Nineteen Minutes

by Jodie Picoult

  “Someone slashed my tires.”

  Selena glanced at him over the baby’s head. “Well, you sure know how to win friends and influence people. Let me guess-the cops aren’t exactly scrambling to take your report?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Comes with the territory, I guess,” Selena said. “You’re the one who took this case.”

  “How about a little spousal understanding?”

  Selena shrugged. “Wasn’t in the vows I took. If you want to have a pity party, set the table for one.”

  Jordan ran a hand through his hair. “Well, did you at least get anything out of the mother? Like, for example, that Peter had a psychiatric diagnosis?”

  She peeled off her jacket while juggling Sam in one hand and then the other, unbuttoned her blouse, and sat down on the couch to nurse. “No. But he did have a sibling.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. A dead one, who-prior to being killed by a drunk driver-was the All-American Son.”

  Jordan sank down beside her. “I can use this…”

  Selena rolled her eyes. “Just for once, could you not be a lawyer and focus instead on being a human? Jordan, this family was in so deep they didn’t have a chance. The kid was a powder keg. The parents were dealing with their own grief and were asleep at the wheel. Peter had no one to turn to.”

  Jordan glanced up at her, a grin splitting his face. “Excellent,” he said. “Our client’s just become sympathetic.”

  One week after the school shooting at Sterling High, the Mount Lebanon School-a primary grade school that had become an administrative building when the population of students in Lebanon dipped-was outfitted to be the temporary home for high school kids to finish out their school year.

  On the day that classes were beginning again, Josie’s mother came into her bedroom. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You can take a few more weeks off, if you want.”

  There had been a flurry of phone calls, a pulse of panic that began a few days ago when each student received the written word that school would be starting again. Are you going back? Are you? There were rumors: whose mother wouldn’t let them return; who was getting transferred to St. Mary’s; who was going to take over Mr. McCabe’s class. Josie had not called any of her friends. She was afraid to hear their answers.

  Josie did not want to go back to school. She could not imagine having to walk down a hallway, even one not physically located at Sterling High. She didn’t know how the superintendent and the principal expected everyone to act-and they would all be doing that: acting-because to feel anything real would be devastating. And yet there was another part of Josie that understood she had to go back to school; it was where she belonged. The other students at Sterling High were the only ones who really understood what it was like to wake up in the morning and crave those three seconds before you remembered your life wasn’t what it used to be; who had forgotten how easy it was to trust that the ground beneath your feet was solid.

  If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?

  “Josie?” her mother said, prompting.

  “It’s fine,” she lied.

  Her mother left, and Josie started to gather her books. She realized, suddenly, that she’d never taken her science test. Catalysts. She didn’t remember anything about them anymore. Mrs. Duplessiers wouldn’t be evil enough to hand out the test on their first day back, would she? It wasn’t like time had stopped during these three weeks-it had changed completely.

  The last morning she had gone to school, she hadn’t been thinking of anything in particular. That test, maybe. Matt. How much homework she’d have that night. Normal things, in other words. A normal day. There had been nothing to set it apart from any other morning at school; so how could Josie be sure that today wouldn’t dissolve at the seams, too?

  When Josie reached the kitchen, her mother was wearing a suit-work clothes. It took her by surprise. “You’re going back today?” she asked.

  Her mother turned, holding a spatula. “Oh,” she answered, faltering. “I just figured that since you were…You can always reach me through the clerk, if there’s a problem. I swear to God, Josie, I’ll be there in less than ten minutes….”

  Josie sank into a chair and closed her eyes. Somehow, it didn’t matter that Josie herself was leaving the house for the day-she’d still imagined her mother sitting home waiting for her, just in case. But that was stupid, wasn’t it? It had never been like that, so why should now be any different?

  Because, a voice whispered in Josie’s head. Everything else is.

  “I’ve rearranged my schedule so I’ll be able to pick you up from school. And if there’s any problem-”

  “Yeah. Call the clerk. Whatever.”

  Her mother sat down across from her. “Honey, what did you expect?”

  Josie glanced up. “Nothing. I stopped that a long time ago.” She stood up. “You’re burning your pancakes,” she said, and she walked back upstairs to her bedroom.

  She buried her face in her pillow. She didn’t know what the hell was wrong with her. It was as if, after, there were two Josies-the little girl who kept hoping it might be a nightmare, might never have happened, and the realist who still hurt so badly she lashed out at anyone who got too close. The thing was, Josie didn’t know which persona was going to take over at any given moment. Here was her mother, for God’s sake, who couldn’t boil water but was now attempting pancakes for Josie before she went back to school. When she was younger, she had imagined living in the kind of house where on the first day of school your mother had a whole spread of eggs and bacon and juice to start the day off right-instead of a lineup of cereal boxes and a paper napkin. Well, she’d gotten what she wished for, hadn’t she? A mother who sat at her bedside when she was crying, a mother who had temporarily abandoned the job that defined her to hover over Josie instead. And what did Josie do? She pushed her away. She said, in all the spaces between her words, You never cared about anything that happened in my life when nobody was watching, so don’t think you can just start now.

