by Jodi Picoult
“Getting tan,” my mother muses.
“Drinking piña coladas,” I suggest.
My mother raises a brow. “Virgin for you.”
There is a pause, as we both imagine a life that will never be ours.
“Maybe,” I say after another moment, “we should bring Jacob along. He loves coconut.”
This will never happen. My brother won’t get on a plane; he’d have the Mother of all Meltdowns before that happened. And you can’t exactly row a boat to Hawaii. Not to mention the fact that we are categorically broke. But still.
My mother lays her head on my shoulder. It feels weird, like I’m the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around. Already, though, I’m taller than her, and still growing. “Let’s do that,” my mother agrees, as if we have a prayer.
Jacob
I have a joke:
Two muffins are in an oven.
One muffin says, “Wow, it’s really hot in here.”
The other one jumps and says, “Yikes! A talking muffin.”
This is funny because
1. Muffins don’t talk.
2. I am sane enough to know that. In spite of what my mother and Oliver and practically every psychiatrist in Vermont seem to think, I have never struck up a conversation with a muffin in my entire life.
3. That would just be plain corny.
4. You got that joke, too, right?
My mother said that she would be talking to Dr. Newcomb for a half hour, yet it has been forty-two minutes and she still has not come back into the waiting room.
We are here because Oliver said we have to be. Even though he managed to get all those concessions at court for me, and even though all of those help him prove his insanity defense to the jury (although don’t ask me how—insanity is not equivalent to disability, or even quirkiness), apparently we also have to meet with a shrink he’s found whose job it will be to tell the jury that they should let me go because I have Asperger’s.
Finally, when it has been sixteen minutes longer than my mother said it would be—when I have started to sweat a little and my mouth has gone dry, because I’m thinking maybe my mother forgot about me and I will be stuck in this little waiting room forever—Dr. Newcomb opens the door. “Jacob?” she says, smiling. “Why don’t you come in?”
She is a very tall woman with an even taller tower of hair and skin as smooth and rich as dark chocolate. Her teeth gleam like headlights, and I find myself staring at them. My mother is nowhere in the room. I feel a hum rise in my throat.
“Where’s my mom?” I ask. “She said she’d be back in a half hour, and now it’s forty-seven minutes.”
“We took a little longer than I expected. Your mom went out the back way and is waiting for you just outside,” Dr. Newcomb says, as if she can read my mind. “Now, Jacob, I’ve had a lovely talk with your mom. And Dr. Murano.” She sits down and offers me the seat across from her. It’s upholstered in zebra stripes, which I don’t really like. Patterns in general make me uneasy. Every time I look at a zebra, I can’t figure out whether it’s black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and that frustrates me.
“It’s my job to examine you,” Dr. Newcomb says. “I have to give a report back to the court, so what you say here isn’t confidential. Do you understand what that means?”
“Intended to be kept secret,” I say, rattling off the definition and frowning. “But you’re a doctor?”
“Yes. A psychiatrist, just like Dr. Murano.”
“Then what I tell you is privileged,” I say. “There’s doctor-patient confidentiality.”
“No, this is a special circumstance where I’m going to tell people what you say, because of the court case.”
This whole procedure is starting to sound even worse—not only do I have to speak to a psychiatrist I don’t know, but she plans to blab about the session. “Then I’d rather talk to Dr. Moon. She doesn’t tell anyone my secrets.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option,” Dr. Newcomb says, and then she looks at me. “Do you have secrets?”
“Everyone has secrets.”
“Does having secrets sometimes make you feel bad?”
I sit very upright on the chair, so that my back doesn’t have to touch the crazy zigzagged fabric. “Sometimes, I guess.”
She crosses her legs. They are really long, like a giraffe’s. Giraffes and zebras. And I am the elephant, who cannot forget.
“Do you understand that what you did, Jacob, was wrong in the eyes of the law?”
“The law doesn’t have eyes,” I tell her. “It has courts and judges and witnesses and juries, but no eyes.” I wonder where Oliver dug this one up. I mean, honestly.
“Do you understand that what you did was wrong?”
I shake my head. “I did the right thing.”
“Why was it right?”
“I was following the rules.”
“What rules?”
I could tell her more, but she is going to tell other people, and that means that I will not be the only one who gets into trouble. But I know she wants me to explain; I can tell by the way she leans forward. I shrink back in the chair. It means touching the zebra print, but it’s the lesser of two evils.
“I see dead people.” Dr. Newcomb just stares at me. “It’s from The Sixth Sense,” I tell her.
“Yes, I know,” she says, and she tilts her head. “Do you believe in God, Jacob?”
“We don’t go to church. My mom says religion is the root of all evil.”
“I didn’t ask what your mom thinks about religion. I asked what you think about it.”
“I don’t think about it.”
“Those rules you mentioned,” Dr. Newcomb says.
Didn’t we get off this topic?
“Do you know that there’s a rule against killing people?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Dr. Newcomb asks, “do you think it would be wrong to kill somebody?”
