Rules

RULES FOR DAVID
Chew with your mouth closed.
Say “thank you” when someone gives you a present (even if you don’t like it).
If someone says “hi” you say “hi” back.
When you want to get out of answering something, distract the questioner with another question.
Not everything worth keeping has to be useful.
If the bathroom door is closed, knock (especially if Catherine has a friend over)!
Sometimes people laugh when they like you. But sometimes they laugh to hurt you.
No toys in the fish tank.

“Come on, David.” I let go of his sleeve, afraid I’ll rip it. When he was little, I could pull my brother behind me if he didn’t want to do something, but now David’s eight and too strong to be pulled.
Opening the front door, I sigh. My first day of summer vacation is nothing like I dreamed. I had imagined today warm, with seagulls winging across a blue sky, not overcast and damp. Still, I refuse to grab my jacket from the peg inside the front door.
“Umbrella?” David asks, a far-off stare in his brown eyes. “It’s not raining. Come on. Mom said go to the car.”
David doesn’t move.
I get his favorite red umbrella.
“Okay, let’s go.” I step onto the front porch and slide the umbrella into my backpack with my sketch-book and colored pencils.
“Let’s go to the video store,” David says, not moving one inch.”You’re going to the clinic. But if you do a good job, Dad’ll take you to the video store when he comes home.”
The video store is David’s favorite place, better than the circus, the fair, or even the beach. Dad always invites me to come, too, but I say, “No, thanks.” David has to watch all the previews on the store TVs and walk down each row of videos, flipping boxes over to read the parental advisory and the rating even on videos Dad would never let him rent. David’ll say, loud enough for the whole store to hear, “Rated PG-thirteen for language and some violence. Crude humor!” He’ll keep reaching for boxes and flipping them over, not even seeing the looks people give us. But the hardest part is when David kneels in the aisle to see the back of a video box a complete stranger is holding in his hand.
Dad says, “No one cares, Catherine. Don’t be so sensitive,” but he’s wrong. People do care.
Beside me, David checks his watch. “I’ll pick you up at five o’clock.”
“Well, maybe five o’clock,” I say. “Sometimes Dad’s late.” David shrieks, “Five o’clock!”
“Shh!” I scan the yards around us to see if anyone heard, and my stomach flips. A moving van is parked in front of the house next door, back wide open, half full of chairs and boxes. From inside the truck, two men appear, carrying a couch between them.
My hands tremble, trying to zip my backpack. “Come on, David. Mom said go to the car.”
David stands with his sneaker toes on the top step, like it’s a diving board and he’s choosing whether to jump. “Five o’clock,” he says. The right answer would be “maybe,” but David only wants surefire answers: “yes” and “no” and “Wednesday at two o’clock,” but never “maybe” or “it depends” or worst of all, “I don’t know.”
Next door the movers set the couch on the driveway. If I hurry, I can ask them before they head into the house.
“Okay,” I say. “Dad will pick you up at five o’clock. That’s the rule.”
David leaps down the steps just as the moving men climb into the van. He might not understand some things, but David loves rules. I know I’m setting up a problem for later because Dad’s always late, but I have rules, too, and one of mine is:
Sometimes you’ve gotta work with what you’ve got.
I take David’s elbow to hurry him. “Let’s go past the fence and talk to those men.”
A little spring mud remains under the pine trees near the fence. Only a month ago, puddles were everywhere when Mrs. Bowman called me over to say her house had been sold to a woman with a twelve-year-old daughter. “I knew you’d be pleased,” she said. “I told the realtor I have a girl just that age living next door and maybe they can be friends.”
A few weeks later, I had stood on my porch, waving, as Mrs. Bowman’s son drove her away to her new apartment attached to his house.
It feels wrong that Mrs. Bowman’s not living in the gray shingled house next door anymore and her porch looks empty without her rocking chairs. But I’m tingly with hopes, too. I’ve always wanted a friend in my neighborhood, and a next-door friend would be best of all.
Usually in summer I do lots of things by myself because my best friend, Melissa, spends the whole vacation in California with her dad. This year’ll be different, though. The girl next door and I can do all my favorite summer things together: swimming at the pond, watching TV, and riding bikes. We could even send midnight messages from our windows, using flashlights and Morse code, like next-door friends do in books.
And the best part, David won’t have to come since Mom won’t have to drive me and pick me up.
I bite my teeth together, fighting the memory of my last sleepover at Melissa’s. When Mom came to pick me up, David raced around Melissa’s kitchen, opening doors, looking for their cellar, even when Mom kept telling him this was a trailer and trailers don’t have cellars.
“Real friends understand,” Mom had said on the ride home. But here’s what I understand: Sometimes everyone gets invited except us, and it’s because of David.
Walking toward the van, I study the moving men. One has a blotchy face and looks all business. The younger one wears a half smile and a dirty T-shirt and jeans.
T-shirt Man seems friendlier.
“Remember the rule,” I whisper, my hand pushing David’s back to hurry him. “If someone says ‘hi,’ you say ‘hi’ back.”
Down the walkway, I through conversation run possibilities in my head, but that one rule should be enough. There’s only one question I need to ask, then I can take David right to the car.
“Hi!” I call, reaching the corner of the fence. David flickers his fingers up and down, like he’s playing a piano in the air.
T-shirt Man turns around.
“Do you know when the family’s coming?” I ask. “Is it today?”
He looks to the other man in the van. “When are the Petersons coming?”
“If someone says ‘hi,’ you say ‘hi’ back!” David yells.
“That’s the rule!”
Both men stare past me with that familiar look. The wrinkled-forehead look that means, “What’s wrong with this kid?”
I grab David’s hands to stop his fingers.
“They’re coming about five o’clock,” the red-faced man says. “That’s what she said. “Five o’clock!” David twists under my arm.
My wrist kills from being curled backward. I grip my toes in my sneakers to hide the pain. “Thanks!” I pretend I can see my watch. “Wow, look at the time! Sorry, gotta go!”
Chasing David to the car, I hear heavy footsteps on the van’s metal ramp behind me, thunk-thunk.
David covers his ears with his hands. “It’s five o’clock. Let’s go to the video store!”
My own hands squeeze to fists. Sometimes I wish someone would invent a pill so David’d wake up one morning without autism, like someone waking from a long coma, and he’d say, “Jeez, Catherine, where have I been?” And he’d be a regular brother like Melissa has a brother who’d give back as much as he took, who I could joke with, even fight with. Someone I could yell at and he’d yell back, and we’d keep going and going until we’d both yelled ourselves out.
But there’s no pill, and our quarrels fray instead of knot, always ending in him crying and me sorry for hurting him over something he can’t help.
“Here’s another rule.” I open the car door. “If you want to get away from someone, you can check your watch and say, ‘Sorry, gotta go.’ It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does.”
“Sorry, gotta go?” David asks, climbing into the car. “That’s right. I’ll add it to your rules.”
The men carry a mattress, still in plastic, up the walkway next door. Someday soon I’m going to take a plate of cookies up those steps and ring the doorbell. And if the girl next door doesn’t have a flashlight, I’ll buy her one that turns on and off easily.
Mom says I have to deal with what is and not to get my hopes up, but how else can hopes go but up?