more important than people are.

  Nobody ever asks Superman if X-ray vision is a drag; if it gets old looking into brick buildings and seeing guys beat their wives or lonely women getting wasted or losers surfing porn sites. Nobody ever asks Spider-Man if he gets vertigo. If their superpowers are anything like mine, it’s no wonder they’re always putting themselves in harm’s way. They’re probably hoping for a quick death.

  Rich

  Mama Spatakopoulous will not talk to me until I agree to eat a little something, which is how I wind up with a full plate of spaghetti and meatballs as I ask her questions about Jess Ogilvy. “Do you remember this girl?” I ask, showing her a photo of Jess.

  “Yes, poor thing, I saw on the news what happened.”

  “I understand that she came here a few days before she was killed?”

  The woman nods. “With her boyfriend, and that other one.”

  “You mean Jacob Hunt?” I show her a picture of Jacob, too.

  “That’s him.” She shrugs.

  “Do you have any security cameras in here?”

  “No. Why? Is the neighborhood dangerous?”

  “I just thought I might be able to see the interaction that afternoon,” I say.

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” Mama Spatakopoulous says. “It was a big fight.”

  “What happened?”

  “The girl, she got very upset. She was crying, and eventually she ran out. She stuck the Hunt kid with the bill and a whole pizza.”

  “Do you know why she was upset?” I ask. “What they were fighting about?”

  “Well,” the woman says, “I couldn’t hear everything, but it seemed like he was jealous.”

  “Ms. Spatakopoulous.” I lean forward. “This is very important: did you hear anything Jacob said in particular that was threatening to Jess? Or see him physically attack her in any way?”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh, it wasn’t Jacob who was jealous,” she says. “It was the other one. The boyfriend.”

  * * *

  When I intercept Mark Maguire, he is leaving the student center with two of his buddies. “How was lunch, Mark?” I ask, stepping away from the lamppost against which I’ve been leaning. “Did you order pizza? Was it as good as Mama Spatakopoulous’s?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he says. “I’m not talking to you.”

  “I’d think as a grieving boyfriend you’d want to do just that.”

  “You know what I want to do? Sue the shit out of you for what you did to me!”

  “I let you go,” I say, shrugging. “People get unarrested all the time.” I fall into step beside him. “I just had a really interesting chat with the pizza lady. She seems to remember you and Jess fighting when you were there.”

  Mark starts walking, and I fall into step beside him. “So what? So we fought. I already told you that.”

  “What was that fight about?”

  “Jacob Hunt. Jess thought he was some helpless moron, and the whole time he was using that act to get her interested in him.”

  “Interested how?”

  “He wanted her,” Mark says. “He played pathetic so that she’d be in the palm of his hand. At the restaurant, he had the nerve to ask her out. In front of me,