by Jodi Picoult
Mimi Scheck is the kind of girl I drooled over in high school, in spite of the fact that she wasn't aware we even inhabited the same building for four years. She has long black hair and a body made for worship, artfully showcased in clothes that reveal just an inch of skin above the waistline of her jeans when she reaches up or bends down. She also looks so nervous that she'd bolt, if not for the fact that Mrs. Grenville just closed the door of her office.
--Hi, Mimi,|| I say, smiling. --How are you doing today?||
She looks from me to the guidance counselor, her lips pressed tight. Then she melts into the couch, anguished. --I swear, I didn't know about the vodka until I got to Esme's.||
--Well. That's interesting ... but it's not why I asked to speak to you today.||
--It's not?|| Mimi whispers. --Oh, crap.||
--I wanted to ask you about Jacob Hunt.||
Her face goes beet red. --I don't really know him very well.||
--You were involved in an incident last year that led to his suspension, right?||
--It was all just a big joke,|| she says, rolling her eyes. --I mean, how was I supposed to know he couldn't even take a joke?||
--What happened?||
She sinks down farther on Mrs. Grenville's couch. --He was always hanging around.
It was creepy, you know? I mean, I'd be, like, talking to my friends and he'd be standing there eavesdropping. And then I got a forty on a math quiz because Mr. LaBlanc is the biggest jerk ever and I got really mad and asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. But I never went to the bathroom, I just went around the corner and started crying because if I failed math again my parents were going to take away my phone and make me give up my Facebook account--and Jacob walked up to me. I guess he'd left class for one of his weirdo breaks or something, and he was headed back. He didn't say anything, he just kept staring at me, and I told him to get lost. So he said he would stay with me because that's what friends do, and I said that if he really wanted to be my friend, he'd go into math class and tell Mr. LaBlanc to go fuck himself.|| Mimi hesitated. --So he did.||
I glance at the guidance counselor. --And that's why he was suspended?||
--No. He got detention for that.||
--And then?|| I ask.
Mimi's gaze slides away. --The next day a bunch of us were hanging out in the commons when Jacob showed up. I guess I sort of ignored him. I mean, it's not like I was actively being mean to him or anything. And he just went crazy and came after me.||
--He hit you?||
She shakes her head. --He grabbed me and threw me up against a locker. He could have killed me, you know, if a teacher hadn't stopped him.||
--Can you show me how he grabbed you?||
Mimi looks at Mrs. Grenville, who nods, encouraging her. We both stand up, and Mimi takes a step forward until she has backed me against the wall. She has to reach up because I am taller than she is, and then gingerly, she wraps her right hand around my throat. --Like this,|| she says. --I had bruises for a week.||
The same bruises, I realize, that Jess Ogilvy had revealed at her autopsy.
Emma
As if I need any further reminder after Oliver Bond's visit that my life is not and never will be what it was, my editor calls. --I was hoping you could come in this afternoon,|| Tanya says. --There's something we need to discuss.||
--I can't.||
--Tomorrow morning?||
--Tanya,|| I say, --Jacob's under house arrest. I'm not allowed to leave.||
--Well, that's sort of why I wanted to meet ... We think that it might be best for everyone right now if you took a leave of absence from your column.||
--Best for everyone?|| I repeat. --How is losing my job best for me?||
--It's temporary, Emma. Just until this ... blows over. Surely you understand,||
Tanya explains. --We can't really endorse advice from--||
--From a writer whose son was accused of murder?|| I finish for her. --I write anonymously. No one knows about me, much less Jacob.||
--For how long? We're in the news business. Someone's going to dig this up, and then we'll be the ones who look like idiots.||
--By all means,|| I say hotly. --We wouldn't want you to look like idiots.||
--We're not cutting you off. Bob's agreed to keep you at half salary plus benefits if you do freelance editing of the Sunday section for us in return.||
--Is this the part where I'm supposed to fall to my knees in gratitude?|| I ask.
She is quiet for a moment. --For what it's worth, Emma,|| Tanya says, --you're the last person in the world who deserves this. You've already got your cross to bear.||
--Jacob,|| I say, --is not a cross to bear. He's my son.|| My hand is shaking where it holds the phone. --Go edit your own fucking Sunday section,|| I tell her, and I hang up.
A tiny cry escapes as I realize the magnitude of what I've just done. I'm a single parent; I hardly make any money as is; I can't work outside the home right now--how am I going to afford to live without a job? I could call my old boss from the textbook company and beg for freelance assignments, but it's been twenty years since I worked there. I could scrape by on whatever savings we've got, until this is over.
