Rules (3 page)

“It’s okay.” Mrs. Morehouse holds the door open with her foot. “I can get it.”

I pick up my palest-yellow pencil and add a dot to my drawing, gleaming in a window. From the dot, I sweep down a shivering beam cutting the darkness. I imagine myself sitting on my bed, hugging my knees, counting Morse code dashes and dots.

A-r-e y-o-u t-h-e-r-e?

The bell jangles again. I look up to see Mrs. Morehouse in the doorway, watching me. She crosses her arms over her stomach.

Mrs. Frost drops her magazine and even the receptionist has stopped typing, her hands held above her keyboard like a conductor waiting to cue a symphony.

“Jason insisted I come back,” Mrs. Morehouse says, “and tell you he likes the picture you’re drawing.” She turns to leave.

I look out the window to Jason at the top of the ramp. “Wait!” Lifting my page, I pull gently so it’ll tear neatly. Colored pencils fall off my lap, scattering and rolling across the floor, but I don’t bother with them. “If he likes it, he can have it. Please tell him the dot in the window is a flashlight.”

His mother smiles. “I’ll tell him.”

I’m too embarrassed to watch her give Jason my picture, so I get down on my knees and hunt for colored pencils, some of which have rolled under the heater.

“That was kind of you, sweetheart,” Mom says.

I slump back on the couch. Though I move my orange pencil over a fresh page, I’m only making lines. Too-busy-to-talk lines. Leave-me-alone lines.

I bear down so hard, my pencil lead breaks.

“Sorry! Gotta go!” David runs through the waiting room, heading for the door to outside, his brown hair damp with sweat. Mom jumps up to block his way.

I flip to my rule collection and add:

On the ride home from the clinic, the rain comes. David holds his hands over his ears, blocking the tiny squeaks of the windshield wipers against the glass.

David hears everything extra loud, Stephanie says. Milk being poured, shopping carts clanging at the grocery store, my pet guinea pigs squealing, the school bus braking as it pulls up to the corner, and the
whoosh
of the bus door opening — all those things and a million more make David cover his ears, fast as lightning.

The last day of school should’ve been a happy day, but I can’t think of it without seeing David at the bus stop, clutching his umbrella, his head tipped way over to his shoulder to cover one ear, his hand covering the other. Ryan Deschaine said he’d steal David’s umbrella if he let go of it, and David believed him. I told him Ryan was joking, but that made it worse, because David laughed and laughed in that twisted position, and Ryan mimicked David, tipping his own head way over, laughing.

I got in trouble with the bus driver because she caught me shoving Ryan. We had to sit in the front seats so she could keep an eye on us, she said. On the ride to school, I added another rule to David’s list:

I hope David can learn that rule by September, when we have to go back to the bus stop.

“Maybe the family next door will be moving in when we get home.” I watch a heron hunting fish in the low-water area under the bridge. His feathers are dark, slick with rain. “The movers said five, but maybe they were wrong.”

“Maybe,” Mom says, “but our new neighbors might have a long drive, and there’s always last-minute things to do when you move.”

I try to hold my hope down, but it keeps popping up again. Until Mom turns the corner to our street and I see Ryan Deschaine getting on his bike, an orange newspaper bag slung on his shoulder, his curly black hair looking frizzy from the rain.

I let loose one hope, skyward: I hope he gets soaked.

David waves out the car window. “Hi, Ryan!”

“Don’t say ‘hi’ to him,” I tell David. “He’s not your friend.”

“Catherine!” Mom snaps, the reflection from her glasses flashing in the rearview mirror. “Don’t stop David from talking to people! Not after all the work we’ve done on initiating conversation.”

Part of me wants to tell her about Ryan, but she’ll call his mother or the bus office and make it worse for David next year. Mom doesn’t understand how not everyone is on David’s side.

“I ran into Ryan’s mom the other day and she was telling me all the fun things the community center is sponsoring for kids this summer,” Mom says. “Wouldn’t you like to sign up for something, Catherine?”

Why is it the minute kids have free time, parents want to fill it up?

“She said they’re having swimming lessons, tennis, yoga,” Mom continues. “They’re even sponsoring a few bus trips and a summer dance. Won’t that be fun?”

“I have a rule against dancing,” I tell her. “No dancing unless I’m alone in my room or it’s pitch-black dark.”

“Don’t be silly. I think it sounds wonderful.”

I want to say, “Then
you
do it,” but that’ll get me in trouble.

“Hmm. I’ll think about it.” I lean forward, looking between the front seats, until I see the driveway next door, a long strip of rain-black tar, empty.

I fall back against my seat.

All afternoon I try to keep too busy to check my watch every fifteen minutes, but by four o’clock I can’t stand waiting in my room anymore. I take my sketchbook and head for the porch where there’s a good view of the neighbor’s driveway. As I open the front door, I hear Mom’s voice from somewhere down the hallway: “Please stop asking me, David! Dad’ll pick you up at five o’clock, and that’s the
last
time I’m saying it!”

I rush outside to our porch swing, worried Mom’s next words will be “Why don’t you find Catherine and see what she’s doing?”

I draw to the steady patter of rain on the roof and cars gushing through puddles on the road.