Of course I do. But I can’t say that. I can’t say it because to admit to this rule would break another one. I stand up and start walking, bouncing up and down on my toes because sometimes it helps me jog the rest of my brain and body into sync.
But I don’t answer.
Dr. Newcomb isn’t giving up, though. “When you were at Jess’s house on the day she died, did you understand that it’s wrong to kill somebody?”
“I’m not bad,” I quote. “I’m just drawn that way.”
“I really need you to answer the question, Jacob. On the day that you were at Jess’s house, did you feel like you were doing something wrong?”
“No,” I say immediately. “I was following the rules.”
“Why did you move Jess’s body?” she asks.
“I was setting up a crime scene.”
“Why did you clean up the evidence at the house?”
“Because we’re supposed to clean up our messes.”
Dr. Newcomb writes something down. “You had a fight with Jess during your tutoring session a couple of days before she died, right?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say to you that day?”
“‘Just get lost.’”
“But you went to her house on Tuesday afternoon anyway?”
I nod. “Yes. We had an appointment.”
“Jess was obviously upset with you. Why did you go back?”
“People are always saying things that aren’t true.” I shrug. “Like when Theo tells me to get a grip. It doesn’t mean hold something, it means calm down. I assumed Jess was doing the same kind of thing.”
“What were your reactions to the victim’s responses?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When you got to Jess’s house, did you yell at her?”
At one point I had leaned right down into her face and screamed at her to wake up.
“Yes,” I say. “But she didn’t answer me.”
“Do you understand that J
ess is never coming back?”
Of course I understand that. I could probably tell Dr. Newcomb a thing or two about body decomposition. “Yeah.”
“Do you think Jess was scared that day?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you think you would have felt, if you were the victim?”
For a moment, I consider this. “Dead,” I say.
Oliver
Three weeks before we go to trial, we start jury selection. You would think that, with autism being diagnosed at the rate it currently is, finding a jury of Jacob’s peers—or at least parents who have children on the spectrum—would not be as difficult as it is. But the only two jurors with autistic children who are in our initial pool are the ones Helen uses her peremptory strikes against to get them removed.
In between my stints in court, I receive the reports from Dr. Newcomb and Dr. Cohn, the two psychiatrists who’ve met with Jacob. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Cohn has found Jacob quite sane—the State’s shrink would declare a toaster sane—and Dr. Newcomb has said that Jacob was legally insane at the time the crime was committed.
Even so, Newcomb’s report isn’t going to be that much help. In it, Jacob comes off sounding like an automaton. The truth is, jurors might want to be fair, but their gut instinct about a defendant has a great deal to do with the verdict rendered. Which means that I’d better stack the odds to make Jacob look as sympathetic as possible, since I have no intention of letting him actually testify. With his flat affect, his darting eyes, his nervous tics—well, that would just be a disaster.
A week before the trial begins, I turn my attention to getting Jacob ready for court. When I reach the Hunt household, Thor bolts out of the car and runs to the porch, his tail wagging. He’s gotten pretty attached to Theo, to the point where I sometimes wonder if I ought to just leave him curled up on the kid’s bed overnight, since he seems to have taken up residence there anyway. And God knows Theo needs the company—in the wake of his cross-country journey, he’s been grounded until he’s thirty—although I keep telling him that I can probably find a reason to appeal.
I knock, but no one answers the door. I’ve gotten used to letting myself inside, though, so I walk in and watch Thor trot upstairs. “Hello,” I call out, and Emma steps forward with a smile.
“You’re just in time,” she says.
“For what?”
“Jacob got a hundred on a math test, and as a reward I’m letting him set up a crime scene.”
“That’s macabre.”
“Just another day in my life,” she says.
“Ready!” Jacob calls from upstairs.
I follow Emma, but instead of heading to Jacob’s room, we continue on to the bathroom. When she pushes open the door, I gag, my hand pressed against my mouth.
“What … what is this?” I manage.
There is blood everywhere. It’s like I’ve stepped into the lair of a serial killer. One long line of blood arcs horizontally across the white shell of the shower wall. Facing that, on the mirror, are a series of drops in various elongated shapes.
Even more strange, Emma doesn’t seem to be the least bit upset that the walls of the shower and the mirror and sink are completely drenched with blood. She takes one look at my face and starts laughing. “Relax, Oliver,” she says. “It’s just corn syrup.”
She reaches over to the mirror, dabs her finger to the mess, and holds it up to my lips.
I can’t resist the urge to taste her. And yeah, it is corn syrup, with red dye, I’m guessing.
“Way to contaminate a crime scene, Mom,” Jacob mutters. “So you remember that the tail of the bloodstain usually points in the direction the blood was traveling …”
All of a sudden I can see Jess Ogilvy standing in the shower, and Jacob across from her, standing right where Emma is.
“I’ll give you a hint,” Jacob tells Emma. “The victim was right here.” He points to the bath mat between the shower stall and the mirror over the sink.
I can easily picture Jacob with a bleach solution, wiping down the mirror and the tub at Jess Ogilvy’s place.
