Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

It wasn’t that he wanted to fool around with a guy-not yet, anyway. He just wanted to know what it was like to be among guys who were gay, and totally okay with it. He wanted to know if they could look at him and know, instantly, that Peter belonged.

He stopped in front of a couple that was going at it in a dark corner. Seeing a guy kiss a guy was strange in real life. Sure, there were gay kisses on television shows-Big Moments that usually were controversial enough to get press, so that Peter knew when they were airing-and he’d sometimes watch them to see if he felt anything, watching them. But they were acted, just like regular hookups on TV shows…unlike the display in front of his eyes right now. He waited to see if his heart started pounding a little harder, if it made sense to him.

He didn’t feel particularly excited, though. Curious, sure-did a beard scratch you when you were making out?-and not repulsed, but Peter couldn’t say he felt with any great conviction that that was something he wanted to try, too.

The men broke away from each other, and one of them narrowed his eyes. “This ain’t no peep show,” he said, and he shoved Peter away.

Peter stumbled, falling against someone sitting at the bar. “Whoa,” the man said, and then his eyes lit up. “What have we here?”

“Sorry…”

“Don’t be.” He was in his early twenties, with white-blond crew-cut hair and nicotine stains on his fingertips. “First time here?”

Peter turned to him. “How can you tell?”

“You’ve got that deer-in-the-headlights look.” He stubbed out his cigarette and summoned the bartender, who, Peter noticed, looked like he’d walked out of the pages of a magazine. “Rico, get my young friend here a drink. What would you like?”

Peter swallowed. “Pepsi?”

The man’s teeth flashed. “Yeah, right.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Ah,” he said. “Here, then.”

He handed a pair of small tubes to Peter, and then took two for himself out of his pocket. There was no powder in them-just air. Peter watched him open the top, inhale deeply, then do the same with the second vial in his other nostril. Mimicking this, Peter felt his head spin, like the one time he’d drunk a six-pack when his parents had gone off to watch Joey play football. But unlike then, when he’d only wanted to fall asleep afterward, Peter now felt every cell of his body buzzing, wide awake.

“My name’s Kurt,” the man said, holding out his hand.

“Peter.”

“Bottom or top?”

Peter shrugged, trying to look like he knew what the guy was talking about, when in fact he had no clue.

“My God,” Kurt said, his jaw dropping. “New blood.”

The bartender set a Pepsi down in front of Peter. “Leave him alone, Kurt. He’s just a kid.”

“Then maybe we should play a game,” Kurt said. “You like pool?”

A game of pool Peter could totally handle. “That would be great.”

He watched Kurt peel a twenty out of his wallet and leave it behind for Rico. “Keep the change,” he said.

The poolroom was adjacent to the main part of the club, four tables that were already engaged in various stages of play. Peter sat down on a bench along the wall, studying people. Some were touching each other-an arm on the shoulder, a pat on the rear-but most were just acting like a bunch of guys. Like friends would.

Kurt took a handful of quarters out of his pocket and put them down on the lip of the table. Thinking that this was the pot they would be playing for, Peter pulled two crumpled dollars out of his jacket. “It’s not a bet,” Kurt laughed. “It’s what you pay to play.” He stood up as the group in front of them sank the last ball, and started feeding the quarters to the table, until it released a colorful torrent of stripes and solids.

Peter picked a cue off the wall and rubbed chalk over the tip. He wasn’t great at pool, but he’d played a couple of times before, and he hadn’t done anything totally stupid, like scratch and make the ball jump off the edge of the table. “So you’re a betting man,” Kurt said. “That could make this interesting.”

“I’ll put down five bucks,” Peter said, hoping that made him sound older.

“I don’t bet for money. How about if I win, I get to take you home. And if you win, you get to take me home.”

Peter didn’t really see how he could win either way, since he didn’t want to go home with Kurt and he sure as hell wasn’t bringing Kurt home with him. He put the cue down on the edge of the table. “I guess I don’t really feel like playing after all.”

Kurt grabbed Peter’s arm. His eyes were too bright in his face, like small, hot stars. “My quarters are already in there. It’s all racked up. You wanted to play the game…that means you’ve got to finish it.”

“Let me go,” Peter said, his voice climbing higher on a ladder of panic.

Kurt smiled. “But we’re just getting started.”

Behind Peter, another man spoke. “I think you heard the boy.” Peter turned around, still bound by Kurt, and saw Mr. McCabe, his math teacher.

It was one of those strange moments, like when you’re at a movie theater and you see the lady who works at the post office, and you know you know her from somewhere, but without the PO boxes and scales and stamp machines around her, you cannot quite figure out who she is. Mr. McCabe was holding a beer and wearing a shirt made out of something silky. He put down the bottle and folded his arms. “Don’t fuck with him, Kurt, or I’ll call the cops and get you bounced out of here.”

Kurt shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, and he walked back into the smoky bar.

Peter looked down at the ground, waiting for Mr. McCabe to speak. He was sure that the teacher would call his parents, or rip up his ID in front of him, or ask him why he thought coming to a gay bar in downtown Manchester was a good idea.

Suddenly Peter realized he could have asked Mr. McCabe the same thing. As he lifted his gaze, he considered a mathematical principle that surely his teacher already knew: If two people have the same secret, it’s not a secret anymore.

“You probably need a ride home,” Mr. McCabe said.

Josie held her hand up to Matt’s, a giant’s paw.

“Look at how tiny you are, compared to me,” Matt said. “It’s amazing I don’t kill you.”

He shifted then, still hard inside her, so that she felt the bulk of his weight. Then he put his hand up to her throat.

“Because,” he said, “I could.”

He pressed just the slightest bit, pressure on her windpipe. Not enough to rob her of air, but certainly to scatter speech.

“Don’t,” Josie managed.

Matt stared down at her, puzzled. “Don’t what?” he said, and when he started to move in her again, Josie was sure she had heard it all wrong.

For most of the hour-long ride from Manchester, the conversation between Peter and Mr. McCabe was as superficial as a dragonfly on the surface of a lake, darting around topics neither of them particularly cared about: hockey standings for the Bruins, the upcoming winter formal dance, what good colleges were looking for these days from applicants.

It was after they pulled off Route 89 at the exit for Sterling, and they were driving down dark back roads toward Peter’s house, that Mr. McCabe even mentioned the reason they were both in the car. “About tonight,” he began. “Not many people know about me in school. I haven’t come out yet.” The small rectangle of reflected light from the rearview mirror banded his eyes like a raccoon’s.

“Why not?” Peter heard himself ask.

“It’s not that I don’t think the faculty would be supportive…it’s that I don’t think it’s any of their business. Right?”