Rules of Rain

by Leah Scheier

  “I don’t mind hearing about it, Ethan, if you want to talk about it,” she says generously, addressing him in her quiet voice, a voice she reserves for him only. “Why were we talking about drinking blood?”

  I turn to stare at her. She’s sidled up beside me and slipped onto a nearby kitchen stool. I note that she was careful not to approach my brother too quickly; she’s long ago given up her attempts to hug him or even touch him.

  He appears momentarily stunned and then shoots me an accusing look. “You didn’t tell me she was coming.”

  I pass over the bit of rudeness; it isn’t his fault. I’ve just violated one of Ethan’s rules. My brother needs to be warned hours in advance of any change to his routine. Some changes (haircuts, doctor’s visits) need days of preparation. I can’t spring Hope on him like this. “It’s okay,” I tell him in a soothing voice. “We’re going to be in my room. You don’t even have to see her. She’s not staying for dinner.”

  Ethan puts his hand to his nose and begins to back away. Strangely enough, Hope doesn’t seem offended. She slides off her chair and moves a step closer to him; he tenses suddenly and stares at the floor. “Is Rain’s turkey bothering you?” she asks him, pointing to my plate. “It is pretty pungent stuff.”

  “No, it’s you,” Ethan tells her bluntly. “I’m doing an experiment.”

  “An experiment?” She shoots me a baffled look over her shoulder.

  “No experiments today!” I say, ignoring her look. “Hope and I are going to my room now.” I try to link my arm through hers, but she slips past me and takes a step closer to my brother.

  “I was hoping that you’d hang out with us a little too,” she tells him softly. “If you’re not too busy.”

  His eyes flicker over her, and he swallows loudly. One hand tightens around his nose, the other clenches at his side. Watching him now, teetering on the edge of panic, nearly undone by a simple question from my harmless friend, I wonder again why Hope wants him to stay. Maybe sixteen years of being Ethan’s interpreter, therapist, and nurse has warped me a little. When I look at him, I don’t see a tall, handsome young man with waves of white-gold hair and large, deep-set blue eyes. That’s Hope’s vision of my brother. All I see is the boy that sat stonily mute for years, who shrieked his frustration in wordless howls until I finally learned to speak for him, who rocked and bit and tore himself to pieces until I learned the magic charm to quiet him. The way I see it, despite all the progress he’s made, he’s still a hiccup away from a total breakdown, and I’m always hovering by his side, ready to pick up the pieces when he shatters. I need to stop this meltdown before it starts. “Ethan, why don’t you boil up a pot of chamomile tea for Mom?” I suggest firmly, taking my friend by the arm and steering her away from him. “She’s been stressed recently, and I’m sure she’d appreciate it. At four o’clock, you and I will go out for our run. Then I’ll make dinner while Mom calls the fridge repairman.”

  The precise instructions and the confident tone with which I dictate them seem to calm my brother. I see the tension in his shoulders ease; the worried pucker in his forehead relaxes.

  (Idea for the blog: Special Spices Edition—Harness the calming power of herbs to season your entire household with serenity! Spotlight: lavender, chamomile, and linden.)

  “I thought you forgot about our run,” he says in a relieved voice.

  “Of course not. I never forget about you,” I reply.

  I mean it too. I can never forget Ethan.

  Not for a second.

  Cooking with Rain

  SERENITY THROUGH YOUR GUT

  Where I answer all your burning food-related questions!

  Dear Rain: Do you ever feel like your friends are getting all the action, and you’re left sitting on the sidelines? What can I do to get people to notice me?

  —Blah in Kentucky

  Dear Blah: I hate to break it to you, but this is a cooking blog. I’m really just here to tell you what to eat. Today I’m recommending coconut oil! Slather yourself in the stuff, inside and out. Great for dull hair, blotchy skin, and flaky scalp. Try it as a substitute for gel when shaving your legs! As for your insides: toast up some coconut oil kale chips!

