Jodi Picoult - Change of heart

People were always "finding" Jesus in jail. What if he was already here?

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work;

I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

- WOODY ALLEN, QUOTED IN WOODY ALLEN AND HIS COMEDY, BY ERIC LAX

Maggie

There were many things I was grateful for, including the fact that I was no longer in high school. Let's just say it wasn't a walk in the park for a girl who didn't fit into the smorgasbord of clothing at the Gap, and who tried to become invisible so she wouldn't be noticed for her size. Today, I was in a different school and it was ten years later, but I was still suffering from a flashback anxiety attack. It didn't matter that I was wearing my

Jones New York I'm-going-to-court suit; it didn't matter that I was old enough to be mistaken for a teacher instead of a student-I still expected a football jock to turn the corner, at any moment, and make a fat joke.

Topher Renfrew, the boy who was sitting beside me in the lobby of the high school, was dressed in black jeans and a frayed T-shirt with an anarchy symbol, a guitar pick strung around his neck on a leather lanyard.

Cut him, and he'd bleed antiestablishment. His iPod earphones hung down the front of his shirt like a doctor's stethoscope; and as he read the decision handed down by the court just an hour before, his lips mouthed the words. "So, what does all this bullshit mean?" he asked.

"That you won," I explained. "If you don't want to say the Pledge of

Allegiance, you don't have to."

"What about Karshank?"

His homeroom teacher, a Korean War veteran, had sent Topher to detention every time he refused to say the Pledge. It had led to a letterwriting campaign by my office (well, me) and then we'd gone to court to protect his civil liberties.

Topher handed me back the decision. "Sweet," he said. "Any chance you can get pot legalized?"

"Uh, not my area of expertise. Sorry." I shook Topher's hand, congratulated him, and headed out of the school.

It was a day for celebration-I unrolled the windows of the Prius, even though it was cold outside, and turned up Aretha on the CD player.

Mostly, my cases got shot down by the courts; I spent more time fighting than I did getting a response. As one of three ACLU attorneys in New

Hampshire, I was a champion of the First Amendment-freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to organize. In other words, I looked really great on paper, but in reality, it meant I had become an expert letter writer. I wrote on behalf of the teenagers who wanted to wear their Hooters shirts to school, or the gay kid who wanted to bring his boyfriend to the prom; I wrote to take the cops to task for enforcing

DWB-driving while black-when statistics showed they corralled more minorities than whites for routine traffic stops. I spent countless hours at community meetings, negotiating with local agencies, the AG's office, the police departments, the schools. I was the splinter they couldn't get rid of, the thorn in their side, their conscience.

I took out my cell phone and dialed my mother's number at the spa.

"Guess what," I said when she picked up. "I won."

"Maggie, that's fantastic. I'm so proud of you." There was the slightest beat. "What did you win?"

"My case! The one I was telling you about last weekend at dinner?"

"The one against the community college whose mascot is an

Indian?"

"Native American. And no," I said. "I lost that one, actually. I was talking about the Pledge case. And"-I pulled out my trump card-"I think I'm going to be on the news tonight. There were cameras all over the courthouse."

I listened to my mother drop the phone, yelling to her staff about her famous daughter. Grinning, I hung up, only to have the cell ring against my palm again. "What were you wearing?" my mother asked.

"My Jones New York suit."

My mother hesitated. "Not the pin-striped one?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just asking."

"Yes, the pin-striped one," I said. "What's wrong with it?"

"Did I say there was anything wrong with it?"

"You didn't have to." I swerved to avoid a slowing car. "I have to go,"

I said, and I hung up, tears stinging.

It rang again. "Your mothers crying," my father said.

"Well, that makes two of us. Why can't she just be happy for me?"

"She is, honey. She thinks you're too critical."

Tin too critical? Are you kidding?"

"I bet Marcia Clark's mother asked her what she was wearing to the

O.J. trial," my father said.

"I bet Marcia Clark's mother doesn't get her daughter exercise videos for Chanukah."

"I bet Marcia Clark's mother doesn't get her anything for Chanukah," my father said, laughing. "Her Christmas stocking, though... I hear it's full of The Firm DVDs."

A smile twitched at the corners of my mouth. In the background, I could hear the rising strains of a crying baby. "Where are you?"

"At a bris," my father said. "And I'd better go, because the mohel's giving me dirty looks, and believe me, I don't want to upset him before he does a circumcision. Call me later and tell me every last detail. Your mothers going to TiVo the news for us."

I hung up and tossed my phone into the passenger seat. My father, who had made a living out of studying Jewish law, was always good at seeing the gray areas between the black-and-white letters. My mother, on the other hand, had a remarkable talent for taking a celebratory day and ruining it. I pulled into my driveway and headed into my house, where

Oliver met me at the front door. "I need a drink," I told him, and he cocked an ear, because after all it was only 11:45 a.m. I went straight to the refrigerator-in spite of what my mother likely imagined, the only food inside of it was ketchup, a jar of pimientos, Ollies carrots, and yogurt with an expiration date from Bill Clinton's administration-and poured myself a glass of Yellow Tail chardonnay I wanted to be pleasantly buzzed before I turned on the television set, where no doubt my fifteen minutes of fame was now going to be marred by a suit with stripes that made my already plus-size butt look positively planetary.

Oliver and I settled onto the couch just as the theme song for the midday news spilled into my living room. The anchor, a woman with a blond helmet head, smiled into the camera. Behind her was a graphic of an American flag with a line through it, and the caption NO PLEDGE? "In today's top story, a winning decision was handed down in the case of the high school student who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance." The screen filled with a video of the courthouse steps, where you could see my face with a bouquet of microphones thrust under my nose.

Dammit, I did look fat in this suit.

"In a stunning victory for individual civil liberties," I began onscreen, and then a bright blue BREAKING NEWS banner obliterated my face. The picture switched to a live feed in front of the state prison, where there were squatters with tents and people holding placards and... was that a chorus line of wheelchairs?

The reporter's hair was being whipped into a frenzy by the wind. "I'm

Janice Lee, reporting live from the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, which houses the man other inmates are calling the Death

Row Messiah."

I picked up Oliver and sat down, cross-legged, in front of the television.

Behind the reporter were dozens of people-I couldn't tell if they were picketing or protesting. Some stuck out from the crowd: the man with the sandwich board that read JOHN 3:16, the mother clutching a limp child, the small knot of nuns praying the rosary.

"This is a follow-up to our initial report," the reporter said, "in which we chronicled the inexplicable events that have occurred since inmate

Shay Bourne-New Hampshire's only death row inhabitant-expressed his desire to donate his organs post-execution. Today there might be scientific proof that these incidents aren't magic... but something more."