House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “Getting tan,” my mother muses.

  “Drinking piña coladas,” I suggest.

  My mother raises a brow. “Virgin for you.”

  There is a pause, as we both imagine a life that will never be ours.

  “Maybe,” I say after another moment, “we should bring Jacob along. He loves coconut.”

  This will never happen. My brother won’t get on a plane; he’d have the Mother of all Meltdowns before that happened. And you can’t exactly row a boat to Hawaii. Not to mention the fact that we are categorically broke. But still.

  My mother lays her head on my shoulder. It feels weird, like I’m the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around. Already, though, I’m taller than her, and still growing. “Let’s do that,” my mother agrees, as if we have a prayer.

  Jacob

  I have a joke:

  Two muffins are in an oven.

  One muffin says, “Wow, it’s really hot in here.”

  The other one jumps and says, “Yikes! A talking muffin.”

  This is funny because

  1. Muffins don’t talk.

  2. I am sane enough to know that. In spite of what my mother and Oliver and practically every psychiatrist in Vermont seem to think, I have never struck up a conversation with a muffin in my entire life.

  3. That would just be plain corny.

  4. You got that joke, too, right?

  My mother said that she would be talking to Dr. Newcomb for a half hour, yet it has been forty-two minutes and she still has not come back into the waiting room.

  We are here because Oliver said we have to be. Even though he managed to get all those concessions at court for me, and even though all of those help him prove his insanity defense to the jury (although don’t ask me how—insanity is not equivalent to disability, or even quirkiness), apparently we also have to meet with a shrink he’s found whose job it will be to tell the jury that they should let me go because I have Asperger’s.

  Finally, when it has been sixteen minutes longer than my mother said it would be—when I have started to sweat a little and my mouth has gone dry, because I’m thinking maybe my mother forgot about me and I will be stuck in this little waiting room forever—Dr. Newcomb opens the door. “Jacob?” she says, smiling. “Why don’t you come in?”

  She is a very tall woman with an even taller tower of hair and skin as smooth and rich as dark chocolate. Her teeth gleam like headlights, and I find myself staring at them. My mother is nowhere in the room. I feel a hum rise in my throat.

  “Where’s my mom?” I ask. “She said she’d be back in a half hour, and now it’s forty-seven minutes.”

  “We took a little longer than I expected. Your mom went out the back way and is waiting for you just outside,” Dr. Newcomb says, as if she can read my mind. “Now, Jacob, I’ve had a lovely talk with your mom. And Dr. Murano.” She sits down and offers me the seat across from her. It’s upholstered in zebra stripes, which I don’t really like. Patterns in general make me uneasy. Every time I look at a zebra, I can’t figure out whether it’s black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.

  “It’s my job to examine you,” Dr. Newcomb says. “I have to give a report back to the court, so what you say here isn’t confidential. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Intended to be kept secret,” I say, rattling off the definition and frowning. “But you’re a doctor?”

  “Yes. A psychiatrist, just like Dr. Murano.”

  “Then what I tell you is privileged,” I say. “There’s doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  “No, this is a special circumstance where I’m going to tell people what you say, because of the court case.”

  This whole procedure is starting to sound even worse—not only do I have to speak to a psychiatrist I don’t know, but she plans to blab about the session. “Then I’d rather talk to Dr. Moon. She doesn’t tell anyone my secrets.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not an option,” Dr. Newcomb says, and then she looks at me. “Do you have secrets?”

  “Everyone has secrets.”

  “Does having secrets sometimes make you feel bad?”

  I sit very upright on the chair, so that my back doesn’t have to touch the crazy zigzagged fabric. “Sometimes, I guess.”

  She crosses her legs. They are really long, like a giraffe’s. Giraffes and zebras. And I am the elephant, who cannot forget.

  “Do you understand that what you did, Jacob, was wrong in the eyes of the law?”

  “The law doesn’t have eyes,” I tell her. “It has courts and judges and witnesses and juries, but no eyes.” I wonder where Oliver dug this one up. I mean, honestly.

  “Do you understand that what you did was wrong?”

  I shake my head. “I did the right thing.”

  “Why was it right?”

  “I was following the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  I could tell her more, but she is going to tell other people, and that means that I will not be the only one who gets into trouble. But I know she wants me to explain; I can tell by the way she leans forward. I shrink back in the chair. It means touching the zebra print, but it’s the lesser of two evils.

  “I see dead people.” Dr. Newcomb just stares at me. “It’s from The Sixth Sense,” I tell her.

  “Yes, I know,” she says, and she tilts her head. “Do you believe in God, Jacob?”

  “We don’t go to church. My mom says religion is the root of all evil.”

  “I didn’t ask what your mom thinks about religion. I asked what you think about it.”

  “I don’t think about it.”

  “Those rules you mentioned,” Dr. Newcomb says.

  Didn’t we get off this topic?

  “Do you know that there’s a rule against killing people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” Dr. Newcomb asks, “do you think it would be wrong to kill somebody?”

  Of course I do. But I can’t say that. I can’t say it because to admit to this rule would break another one. I stand up and start walking, bouncing up and down on my toes because sometimes it helps me jog the rest of my brain and body into sync.

  But I don’t answer.

  Dr. Newcomb isn’t giving up, though. “When you were at Jess’s house on the day she died, did you understand that it’s wrong to kill somebody?”

  “I’m not bad,” I quote. “I’m just drawn that way.”

  “I really need you to answer the question, Jacob. On the day that you were at Jess’s house, did you feel like you were doing something wrong?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “I was following the rules.”

  “Why did you move Jess’s body?” she asks.

  “I was setting up a crime scene.”

  “Why did you clean up the evidence at the house?”

  “Because we’re supposed to clean up our messes.”

  Dr. Newcomb writes something down. “You had a fight with Jess during your tutoring session a couple of days before she died, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say to you that day?”

  “‘Just get lost.’”

  “But you went to her house on Tuesday afternoon anyway?”

  I nod. “Yes. We had an appointment.”

  “Jess was obviously upset with you. Why did you go back?”

  “People are always saying things that aren’t true.” I shrug. “Like when Theo tells me to get a grip. It doesn’t mean hold something, it means calm down. I assumed Jess was doing the same kind of thing.”

  “What were your reactions to the victim’s responses?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “When you got to Jess’s house, did you yell at her?”

  At one point I had leaned right down into her face and screamed at her to wake up.

  “Yes,” I say. “But she didn’t answer me.”

  “Do you understand that J