  Suddenly, Josie heard the roar of an engine pulling into the driveway. Matt, she thought, before she could stop herself; and by then, every nerve in her body was stretched to the point of pain. Somehow, she hadn’t really thought about how she would physically be transported to school-Matt had always picked her up en route. Her mother, of course, would have driven her. But Josie wondered why she hadn’t worked through these logistics earlier. Because she was afraid to? Didn’t want to?

  From her bedroom window she watched Drew Girard get out of his battered Volvo. By the time she reached the front door to open it, her mother had come out of the kitchen, too. She held the smoke detector in her hand, popped off its plastic snap on the ceiling.

  Drew stood in a shaft of sunlight, shading his eyes with his free hand. His other arm was still in a sling. “I should have called.”

  “That’s okay,” Josie said. She felt dizzy. She realized that, in the background, the birds had come back from wherever they went in the winter.

  Drew looked from Josie to her mother. “I thought maybe, you know, you might need a ride.”

  Suddenly Matt was standing there with them; Josie could feel his fingers on her back.

  “Thanks,” her mother said, “but I’m going to take Josie in today.”

  The monster in Josie uncoiled. “I’d rather go with Drew,” she said, grabbing her backpack off the newel post of the banister. “I’ll see you at pickup.” Without turning around to see her mother’s face, Josie ran to the car, which gleamed like a sanctuary.

  Inside, she waited for Drew to turn over the ignition and pull out of the driveway. “Are your parents like that?” Josie asked, closing her eyes as they sped down the street. “Like you can’t breathe?”

  Drew glanced at her. “Yeah.”

  “Have you talked to anyone?”

  “Like the police?”

  Josie shook her head. “L
ike us.”

  He downshifted. “I went over to the hospital to see John a couple of times,” Drew said. “He couldn’t remember my name. He can’t remember the words for things like forks or hairbrushes or stairs. I kind of sat there and told him stupid things-who’d won the last few Bruins games, things like that-but the whole time I was wondering if he even knows he can’t walk anymore.” At a stoplight, Drew turned to her. “Why not me?”

  “What?”

  “How come we got to be the lucky ones?”

  Josie didn’t know what to say to that. She looked out the window, pretending to be fascinated by a dog that was pulling its owner, instead of the other way around.

  Drew pulled into the parking lot of the Mount Lebanon School. Beside the building was a playground-this had been an elementary school, after all, and even once it became administrative, neighborhood kids would still come to use the monkey bars and the swings. In front of the school’s main doors stood the principal and a line of parents, calling out the names of students and encouraging them as they walked inside.

  “I have something for you,” Drew said, and he reached behind his seat and held out a baseball cap-one Josie recognized. Whatever embroidery had once been on it had long since unraveled; the brim was frayed and curled tight as a fiddlehead. He handed it to Josie, who ran a finger gently along the inside seam.

  “He left it in my car,” Drew explained. “I was going to give it to his parents…after. But then I kind of thought you might want it instead.”

  Josie nodded, as tears rose along the watermark of her throat.

  Drew bent his head against the wheel. It took Josie a moment to realize that he was crying, too.

  She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you,” Josie managed, and she settled Matt’s baseball cap onto her head. She opened the passenger door and reached for her knapsack, but instead of heading toward the school she walked through the rusted gates onto the playground. She strode into the middle of the sandbox and stared at her shoe prints, wondered how much wind or weather it would take to make them disappear.

  Twice Alex had excused herself from the courtroom to call Josie’s cell, even though she knew Josie kept it turned off during classroom hours. The message she left both times was the same:

  It’s me. I just wanted to know how you were holding up.

  Alex told her clerk, Eleanor, that if Josie called back, she was to be disturbed. No matter what.

  She was relieved to be back at work, but had to force herself to pay attention to the case in front of her. There was a defendant on the stand who claimed to have no experience with the criminal justice system. “I don’t understand the court process,” the woman said, turning to Alex. “Can I go now?”

  The prosecutor was in the middle of his cross-examination. “First, why don’t you tell Judge Cormier about the last time you were in court.”

  The woman hesitated. “Maybe for a speeding ticket.”

  “What else?”

  “I can’t remember,” she said.

  “Aren’t you on probation?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Oh,” the woman replied. “That.”

  “What are you on probation for?”

  “I can’t remember.” She looked up at the ceiling, her brow wrinkling in thought. “It begins with an F. F…F…F…felony! That’s it!”

  The prosecutor sighed. “Didn’t it have to do with a check?”

  Alex looked at her watch, thinking that if she got this woman off the damn stand, she could see if Josie had called in yet. “How about forgery,” she interrupted. “That starts with an F.”

  “So does fraud,” the prosecutor pointed out.

  The woman faced Alex blankly. “I can’t remember.”

  “I’m calling a one-hour recess,” Alex announced. “Court will resume at eleven a.m.”

