House Rules

by Jodi Picoult

  --Consider yourself on winter break,|| the officer says.

  --Winter break isn't until February fifteenth.||

  He punches a button on the keyboard. --All right. Stand up,|| he says, so I do.

  --What's in your pockets?||

  I glance down at my jacket. --My hands.||

  --So you're a wiseass,|| the officer says. --Empty them, come on.||

  Confused, I hold my palms up in front of me. There's nothing in them.

  --Your pockets.||

  I pull out a stick of gum, a green pebble, a piece of sea glass, a strip of photographs of my mother and me, and my wallet. He takes them all. --Hey--||

  --The money will be logged in to your account,|| he says. I watch him write notes on a piece of paper, and then he opens my wallet and takes out my money and my picture of Dr. Henry Lee. He starts to count the money, and by accident, he drops the pile. When he gathers it back up, it's out of order.

  Sweat breaks out on my forehead. --The money,|| I say.

  --I didn't take any, if that's what you're worried about.||

  I see a twenty rubbing up against a dollar bill, and the five-dollar bill is backward, with President Lincoln facedown.

  In my wallet, I make sure that everything is in order from the smallest denomination to the biggest, and everything faces up. I have never taken cash out of my mother's wallet without her permission, but sometimes when she is unaware I sneak into her purse and organize her money for her. I just don't like the thought of all that chaos; the coin pocket is already haphazard enough.

  --You okay?|| the officer says, and I realize he is staring at me.

  --Could you ...|| I can barely speak, my throat has gotten so tight. --Could you just put the bills in order?||

  --What the hell?||

  With my hand curled to my chest, I point a single finger at the stack of bills.

  --Please,|| I whisper. --The ones go on top.||

  If at least the money looks the way it is supposed to, that's something that hasn't changed.

  --I don't believe this,|| the officer mutters, but he does it, and once that twenty is resting safely at the bottom of the pile, I let out the breath I've been holding.

  --Thanks,|| I say, even though I noticed at least two of the bills are still upside down.

  Jacob, I tell myself, you can do this. It doesn't matter if you are in another bed tonight instead of your own. It doesn't matter if they do not let you brush your teeth. In the grand scheme of things, the world will not stop spinning. (That is a sentence my mother likes to use when I get nervous about a change in routine.) Meanwhile the officer leads me to another room, one not much bigger than a closet.

  --Strip,|| he says, and he folds his arms.

  --Strip what?|| I answer.

  --All of it. Underwear, too.|| When I realize he wants me to take off my clothes, I am so surprised that my jaw drops.

  --I'm not changing in front of you,|| I say, incredulous. I won't even change for gym class in the locker room. I have a doctor's note from Dr. Moon saying that I do not have to, that I can participate in class while wearing my normal clothes.

  --Again,|| the officer says, --I didn't ask you.||

  On television I've seen inmates wearing jumpsuits, although I never really gave much thought to what happened to their clothes. But what I am remembering now is bad.

  Very Bad, with capital letters. On television, the jumpsuits are always orange. Sometimes it is enough to make me change the channel.

  I can feel my pulse accelerate at the thought of all that orange, touching my skin. Of the other inmates, wearing the same color. We would be like an ocean of hazard warnings, a sea of danger.

  --If you don't take off your clothes,|| the officer says, --I will do it for you.||

  I turn my back to him and peel off my coat. I pull my shirt over my head. My skin is white, like a fish belly, and I don't have rippling stomach muscles like the Abercrombie & Fitch guys; this embarrasses me. I unzip my jeans and pull down my underwear and then remember my socks. Then I crouch into a ball and carefully organize my clothes so that the olive khaki pants are on the bottom, then the green shirt, finally the green boxers and socks.

  The officer takes the clothes and starts shaking them out. --Hands out at your sides,||

  he says, and I close my eyes and do what he says, even when he makes me turn around and bend down and I can feel his fingers moving me apart. A soft cloth sack hits my chest. --Get dressed again.||

  Inside it is clothing but not my own. Instead, there are three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, three T-shirts, thermal pants, a thermal top, three pairs of dark blue pants and matching shirts, rubber flip-flops, a jacket, a hat, gloves, a towel.