“Why the bathroom?” I ask. “What made you choose to set your crime scene here, Jacob?”
Those words are all it takes to make Emma understand why I’m so shaken. “Oh, God,” she says, turning. “I didn’t think … I didn’t realize …”
“Blood spatter’s messy,” Jacob says, confounded. “I thought my mom would be less likely to yell at me if I did it in the bathroom.”
A line from Dr. Newcomb’s report jumps out at me: I was following the rules.
“Clean it up,” I announce, and I walk out.
“New rules,” I say, when the three of us are sitting at the kitchen table. “First and foremost: No more crime scene staging.”
“Why not?” Jacob demands.
“You tell me, Jake. You’re on trial for homicide. You think it’s smart to create a fake murder a week before your trial? You don’t know what neighbors are peeking through your curtains—”
“(A) Our neighbors are too far to see through the windows and (B) that crime scene upstairs was nothing like what was at Jess’s house. This one showed the arterial bleed in the shower and also the cast-off pattern of blood flung from the knife that killed the victim behind her, on the mirror. At Jess’s—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” I interrupt, covering my ears.
Every time I think I have a chance to save Jacob’s ass, he does something like this. Unfortunately, I waver between thinking that behavior like what I’ve just witnessed proves my case (how could he not be considered insane?) and thinking that it’s chillingly off-putting to a jury. After all, Jacob’s not talking to imaginary giant rabbits, he’s pretending to kill someone. That looks pretty fucking deliberate to me. That looks like practice so that, in reality, he might get it perfect.
“Rule number two: you need to do exactly what I tell you in court.”
“I’ve been to court, like, ten times now,” Jacob says. “I think I can figure it out.”
Emma shakes her head. “Listen to him,” she says quietly. “Right now, Oliver’s the boss.”
“I’m going to give you a stack of Post-its every time we walk into that courtroom,” I tell him. “If you need a break, you hand me a note.”
“What kind of note?” Jacob says.
“Any note. But you only do it if you need a break. I’m also going to give you a pad and a pen, and I want you to write stuff down—just like you would if you were watching CrimeBusters.”
“But there’s nothing interesting going on in that courtroom—”
“Jacob,” I tell him flatly, “your life is being decided in there. Rule number three: you can’t talk to anyone. Not even your mother. And you,” I say, turning to Emma, “cannot tell him how he’s supposed to feel, or react, or what he should look like or how he should act. Everything you two pass back and forth is going to be read by the prosecution and the judge. I don’t even want you two discussing the weather, because they’re going to interpret it, and if you do anything suspicious, you’re going to be kicked off that counsel table. You want to write Breathe, that’s fine. Or It’s okay, don’t worry. But that’s as specific as I want you to get.”
Emma touches Jacob’s arm. “You understand?”
“Yes,” he says. “Can I go now? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get corn syrup off a wall once it dries?”
I completely ignore him. “Rule number four: you will wear a button-down shirt and a tie, and I don’t want to hear that you haven’t got the money for it because this isn’t negotiable, Emma—”
“No buttons,” Jacob announces, in a tone that brooks no argument.
“Why not?”
“Because they feel weird on my chest.”
“All right,” I say. “How about a turtleneck?”
“Can’t I wear my lucky green sweatshirt?” Jacob asks. “I wore it when I took my SATs, and I got 800 on the math section.”
“Why don’
t we go up to your closet and find something?” Emma suggests, and we all trudge upstairs again, this time to Jacob’s room. I studiously avoid looking into the bathroom as we pass.
Although the police still have his fuming chamber as evidence, Jacob has configured a new one, an overturned planter. It’s not transparent, like his fish tank, but it must be getting the job done, because I can smell the glue. Emma throws open the closet door.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. Chromatically ordered, Jacob’s clothes hang side by side, not quite touching. There are jeans and chinos in the blue area; and a rainbow of long- and short-sleeved tees. And yes, in its correct sequence, the lucky green sweatshirt. It looks like a Gay Pride shrine in there.
There is a fine line between looking insane in court and looking disrespectful. I take a deep breath, wondering how to explain this to a client who cannot think beyond the feeling of a placket of buttons on his skin. “Jacob,” I say, “you have to wear a shirt with a collar. And you have to wear a tie. I’m sorry, but none of this will work.”
“What does the way I look have to do with you telling the jury the truth?”
“Because they still see you,” I answer. “So you need to make a good first impression.”
He turns away. “They’re not going to like me anyway. Nobody ever does.”
He doesn’t say this in a way that suggests he feels sorry for himself. More like he’s just telling me a fact, relating the way the world works.
After Jacob leaves to clean up his mess, I remember that Emma’s in the room with me. “The bathroom. I … I don’t know what to say.” She sinks down onto Jacob’s bed. “He does this all the time—sets up scenes for me to solve. It’s what makes him happy.”
“Well, there’s a big difference between using a bottle of corn syrup to get your jollies and using a human being. I don’t need the jury to be wondering how far a leap there is from one to the other.”
“Are you nervous?” she asks, turning to face me.