Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“A pirate walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder, a peg leg, and a steering wheel on his pants,” Derek said. “The bartender says, ‘Hey, you’ve got a steering wheel on your pants.’ And the pirate goes, ‘Arrrgh, I know. It’s driving me nuts.’”

“Good game,” the coach said, congratulating each of the players with a handshake. “Good game. Good game.”

“You coming?” Derek asked, standing up.

“I’ll meet you in there,” Peter said, and as he leaned down to retie his cleats he saw a pair of lady’s shoes stop in front of him-a pair he recognized, because he was always tripping over them in the mudroom.

“Hi, baby,” his mother said, smiling down.

Peter choked. What middle school kid had Mommy come to pick him up right at the field, as if he were leaving nursery school and needed a hand crossing the street?

“Just give me a second, Peter,” his mother said.

He glanced up long enough to see that the team had not gone into the locker room, as usual, but hung around to watch this latest humiliation. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, his mother marched up to the coach. “Coach Yarbrowski,” she said. “Could I have a word?”

Kill me now, Peter thought.

“I’m Peter’s mother. And I’m wondering why you don’t play my son during the games.”

“It’s a matter of teamwork, Mrs. Houghton, and I’m just giving Peter the chance to come up to speed with some of the other-”

“It’s halfway through the season, and my son has just as much right to play on this soccer team as any of the other boys.”

“Mom,” Peter interrupted, wishing that there were earthquakes in New Hampshire, that a ravine would open under her feet and swallow her mid-sentence. “Stop.”

“It’s all right, Peter. I’m taking care of it.”

The coach pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll put Peter in on Monday’s game, Mrs. Houghton, but it isn’t going to be pretty.”

“It doesn’t have to be pretty. It just has to be fun.” She turned around and smiled, clueless, at Peter. “Right?”

Peter could barely hear her. Shame was a shot that rang in his ears, broken only by the buzz of his teammates. His mother squatted down in front of him. He had never really understood what it meant to love someone and hate them at the same time, but now he was starting to get it. “Once he sees you on that field, you’ll be playing first string.” She patted his knee. “I’ll wait for you in the parking lot.”

The other players laughed as he pushed past them. “Mama’s boy,” they said. “Does she fight all your battles, homo?”

In the locker room, he sat down and pulled off his cleats. He had a hole in the toe of one sock, and he stared at it as if he were truly amazed by that fact, instead of because he was trying so hard not to cry.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt someone sit down beside him. “Peter,” Derek said. “You okay?”

Peter tried to say yes, but just couldn’t get the lie through his throat.

“What’s the difference between this team and a porcupine?” Derek asked.

Peter shook his head.

“A porcupine has pricks on the outside.” Derek grinned. “See you Monday.”

Courtney Ignatio was a spaghetti-strap girl. That’s what Josie called that posse, for lack of a better term-the girls who wore belly-baring tanks and who, during the student-run recitals, made up dances to the songs “Booty-licious” and “Lady Marmalade.” Courtney had been the first seventh grader to get a cell phone. It was pink, and sometimes it even rang in class, but teachers never got angry at her.

When she was paired with Courtney in social studies to make a timeline of the American Revolution, Josie had groaned-she was sure she’d be pulling all the weight. But Courtney had invited her over to work on the project, and Josie’s mother told her that if she didn’t go, she would be stuck doing all the work, so now she was sitting on Courtney’s bed, eating chocolate chip cookies and organizing note cards.

“What?” Courtney said, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips.

“What what?”

“Why do you have that look on your face?”

Josie shrugged. “Your room. It’s totally different than mine.”

Courtney glanced around, as if seeing her bedroom for the first time. “Different how?”

Courtney had a wild purple shag rug and beaded lamps strung with gauzy silk scarves for atmosphere. An entire dresser top was dedicated to makeup. A poster of Johnny Depp hung on the back of her door, and a shelf sported a state-of-the-art stereo system. She had her own DVD player.

Josie’s room, in comparison, was spartan. She had a bookshelf, a desk, a dresser, and a bed. Her comforter looked like an old-lady quilt, compared to Courtney’s satin one. If Josie had any style at all, it was Early American Dork.

“Just different,” Josie said.

“My mom’s a decorator. She thinks this is what every teenage girl dreams of.”

“Do you?”

Courtney shrugged. “I kind of think it looks like a bordello, but I don’t want to ruin it for her. Let me just go get my binder, and we can start…”

When she left to go back downstairs, Josie found herself staring into the mirror. Drawn forward to the dresser with makeup on it, she found herself picking up tubes and bottles that were completely unfamiliar. Her mother rarely wore any makeup-maybe lipstick, but that was it. Josie lifted a mascara wand and unscrewed the cap, ran her finger over the black bristles. She uncapped a bottle of perfume and sniffed.

In the reflection of the mirror, she watched the girl who looked just like her take a tube of lipstick-“Positively Hot!” the label read-and apply it. It put a bloom of color in her face; it brought her to life.

Was it really that easy to become someone else?

“What are you doing?”

Josie jumped at the sound of Courtney’s voice. She watched in the mirror as Courtney came forward and took the lipstick out of her hands.

“I…I’m sorry,” Josie stammered.

To her surprise, Courtney Ignatio grinned. “Actually,” she said, “it suits you.”

Joey got better grades than his younger brother; he was a better athlete than Peter. He was funnier; he had more common sense; he could draw more than a straight line; he was the one people gravitated toward at a party. There was only one thing, as far as Peter could tell (and he’d been counting), that Joey could not do, and that was stand the sight of blood.

When Joey was seven and his best friend went over the handlebars of his bike and opened a cut over his forehead, it was Joey who passed out. When a medical show was on television, he had to leave the room. Because of this, he’d never gone hunting with his father, although Lewis had promised his boys that as soon as they turned twelve, they were old enough to come out with him and learn how to shoot.

It seemed as if Peter had been waiting all fall for this weekend. He had been reading up on the rifle his father was going to let him use-a Winchester Model 94 lever action 30-30 that had been his father’s, before the purchase of the bolt-action Remington 721 30.06 he used now to hunt deer. Now, at 4:30 in the morning, Peter could barely believe he was holding it in his hands, the safety carefully locked. He crept through the woods behind his father, his breath crystallizing in the air.

It had snowed last night-which was why the conditions were perfect for deer hunting. They’d been out yesterday to find fresh scrapes-spots on live trees where a buck had rubbed his antlers and returned to scrape over and over, marking its territory. Now it was just a matter of finding the same spot and checking for fresh tracks, to see if the buck had come through yet.