House Rules Read Free Page B

took the first shower, and he can‘t handle having his routine messed up. And when I turned fifteen and made an appointment to get my learner‘s permit at the DMV an appointment that got canceled when Jacob had a meltdown over buying a pair of new sneakers I was expected to understand that these things happen. The problem is, something happened the next three times I tried to get my mom to take me to the DMV and, finally, I just stopped asking. At this rate, I‘ll be riding my skateboard till I‘m thirty.
    Once, when Jacob and I were little, we were playing in a pond near our house with an inflatable boat. It was my job to watch Jacob, even though he was three years older than I am and has had just as many swimming lessons as I have. We overturned the boat and swam up underneath it, where the air was heavy and wet. Jacob started talking about dinosaurs, which he was into at the time, and he wouldn‘t shut up. Suddenly I began to panic. He was sucking up all the oxygen in that tiny space. I pushed at the boat, trying to lift it off us, but the plastic had created some kind of seal on the surface of the water which only made me panic even more. And sure, with twenty-twenty hindsight, I know I could have swum out from underneath the boat, but at that moment it didn‘t occur to me. All I knew, at the time, was that I couldn‘t breathe. When people ask me what it‘s like growing up with a brother who has Asperger‘s, that‘s what I always think of, even though the answer I give out loud is that I‘ve never known anything different.
    I‘m no saint. There are times I‘ll do things to drive Jacob crazy, because it‘s just so damn easy. Like when I went into his closet and mixed up all his clothes. Or when I hid the toothpaste cap so that he couldn‘t put it back on when he was done brushing his teeth. But then I wind up feeling bad for my mom, who usually bears the brunt of one of Jacob‘s meltdowns. There are times I hear her crying, when she thinks Jacob and I are asleep.
    That‘s when I remember that she didn‘t sign up for this kind of life, either.
    So I run interference. I‘m the one who physically drags Jacob away from a conversation when he‘s starting to freak people out by being too intense. I‘m the one who tells him to stop flapping when he‘s nervous on the bus, because it makes him look like a total nutcase. I‘m the one who goes to his classes before I go to my own, just to let the teachers know that Jacob had a rough morning because we unexpectedly ran out of soy milk. In other words, I act like the big brother, even though I‘m not. And during the times when I think it‘s not fair, when my blood feels like lava, I step away. If my room isn‘t far enough, I get on my skateboard and tool somewhere anywhere that isn‘t the place I am supposed to call home.
    That‘s what I do this afternoon, after my brother decides to cast me as the perp in his fake crime scene. I‘ll be honest with you it wasn‘t the fact that he took my sneakers without asking or even that he stole hair out of my brush (which is, frankly, Silence of the Lambs creepy). It was that when I saw Jacob in the kitchen with his corn-syrup blood and his fake head injury and all the evidence pointing to me, for a half a second, I thought: I wish .
    But I‘m not allowed to say my life would be easier without Jacob around. I‘m not even allowed to think it. It‘s another one of those unwritten house rules. So I grab my coat and head south, although it is twenty degrees outside and the wind feels like knives on my face. I stop briefly at the skateboarding park, the only place in this stupid town where the cops even let you skate anymore, although it‘s totally useless during the winter, which is like nine months of the year in Townsend, Vermont.
    It snowed last night, about two inches, but there‘s a guy with a snowskate trying to Ollie off the stairs when I get there. His friend is holding a cell phone, recording the trick. I