  ETHAN’S JOURNAL

  Re: The Antidote to Hope

  The problem appears to be multisensory in nature. Next time, I should try closing my eyes.

  Chapter 2

  “What’s the Secret Rule?” Hope asks me as I shut my bedroom door behind us. “I heard you shout that at him as I walked in.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” I tell her vaguely. “It’s like Ethan’s reset button.”

  “How does it work?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” I hesitate and consider changing the subject. I’ve never spoken about the Secret Rule to anyone. “I don’t know if Ethan wants me to tell people about it.”

  “I’m not just ‘people,’” Hope protests. “I’m your best friend. But whenever your brother is around, you act like I’m some dangerous stranger. Seriously, why couldn’t you have invited him in for a little while?”

  I laugh shortly and lean back against the wall. “No way. That would be way too weird!”

  She sighs and climbs up to sit cross-legged on my bed. “Rain, you don’t need to protect me from Ethan—”

  “I’m not protecting you; I’m protecting him,” I interrupt irritably. “I’m just trying to prevent a meltdown, okay?”

  “Relax, Rainey!” She puts her hands up in mock surrender. “I get it. I just feel sorry for him sometimes. He’s here the whole day, all alone, while you’re at school. He has no one to talk to. At least if he had some friends, someone to hang out with—”

  I can’t help smiling, despite my frustration. “We’ve tried,” I tell her. My mother had enrolled him in every kind of social group that Mineral County had to offer. We’d been to the Child Development Center about a thousand times even though it’s more than an hour away. And he’d gone to school with me until a couple of years ago. But public school was a total disaster for him, and homeschooling was the only other option in our little town. “He’s happiest when he’s surrounded by his drawings and his books,” I explain. “Once in a while he hangs out with me and Mom, but that’s as big as his circle is going to get. Trust me, Ethan will never get close to anyone else.”

  I say that last statement pretty loudly; I even shake my head at her and raise my eyebrows as a none-too-subtle hint. He will never want you near him, I’m trying to tell her silently. Just stop trying already.

  She really doesn’t hear me. “I think he’s lonely,” she persists. “I just want to help him. I want to be his friend.”

  I don’t know what to say to that. Help him? What does she think I’ve been doing my whole life? Every breath I take is somehow related to my twin.

  “You know, I’ve been reading about countertransference,” I say, trying my best to sound casual. I’m a little proud of my ability to name the condition. “So I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “You’ve been reading about what?”

  “Countertransference. It’s when a therapist confuses his feelings for a patient with love. It starts innocently enough. You think that you’re just trying to help—”

  “God, Rain, where did you read that?”

  I point feebly to the psychology tome on my desk. “I’m most of the way through—”

  “Oh, I hate this new hobby of yours!” she exclaims, rolling her eyes. “What’s next? Should I nibble on your signature ginseng pretzels to stay calm in case the Freud boogie monster comes knocking?”

  I take a page from Ethan’s book and ignore the sarcasm. “Actually, the high salt content of pretzels can raise your blood pressure and make you more nervous. And ginseng doesn’t help with complex psychological issues. I don’t think.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying I have complex psychological issues? And that
I’m some sort of confused therapist who thinks that Ethan is my patient?” I can’t tell if she’s pissed or amused now, but her crossed arms and raised eyebrows suggest a little of both.

  “Well, no—not exactly—” I’m not sure what I was suggesting. I was just excited to diagnose something. That chapter on nurturing and carer’s confusion had Hope’s name written all over it. Or so I’d thought when I’d read it last night.

  “I think you’re the confused therapist, Rain,” she says, pursing her lips. “And I don’t like being your patient.”

  I just want to get off the topic already. It’s not really going the way I expected.

  (For the blog: After you piss off your friends, try serving them chocolate-covered potato chips! Chocolate is the best cure for irritability, and potatoes are the ultimate comfort food. Only don’t tell them it’s for their cranky mood, or they’ll just throw them at you. People used to throw food in my face a lot when I was younger.)