  This is a huge relief. I won't be wearing orange after all.

  I have been to one sleepover in my life. It was at the home of a boy named Marshall, who has since moved to San Francisco. Marshall had a lazy eye and was, like me, often the butt of classmates' jokes in second grade. Our mothers were the ones who organized the sleepover, after mine learned that Marshall could spell the names of most dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period as well.

  My mother and I talked for two whole weeks about what would happen if I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted to come home (I'd call). What would happen if Marshall's mother served something for breakfast that I didn't like (I would say No thank you). We talked about how Marshall might not have his clothes organized in his closet the way I do and how he had a dog and dogs sometimes drop hair on the floor without intending to.

  The night of the sleepover my mother dropped me off after dinner. Marshall asked if I wanted to watch Jurassic Park, and I said yes. But when I started telling him during the video what was anachronistic and what was downright fictionalized, he got angry and told me to shut up and I went to play with his dog instead.

  The dog was a Yorkshire terrier with a pink bow in its hair even though it happened to be male. It had a very small pink tongue, and it licked my hand, which I thought I would like but which I wanted to wash off immediately.

  That night when we went to sleep Marshall's mother put a rolled blanket between us to divide up his full-size bed. She kissed him on the forehead and then she kissed me, which was strange because she was not my mother. Marshall told me that in the morning if we got up early we could watch TV before his mother got up and caught us. Then he fell asleep, but I didn't. I was awake when the dog came into the room and burrowed underneath the covers, scratching me with its tiny black toenails. And I was still awake when Marshall wet the bed in his sleep, too.

  I got up and called my mother. It was 4:24 A.M.

  When she arrived, she knocked on the door, and Marshall's mother answered it in her bathrobe. My mother thanked her on my behalf. --I guess Jacob's an early riser,|| she said. --Very early.|| She tried to laugh a little, but it sounded like a brick falling.

  When we got into the car, she said, --I'm sorry.||

  Even though I didn't meet her gaze, I could feel her looking at me. --Don't ever do that to me again,|| I answered.

  I have to fill out a form for visitors. I can't imagine who might want to come, so I write down my mother's name and my brother's name and our address, and their birth dates. I add Jess's name, too, although I know she can't visit, obviously, but I bet she would have wanted to.

  Then a nurse examines me, taking my temperature and checking my pulse, just like at the doctor's office. When she asks me if I'm on any medication, I tell her yes, but she gets angry when I don't know the names of the supplements, when I can only tell her the colors, or the fact that it comes in a syringe.

  Finally, I am taken to the place where I will be staying. The officer walks me down a hallway until we reach a booth. Inside, another officer pushes a button, and the metal door in front of us slides open. I am given another laundry bag, this one with two sheets and two blankets and a pillowcase.

  The cells are on the left side of a hallway that has a metal grate instead of a floor. />
  Each cell has two beds, a sink, a toilet, and a television inside it. Each cell also has two men inside. They look like the same people you would see on the street, except of course they have all done something bad.

  Well, maybe not. After all, I'm here, too.

  --You'll stay here for a week while you're evaluated,|| the officer says. --Based on your behavior, you might be moved to the minimum-security population.|| He nods at one cell, which, unlike the others, has a smaller window. --That's the shower,|| the officer says.

  How am I supposed to make sure I shower first when there are so many other people around?

  How am I going to brush my teeth when I don't have my toothbrush with me?

  How will I take my shot in the morning, and my supplements?

  As I think about these details, I feel myself starting to lose control.

  It's not like a tsunami, although I'm sure that's what it looks like to someone on the outside. It's more like a packet of mail that's wrapped tight several times with a rubber band. When it snaps, the band stays in place--out of habit, or out of muscle memory, I don't know--and then one tiny move of the packet and it begins to unravel. Before you know it, there is nothing holding that packet of letters together.

