House Rules: A Novel Read online

  “Now … sing!”

  “I shot the sheriff … but I didn’t shoot no deputy—” I break off. “I can still hear them.”

  So Theo starts singing. And Oliver, and my mother. All of us, a barbershop quartet but without the harmony, up the stairs of the courthouse.

  It works. Probably because they are so surprised by the musical number, the Red Sea of reporters parts and we walk right up the middle.

  I’m so amazed that it takes me a while to remember what was stuck like a fish bone in my throat before we walked up the steps of the courthouse.

  1. I said to Oliver the verbal equation we’ll call p: “You tell the truth.”

  2. He replied with q: “I’ll tell them why you’re not guilty.”

  3. In the logic equation of this conversation, I had made the assumption that p and q were equivalent.

  4. Now I realize that’s not necessarily true.

  Before Jess and I started to work together, I had to go to social skills class at my school. This was largely populated by kids who, unlike me, were not particularly interested in joining the social scene. Robbie was profoundly autistic and spent most of the sessions lining crayons from end to end across the room. Jordan and Nia were developmentally disabled and spent all their time in special ed instead of being mainstreamed. Serafima was probably the most similar to me, although she had Down syndrome. She wanted to be part of the action so badly she’d crawl into the lap of a stranger and hold his face between her hands, which was cute when she was six but not so much when she was sixteen.

  Lois, the teacher, had all sorts of interactive games that we had to participate in. We’d role-play and have to greet each other as if we hadn’t been sitting in the same room together for the past half hour. We’d have contests to see how long we could keep eye contact. Once, she used an egg timer to show us when we should stop talking about a topic so that someone else could have a turn in the conversation, but that stopped quickly when Robbie went ballistic the first time the buzzer went off.

  Every day we had to end with a circle time, where we each gave a compliment to the person next to us. Robbie always said the same thing, no matter whom he was placed beside: I like terrapins.

  (He did, too. He knew more about them than anyone I’ve ever met since and probably ever will, and if not for him I’d still be confusing them with box turtles.)

  Jordan and Nia always gave compliments based on appearance: I like that you brush your hair. I like that your skirt is red.

  One day Serafima told me that she liked hearing me talk about mitochondrial DNA. I turned to her and said that I didn’t like the fact that she was a liar, since she had just that very day used the hand signal we agreed on as a class—a peace sign raised in the air—to tell Lois that she was tired of the topic, even though I hadn’t gotten to the part about how all of us in this world are related.

  That was when Lois called my mother, and my mother found Jess.

  I worked on compliments with Jess, too, but it was different. For one thing, I really wanted to give them to her. I did like the way her hair looked like the stringy silk you pull out of a corn husk before it goes into the boiling water, and how she drew smiley faces on the white rubber rims of her sneakers. And when I went on and on about forensic science, she didn’t wave a peace sign in the air; instead, she’d ask more questions.

  It was almost like that was her way of getting to know me—through how my mind worked. It was like a maze; you had to follow all the twists and turns in order to figure out where I started from, and I was amazed that Jess was willing to put in the time. I guess I didn’t really think about the fact that my mother must have been paying her to do that, at least not until that idiot Mark Maguire said so at the pizza place. But still, it wasn’t like she was sitting there counting down the minutes she had to suffer with me. You would have realized that, if you’d seen her.

  My favorite session with Jess was the one where we practiced asking a girl to the dance. We were sitting at a Wendy’s because it was raining—we

  had gotten caught in a sudden downpour. While it passed Jess decided to get a snack, although there wasn’t much fast food that was gluten- and casein-free. I had ordered two baked potatoes and a side salad without dressing, while Jess had a cheeseburger. “You can’t even have French fries?”

  “Nope,” I said. “It’s all about the coating, and the oil they’re fried in. The only fast-food fries that are gluten-free are at Hooters.”

  Jess laughed. “Yeah, I won’t be taking you there.” She peered at my bare potato, my undressed salad. “You can’t even have a little butter?”

  “Not unless it’s soy.” I shrug. “You get used to it.”

  “So this,” she said, turning the cheeseburger over in her hand, “is the kiss of death for you?”

  I felt my face go bright red. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but hearing her say the word kiss was enough to make me feel like I’d just eaten a butterfly instead of a cucumber. “It’s not like an allergy.”

  “What would happen if you ate it?”

  “I don’t know. I’d get upset more easily, I guess. The diet just works, for some reason.”

  She looked at the bun and picked a seed off it. “Maybe I should go cold turkey, too.”

  “Nothing upsets you,” I told her.

  “Little do you know,” Jess said, and then she shook her head and went back to the topic of the day. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  “Um,” I said, looking into my potato, “so do you want to go to the dance with me?”

  “No,” Jess said flatly. “You’ve got to sell it, Jacob.”

  “I’m, uh, going to the dance and I thought since you might be there, too—”

  “Blah blah blah,” she interrupted.

  I forced myself to look Jess in the eye. “I think you’re the only person who gets me.” I swallowed hard. “When I’m with you, the world doesn’t feel like a problem I can’t figure out. Please come to the dance,” I said, “because you’re my music.”

  Jess’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, Jacob, yes!” she shouted, and then all of a sudden she was out of her seat and pulling me up and hugging me, and I could smell the rain in her ponytail and I didn’t mind at all that she was in my space and too close. I liked it. I liked it so much that you know what happened and I had to push her away before she noticed or (worse) felt it hard against her.

  An old couple that was sitting across from us was smiling. I have no idea what they thought we were up to, but chances are Autistic Kid with Social Skills Tutor was not high on the list. The elderly woman winked at Jess. “Looks like that’s one cheeseburger you won’t forget.”

  There’s a lot about Jess I won’t forget. Like the way her fingernails were painted with sparkly purple polish that day. And how she hated barbecue sauce. How when she laughed, it wasn’t a tiny, delicate thing but a sound that came from her belly.

  So much time is spent with people superficially. You remember all the fun you had but nothing specific.

  I’ll never forget anything about her.

  Oliver

  When Jacob and Emma and I reach the defense table, the courtroom is already full and Helen Sharp is reviewing her notes. “The fun room’s great,” she says, sliding a glance toward me. “Gotta get me one of those.”

  By fun room, she means the sensory break zone, which has been erected at the rear of the courtroom. There are heavy soundproof curtains that seal it off from the gallery. Inside there are rubber balls with knobs on them and a vibrating pillow and a Lava lamp and something that reminds me of the long fabric tongues in a car wash. Emma swears all of these function as soothing devices, but if you ask me, they might just as easily have come from a fetish porn movie set.

  “If you’re going to ask the wizard for something, Helen,” I suggest, “start with a heart.”

  The bailiff calls us to attention, and we stand for the arrival of Judge Cuttings. He takes one look at the four cameras in the back of the courtroom. “I�€