Jodi Picoult - House Rules

Amanda, bless her heart, had offered to drive since Jacob couldn’t. She pulled up in her Jeep Cherokee at 7:00 on the dot. Jacob was waiting for her with a wrist corsage he’d picked out at the florist that afternoon. He’d been standing at the window, watching, since 6:00.

Jess had come over with a video camera to record the event for posterity. We all held our breath as Amanda stepped out of her car in a long peach gown.

“You said she wouldn’t wear orange,” Jacob whispered.

“It’s peach,” I corrected.

“It’s in the orange family, ” he said, all he had time for before she knocked. Jacob yanked the door open. “You look beautiful,” he announced, just like we’d practiced.

When I took their picture on the front lawn, Jacob even looked at the camera. It remains, to this day, the only photo I have of him where he’s doing that. I admit, I cried a little as I watched him extend his crooked elbow to escort his date to her car. Could I have asked for a better outcome? Could Jacob have done a finer job of remembering every lesson we’d worked on so diligently?

Jacob opened Amanda’s door and then walked around to the passenger side.

Oh no, I thought.

“We totally forgot about that,” Jess said.

And sure enough, Jess and I watched Jacob slide into his usual position in a car, the backseat.

“This is it,” I say, and my mother pulls the car over in front of some random house I’ve never seen before.

“When do you want me to come get you?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how long it’s going to take us to write up the lab report,” I say.

“Well, you have your cell phone. Call me.” I nod and get out of the car. “Theo!” she yells. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

A backpack. If I’m doing schoolwork with an imaginary lab partner, I should at least be smart enough to carry a freaking notebook.

“Leon’s got everything,” I say. “It’s on his computer.”

She peers over my shoulder to the front door of the house. “Are you sure he’s expecting you? It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“Mom, I told you. I talked to Leon ten minutes before we left the house. I’m supposed to go in the back door. Relax, okay?”

“Make sure you’re polite,” she says, as I shut the car door. “Please and thank-”

You, I mutter under my breath.

I start up the driveway and along a path that leads around the house. I have just turned the corner when I hear my mother pull away.

Of course it looks like there’s no one here. I planned it that way.

I don’t have a lab report to do. I don’t even know anyone named Leon.

This is a new neighborhood for me. A lot of professors who work at UVM live here. The houses are old and have little brass plaques on them with the years they were built. The really cool thing about old houses is that they have crappy locks. You can jimmy them open most of the time with a credit card slipped in the right way. I don’t have a credit card, but my school ID works just as well.

I know that no one’s home because there aren’t any footprints on the driveway after last night’s snow-something my mother didn’t notice. On the porch, I kick the snow off my sneakers and walk inside. The house smells like old people-oatmeal and mothballs. There’s a cane propped inside the entryway, too. But-weird-there’s also a Gap hoodie hanging up. Maybe their granddaughter left it behind.

Like last time, I go to the kitchen first.

The first thing I see is a bottle of red wine on the counter. It’s about half full. I pop the cork and take a swig, and nearly spit the shit out all over the countertop. How come people drink if it tastes like this? Wiping my mouth, I rummage through the pantry for something to make me forget the taste of the wine, and find a box of crackers. I rip it open and eat a few. Then I check out the contents of the fridge and make myself a Black Forest ham and sage-cheddar sandwich on a baguette. No ham and cheese for this house. It’s even too fancy for good ol’ yellow mustard-I have to use champagne mustard instead, whatever that is. For a second I worry it will taste like the wine, but if there’s alcohol in it, you could have fooled me.

Trailing crumbs, I walk into the living room. I haven’t taken my sneakers off, so I’m leaving behind a trail of melting snow, too. I pretend I’m superhuman. I can see through walls; I can hear a pin drop. Nobody could ever take me by surprise.

The living room is exactly what you’d be expecting. Couches with crackly leather and stacks of paper everywhere, so many dusty books that even though I don’t have asthma I feel it coming on.

A woman and a man live here. I can tell because there are books on gardening and little glass bottles lined up on the mantel. I wonder if they sit in this room and talk about their kids, way back when. I bet they finish each other’s sentences.

Remember when Louis found a piece of felt on the driveway after Christmas…

… and he took it to show-and-tell as proof of Santa Claus?

I sit down on the couch. The television remote is on the coffee table, so I pick it up. I put my sandwich down beside me on the couch and turn on the entertainment system, which is much nicer than you’d think for ol’ Grandpa and Grandma. They have shelves of CDs, with every kind of music you can imagine. And a state-of-the-art, flat-screen HDTV.

They have TiVo, too. I punch buttons until I reach the screen to show what they’ve recorded.

Antiques Roadshow.

The Three Tenors on Vermont Public TV.

And, like, everything on the History Channel.

They’ve also taped a hockey game on NESN and a movie that aired last weekend- Mission Impossible III.

I double-click that one-because it’s hard to believe Mr. and Mrs. Professor watching Tom Cruise kick ass, but sure enough, there it is.

So I decide to let them have that one. The rest, I delete.

Then I start adding programs to tape.

The Girls Next Door

My Super Sweet 16

South Park

And for good measure, I go to HBO and add a dollop of Borat.

When that movie came out, it was playing at the same theater as Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I wanted to see Borat, but my mother said I had to wait a decade or so. She bought us tickets to Pirates and said she would meet us in the parking lot after the film, because she had to go grocery shopping. I knew that Jacob would never have suggested it, so I told him that I wanted to let him in on a secret-but he had to promise not to tell Mom. He was so psyched about the secret he didn’t even care that we were breaking the rules, and when I sneaked into the other theater after the opening credits, he came along. And in a way, I guess he did keep his promise-he never actually told my mother that we’d gone to see Borat.

She figured it out when he started quoting lines from the film, like he always does. Very nice, very nice, how much? I like to make sexy time!

I think I was grounded for three months.

I have a fleeting vision of Mrs. Professor turning on her TiVoed programs and seeing the Playboy bunnies and having a heart attack. Of her husband having a stroke when he finds her.

Immediately, I feel like shit.

I erase all the programming and put back in the original shows. This is it. This is the last time I’m breaking in somewhere, I tell myself, even though there’s another part of me that knows this won’t be true. I’m an addict, but instead of the rush some people get from shooting up or snorting, I need a fix that feels like home.

I pick up the telephone, intending to call my mother and ask her to come pick me up, but then on second thought I put down the receiver. I don’t want there to be any trace of me. I want it to feel like I was never here.