Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

Dorian Gray had a portrait that grew old and evil while he remained young and innocent-looking. Maybe the quiet, reserved mother who would testify for her son had a portrait somewhere that was ravaged with guilt, twisted with pain. Maybe the woman in that picture was allowed to cry and scream, to break down, to grab her son’s shoulders and say What have you done?

She startled at the sound of someone opening the door. Lewis stood on the threshold, wearing the suit that he kept for conferences and college graduations. He was holding a blue silk tie in his hand and did not speak.

Lacy took the tie out of Lewis’s hand and walked behind him. She noosed it around his neck, gently pulled the knot into place, and flipped down the collar. As she did, Lewis reached for her hand and didn’t let go.

There weren’t words, really, for moments like this-when you realized that you’d lost one child and the other was slipping out of your reach. Still holding Lacy’s hand, Lewis led her out of Peter’s room. He closed the door behind them.

At 6:00 a.m., when Jordan crept downstairs to read through his notes in preparation for the trial, he found a single place setting at the table: a bowl, a spoon, and a box of Cocoa Krispies-the meal he always used to kick off a battle. Grinning-Selena must have gotten up in the middle of the night to do this, since they’d headed up to bed together last night-he sat down and poured himself a healthy serving, then went into the fridge for the milk.

A Post-it note had been stuck to the carton. GOOD LUCK.

Just as Jordan sat down to eat, the telephone rang. He grabbed it-Selena and the baby were still asleep. “Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Thomas,” he said. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Well, um, I sort of didn’t go to bed yet.”

Jordan smiled. “Ah, to be young and collegiate again.”

“Anyway, I just called to wish you luck. It starts today, right?”

He looked down at his cereal and suddenly remembered the footage taken by the cafeteria video camera at Sterling High: Peter sitting down, just like this, to have a bowl of cereal, dead students flanking him. Jordan pushed the bowl away. “Yes,” he said. “It does.”

The correctional officer opened up Peter’s cell and handed him a stack of folded clothes. “Time for the ball, Cinderella,” he said.

Peter waited until he left. He knew his mother had bought these for him; she’d even left the tags on so that he could see they hadn’t come from Joey’s closet. They were preppy, the kind of clothes he imagined were worn to polo matches-not that he’d ever actually been to one to see.

Peter stripped out of his jumpsuit and pulled on the boxer shorts, the socks. He sat down on his bunk to pull up his trousers, which were a little tight at the waist. He buttoned the shirt wrong the first time and had to do it over. He didn’t know how to do his tie right. He rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket so that Jordan could help him.

There wasn’t a mirror in his cell, but Peter imagined he looked ordinary now. If you beamed him from this jail into a crowded New York street or into the stands of a football game, people probably wouldn’t glance twice at him; wouldn’t realize that underneath all that washed wool and Egyptian cotton was someone they’d never imagine. Or in other words, after all this, nothing had changed.

He was about to leave the cell when he realized he had not been given a bulletproof vest, as he had for the arraignment. It probably wasn’t because he was any less hated now; more likely, it had been an oversight. He started to ask the guard about it, but then snapped his mouth shut.

Maybe, for the first time in his life, Peter had gotten lucky.

Alex dressed like she was going to work, which she was, except not as a judge. She wondered what it would be like to sit in court in the role of civilian. She wondered if the grieving mother from the arraignment would be there.

She knew it was going to be hard to listen to this trial, and to understand all over again how close she had come to losing Josie. Alex was through pretending that she was listening only because it was her job; she was listening because she had to. One day Josie would remember and would need someone to hold her upright; and since Alex hadn’t been there the first time to protect Josie, she’d bear witness now.

She hurried downstairs and found Josie sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in a skirt and blouse. “I’m going,” she announced.

It was déjà vu-this was exactly what had happened the day of Peter’s arraignment, except that seemed so long ago, and she and Josie had both been very different people back then. Today, she was on the defense’s witness list, but she hadn’t been served with a subpoena, which meant that she didn’t actually have to be in the courthouse at all during the trial.

“I know I can’t go in, but Patrick’s sequestered, too, isn’t he?”

The last time Josie had asked to go to court, Alex had flatly refused. This time, though, she sat down across from Josie. “Do you have any idea what it’s going to be like? There are going to be cameras, lots of them. And kids in wheelchairs. And angry parents. And Peter.”

Josie’s gaze fell into her lap like a stone. “You’re trying to keep me from going again.”

“No, I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

“I didn’t get hurt,” Josie said. “That’s why I have to go.”

Five months ago, Alex had made this decision for her daughter. Now she knew that Josie deserved to speak for herself. “I’ll meet you in the car,” she said calmly. She held this mask until Josie closed the door behind herself, and then bolted upstairs to the bathroom and got sick.

She was afraid that reliving the shooting, even from a distance, would rattle Josie past the point of recovery. But mostly she worried that for the second time, she would be powerless to keep her daughter from being hurt.

Alex rested her forehead against the cool porcelain lip of the bathtub. Then, standing, she brushed her teeth and splashed her face with water. She hurried to the car, where her daughter was already waiting.

Because the sitter was late, Jordan and Selena found themselves fighting the crowd on the courtroom steps. Selena had been expecting it-and still wasn’t entirely prepared for the hordes of reporters, the television vans, the spectators holding up their camera phones to capture a snapshot of the melee.

Jordan was playing the villain today-the vast majority of the onlookers were from Sterling, and since Peter would be transported to the court via underground tunnel, Jordan was their fall guy. “How do you sleep at night?” a woman shouted as Jordan hurried up the steps past her. Another held up a sign: There’s still a death penalty in NH.

“Ooh boy,” Jordan said under his breath. “This is gonna be a fun one.”

“You’ll be fine,” Selena replied.

But he had stopped moving. There was a man standing on the steps holding up a piece of posterboard with two large mounted photos-one of a girl, one of a pretty woman. Kaitlyn Harvey, Selena realized, recognizing the face. And her mother. At the top of the display were two words: NINETEEN MINUTES.

Jordan met the man’s gaze. Selena knew what he was thinking-that this could be him, that he had just as much to lose. “I’m sorry,” Jordan murmured, and Selena looped her arm through his and pulled him up the stairs again.

There was a different crowd up here, though. They wore startling yellow shirts with BVA printed across the chest, and they were chanting: “Peter, you are not alone. Peter, you are not alone.”

Jordan leaned closer to her. “What the fuck is this?”

“The Bullied Victims of America.”