And when will that be?
I admit that I've taken our legal system for granted. I assumed that the innocent prevail, that the guilty get their due. But as it turns out, it isn't as simple as saying you're not guilty if you're not guilty. As Oliver Bond has pointed out, the jury has to be convinced. And connecting with strangers is Jacob's weakest link.
I keep waiting to wake up. To have someone surprise me with the hidden camera and tell me this is all a big joke: that of course Jacob is free to go, that of course there has been some mistake. But no one surprises me, and I wake up every morning and nothing has changed.
The worst thing that could happen would be if Jacob goes to prison again, because they don't understand him there. On the other hand, if he's hospitalized, he'll be with doctors. Oliver said that he'd be kept in a secure treatment facility until the judge could be sure that he wouldn't hurt anyone again. Which means that he'd have a chance, however slight, of getting out one day.
I pull myself up the stairs heavily, as if my feet have been cast in lead. At Jacob's door, I knock. He is sitting on his bed, Flowers for Algernon folded on his chest. --I finished,|| he says.
As part of our new home-schooling protocol, I have to make sure he keeps up with the school curriculum, and this novel was the first assignment for his English class. --And?||
--It was stupid.||
--I always thought it was sad.||
--It's stupid,|| Jacob reiterates, --because he never should have had the experiment done.||
I sit down beside him. In the narrative, Charlie Gordon, a retarded man, undergoes a surgical procedure that triples his IQ, only to have the experiment ultimately fail and leave him with subnormal intelligence again. --Why not? He got to see what he was missing.||
--But if he never had that procedure, he would never know he was missing it.||
When Jacob says things like this--truths so raw most of us won't even admit them in silence, much less speak them out loud--he seems more lucid than anyone else I know. I do not believe my son is insane. And I do not believe that his Asperger's is a disability, either. If Jacob didn't have Asperger's, he wouldn't be the same boy I love so fiercely: the one who watches Casablanca with me and can recite all of Bogey's dialogue; the one who remembers the grocery list in his head when I've inadvertently left it sitting on the counter; the one who never ignores me if I ask him to get my wallet out of my handbag or run upstairs to get a ream of paper for the printer. Would I have rather had a kid who doesn't struggle so hard, who could make his way in the world with less resistance? No, because that child wouldn't have been Jacob. The crises may be what stick in my mind when it comes to him, but the in-between moments are the ones I would not have missed for the world.
Still, I know why Charlie Gordon had the procedure done. And
I know why I am about to have a conversation with Jacob that makes my heart feel like it's turned to ash. It's because, whenever possible, humans err on the side of hope.
--I have to talk to you about what Oliver said,|| I begin.
Jacob sits up. --I'm not crazy. I'm not letting him say that about me.||
--Just hear me out--||
--It's not the truth,|| Jacob says. --And you always have to tell the truth. House rules.||
--You're right. But sometimes, it's okay to tell a little lie, if it gets you to the truth in the long run.||
He blinks. --Saying I'm insane isn't a little lie.||
I look at him. --I know you didn't kill Jess. I believe you. But you have to get twelve strangers on a jury to believe you. How are you going to do that?||
--I'm going to tell them the truth.||
--Okay. Pretend we're in court, then, and tell it to me.||
His eyes flicker across my face and then fix on the window behind me. --The first rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club.||
--That's exactly what I mean. You can't use movie quotes in a courtroom to say what happened ... But you can use a lawyer.|| I grasp his arms. --I want you to promise me that you'll let Oliver say whatever he has to in order for you to win this case.||
He jerks his chin down. --One martini, please,|| he mutters. --Shaken, not stirred.||
--I'm going to take that as a yes,|| I say.
Theo
If a school day is seven hours long, six of those are eaten up by blocks of time that are full of nothing but crap: teachers yelling at kids who misbehave, gossip as you walk to your locker, recap of a math concept you understood the first time it was explained. What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.
When it's just me and Jacob, sitting at the kitchen table, I can blow through my work in about an hour's time if I leave the reading stuff for before I fall asleep. It helps that my mother second-guesses the curriculum a lot. (--We're skipping this part. If imaginary numbers were meant to be learned, they would have made themselves real,|| or --For God's sake, how many times have you studied the Puritans now, since first grade? A hundred?
