“You said that kids with Asperger’s have an affinity for rules. Is that true of Jacob?”

“Yes. For example, Jacob knows that school starts at eight-twelve A.M. and because of that rule, he is on time every day. However, one week his mother told him that he would be late for school because he had a dentist appointment. He had a meltdown, put his fist through a wall in his bedroom, and could not be calmed down enough to be taken to the dentist. In Jacob’s mind, he was being asked to break a rule.”

“He punched in a wall? Do kids with Asperger’s have a propensity for violence?” Oliver asks.

“That’s a myth. In fact, a child with Asperger’s is more likely to not misbehave than neurotypical children are, simply because he knows that’s the rule. However, a child with Asperger’s also has a very low fight-or-flight threshold. If he feels cornered in any way-verbally, physically, or emotionally-he might either run or strike out blindly.”

“Have you ever seen Jacob do that?”

“Yes,” Dr. Moon says. “At school last year he was given detention for swearing at a teacher. Apparently a young woman tricked him into behaving inappropriately by saying she’d be his friend if he did it. Afterward, he retaliated by shoving her and was suspended.”

“What triggered the violent response in Jacob?”

“Being belittled, I imagine.”

“Did you talk to him about the episode?” Oliver asks.

“I did.”

“Did you explain why his violent response wasn’t appropriate?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think he understood that what he did was wrong?”

She hesitates. “Jacob’s sense of right and wrong isn’t based on an internalized moral code. It’s based on what he has been told to do, or not to do. If you asked him whether it’s right to hit someone, he would tell you no. However, he would also tell you that it’s wrong to make fun of someone-and in his mind, the young woman broke that rule first. When Jacob hit her, he was not thinking of how he might hurt her, or even of how his actions would be going against a rule of behavior. He was thinking of how she’d hurt him, and he simply… reacted.”

Oliver approaches the witness stand. “Dr. Murano, if I told you that Jacob had argued with Jess Ogilvy two days before she died, and that she’d told him to get lost, how would you think that had affected his behavior?”

She shakes her head. “Jess was very important to Jacob, and if they had a fight, he would have been extremely upset. In going to her house that day, he was clearly manifesting that he didn’t know how to behave. He stuck to his routine rather than let the argument run its course. Most likely, Jacob’s mind processed the fight like this: Jess told me to get lost. I can’t possibly get lost because I always know where I am. Therefore she didn’t really mean what she said, so I will just go on as if she never said it. Jacob would not have understood from Jess’s language that she might truly not have wanted to see him. It’s this inability to put himself in Jess’s frame of mind that separates Jacob from his peers. Whereas another child may just be socially awkward, Jacob is dissociated entirely from empathy, and his actions and perceptions revolve around his own needs. He never stopped to imagine what Jess was feeling; all he knew was how much she was hurting him by arguing with him.”

“Does Jacob know that it’s against the law to commit murder?”

“Absolutely. With his fixation on forensic criminology, he probably could recite the legal statutes as well as you could, Mr. Bond. But for Jacob, self-preservation is the one inviolable rule, the one that trumps everything else. So just like he lost his temper with the girl at school who’d humiliated him-and truly didn’t understand why that was problematic, given what she’d done to him first-well, I can only imagine that’s what happened with Jess, too.”

Suddenly Jacob stands up. “I didn’t lose my temper!” he shouts, as my mother grabs his arm to make him sit down again.

Of course, the fact that he’s losing his temper at this very second sort of negates what he’s saying.

“Control your client, Mr. Bond,” the judge warns.

When Oliver turns around, he looks the way soldiers do in movies when they crest a hill and see a swarm of enemy forces below them-and realize that, no matter what, they don’t have a prayer. “Jacob,” he sighs. “Sit down.”

“I need a break,” Jacob yells.

Oliver looks at the judge. “Your Honor?” And then suddenly, the jury is being led out and Jacob is practically running to the sensory break room.

My father looks completely lost. “What happens now?”

“We wait fifteen minutes.”

“Should I… Are you going to go back there with them?”

I have, every time so far. I’ve hung out in a corner, playing with some Koosh balls, while Jacob gets his act together. But now, I glance up at my father. “Do what you want,” I say. “I’m staying here.”

In my first memory, I’m really sick and I can’t stop crying. Jacob is around six or seven, and he keeps asking my mother-who has been up with me all night-to get breakfast ready. It is early; the sun hasn’t even come up yet.

I’m hungry, Jacob says.

I know, but I have to take care of Theo right now.

What’s the matter with Theo?

His throat hurts, very bad.

There’s a moment where Jacob takes this information in. I bet if he had ice cream his throat would feel better.

Jacob, my mother says, stunned. You’re thinking about how Theo feels?

I don’t want his throat to hurt, Jacob says.

Ice cream! Ice cream! I yell. It’s not even really ice cream I’m screaming for-it’s soy-based, like everything else in the freezer and fridge. But it’s still something that’s supposed to be a treat, not a breakfast food.

My mother gives in. Okay. Ice cream, she says. She puts me in my booster seat and gives me a bowl. She gives Jacob a bowl, too, and pats his head. I’m going to have to tell Dr. Moon that you were looking out for your brother, she says.

Jacob eats his ice cream. Finally, he says. Peace and quiet.

My mother still holds that up as an example of Jacob transcending his Asperger’s to exhibit empathy for his poor, sick kid brother.

Here’s what I see, now that I’m older:

Jacob got a bowl of ice cream for breakfast and didn’t even have to be the one to beg for it.

Jacob got me to stop making a racket.

My brother wasn’t trying to help me that day. He was trying to help himself.

I am lying underneath the blanket that feels like a hundred hands pressing down on me, like I’m deep at the bottom of the sea and cannot see the sun or hear what’s happening on the shore.

I didn’t lose my temper.

I don’t know why Dr. Moon would think that.

I don’t know why my mother didn’t stand up and object. I don’t know why Oliver isn’t telling the truth.

I used to have nightmares where the sun was coming too close to the earth and I was the only one who knew it, because my skin could sense a change in temperature more accurately than anyone else’s. No matter what I did to try to warn people, nobody ever listened to me, and eventually trees started to burst into flame and my family was burned alive. I would wake up and see the sunrise, and I’d freak out all over again, because how could I really be sure that my nightmare had been a nightmare after all and not actually a premonition?

I think the same thing is happening now. After years of imagining I’m an alien in this world-with senses more acute than those of normal people, and with speech patterns that don’t make sense to normal people, and behaviors that look odd on this planet but that, on my home planet, must be perfectly acceptable-it has actually become true. Truth is a lie and lies are the truth. The members of the jury believe what they hear, not what’s right in front of their eyes. And no one is listening, no matter how loud I am screaming inside my own head.