Jodi Picoult - House Rules

There are times when Jacob’s world makes a lot more sense to me than the one the rest of us live in. Why do we ask people how they’re doing when we don’t give a crap about the answer? Is Mr. Jennison asking me that question because he’s worried about me, or because it’s something to say to fill up the air between us?

“I’m okay,” I say, because old habits die hard. If I were like Jacob, I would have answered directly: I can’t sleep at night. And sometimes, when I run too fast, I can’t breathe. But in reality, someone who asks you how you’re doing doesn’t want to hear the truth. He wants the pat answer, the expected response, so that he can go on his merry way.

“You need a lift? It’s freezing out here.”

There are some teachers I have really liked, and others I’ve really disliked, but Mr. Jennison doesn’t fall into either category. He’s nondescript, from his thinning hair to his lectures; the kind of teacher whose name I’ll probably forget by the time I go to college. I’m pretty sure that-until recently-he could say the same about me: I was an average student in his class who didn’t excel or fail enough to leave an impression. Until, of course, all this happened.

Now I’m the boy at the center of six degrees of separation: Oh yeah, my aunt was Theo’s third-grade teacher. Or I sat behind him at a school assembly once. I am the kid whose name they will toss out at cocktail parties years from now: That autistic murderer kid? I was in his brother’s class at Townsend High.

“My mom’s double-parked across the street,” I mumble, realizing too late that, if our car was indeed in town, it would most likely be at this drive-through ATM right now. “Thanks anyway,” I say, and I leave in such a hurry that I almost forget to take the transaction receipt.

I jog all the way to the grocery store, as if I’m expecting Mr. Jennison to tail me in his car and call me a liar to my face. Only once do I think about taking the $200 and hopping on a bus and leaving for good. I imagine sitting in the backseat next to a pretty girl who shares her trail mix with me, or an old lady who’s knitting a cap for her newborn grandson, who asks me where I’m headed.

I imagine telling her that I’m going to visit my big brother at college. That we’re really close and that I miss him when he’s away at school.

I imagine how cool it would be if small talk wasn’t lies.

When I’m getting ready to go to sleep that night, my toothbrush goes missing. Furious-this isn’t the first time this has happened, believe me-I stalk down the hall to my brother’s room. Jacob’s got an audiotape of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine playing on an old tape deck. “What the hell did you do with my toothbrush this time?” I ask.

“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.

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.