Jodie Picoult: Nineteen Minutes

To one side of the atrium, in front of the glass wall, were ten chairs. Unlike the rest of the seats in the atrium, these had backs and were painted white. You had to look closely to see that they had been bolted to the floor, instead of having been dragged over by students and left behind. They were not lined up in a row; they were not evenly spaced. They did not have names or placards on them, but everyone knew why they were there.

She felt Alex come up behind her and slide his arm around her waist. “It’s almost time,” he said, and she nodded.

As she reached for one of the empty stools and started to drag it closer to the glass wall, Patrick took it from her. “For God’s sake, Patrick,” she muttered. “I’m pregnant, not terminal.”

That had been a surprise, too. The baby was due at the end of May. Alex tried not to think about it as a replacement for the daughter who would still be in jail for the next four years; she imagined instead that maybe this would be the one who rescued them all.

Patrick sank down beside her on a stool as Alex looked at her watch: 10:02 a.m.

She took a deep breath. “It doesn’t look the same anymore.”

“I know,” Patrick said.

“Do you think that’s a good thing?”

He thought for a moment. “I think it’s a necessary thing,” he said.

She noticed that the maple tree, the one that had grown outside the window of the second-story locker room, had not been cut down during the construction of the atrium. From where she was sitting, you couldn’t see the hole that had been carved out of it to retrieve a bullet. The tree was enormous, with a thick gnarled trunk and twisted limbs. It had probably been here long before the high school ever was, maybe even before Sterling was settled.

10:09.

She felt Patrick’s hand slip into her lap as she watched the soccer game. The teams seemed grossly mismatched, the kids who had already hit puberty playing against those who were still slight and small. Alex watched a striker charge a defenseman for the other team, leaving the smaller boy trampled as the ball hurtled high into the net.

All that, Alex thought, and nothing’s changed. She glanced at her watch again: 10:13.

The last few minutes, of course, were the hardest. Alex found herself standing, her hands pressed flat against the glass. She felt the baby kick inside her, answering back to the darker hook of her heart. 10:16. 10:17.

The striker returned to the spot where the defenseman had fallen and reached out his hand to help the slighter boy stand. They walked back to center field, talking about something Alex couldn’t hear.

It was 10:19.

She happened to glance at the maple tree again. The sap was still running. A few weeks from now, there would be a reddish hue on the branches. Then buds. A burst of first leaves.

Alex took Patrick’s hand. They walked out of the atrium in silence, down the corridors, past the rows of cubbies. They crossed the lobby and threshold of the front door, retracing the steps they’d taken.