  My hand starts moving a little, my fingers playing a beat on my thigh.

  Jess is dead and I am in jail and I missed CrimeBusters today and my right eye has a tic now that I can't stop.

  We stop walking when we reach the cell at the end of the hallway. --Home sweet home,|| the officer says. He unlocks the door to the cell and waits for me to move inside.

  The minute he locks the door again, I grab the bars. I can hear the lights buzzing overhead.

  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid didn't go to jail; instead they jumped off a cliff. --Kid, the next time I say Let's go someplace like Bolivia,'|| I mutter, --let's go someplace like Bolivia. ||

  My head hurts, and out of the corners of my eyes, I am seeing red. I shut them, but the sounds are still there and my hands feel too big for my body and my skin is getting tighter. I picture it stretching so hard that it splits.

  --Don't worry,|| a voice says. --You'll get used to it.||

  I spin around and hold my hands clutched in front of my chest, the way I used to walk sometimes when I wasn't concentrating on looking like everyone else. I'd assumed the officer had put me in a special cell for people who have to be in jail but shouldn't really be. I had not realized that I, like everyone else, would have a roommate.

  He is wearing all his blue clothes plus his jacket and hat, pulled down to his eyebrows. --What's your name?||

  I stare at his face without looking him in the eye. He has a mole on his left cheek, and I have never liked people with moles. --I am Spartacus.||

  --No shit? Then I hope you're in here for killing your parents.|| He gets up from the bunk and walks behind me. --How about I call you Bitch instead?|| My hands grip the bars more tightly. --Let's get some things straight, so that you and me, we get along. I get the bottom bunk. I get to go out to the exercise yard before you do. I pick the TV channel. You don't fuck with me, and I won't fuck with you.||

  There is a common behavior in dogs that are put together in close quarters. One will snap at the other until the beta dog knows that the alpha dog is to be obeyed.

  I am not a dog. Neither is this man. He is shorter than I am. The mole on his cheek is raised, and shaped like a beehive.

  If Dr. Moon were here she'd ask, What's the number?

  Sixteen. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, my anxiety level is a sixteen. Which is the worst number, because it's (a) even, (b) has an even square root, and (c) its even square root has an even square root.

  If my mother were here, she'd start singing --I Shot the Sheriff.|| I stick my fingers in my ears so I cannot hear him and I close my eyes so I cannot see him and I start to repeat the chorus without any breaks between the words, just a ribbon of sound that I can imagine circling me like a force field.

  Suddenly he grabs my shoulder. --Hey,|| he says, and I start to scream.

  His hat has fallen off so that I can see he is a redhead, and everyone knows that people with red hair don't really have red hair, they have orange hair. And worse, his hair is long. It falls all around his face and his shoulders, and if he leans any closer it might land on me.

  The sounds that I make are high and piercing, louder than the voices of everyone who is telling me to shut the fuck up, louder than the officer who tells me he'll write me up if I do not stop. But I can't, because by now, the sound is oozing out of all my pores and even when I press my lips together my body is screaming. I grab the bars of the cell door--

  contusions are caused by blood vessels that are broken as the result of the blow--and smack my head against them-- cerebral contusion associated with subdural hematoma in the front lobe is associated with mortality--and again-- each red blood cell is one-third hemoglobin--and then just as I predicted my skin cannot contain what's happening inside me and it splits and the blood runs down my face and into my eyes and mouth.

  I hear:

  Get this fucking nutcase out of my house.

  And

  If he's got AIDS I'm gonna sue this state for everything it's got.

  My blood tastes like pennies, like copper, like iron-- Blood makes up seven percent of the total body weight--

  --On the count of three,|| I hear. Two people grab my arms and I am moving, but my feet don't feel like they belong to me and it's too yellow under the lights and there is metal in my mouth and metal on my wrists and then I don't see or hear or taste anything at all.

  I think I might be dead.

