The Jodi Picoult Collection #4

by Jodi Picoult

  “Theo? Theo Hunt, is that you?”

  I feel guilty, as if I’ve been caught in the act of doing something I shouldn’t be. But it’s not, like, illegal to walk up to a drive-up ATM, is it?

  The door of the car behind me opens, and out steps my biology teacher, Mr. Jennison. “How are you doing?” he asks.

  I remember how once, when my mother was getting on Jacob’s back because he refused to make small talk at a distant cousin’s wedding, he said that he would have asked Aunt Marie how she was doing if he really truly cared . . . but he didn’t, so pretending he did would be a big lie.

  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.

  Jacob

  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.

  Nobody ever asks Superman if X-ray vision is a drag; if it gets old looking into brick buildings and seeing guys beat their wives or lonely women getting wasted or losers surfing porn sites. Nobody ever asks Spider-Man if he gets vertigo. If their superpowers are anything like mine, it’s no wonder they’re always putting themselves in harm’s way. They’re probably hoping for a quick death.

  Rich

  Mama Spatakopoulous will not talk to me until I agree to eat a little something, which is how I wind up with a full plate of spaghetti and meatballs as I ask her questions about Jess Ogilvy. “Do you remember this girl?” I ask, showing her a photo of Jess.

  “Yes, poor thing, I saw on the news what happened.”

  “I understand that she came here a few days before she was killed?”

  The woman nods. “With her boyfriend, and that other one.”

  “You mean Jacob Hunt?” I show her a picture of Jacob, too.

  “That’s him.” She shrugs.

  “Do you have any security cameras in here?”

  “No. Why? Is the neighborhood dangerous?”

  “I just thought I might be able to see the interaction that afternoon,” I say.

  “Oh, I can tell you that,” Mama Spatakopoulous says. “It was a big fight.”

  “What happened?”

  “The girl, she got very upset. She was crying, and eventually she ran out. She stuck the Hunt kid with the bill and a whole pizza.”

  “Do you know why she was upset?” I ask. “What they were fighting about?”

  “Well,” the woman says, “I couldn’t hear everything, but it seemed like he was jealous.”

  “Ms. Spatakopoulous.” I lean forward. “This is very important: did you hear anything Jacob said in particular that was threatening to Jess? Or see him physically attack her in any way?”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh, it wasn’t Jacob who was jealous,” she says. “It was the other one. The boyfriend.”

  * * *

  When I intercept Mark Maguire, he is leaving the student center with two of his buddies. “How was lunch, Mark?” I ask, stepping away from the lamppost against which I’ve been leaning. “Did you order pizza? Was it as good as Mama Spatakopoulous’s?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” he says. “I’m not talking to you.”

  “I’d think as a grieving boyfriend you’d want to do just that.”

  “You know what I want to do? Sue the shit out of you for what you did to me!”

  “I let you go,” I say, shrugging. “People get unarrested all the time.” I fall into step beside him. “I just had a really interesting chat with the pizza lady. She seems to remember you and Jess fighting when you were there.”

  Mark starts walking, and I fall into step beside him. “So what? So we fought. I already told you that.”

  “What was that fight about?”

  “Jacob Hunt. Jess thought he was some helpless moron, and the whole time he was using that act to get her interested in him.”

  “Interested how?”

  “He wanted her,” Mark says. “He played pathetic so that she’d be in the palm of his hand. At the restaurant, he had the nerve to ask her out. In front of me, like I wasn’t even there. All I did was put Hunt in his place—and remind him that his mommy was buying him Jess’s company.”

  “How did she react?”

  “She got pissed.” He stops in his tracks and faces me. “Look, maybe I’m not the most sensitive guy . . .”

  “Gee, I didn’t notice.”

  Mark glares at me. “I’m trying to make a point here. I said and did things I’m not proud of. I’m jealous; I wanted to be number one on Jess’s list. Maybe I crossed the line a few times, trying to make sure of that. But I never would have hurt her, never. The reason I started the fight at the pizza place in the first place was to protect her. She trusted everyone; she only saw the good in people. I could read right through Hunt’s bullshit, even if Jess couldn’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He folds his arms. “My freshman year roommate still played with Pokémon cards. He never showered, and he pretty much lived in the computer lab. I probably said less than ten sentences to him all year. He was fucking brilliant—graduated early and went to go design missile systems for the Pentagon or something. He probably had Asperger’s, too, but no one ever slapped a label on him other than nerd. All I’m saying is that there’s a difference between being mentally retarded and being socially retarded. One’s a handicap. The other’s just a Get Out of Jail Free card.”