  “All right, all right.” I clear my throat and slump back against my pillow. “Forget I said that.”

  She shrugs but doesn’t let go of her righteous pout. “Fine, I will. If you promise to stop analyzing me. Every time I mention Ethan.”

  “Okay, I promise. I’m sorry.”

  The worry fades from her face as she shakes my brother from her mind with a toss of her head. “Let’s talk about something else. Or should I say someone else?”

  “Well, that is what I messaged you about.”

  “Yeah, but your text was really vague. What’s going on? Did something happen between you and Liam?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.” I take a deep breath, let the suspense build a little. “Liam asked me to be his lab partner this morning. He actually picked me.”

  She nods slowly and waits, silently, her green eyes wide with expectation. I wait for the rest of her reaction. I love Hope for many reasons, but the greatest thing about her is the way she brims over with excitement about everything. Half the pleasure of telling her anything is watching her features light up, her round cheeks glow pink, her curly blond head bob up and down in celebration with me. So after months of pining over a boy who had never once looked in my direction, I thought this news deserved a real bang of a response.

  “Okay,” she murmurs. “And?”

  I hesitate. “That’s it. I mean, he chose—there were other people he could have picked—I wasn’t—” I splutter to a halt.

  I’m completely baffled and a little frustrated. I mean, last week she’d squealed for fifteen minutes when I told her about a new flavor of ice cream at Manny’s. I expected at least a small bubble of happiness from her now.

  She seems to realize her mistake and her face colors a little. “No—that’s great!” she stammers, a little too loudly. “I got confused, that’s all. Your text said ‘It’s finally happening!’ so I thought maybe he’d asked you out or something—”

  “Asked me out?” My voice quavers, and I’m suddenly embarrassed. I should never have texted her at all. Maybe I’d gotten a bit overexcited about the whole thing. But it had seemed so momentous a few hours ago. “How could he have asked me out? I was surprised he even knew my name!”

  She sighs and settles back against the wall. “It’s Clarkson High School, not Caltech. There are thirty-five kids in the eleventh grade. Everyone knows everyone’s name—”

  “He could have picked Mike instead of me!” I interrupt heatedly. “Or Angel—”

  “Angel barely passed the tenth grade,” she says with a shrug. “As for Mike—” She makes a pow sound with her lips.

  “Oh, that arson charge was like a year ago! And they could never prove that he set his dad’s garage on fire.”

  “The class will be working with Bunsen burners, right?” She’s smiling now, and I realize how stupid I just sounded. Of course Liam picked me. There were three people left to choose from after everyone had paired up—and I was simply Miss Process of Elimination. Not Miss Future Girlfriend. God, I really am an idiot.

  Hope shrugs sympathetically as I slump against my pillow. “This could be a good thing, Rainey. You’ve had a crush on this guy for almost a year, right? Now you don’t have an excuse anymore. You two have to work together on your science projects. So you’ll have to talk to him. And you never know—”

  I nod and sit up a little straighter. “Well, yeah. I don’t know why it’s been so hard for me to start a conversation. Talking to people is supposed to be my thing!” It’s what I wanted to do with my life. My mom was always saying that psychology was my true calling.

  “Sure it is,” she remarks sarcastically. “If it means analyzing the crap out of people.”

  “But there’s nothing to analyze about Liam. Don’t roll your eyes! I know that everyone thinks that their crush is perfect. But he actually is the smartest guy I’ve ever met. Plus he volunteers with the paramedic team and is a lifeguard at the pool and tutors a bunch of ninth graders on the side—as if he’s not busy enough staying at the top of the class—”

  “Rain,” she interrupts, holding up her hands. “I know the guy’s resume. He’s the class overachiever, future valedictorian blah blah blah. But I’m still trying to understand why you’re so nuts about a guy who’s never really looked at any girl at our school—”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing! Maybe he has other things on his mind.”