  I make this deduction from the following facts:

  1. The room that I am in is monochromatic--floor, walls, ceiling all the color of pale flesh.

  2. The room is soft. When I walk, it feels like walking on a tongue. When I lean against the walls, they lean against me, too. I cannot reach the ceiling, but it stands to reason it is the same. There's one door, without any windows, or a knob.

  3. There is no noise except for my breathing.

  4. There is no furniture. Just a mat, which is flesh-colored, too, and soft.

  5. There is a grate in the middle of the floor, but when I look down inside it, I cannot see anything. Maybe that's the tunnel that leads back to earth.

  Then again, there are other factors that lead me to believe that I might not actually be dead after all.

  1. If I were dead, why would I be breathing?

  2. Shouldn't there be other dead people around?

  3. Dead people don't have fierce headaches, do they?

  4. Heaven probably does not have a door, knob notwithstanding.

  I touch my hand to my scalp and find a bandage shaped like a butterfly. There is blood on my shirt that has dried brown and stiff. My eyes are swollen, and there are tiny cuts on my hands.

  I walk around the grate, giving it a wide berth. Then I lie down on the mat with my arms crossed over my chest.

  This is what my grandfather looked like, in his coffin.

  This is not how Jess looked.

  Maybe she's what is inside that grate. Maybe she is on the other side of that door.

  Would she be happy to see me? Or angry? Would I look at her and be able to tell the difference?

  I wish I could cry, like other humans do.

  Emma

  Jacob's medicines and supplements fill two full gallon-size Ziploc bags. Some are prescription--antianxiety meds given by Dr. Murano, for example--and others, like the glutathione, I get online for him. I am waiting outside the visitors' entrance of the jail, holding these, when the door is unlocked.

  My mother used to tell me how, when she was a little girl, her appendix burst. That was back in the day before parents were allowed to stay with their children during hospitalizations, and so my grandmother would arrive four hours before visiting hours began and would stand at the front of a roped-off queue that my mother could see from her hospit
al bed. My grandmother would just stand there, smiling and waving, until they let her in.

  If Jacob knows I'm waiting for him, if he knows that I will see him every day at nine o'clock--well, that's a routine he can cling to.

  I would have expected there to be more people waiting with me for the front door to open, but maybe for the rest of the mothers who have come to jail to visit their sons, this is old hat. Maybe they are used to the routine. There is only one other person waiting with me, a man dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. He must be a lawyer. He stamps his feet.

  --Cold out,|| he says, smiling tightly.

  I smile back. --It is.|| He must be a defense attorney, coming in here to see his client.

  --Do you, um, know how this works?||

  --Oh, first time?|| he says. --It's a piece of cake. You go in, give up your license, and go through the metal detectors. Kind of like checking in for a flight.||

  --Except you don't go anywhere,|| I muse.

  He glances at me and laughs. --That's for damn sure.||

  A correctional officer appears on the other side of the glass door and turns the lock.

  --Hey, Joe,|| the lawyer says, and the officer grunts a greeting. --You see the Bruins last night?||

  --Yeah. Answer me this. How come the Patriots and the Sox can win championships but the Bs are still skating like crap?||

  I follow them to a control booth, where the officer steps inside and the lawyer hands over his driver's license. The lawyer scribbles something on a clipboard and hands his keys to the officer. Then he walks through a metal detector, heading down a hall where I lose sight of him.

  --Can I help you, ma'am?|| the officer asks.

  --Yes. I'm here to visit my son. Jacob Hunt.||

  --Hunt.|| He scans a list. --Oh, Hunt. Right. He just came in last night.||

  --Yes.||

  --Well, you're not approved yet.||

  --For what?||

  --Visitation. You'll probably be clear by Saturday--that's when visiting hours are, anyway.||

  --Saturday?|| I repeat. --You expect me to wait till Saturday?||

  --Sorry, ma'am. Until you're cleared, I can't help you.||

  --My son is autistic. He needs to see me. When his routine gets changed, he can get incredibly upset. Even violent.||