Nineteen Minutes

by Jodie Picoult

  At dinner, Peter would tell his parents that practice was going fine. He made up stories based on plays he’d seen other kids execute-athletic feats that he himself could never have done. He did this so that he could see his mother glance at Joey and say things like, “Guess there’s more than one athlete in this family.” When they came to cheer him on during games, and Peter never left the bench, he said it was because Coach played his favorites; and in a way, that was true.

  Like Peter, Derek was just about the worst soccer player on the planet. He was so fair that his veins looked like a road map underneath his skin, and he had such pale hair that you had to search hard to find his eyebrows. Now, when they were at games, they sat next to each other on the bench. Peter liked him because he smuggled Snickers bars into practice and ate them when Coach wasn’t looking, and because he knew how to tell a good joke: Why did the ref stop the leper hockey game? There was a face-off in the corner. What’s more fun than stapling Drew Girard to a wall? Ripping him off. It got to the point where Peter actually was looking forward to soccer practice, just to hear what Derek had to say-although then Peter began to worry again if he liked Derek just because he was Derek, or because Peter was gay; and then he’d sit a little farther away, or tell himself that no matter what, he wouldn’t look Derek in the eye for the whole practice, so that he didn’t get the wrong idea.

  They were sitting on the bench one Friday afternoon, watching everyone else play Rivendell. Sterling was expected to be able to kick their collective ass with their eyes closed (not that that was reason enough for the coach to put Peter or Derek in to actually play during a real league game). The score was climbing to something humiliating in the last minute of the final quarter-Sterling 24, Rivendell 2-and Derek was telling Peter another joke.

  “A pirate walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder, a peg leg, and a steering wheel on his pants,” Derek said. “The bartender says, ‘Hey, you’ve got a steering wheel on your pants.’ And the pirate goes, ‘Arrrgh, I know. It’s driving me nuts.’”

  “Good game,” the coach said, congratulating each of the players with a handshake. “Good game. Good game.”

  “You coming?” Derek asked, standing up.

  “I’ll meet you in there,” Peter said, and as he leaned down to retie his cleats he saw a pair of lady’s shoes stop in front of him-a pair he recognized, because he was always tripping over them in the mudroom.

  “Hi, baby,” his mother said, smiling down.

  Peter choked. What middle school kid had Mommy come to pick him up right at the field, as if he were leaving nursery school and needed a hand crossing the street?

  “Just give me a second, Peter,” his mother said.

  He glanced up long enough to see that the team had not gone into the locker room, as usual, but hung around to watch this latest humiliation. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, his mother marched up to the coach. “Coach Yarbrowski,” she said. “Could I have a word?”

  Kill me now, Peter thought.

  “I’m Peter’s mother. And I’m wondering why you don’t play my son during the games.”

  “It’s a matter of teamwork, Mrs. Houghton, and I’m just giving Peter the chance to come up to speed with some of the other-”

  “It’s halfway through the season, and my son has just as much right to play on this soccer team as any of the other boys.”

  “Mom,” Peter interrupted, wishing that there were earthquakes in New Hampshire, that a ravine would open under her feet and swallow her mid-sentence. “Stop.”

  “It’s all right, Peter. I’m taking care of it.”

  The coach pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll put Peter in on Monday’s game, Mrs. Houghton, but it isn’t going to be pretty.”

  “It doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to be fun.” She turned around and smiled, clueless, at Peter. “Right?”

  Peter could barely hear her. Shame was a shot that rang in his ears, broken only by the buzz of his teammates. His mother squatted down in front of him. He had never really understood what it meant to love someone and hate them at the same time, but now he was starting to get it. “Once he sees you on that field, you’ll be playing first string.” She patted his knee. “I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”

  The other players laughed as he pushed past them. “Mama’s boy,” they said. “Does she fight all your battles, homo?”

  In the locker room, he sat down and pulled off his cleats. He had a hole in the toe of one sock, and he stared at it as if he were truly amazed by that fact, instead of because he was trying so hard not to cry.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt someone sit down beside him. “Peter,” Derek said. “You okay?”