  “He’s sixteen. He shouldn’t have other things on his mind.” She shakes her head. “You know, sometimes I wonder if we’re even talking about the same person. Liam isn’t exactly—” She breaks off and plucks nervously at her sleeve.

  “Yeah, I know you don’t think he’s cute,” I say shortly.

  She shrugs and looks away. “That isn’t it. Everyone has their type. Just because I’m not into the skinny, curly hair, giant glasses look doesn’t mean that you can’t be. I’m just trying to figure out why you find it so hard to talk to him. You’re really smart and pretty. He should be thrilled to talk to you!”

  “Thank you.” I can’t help smiling at the compliment hiding behind her jokes. “I guess the problem is that I feel like a nothing when I’m standing next to him. So I freeze up. My mind goes completely blank.”

  “So just take it slow, okay? Maybe start with the science experiment and find a way to make it personal. Like—‘Hey, Liam, those chemicals are pretty flammable. Aren’t you glad that I’m not a pyromaniac who set fire to my dad’s garage?’ Like that.”

  “Ha. Very funny, Hope.”

  “Or how about…” She puckers her lips and sinks her voice into a hoarse whisper. “‘Oh, Liam, my name may be Rain, but right now I’m hotter than the exothermic reaction in that beaker—’”

  I smack her on the shoulder. “Shut up! That’s just—”

  “You can even use chemistry as an excuse to ask him out!” She’s shaking with laughter now. “‘Wow, that lab made an awful sulfur smell, Liam.’” She fans her face in mock disgust. “‘You want to go somewhere quiet and romantic where the air doesn’t smell like fart?’”

  “All right, enough!” I smother a smile and duck my head. “You can stop making fun of me now.”

  “And, you know, if all else fails,” she suggests between a hiccup and a giggle, “you can just keep stalking him silently, like you’ve been doing all year.”

  “How can I be stalking him?” I protest. “He hasn’t posted anything new on Instagram in three weeks and nothing on Facebook for seven.” I pause for a moment as she bursts out laughing again. “Okay, fine. You’ve made your point.”

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “It won’t be as hard as you think,” she reassures me, her voice suddenly serious again. “What do you talk about with everyone else? I mean, besides your recipe fetish.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Guys like food—”

  “No, Rain.”

  “Just because y
ou threw up that time—”

  “You served me pancakes with hot chili sauce!”

  “It’s a thing! I swear—”

  “You didn’t even warn me! It looked like maple syrup.”

  “Syrup is boring. And I just thought—”

  “Be boring, Rain. At least in the beginning. I’m serious. And don’t mention the blog.”

  “It has twenty followers.”

  “Good for you. Forget the puke pancakes for a minute. Rain, you have so much going for you! Your future is all mapped out in your head. That’s something to talk about. And then there’s the ‘rules’ that you’re always telling me about and your theories about everyone—”

  “I thought the whole point was to make me sound normal.”

  “I’m working with what I’ve got,” she says, grinning. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m trying to tell you that you’re awesome. I mean, you’ve practically raised your brother with those rules. That’s pretty impressive, isn’t it? You can talk about Ethan—the things you do to help take care of him—”

  “No!” I cut her off before she can finish the thought.

  She blinks at me, her eyes blank with surprise. “I just meant—”

  “Ethan is not a topic of conversation,” I say shortly. My voice comes out harsher than I intended, and the air between us suddenly goes cold. “I don’t gossip about my brother. To anyone.”

  She looks genuinely hurt now, and her eyes narrow defensively. “I didn’t think you felt that way,” she mutters. “I never thought you’d be ashamed—”

  “I’m not! That’s not how I feel at all!” No one understands this part of my life. Everyone thinks that they get it, thinks that they can imagine what it feels like to be tied to someone you love, tied to him every minute of every day. But they can never understand. Even my best friend doesn’t get it. She just thinks of him as a hot puzzle that hasn’t been solved. “I have never been ashamed of Ethan,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice steady but failing. “He’s the most important person in my life. But I’m not going to use him that way, all right? I won’t use him to get a date.”