Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“That’s Peter’s most recent game.”

“What’s it called?”

“Hide-n-Shriek.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s one of those games where you go around shooting the bad guys.”

“Who are the bad guys in this game?” Diana asked.

Derek darted a glance at Peter again. “They’re jocks.”

“Where does the game take place?”

“In a school,” Derek said.

From the corner of her eye, Diana could see Jordan shifting in his chair. “Derek, were you in school the morning of March 6, 2007?”

“Yeah.”

“What was your first-period class that morning?”

“Honors Trig.”

“How about second period?” Diana asked.

“English.”

“Then where did you go?”

“I had gym third period, but my asthma was pretty bad, so I had a doctor’s note to excuse me from class. Since I finished my work early in English, I asked Mrs. Eccles if I could go to my car to get it.”

Diana nodded. “Where was your car parked?”

“In the student parking lot, behind the school.”

“Can you show me on this diagram which door you used to leave the school at the end of second period?” Derek reached toward the easel and pointed to one of the rear doors of the school. “What did you see when you went outside?”

“Uh, a lot of cars.”

“Any people?”

“Yes,” Derek said. “Peter. It looked like he was getting something out of the backseat of his car.”

“What did you do?”

“I went over to say hi. I asked him why he was late to school, and he stood up and looked at me in a weird way.”

“Weird? What do you mean?”

Derek shook his head. “I don’t know. Like he didn’t know who I was for a second.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“He said, ‘Go home. Something’s about to happen.’”

“Did you think that was unusual?”

“Well, it was a little bit Twilight Zone…”

“Had Peter ever said anything like that to you before?”

“Yes,” Derek said quietly.

“When?”

Jordan objected, as Diana had expected, and Judge Wagner overruled it, as she’d hoped. “A few weeks before,” Derek said, “the first time we were playing Hide-n-Shriek.”

“What did he say?” Derek looked down and mumbled a response. “Derek,” Diana said, coming closer, “I have to ask you to speak up.”

“He said, ‘When this really happens, it’s going to be awesome.’”

A hum rose in the gallery, like a swarm of bees. “Did you know what he meant by that?”

“I thought…I thought he was kidding,” Derek said.

“The day of the shooting when you found Peter in the parking lot, did you see what he was doing in the car?”

“No…” Derek broke off, clearing his throat. “I just sort of laughed off what he said and told him I had to go to class.”

“What happened next?”

“I went back into the school through the same door and walked to the office to get my gym note signed by Mrs. Whyte, the secretary. She was talking to another girl, who was signing out of school for an orthodontist appointment.”

“And then?” Diana asked.

“Once she left, Mrs. Whyte and I heard an explosion.”

“Did you see where it was coming from?”

“No.”

“What happened after that?”

“I looked at the computer screen on Mrs. Whyte’s desk,” Derek said. “It was scrolling, like, a message.”

“What did it say?”

“Ready or not…here I come.” Derek swallowed. “We heard these little pops, like lots of champagne bottles, and Mrs. Whyte grabbed me and dragged me into the principal’s office.”

“Was there a computer in that office?”

“Yes.”

“What was on the screen?”

“Ready or not…here I come.”

“How long were you in the office?”

“I don’t know. Ten, twenty minutes. Mrs. Whyte tried to call the police, but she couldn’t. There was something wrong with the phone.”

Diana faced the bench. “Judge, at this time, the prosecution would like to move State’s Exhibit 303 in full, and we ask that it be published to the jury.” She watched the deputy wheel out a television monitor with a computer attached, so that the CD-ROM could be inserted.

HIDE-N-SHRIEK, the screen proclaimed. CHOOSE YOUR FIRST WEAPON!

A 3-D animated boy wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a golf shirt crossed the screen and looked down over an array of crossbows, Uzis, AK-47s, and biological weapons. He reached for one, and then with his other hand, he loaded up on ammunition. There was a close-up of his face: freckles; braces; fever in his eyes.

Then the screen went blue and started scrolling.

Ready or not, it read. Here I come.

Derek liked Mr. McAfee. He wasn’t much to look at, but he had the hottest babe of a wife. Plus, he was probably the only other person in Sterling High who wasn’t related to Peter and still felt sorry for him.

“Derek,” the lawyer said, “you’ve been friends with Peter since sixth grade, right?”

“Yes.”

“You spent a lot of time with him both in and outside school.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you ever see Peter getting picked on by other kids?”

“All the time,” Derek said. “They’d call us fags and homos. They’d give us wedgies. When we walked down the hall, they’d trip us or slam us into lockers. Things like that.”

“Did you ever talk to a teacher about this?”

“I used to, but that just made it worse. I got creamed for being a tattletale.”

“Did you and Peter ever talk about getting picked on?”

Derek shook his head. “No. It was kind of nice to have someone around who just got it, you know?”

“How often was this happening…once a week?”

He snorted. “More like once a day.”

“Just you and Peter?”

“No, there are others.”

“Who did most of the bullying?”

“The jocks,” Derek said. “Matt Royston, Drew Girard, John Eberhard…”

“Any girls participate in the bullying?”

“Yeah, the ones who looked at us like we were bugs on a windshield,” Derek said. “Courtney Ignatio, Emma Alexis, Josie Cormier, Maddie Shaw.”

“So what do you do when someone’s slamming you into a locker?” Mr. McAfee asked.

“You can’t fight back, because you’re not as strong as they are, and you can’t stop it…so you just kind of wait it out.”

“Would it be fair to say that this group you named-Matt and Drew and Courtney and Emma and the rest-went after one person more than any others?”

“Yes,” Derek said. “Peter.”

Derek watched Peter’s attorney sit back down next to him, and then the lady lawyer rose and started speaking again. “Derek, you said you were bullied, too.”

“Yeah.”

“You never helped Peter put together a pipe bomb to blow up someone’s car, did you?”

“No.”

“You never helped Peter hack into the phone lines and computers at Sterling High, so that once the shooting started, no one could call for help, did you?”

“No,” Derek said.

“You never stole guns and hoarded them in your bedroom, did you?”

“No.”

The prosecutor took a step closer. “You never put together a plan, like Peter, to go through the school, systematically killing the people who had hurt you the most, did you, Derek?”

Derek turned to Peter, so that he could look him square in the eye when he answered. “No,” he said. “But sometimes I wish I had.”

From time to time, over the course of her career as a midwife, Lacy had run into a former patient at the grocery store or the bank or on a bike trail. They’d present their babies-now three, seven, fifteen years old. Look at what a great job you did, they’d sometimes say, as if bringing the child into the world had anything to do with who he became.