  Peter tried to say yes, but just couldn’t get the lie through his throat.

  “What’s the difference between this team and a porcupine?” Derek asked.

  Peter shook his head.

  “A porcupine has pricks on the outside.” Derek grinned. “See you Monday.”

  Courtney Ignatio was a spaghetti-strap girl. That’s what Josie called that posse, for lack of a better term-the girls who wore belly-baring tanks and who, during the student-run recitals, made up dances to the songs “Booty-licious” and “Lady Marmalade.” Courtney had been the first seventh grader to get a cell phone. It was pink, and sometimes it even rang in class, but teachers never got angry at her.

  When she was paired with Courtney in social studies to make a timeline of the American Revolution, Josie had groaned-she was sure she’d be pulling all the weight. But Courtney had invited her over to work on the project, and Josie’s mother told her that if she didn’t go, she would be stuck doing all the work, so now she was sitting on Courtney’s bed, eating chocolate chip cookies and organizing note cards.

  “What?” Courtney said, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips.

  “What what?”

  “Why do you have that look on your face?”

  Josie shrugged. “Your room. It’s totally different than mine.”

  Courtney glanced around, as if seeing her bedroom for the first time. “Different how?”

  Courtney had a wild purple shag rug and beaded lamps strung with gauzy silk scarves for atmosphere. An entire dresser top was dedicated to makeup. A poster of Johnny Depp hung on the back of her door, and a shelf sported a state-of-the-art stereo system. She had her own DVD player.

  Josie’s room, in comparison, was spartan. She had a bookshelf, a desk, a dresser, and a bed. Her comforter looked like an old-lady quilt, compared to Courtney’s satin one. If Josie had any style at all, it was Early American Dork.

  “Just different,” Josie said.

  “My mom’s a decorator. She thinks this is what every teenage girl dreams of.”

  “Do you?”

  Courtney shrugged. “I kind of think it looks like a bordello, but I don’t want to ruin it for her. Let me just go get my binder, and we can start…”

  When she left to go back downstairs, Josie found herself staring into the mirror. Drawn forward to the dresser with makeup on it, she found herself picking up tubes and bottles that were completely unfamiliar. Her mother rarely wore any makeup-maybe lipstick, but that was it. Josie lifted a mascara wand and unscrewed the cap, ran her finger over the black bristles. She uncapped a bottle of perfume and sniffed.

  In the reflection of the mirror, she watched the girl who looked just like her take a tube of lipstick-“Positively Hot!” the label read-and apply it. It put a bloom of color in her face; it brought her to life.

  Was it really that easy to become someone else?

  “What are you doing?”

  Josie jumped at the sound of Courtney’s voice. She watched in the mirror as Courtney came forward and took the lipstick out of her hands.

  “I…I’m sorry,” Josie stammered.

  To her surprise, Courtney Ignatio grinned. “Actually,” she said, “it suits you.”

  Joey got better grades than his yo
unger brother; he was a better athlete than Peter. He was funnier; he had more common sense; he could draw more than a straight line; he was the one people gravitated toward at a party. There was only one thing, as far as Peter could tell (and he’d been counting), that Joey could not do, and that was stand the sight of blood.

  When Joey was seven and his best friend went over the handlebars of his bike and opened a cut over his forehead, it was Joey who passed out. When a medical show was on television, he had to leave the room. Because of this, he’d never gone hunting with his father, although Lewis had promised his boys that as soon as they turned twelve, they were old enough to come out with him and learn how to shoot.

  It seemed as if Peter had been waiting all fall for this weekend. He had been reading up on the rifle his father was going to let him use-a Winchester Model 94 lever action 30-30 that had been his father’s, before the purchase of the bolt-action Remington 721 30.06 he used now to hunt deer. Now, at 4:30 in the morning, Peter could barely believe he was holding it in his hands, the safety carefully locked. He crept through the woods behind his father, his breath crystallizing in the air.