At quarter to five, a slow splashing makes me look up. A minivan passes through a puddle and into the driveway next door.

I pull my feet up onto the swing, watching over the top of my sketchbook. A woman gets out of the van and runs for the porch, her purse held over her short hair. From the passenger side, a girl climbs out. Tall with straight brown hair falling past her elbows, she’s not fat or skinny, a perfect between. She doesn’t run — just walks, like the rain doesn’t bother her at all.

Sitting here thinking about what happened with Jason and seeing Ryan, I figure today might be a bad-luck day, and I should let all that bad luck run out overnight before I try something else big. Plus, I haven’t baked anything yet and I want my introducing day to be perfect, not me standing on her porch, dripping wet, handing her soggy cookies.

The girl follows her mother inside without once looking over to my house.

Our front door opens. “Let’s go to the video store,” David says, holding his umbrella under his arm. He hops onto the swing with me, squiggling my pencil line. “Seven minutes.”

“Sometimes Dad’s late.”

Dad always has an excuse: traffic, last-minute customers at the pharmacy who’ve run out of their prescriptions and can’t wait until morning, a salesman stopping by with drug samples. But I think even if things went just right, Dad would still be late. It’s part of him, like his brown hair or his glasses or his name tag and lab coat. I gave up expecting Dad to be on time years ago, but David thinks everything a person says is the truth.

Dad works all the extra hours he can, even on Saturdays, so Mom can afford to work part-time at home. She used to have an office downtown, but David got kicked out of day care, so now she runs her tax-preparation business from our spare bedroom. The good part of having Mom home is she’s around to talk to and can take me places, but the bad part is David has to come wherever we go, and sometimes I have to babysit while she meets with clients or makes phone calls.

She says it doesn’t sound professional when she has to put her hand over the phone and yell, “David! Put those pants back on!”

David checks his watch. “Six minutes and thirty-three seconds.”

In exactly six minutes and thirty-three seconds, there’s going to be a scene. I know it as sure as I know the window next door is open, and David’s scream will travel from my porch, across our yard, and through that open window.

A red sports car zooms by on the road, puddle-spraying our fence. “Let’s count cars,” I suggest. “There’s one.”

He glances up. It’s not easy to sidetrack David, especially when it involves the video store, but he does like to count cars.

A truck rolls by.

“Two!” Raising his arm, David holds it out so he can see both the road and his watch. “And five minutes six seconds.”

“Well,
maybe
five minutes.”

“Three cars! And four minutes fifty-eight seconds.”

I give up. We count cars: four, five, six.

And he counts minutes: three, two, one.

“Remember the rule.” I flip to the back of my sketchbook and show him.

Our new neighbor’s front door opens.

“Ten! Nine!” David shouts the seconds, like an announcer at a rocket launch.

The girl steps onto her porch.

“Eight! Seven!”

I scramble to cover his mouth, but David jumps off the porch swing. A car’s coming. Please let it be Dad.

“Six! Five!” David yells, and the girl next door glances our way. “Four! Three! Two! ONE!”

I peek over, but the girl isn’t glancing now; she’s staring right at us.

“Seven cars!” David screams as the car goes past. “‘“The whole world is covered with buttons, and not one of them is mine!”’”

I jump up to stop his hands, flapping now like two fierce and angry birds.

“Is he okay?” the girl calls. “I could help you look for it.”

Look for it?

“Do you need help finding his button?” she asks.

“Oh! No, thanks!” I struggle to hold David down. The truth is, I wouldn’t know where to begin explaining, especially hollering from my porch to hers.

Talking to David can be like a treasure hunt. You have to look underneath the words to figure out what he’s trying to say. It helps if you know his conversation rules:

That button line comes from a story in one of David’s favorite books, Arnold Lobel’s
Frog and Toad Are Friends.
In the story Toad keeps finding buttons — big ones, little ones, square ones — but none of the buttons he finds is the right button. Like none of the passing cars is Dad’s.

But that would take too much explaining, and the girl is already going back inside her house.

No cookies.

No trading “hi” or “my name is.”

No flashlight discussion or even a “nice to meet you.” Her first-ever words to me were, “Is he okay?”

“I’ll pick you up at five o’clock,” David whispers. A tear gleams like a tiny pearl on David’s eyelashes.

My grip on him softens. “Dad’s still coming,” I say. “Late doesn’t mean not coming.”

But those words don’t help. So I reach over, wipe away his tear with the side of my thumb, and say the only words I know will calm him: “‘“Frog, you are looking quite green.”’”

David sniffles. “‘“But I always look green,” said Frog. “I am a frog.”’”

I pause, pretending I don’t remember what comes next, though I can do the entire book word for word, by heart.

“‘“Today you look very green, even for a frog,” said Toad.’” David looks at me.

I nod. “Even for a frog.”

David and I sit on the swing until Dad pulls into the driveway. “Ready to go, sport?” he calls, though David is already running down the steps, headed for the car.

I watch David trying to get into the car without closing his umbrella.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” Dad waves to me. “Mrs. Jesland came in at the last minute and needed her heart pills. Want to come, Catherine?”

“No, thanks.”

I check my watch. Five forty-two.