As part of our new home-schooling protocol, I have to make sure he keeps up with the school curriculum, and this novel was the first assignment for his English class. “And?”

“It was stupid.”

“I always thought it was sad.”

“It’s stupid,” Jacob reiterates, “because he never should have had the experiment done.”

I sit down beside him. In the narrative, Charlie Gordon, a retarded man, undergoes a surgical procedure that triples his IQ, only to have the experiment ultimately fail and leave him with subnormal intelligence again. “Why not? He got to see what he was missing.”

“But if he never had that procedure, he would never know he was missing it.”

When Jacob says things like this-truths so raw most of us won’t even admit them in silence, much less speak them out loud-he seems more lucid than anyone else I know. I do not believe my son is insane. And I do not believe that his Asperger’s is a disability, either. If Jacob didn’t have Asperger’s, he wouldn’t be the same boy I love so fiercely: the one who watches Casablanca with me and can recite all of Bogey’s dialogue; the one who remembers the grocery list in his head when I’ve inadvertently left it sitting on the counter; the one who never ignores me if I ask him to get my wallet out of my handbag or run upstairs to get a ream of paper for the printer. Would I have rather had a kid who doesn’t struggle so hard, who could make his way in the world with less resistance? No, because that child wouldn’t have been Jacob. The crises may be what stick in my mind when it comes to him, but the in-between moments are the ones I would not have missed for the world.

Still, I know why Charlie Gordon had the procedure done. And I know why I am about to have a conversation with Jacob that makes my heart feel like it’s turned to ash. It’s because, whenever possible, humans err on the side of hope.

“I have to talk to you about what Oliver said,” I begin.

Jacob sits up. “I’m not crazy. I’m not letting him say that about me.”

“Just hear me out-”

“It’s not the truth,” Jacob says. “And you always have to tell the truth. House rules.”

“You’re right. But sometimes, it’s okay to tell a little lie, if it gets you to the truth in the long run.”

He blinks. “Saying I’m insane isn’t a little lie.”

I look at him. “I know you didn’t kill Jess. I believe you. But you have to get twelve strangers on a jury to believe you. How are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to tell them the truth.”

“Okay. Pretend we’re in court, then, and tell it to me.”

His eyes flicker across my face and then fix on the window behind me. “The first rule of Fight Club is don’t talk about Fight Club.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. You can’t use movie quotes in a courtroom to say what happened… But you can use a lawyer.” I grasp his arms. “I want you to promise me that you’ll let Oliver say whatever he has to in order for you to win this case.”

He jerks his chin down. “One martini, please,” he mutters. “Shaken, not stirred.”

“I’m going to take that as a yes,” I say.

If a school day is seven hours long, six of those are eaten up by blocks of time that are full of nothing but crap: teachers yelling at kids who misbehave, gossip as you walk to your locker, recap of a math concept you understood the first time it was explained. What being home-schooled has taught me, more than anything, is what a waste of a life high school is.

When it’s just me and Jacob, sitting at the kitchen table, I can blow through my work in about an hour’s time if I leave the reading stuff for before I fall asleep. It helps that my mother second-guesses the curriculum a lot. (“We’re skipping this part. If imaginary numbers were meant to be learned, they would have made themselves real,” or “For God’s sake, how many times have you studied the Puritans now, since first grade? A hundred? Let’s just move on to the Reformation.”) At any rate, I like being home-schooled. By definition, you’re an outcast, so you don’t have to worry about sounding stupid if you give the wrong answer or if that hot girl from your English class is checking you out when you go up to the whiteboard to write your equation for the math homework. I mean, we don’t even have a whiteboard here.

Since Jacob works on different stuff than I do, he’s buried in his work on one end of the table and I’m at the other. I finish before him, but then again, I did even when we worked on regular homework before. He may be freaking brilliant, but sometimes whatever’s cooking in his brain doesn’t quite translate onto the page. I guess it’s a little like being the world’s fastest bullet train but your wheels don’t fit the rails.

As soon as I finish my French homework (Que fait ton frère? Il va à la prison!), I close my textbook. My mom looks up from her cup of coffee. Usually, she’s typing away at her computer, but she hasn’t even been able to focus on that today. “Done,” I announce.

She stretches out her lips, and I know it’s supposed to be a smile. “Great.”

“You need me to do anything?” I ask.

“Turning back time would be nice.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the grocery store,” I suggest. “We have, like, nothing to eat here.”

It’s true, and she knows it. She isn’t allowed to leave the house as long as Jacob’s stuck here, and that means we’re on a slow road to starvation unless I do something about it. “You can’t drive,” she says.

“I’ve got my skateboard.”

She arches a brow. “Theo, you cannot skateboard with groceries.”

“Why not? I’ll use those green bags I can loop over my arms, and I won’t buy anything heavy.”

It doesn’t take her very long to be convinced, but then we hit another snafu-she has only ten bucks in her wallet, and I can’t very well pretend to be Emma Hunt when I hand over her credit card. “Hey, Jacob,” I say, “we need to borrow some money.”

He doesn’t look up from his history book. “Do I look like a bank?”

“Are you kidding me?” My brother has, I swear, every dollar he’s ever been given for a birthday, Christmas, you name it. I have only seen him spend money once, on a thirty-five-cent pack of gum.

“Don’t,” my mother says quietly. “Let’s not get him upset.” Instead, she rummages in her wallet and pulls out her ATM card. “Stop off at the bank in the shopping center, and take out some cash. My PIN is 4550.”

“Really?” I say, beaming. “You just gave me your PIN?”

“Yes, so don’t make me regret it.”

I grab the card and head out of the kitchen. “So, is it your computer password, too?”

“Soy milk,” she says. “And gluten-free bread, and no-salt ham. And anything else you want.”

I make the executive decision to not take my skateboard and instead walk to the bank. It’s only two miles into town anyway. I keep my head ducked and tell myself it’s because of the wind, but really it’s because I don’t want to run into anyone I know. I pass cross-country skiers on the golf course and a pair of joggers. When I get to the bank, I realize that it’s after hours and I don’t know how to get into the little lobby where the ATM is located. Instead, I walk around to the back of the building, where there is a drive-up machine. I stand behind a Honda and wait my turn.

ENTER AMOUNT, the screen reads. I type in $200, and then I hesitate and cancel the transaction. Instead of doing a withdrawal, I look up the account balances.

Could we really have only $3,356 in our savings account? I try to remember whether my mother gets statements from more banks than just this one. If there’s a safe in our house where she keeps money.

I know that the Townsend Inn hires fifteen-year-olds as busboys for the restaurant. And I am pretty sure that, if I can get a lift into Burlington, I could work at the McDonald’s. Clearly, if someone needs to be employed, it’s me-since my mother can’t leave the house right now, and since Jacob has proven himself pathologically incapable of holding down a job.