  As soon as she was through the door that took her to her chambers, she stripped off her robes. They felt suffocating today, something that Alex didn’t really understand-this was where she had always felt comfortable. Law was a set of rules she understood-a code of behavior where certain actions had certain consequences. She could not say the same of her personal life, where a school that was supposed to be safe turned into a slaughterhouse, where a daughter carved from her own body had become someone Alex no longer understood.

  Okay, if she was going to be honest, that she’d never understood.

  Frustrated, she stood up and walked into her clerk’s office. Twice, before the trial began, she’d called on Eleanor for trivial things, hoping that instead of hearing “Yes, Your Honor,” the clerk would let down her guard and ask Alex how she was doing, how Josie was doing. That for a half a moment, she wouldn’t be a judge to someone, just another parent who’d had the scare of a lifetime.

  “I need a cigarette,” Alex said. “I’m going downstairs.”

  Eleanor glanced up. “All right, Your Honor.”

  Alex, she thought. Alex Alex Alex.

  Outside, Alex sat down on the cement block near the loading zone and lit a cigarette. She drew in deeply, closed her eyes.

  “Those’ll kill you, you know.”

  “So will old age,” Alex replied, and she turned around to see Patrick Ducharme.

  He turned his face up to the sun, squinted. “I wouldn’t have expected a judge to have vices.”

  “You probably think we sleep under the bench, too.”

  Patrick grinned. “Well, that would be just plain silly. There’s not enough room for a mattress.”

  She held out the pack. “Be my guest.”

  “If you want to corrupt me, there are more interesting ways.”

  Alex felt her face flame. He hadn’t just said that, had he? To a judge? “If you don’t smoke, why’d you come out here?”

  “To photosynthesize. When I’m stuck in court all day it ruins my feng shui.”

  “People don’t have feng shui. Places do.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?”

  Alex hesitated. “Well. No.”

  “There you go.” He turned to her, and for the first time she noticed that he had a white streak in his hair, right at the widow’s peak. “You’re staring.”

  Alex immediately jerked her gaze away.

  “It’s all right,” Patrick said, laughing. “It’s albinism.”

  “Albinism?”

  “Yeah, you know. Pale skin, white hair. It’s recessive, so I got a skunk streak. I’m one gene away from looking like a rabbit.” He faced her, sobering. “How’s Josie?”

  She considered putting up that Chinese wall, telling him she didn’t want to talk about anything that could compromise her case. But Patrick Ducharme had done the one thing Alex had wished for-he’d treated her like a person instead of a public figure. “She went back to school,” Alex confided.

  “I know. I saw her.”

  “You…Were you there?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Yeah. Just in case.”

  “Did anything happen?”

  “No,” he said. “It was…ordinary.”

  The word hung between them. Nothing was going to be ordinary again, and both of them knew it. You could patch up whatever was broken, but if you were the one who had fixed it, you’d always know in your heart where the fault lines lay.

  “Hey,” Patrick said, touching her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She realized, mortified, that she was crying. Wiping her eyes, Alex moved out of his reach.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said, daring Patrick to challenge her.

  He opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, but then snapped it shut. “I’ll leave you to your vices, then,” he said, and walked back inside.

  It wasn’t until Alex was back in chambers that she realized the detective had used the plural. That he’d not only caught her smoking, but also lying.

  There were new rules: All the doors except for the main entrance would be locked after school began, even though a shooter who was a student might al
ready be inside. No backpacks were allowed in classrooms anymore, although a gun could be sneaked in under a coat or in a purse or even in a zippered three-ring binder. Everyone-students and staff-would get ID cards to wear around their necks. It was supposed to make everyone accountable, but Josie couldn’t help but wonder if this way, next time, it would be easier to tell who’d been killed.

  The principal got on the loudspeaker during homeroom and welcomed everyone back to Sterling High, even if it wasn’t Sterling High. He suggested a moment of silence.

  While other kids in her homeroom bowed their heads, Josie glanced around. She was not the only one who wasn’t praying. Some kids were passing notes. A couple were listening to their iPods. A guy was copying someone else’s math notes.

  She wondered if they, like her, were afraid to honor the dead, because it made them feel more guilty.

  Josie shifted, banging her knee against the desk. The desks and chairs that had been brought back to this makeshift school were for little children, not high school refugees. As a result, nobody fit. Josie’s knees were bent up to her chin. Some kids couldn’t even sit at the desks; they had to write with their binders on their laps.

  I am Alice in Wonderland, Josie thought. Watch me fall.

  Jordan waited for his client to sit down across from him in the conference room of the jail. “Tell me about your brother, Peter,” he said.

  He scrutinized Peter’s face-saw the disappointment flash across it as he realized that Jordan had again unearthed something he’d hoped would stay hidden. “What about him?” Peter replied.

  “You two get along?”

  “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I wasn’t.” Jordan shrugged. “I’m just surprised you didn’t mention him earlier.”

  Peter glared at him. “Like when? When I was supposed to shut up at the arraignment? Or after that, when you came here and told me you were going to do all the talking and I was going to listen?”

  “What was he like?”

  “Look. Joey’s dead, which you obviously know. So I don’t really get why talking about him is going to help me.”