He’s had three. The first was working at a pet store in town, back when he was obsessive about dogs. He got fired for telling his boss that she was stupid to keep the dog food in the back of the store, since the bags were so heavy. The second job he had was bagging groceries at a food co-op, where the cashiers kept telling him to “get his ducks in a row” as the items came down the conveyor belt and then got mad because he wouldn’t listen, when in reality Jacob probably just didn’t understand. The third job was selling concessions at a snack bar during the summer at the town pool. I guess that worked out fine for the first hour or so, but when lunchtime came and there were six kids shouting to him for sno-cones and hot dogs and nachos all at once, he took off his apron and just walked out.

A car drives up behind me, which makes me feel like a moron. I shuffle my feet and punch the Withdrawal button, and then enter $200 on the keypad. When the money comes out of the mouth of the machine, I stuff it into my pocket. And then I hear my name being called.

“Theo? Theo Hunt, is that you?”

I feel guilty, as if I’ve been caught in the act of doing something I shouldn’t be. But it’s not, like, illegal to walk up to a drive-up ATM, is it?

The door of the car behind me opens, and out steps my biology teacher, Mr. Jennison. “How are you doing?” he asks.

I remember how once, when my mother was getting on Jacob’s back because he refused to make small talk at a distant cousin’s wedding, he said that he would have asked Aunt Marie how she was doing if he really truly cared… but he didn’t, so pretending he did would be a big lie.

There are times when Jacob’s world makes a lot more sense to me than the one the rest of us live in. Why do we ask people how they’re doing when we don’t give a crap about the answer? Is Mr. Jennison asking me that question because he’s worried about me, or because it’s something to say to fill up the air between us?

“I’m okay,” I say, because old habits die hard. If I were like Jacob, I would have answered directly: I can’t sleep at night. And sometimes, when I run too fast, I can’t breathe. But in reality, someone who asks you how you’re doing doesn’t want to hear the truth. He wants the pat answer, the expected response, so that he can go on his merry way.

“You need a lift? It’s freezing out here.”

There are some teachers I have really liked, and others I’ve really disliked, but Mr. Jennison doesn’t fall into either category. He’s nondescript, from his thinning hair to his lectures; the kind of teacher whose name I’ll probably forget by the time I go to college. I’m pretty sure that-until recently-he could say the same about me: I was an average student in his class who didn’t excel or fail enough to leave an impression. Until, of course, all this happened.

Now I’m the boy at the center of six degrees of separation: Oh yeah, my aunt was Theo’s third-grade teacher. Or I sat behind him at a school assembly once. I am the kid whose name they will toss out at cocktail parties years from now: That autistic murderer kid? I was in his brother’s class at Townsend High.

“My mom’s double-parked across the street,” I mumble, realizing too late that, if our car was indeed in town, it would most likely be at this drive-through ATM right now. “Thanks anyway,” I say, and I leave in such a hurry that I almost forget to take the transaction receipt.

I jog all the way to the grocery store, as if I’m expecting Mr. Jennison to tail me in his car and call me a liar to my face. Only once do I think about taking the $200 and hopping on a bus and leaving for good. I imagine sitting in the backseat next to a pretty girl who shares her trail mix with me, or an old lady who’s knitting a cap for her newborn grandson, who asks me where I’m headed.

I imagine telling her that I’m going to visit my big brother at college. That we’re really close and that I miss him when he’s away at school.

I imagine how cool it would be if small talk wasn’t lies.

When I’m getting ready to go to sleep that night, my toothbrush goes missing. Furious-this isn’t the first time this has happened, believe me-I stalk down the hall to my brother’s room. Jacob’s got an audiotape of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine playing on an old tape deck. “What the hell did you do with my toothbrush this time?” I ask.

“I didn’t touch your stupid toothbrush.”

But I don’t believe him. I glance at the old fish tank he uses for a fuming chamber, but it’s not there-it was seized as evidence.

Abbott’s and Costello’s voices are so faint, I can barely make out the words. “Can you even hear that?” I say.

“It’s loud enough.”

I remember once, at Christmas, when my mom got Jacob a watch. She had to return it because the ticking noise drove him crazy.

“I’m not crazy,” Jacob says, and for a second I wonder if I’ve spoken out loud.

“I never said you were!”

“Yes, you did,” Jacob says.

He’s probably right. His memory’s like a steel trap. “Considering all the shit you steal from my room for your fuming chamber and your crime scenes, I think we can call it even.”

What’s the guy’s name on first base?

No. What is on second.

I’m not asking you who’s on second.

Who’s on first.

I don’t know.

He’s on third, we’re not talking about him.

Okay, so I know some people find that comedy routine hilarious, but I’ve never been one of them. Probably the reason Jacob likes it so much is that it makes perfect sense to him, since the names are taken literally.

“Maybe it got thrown out,” Jacob says, and at first I think it’s Costello’s line, until I realize that he’s talking about my toothbrush.

“Did you do it?” I ask.

Jacob stares at me. It always gives me a jolt when that happens, because he spends so much time not looking me in the eye. “Did you?” he replies.

Suddenly I’m not sure what we’re talking about, but I don’t think it’s oral hygiene. Before I can respond, my mother sticks her head in the doorway. “Which one of you does this belong to?” she asks, holding up my toothbrush. “It was in my bathroom.”

I grab it from her. On the cassette deck, Abbott and Costello are arguing over the canned laugh track.

Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about!

“I told you so,” Jacob says.

When I was little, I convinced my brother that I had superpowers. Why else would I be able to hear what our mother was doing upstairs when we were downstairs? Why not say that the reason fluorescent bulbs made me dizzy was that I was so sensitive to light? When I missed a question Theo asked me, I told him it was because I could hear so many conversations and background noises at once, that sometimes it was hard for me to focus on just one sound at a time.

For a while, it worked. And then my brother figured out I wasn’t gifted with extrasensory perception. I was just strange.

Having Asperger’s is like having the volume of life at full blast all the time. It’s like a permanent hangover (although I admit I have only been drunk once, when I tried Grey Goose straight to see the effect it would have on me and was dismayed to learn that, rather than giggling, like everyone on television who’s drunk, I only felt more displaced and disoriented, and the world only got more fuzzy and indistinct). All those little autistic kids you see smacking their heads against walls? They’re not doing it because they’re mental. They’re doing it because the rest of the world is so loud it actually hurts, and they’re trying to make it all go away.