  It had snowed last night-which was why the conditions were perfect for deer hunting. They’d been out yesterday to find fresh scrapes-spots on live trees where a buck had rubbed his antlers and returned to scrape over and over, marking its territory. Now it was just a matter of finding the same spot and checking for fresh tracks, to see if the buck had come through yet.

  The world was different when there was no one in it. Peter tried to match his father’s footsteps, setting his boot into the print left behind by his father. He pretended he was in the army, on a guerrilla mission. The enemy was right around the corner. At any moment now, he might be surprised into an exchange of fire.

  “Peter,” his father hissed over his shoulder. “Keep your rifle pointed up!”

  They approached the ring of trees where they’d seen the rub. Today, the antler scrapes were fresh, the white flesh of the tree and the pale green strip of peeled bark chafed raw. Peter looked down at his feet. There were three sets of tracks-one much larger than the other two.

  “He’s already been through here,” Peter’s father murmured. “He’s probably following the does.” Deer in rut weren’t as smart as usual-they were so focused on the does they were chasing, they forgot to avoid the humans who might be hunting them.

  Peter and his father walked softly through the woods, following tracks toward the swamp. Suddenly, his father stuck out his hand-a signal to stop. Glancing up, Peter could see two does-one older, one a yearling. His father turned, mouthing, Don’t move.

  When the buck stepped out from behind the tree, Peter stopped breathing. It was massive, majestic. Its thick neck supported the weight of a six-point rack. Peter’s father nodded imperceptibly at the gun. Go ahead.

  Peter fumbled with the rifle, which felt thirty pounds heavier. He lifted it to his shoulder and got the deer in his sights. His pulse was pounding so hard that the gun kept shaking.

  He could hear his father’s instructions as if they were being whispered aloud even now: Shoot underneath the front leg, low on the body. If you hit the heart, you’ll kill it instantly. If you miss the heart, you’ll get the lungs, so it will run for a hundred yards or so and then drop.

  Then the deer turned and looked at him, eyes trained on Peter’s face.

  Peter squeezed the trigger, sending the shot wide.

  On purpose.

  The three deer ducked in unison, unsure of where the danger was. Just as Peter wondered whether or not his father had noticed that he wimped out-or simply assumed Peter was a lousy shot-a second shot rang from his father’s rifle. The does bolted away; the buck dropped like a stone.

  Peter stood over the deer, watching blood pump from its heart. “I didn’t mean to steal your shot,” his father said, “but if you’d reloaded, they would have heard you and run.”

  “No,” Peter said. He could not tear his eyes from the deer. “It’s okay.” Then he vomited into the scrub brush.

  He could hear his father doing something behind him, but he wouldn’t turn around. Instead Peter stared hard at a patch of snow that had already begun to melt. He felt his father approach. Peter could smell the blood on his hands, the disappointment.

  Peter’s father reached out, patting his shoulder. “Next time,” he sighed.

  Dolores Keating had transferred to the middle school this year in January. She was one of those kids that slipped by unnoticed-not too pretty, not too smart, not a troublemaker. She sat in front of Peter in French class, her ponytail bobbing up and down as she conjugated verbs out loud.

  One day, as Peter was doing his best not to fall asleep to Madame’s recitation of the verb avoir, he noticed that Dolores was sitting in the middle of an ink stain. He thought that was pretty funny, given that she was wearing white pants, and then he realized that it wasn’t ink at all.

  “Dolores has her period!” he cried out loud, out of sheer shock. In a house full of males-with the exception of his mother, of course-menstruation was one of those great mysteries about women, like how do they put on mascara without poking out their eyes and how can they hook a bra behind themselves, without seeing what they’re doing?

  Everyone in the class turned, and Dolores’s face went as scarlet as her pants. Madame ushered her into the hall, suggesting she go to the nurse. On the seat in front of Peter was a small red puddle of blood. Madame called the custodian, but by then, the class was out of control-whispers raging like a brush fire about how much blood there was, how Dolores was now one of the girls that everyone knew had her period.

