Rules
By Cynthia Lord

Excerpt:

Down the walkway, I run through conversation 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 looked 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 hand 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 hid 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 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 you watch an 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.