Let's just move on to the Reformation.||) At any rate, I like being home-schooled. By definition, you're an outcast, so you don't have to worry about sounding stupid if you give the wrong answer or if that hot girl from your English class is checking you out when you go up to the whiteboard to write your equation for the math homework. I mean, we don't even have a whiteboard here.
Since Jacob works on different stuff than I do, he's buried in his work on one end of the table and I'm at the other. I finish before him, but then again, I did even when we worked on regular homework before. He may be freaking brilliant, but sometimes whatever's cooking in his brain doesn't quite translate onto the page. I guess it's a little like being the world's fastest bullet train but your wheels don't fit the rails.
As soon as I finish my French homework ( Que fait ton frere? Il va a la prison! ), I close my textbook. My mom looks up from her cup of coffee. Usually, she's typing away at her computer, but she hasn't even been able to focus on that today. --Done,|| I announce.
She stretches out her lips, and I know it's supposed to be a smile. --Great.||
--You need me to do anything?|| I ask.
--Turning back time would be nice.||
--I was thinking more along the lines of the grocery store,|| I suggest. --We have, like, nothing to eat here.||
It's true, and she knows it. She isn't allowed to leave the house as long as Jacob's stuck here, and that means we're on a slow road to starvation unless I do something about it. --You can't drive,|| she says.
--I've got my skateboard.||
She arches a brow. --Theo, you cannot skateboard with groceries.||
--Why not? I'll use those green bags I can loop over my arms, and I won't buy anything heavy.||
It doesn't take her very long to be convinced, but then we hit another snafu--she has only ten bucks in her wallet, and I can't very well pretend to be Emma Hunt when I hand over her credit card. --Hey, Jacob,|| I say, --we need to borrow some money.||
He doesn't look up from his history book. --Do I look like a bank?||
--Are you kidding me?|| My brother has, I swear, every dollar he's ever been given for a birthday, Christmas, you name it. I have only seen him spend money once, on a thirty-five-cent pack of gum.
--Don't,|| my mother says quietly. --Let's not get him upset.|| Instead, she rummages in her wallet and pulls out her ATM card. --Stop off at the bank in the shopping center, and take out some cash. My PIN is 4550.||
--Really?|| I say, beaming. --You just gave me your PIN?||
--Yes, so don't make me regret it.||
I grab the card and head out of the kitchen. --So, is it your computer password, too?||
--Soy milk,|| she says. --And gluten-free bread, and no-salt ham. And anything else you want.||
I make the executive decision to not take my skateboard and instead walk to the bank. It's only two miles into town anyway. I keep my head ducked and tell myself it's because of the wind, but really it's because I don't want to run into anyone I know. I pass cross-country skiers on the golf course and a pair of joggers. When I get to the bank, I realize that it's after hours and I don't know how to get into the little lobby where the ATM
is located. Instead, I walk around to the back of the building, where there is a drive-up machine. I stand behind a Honda and wait my turn.
ENTER AMOUNT, the screen reads. I type in $200, and then I hesitate and cancel the transaction. Instead of doing a withdrawal, I look up the account balances.
Could we really have only $3,356 in our savings account? I try to remember whether my mother gets statements from more banks than just this one. If there's a safe in our house where she keeps money.
I know that the Townsend Inn hires fifteen-year-olds as busboys for the restaurant.
And I am pretty sure that, if I can get a lift into Burlington, I could work at the McDonald's. Clearly, if someone needs to be employed, it's me--since my mother can't leave the house right now, and since Jacob has proven himself pathologically incapable of holding down a job.
He's had three. The first was working at a pet store in town, back when he was obsessive about dogs. He got fired for telling his boss that she was stupid to keep the dog food in the back of the store, since the bags were so heavy. The second job he had was bagging groceries at a food co-op, where the cashiers kept telling him to --get his ducks in a row|| as the items came down the conveyor belt and then got mad because he wouldn't listen, when in reality Jacob probably just didn't understand. The third job was selling concessions at a snack bar during the summer at the town pool. I guess that worked out fine for the first hour or so, but when lunchtime came and there were six kids shouting to him for sno-cones and hot dogs and nachos all at once, he took off his apron and just walked out.
A car drives up behind me, which makes me feel like a moron. I shuffle my feet and punch the Withdrawal button, and then enter $200 on the keypad. When the money comes out of the mouth of the machine, I stuff it into my pocket. And then I hear my name being called.
--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. J
ennison 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.