Jodi Picoult - House Rules

“What a coincidence,” the prosecutor says, folding her arms. “They’re also traits you find in cold-blooded killers.”

Once Jacob told me that he could hear plants dying. They scream, he said. I thought for certain this was ridiculous until I talked to Dr. Murano about it. Kids with Asperger’s, she said, have senses we can’t even imagine. We filter out sounds and sights that are constantly barraging their brains, which is why sometimes it seems like they’re off in their own little world. They’re not, she said. They’re in our world, but they’re more engaged in it than we’ll ever be.

I went home that day and I looked up plant death on the Internet. As it turned out, plants under stress emit ethylene gas, and scientists in Germany have created a device that measures the energy of those molecules as vibrations-or sound.

Now I wonder if it gets tiring, bearing witness to the last gasp of nature. If it’s not only plants my son hears but the gnash of an angry ocean. A shy sunrise. A breaking heart.

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown.

I’m pretty sure lawyer wasn’t even on the list.

Sometime after I graduated from college I heard through the grapevine that this same guidance counselor had taken an early retirement and moved to a Utopian community in Idaho, where she renamed herself Blessing and now raises alpacas.

Frances Grenville doesn’t look like she’s in any danger of starting a llama farm anytime soon. She is wearing a blouse buttoned to the throat, and her hands are clasped so tightly in her lap that I imagine her nails are leaving marks on the skin. “Mrs. Grenville,” I say, “where are you employed?”

“At Townsend Regional High School.”

“And how long have you been a guidance counselor there?”

“This is my tenth year.”

“What are your responsibilities?” I ask.

“I help students with college search and selection. I write recommendations for students applying to college. And I work with students who face behavioral issues during their school career.”

“Do you know Jacob?”

“I do. Because he has an IEP, I’ve been intimately involved in the organization of his school day, to accommodate his special needs.”

“Can you explain what an IEP is?”

“An individualized education program,” she says. “It’s an educational plan mandated by federal law to improve educational results for children with disabilities. Each IEP is different, based on the child. For Jacob, for example, we created a list of rules to be adhered to in a school setting-because he functions well with strictures and routines.”

“Have you met with Jacob for reasons other than his learning needs?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Grenville says. “There have been instances where he’s gotten into trouble with teachers for acting out in class.”

“How so?”

“In one case, he kept telling his biology teacher that he was wrong when the teacher made certain factual statements in class.” She hesitates. “Mr. Hubbard was teaching the structure of DNA. He paired adenine with adenine instead of pairing it with thymine. When Jacob told him this was incorrect, Mr. Hubbard got angry. Jacob didn’t realize the teacher was angry and kept pointing out the inaccuracy. Mr. Hubbard sent him to the principal’s office for being disruptive in class.”

“Did he explain to you why he didn’t know his teacher was angry?”

“Yes. He said that Mr. Hubbard’s angry face looks a lot like other people’s when they’re happy.”

“Does it?”

Mrs. Grenville purses her lips. “I have noticed that Mr. Hubbard has a tendency to smirk when he gets frustrated.”

“Do you happen to know if it is incorrect to pair adenine with adenine?”

“As it turns out, Jacob was right.”

I glance back at the defense table. Jacob is smiling from ear to ear.

“Were there any other incidents when you had to help Jacob?”

“Last year, he got into trouble with a young woman. She was very upset over a poor grade and somehow communicated to Jacob that if he really wanted to be her friend, he’d tell the math teacher to go…” She looks down at her lap. “Fornicate with himself. Jacob was given detention for that, and later confronted the young woman and grabbed her by the throat.”

“Then what happened?”

“A teacher saw him and pulled him away from the girl. Jacob was suspended for two weeks. He would have been expelled if not for his IEP and the understanding that he was provoked.”

“What have you done to modify Jacob’s social behavior in school?”

“He attended social skills class, but then Emma Hunt and I discussed getting a private tutor for Jacob instead. We thought he might be able to better work on specific situations that tended to upset him, so that he could deal with them more constructively.”

“Did you find a tutor?”

“Yes. I contacted the university, and they put feelers out in their education department.” She looks at the jury. “Jess Ogilvy was the first student to respond to the request.”

“Had Jacob been meeting with her?”

“Yes, since last fall.”

“Mrs. Grenville, since Jacob began his tutoring with Jess Ogilvy, have there been any incidents of him losing his temper?”

She shakes her head. “Not one,” she says.

“Your witness,” I say to Helen.

The prosecutor stands up. “Mr. Hubbard-the biology teacher-he was angry and Jacob didn’t realize it?”

“No.”

“Would you say that’s a problem for Jacob? Knowing when someone’s angry at him?”

“From what I know about Asperger’s, yes.”

“The other incident you raised involved Jacob cursing out a teacher on a dare and then attacking the girl who dared him, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Had Jacob been told before to not use physical violence to solve problems?”

“Certainly,” the counselor says. “He knew that was a school rule.”

“But he broke that rule?” Helen asks.

“He did.”

“Even though, according to your own testimony, following rules is very important to Jacob?”

“Even though,” Mrs. Grenville says.

“Did he have any explanation for you as to why he broke that rule?”

Mrs. Grenville shakes her head slowly. “He said that he just snapped.”

Helen considers this. “You also said, Mrs. Grenville, that since starting his tutoring sessions, Jacob hasn’t lost his temper in school.”

“That’s correct.”

“Apparently he was saving that for after school,” Helen says. “Nothing further.”

Court adjourns early that day because Judge Cuttings has a doctor’s appointment. As the room empties, I gather up my files and stuff them into my briefcase. “So,” I say to Emma, “I’d like to come over and talk to you about your testimony.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Theo and Henry making their way toward us.

“I thought we discussed this,” Emma says pointedly.

We did. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to go back to my office while I know Henry is under her roof.

“You can never be too ready,” I tell her. “We have two cars. No sense in all of you being crammed into one. Would anyone like to ride with me?”

I am staring straight at Emma. “That’s a good idea,” she says. “Jacob, why don’t you go?”

Which is how I wind up trailing Henry’s rental car with Jacob sitting beside me in the passenger seat of the truck-and only after a small fit, because he prefers to ride in the backseat and there isn’t one. He fiddles with the radio, which is AM stations only because my truck is old enough to have been built by Moses. “You know why you can pick up AM stations better at night?” Jacob says. “Because the ionosphere reflects radio signals better when the sun isn’t radiating the heck out of the upper atmosphere.”