  “Keating’s bleeding,” Peter said to the kid sitting next to him, whose eyes lit up.

  “Keating’s bleeding,” the boy repeated, and the chant went around the room. Keating’s bleeding. Keating’s bleeding. Across the room, Peter caught Josie’s eye-Josie, who’d started to wear makeup lately. She was singing along with the rest of them.

  Belonging felt like helium; Peter felt himself swell inside. He’d been the one to start this; by drawing a line around Dolores, he’d become part of the inner circle.

  At lunch that day, he was sitting with Josie when Drew Girard and Matt Royston came over with their trays. “We heard that you saw it happen,” Drew said, and they sat down so that Peter could tell them the details. He began embellishing-a teaspoon of blood became a cup; the stain on her white pants grew from a modest spot to a Rorschach blot of enormous proportion. They called over their friends-some who were kids on Peter’s soccer team, yet hadn’t spoken to him all year. “Tell them, too, it’s hilarious,” Matt said, and he smiled at Peter as if Peter were one of them.

  Dolores stayed out of school. Peter knew that it wouldn’t have made any difference if she was gone for a month or more-the memories of sixth graders were steel traps, and for the rest of her high school career, Dolores would always be remembered as the girl who got her period in French class and bled all over the seat.

  The morning that she came back, she stepped off the bus and was immediately flanked by Drew and Matt. “For a woman,” they said, drawing out the words, “you sure don’t have any boobs.” She pushed away from them, and Peter didn’t see her again until French class.

  Someone-he really didn’t know who-had come up with a plan. Madame was always late to class; she had to come from the other end of the school. So before the bell rang, everyone would walk up to Dolores’s desk and hand her a tampon they’d been given by Courtney Ignatio, who’d pilfered a box from her mother.

  Drew was first. As he set the tampon on her desk he said, “I think you might have dropped this.” Six tampons later, the bell still hadn’t rung, and Madame wasn’t in the room yet. Peter walked up, holding the wrapped tube in his fist, ready to drop it-and noticed Dolores was crying.

  It wasn’t loud, and it was barely even visible. But as Peter reached out with the tampon, he suddenly realized that this was what it looked like from the other side, when he was bei
ng put through hell.

  Peter crushed the tampon in his fist. “Stop,” he said softly, and then he turned around to the next three students waiting in line to humiliate Dolores. “Just stop already.”

  “What’s your problem, homo?” Drew asked.

  “It’s not funny anymore.”

  Maybe it was never funny. It was just that it hadn’t been him, and that was good enough.

  The boy behind him shoved Peter out of the way and flicked his tampon so that it bounced off Dolores’s head, rolled underneath Peter’s seat. And then it was Josie’s turn.

  She looked at Dolores, and then she looked at Peter. “Don’t,” he murmured.

  Josie pressed her lips together and let the tampon roll from her outstretched fingers onto Dolores’s desk. “Oops,” she said, and when Matt Royston laughed, she went to stand beside him.

  Peter was lying in wait. Although Josie hadn’t been walking with him for a few weeks now, he knew what she was doing after school-usually strolling into town to get an iced tea with Courtney & Co. and then window-shopping. Sometimes he stood back at a distance and watched her the way you’d stare at a butterfly that you’d only known as a caterpillar, wondering how the hell change could be that dramatic.

  He waited until she’d left the other girls, and then he followed her down the street that led to her house. When he caught up to her and grabbed her arm, she shrieked.

  “God!” she said. “Peter, why don’t you just scare me to death!”

  He had worked out what he was going to ask her in his mind, because words didn’t come easily to him, and he knew that he had to practice them more than others would; but when he had Josie this close, after everything that had happened, every question felt like a slap. Instead, he sank onto the curb, spearing his hands through his hair. “Why?” he asked.

  She sat down next to him, folding her arms over her knees. “I’m not doing it to hurt you.”