  “I think current psychiatry might trump you, Mark. There’s a difference between being socially awkward and being clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s.”

  “Yeah.” He meets my gaze. “That’s what Jess used to say, and now she’s dead.”

  Oliver

  When I step into the kitchen at the Hunts’ house for the second day in a row, Emma is cooking something at the stove while Jacob sits at the kitchen table. I look from his face, bent toward the table over a gruesome collection of crime scene photography, to his mother’s. “Go ahead,” Emma says.

  “The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination by the State or local government, including in the courts,” Jacob recites, in his monotone. “In order to be protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, you have to have a disability or have a relationship with someone with a disability. A person with a disability is defined as a person with a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities . . . like communication . . . or is a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment.”

  He flips a page; now the pictures are of bodies in a morgue. Who the hell publishes this kind of book?

  “Dr. Moon and my mother say I have quirks, but other people, like my teachers and the kids at school and that judge, might assume I have a disability,” Jacob adds.

  I shake my head. “I don’t really understand.”

  “There’s a logical and valid legal reason for you to speak for me,” Jacob says. “You may use the insanity defense, if you think it will work best during the trial.” He stands up, tucking the book under his arm. “But for the record, I personally subscribe to the belief that normal is just a setting on the dryer.”

  I nod, considering this. “What movie is that from?”

  Jacob rolls his eyes. “Not everything’s from a movie,” he says, and he walks off.

  “Wow.” I walk toward Emma. “I don’t know how you did that, but thank you.”

  “Don’t underestimate me,” she answers, and with a spatula, she flips the fish that is being sautéed in a pan.

  “Was that the only reason you asked me to come over?”

  “I thought that was what you wanted,” Emma says.

  “It was. Until I smelled what you were cooking.” I grin. “I’ll knock ten bucks off my retainer if you feed me lunch.”

  “Don’t you have a built-in cafeteria downstairs from your office?”

  “A guy gets sick of red sauce every now and then,” I say. “Come on. Surely you could use a little grown-up conversation after being cooped up in the house.”

  Emma makes a pretense of looking around the kitchen. “Sure . . . where’s the other grown-up?”

  “I’m ten years older than Jacob,” I remind her. “So what are we eating?”

  “Sea bass with garlic.”

  I sit down at one of the counter stools and watch her carry a pot of boiling something to the sink and dump it in a colander. The steam curls the hair around her face. “One of my favorites,” I say. “I’m so glad you invited me.”

  “Fine,” she sighs. “Stay already.”

  “All right, but only if you can contain your enthusiasm for my company.”

  She shakes her head. “Make yourself useful and set the table.”

  There’s an intimacy to being in someone else’s kitch
en that makes me homesick—not for my apartment over the pizza place but for my childhood home. I grew up as the youngest of a big family in Buffalo; sometimes even now I miss the sound of chaos. “My mom used to cook fish on Fridays,” I say as I open and close drawers, trying to find the silverware.

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “No—Norwegian. Fish is a Scandinavian aphrodisiac.”

  Emma’s cheeks flush. “Did it work?”

  “My parents had five kids,” I say, and I gesture at the sea bass. “Foreplay on a platter.”

  “I guess I could go along with the metaphor,” Emma murmurs. “My ex’s cooking could be considered contraception.”

  “Would it be rude to ask how long you’ve been a single parent?”

  “Yes,” Emma says. “But the short answer is, since Jacob’s diagnosis.” She takes some milk out of the refrigerator and pours it into a pan, then begins to whip the contents with a hand mixer. “He’s not involved with Jacob or Theo, except for the monthly child support.”

  “Well, you should be proud of doing it all on your own.”

  “Yeah, I’m proud. I have a son accused of murder. What mother wouldn’t think of herself as a huge success after that?”

  I look up at her. “Accused,” I repeat. “Not convicted.”

  For a long moment she looks at me, as if she is afraid to believe there could be someone else who believes Jacob might not be guilty. Then she begins to make up individual plates. “Jacob, Theo!” she yells, and the boys file into the kitchen.

  Jacob takes his and immediately returns to the living room and the television. Theo thunders down the stairs, takes one look at me sitting at the table, and frowns. “Shouldn’t he be buying us lunch?” he asks.

  “It’s lovely to see you, too,” I answer.

  He looks at me. “Whatever.”

  As he shuffles back upstairs with his meal, Emma fixes plates for the two of us. “Usually we all sit down to dinner together,” she says, “but sometimes it’s nice to have a break from each other, too.”