Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“Matt,” Josie whispered, as if he could hear her; as if he could answer.

Matt. She drew in his name like oxygen and imagined it breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, funneling into her red blood cells, beating through her heart.

Peter snapped a pencil in half and stuck the eraser end into his corn bread. “Happy birthday to me,” he sang under his breath. He didn’t finish the song; what was the point when you already knew where it was heading?

“Hey, Houghton,” a correctional officer said, “we got a present for you.”

Standing behind him was a kid not much older than Peter. He was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and he had snot running down his nose. The officer led him into the cell. “Make sure you share your cake,” the officer said.

Peter sat down on the lower bunk, just to let this kid know exactly who was in charge. The boy stood with his arms crossed tight around the blanket he’d been given, staring down at the ground. He reached up and pushed his glasses up his nose, and that’s when Peter realized there was something, well, wrong with him. He had that glassy-eyed, gum-lipped look of a special-needs kid.

Peter realized why they’d stuck the kid in his cell instead of anyone else’s: they figured Peter would be least likely to fuck with him.

He felt his hands ball into fists. “Hey, you,” Peter said.

The boy swiveled his head toward Peter. “I have a dog,” he said. “Do you have a dog?”

Peter pictured the correctional officers watching this comedy through their little video hookups, expecting Peter to put up with this shit.

Expecting something of him, period.

He reached forward and plucked the glasses off the kid’s nose. They were Coke-bottle-thick, with black plastic frames. The boy started to shriek, grabbing at his own face. His scream sounded like an air horn.

Peter put the glasses down on the floor and stomped on them, but in his rubber flip-flops that didn’t do much damage. So he picked them up and smashed them into the bars of the cell until the glass shattered.

By then the officers had arrived to pull Peter away from the kid, not that he was touching him anyway. They handcuffed him as the other inmates cheered him on. He was dragged down the hall to the superintendent’s office.

He sat hunched in a chair, with a guard watching him breathe, until the superintendent came in. “What was that all about, Peter?”

“It’s my birthday,” Peter said. “I just wanted to be alone for it.”

The funny thing, he realized, was that before the shooting, he’d believed that the best thing in the world was being left alone, so nobody could tell him he didn’t fit in. But as it turned out-not that he was about to tell the superintendent this-he didn’t much like himself, either.

The superintendent started to talk about disciplinary action; how this could affect him in the event of a conviction, what few privileges were left to be taken away. Peter deliberately tuned him out.

He thought instead of how angry the rest of the pod would be when this incident cost them television for a week.

He thought of Jordan’s bullied victim syndrome and wondered if he believed it; if anyone would.

He thought of how nobody who saw him in jail-not his mother, not his lawyer-ever said what they should: that Peter would be imprisoned forever, that he’d die in a cell that looked just like this one.

He thought of how he would rather end his life with a bullet.

He thought of how at night, you could hear the wings of bats beating in the cement corners of the jail, and screams. No one was stupid enough to cry.

At 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, when Jordan opened the door, he was still wearing pajama bottoms. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.

Judge Cormier pasted on a smile. “I’m really sorry we got off on the wrong foot,” she said. “But you know how it is when it’s your child who’s in trouble…you just can’t think straight.” She stood arm in arm with the mini-me standing beside her. Josie Cormier, Jordan thought, scrutinizing the girl who was shaking like an aspen leaf. She had chestnut hair that hit her shoulders, and blue eyes that wouldn’t meet his.

“Josie is really scared,” the judge said. “I wondered if we could sit down for a minute…maybe you could put her at ease about being a witness. Hear whether or not what she knows will even help your case.”

“Jordan? Who is it?”

He turned around to find Selena standing in the entryway, holding on to Sam. She was wearing flannel pajamas, which might or might not have been one step more formal.

“Judge Cormier was wondering if we could talk to Josie about her testimony,” he said pointedly, trying desperately to telegraph to Selena that he was in deep trouble-since they all knew, with the exception perhaps of Josie, that the only reason he’d noticed up his intent to use her was to get Cormier off the case.

Jordan turned toward the judge again. “You see, I’m not really at that stage of planning yet.”

“Surely you have some idea of what you’re after if you call her as a witness…or you wouldn’t have put her on the list,” Alex pointed out.

“Why don’t you ring my secretary, and make an appointment-”

“I was thinking of now,” Judge Cormier said. “Please. I’m not here as a judge. Just as a mother.”

Selena stepped forward. “You come right on in,” she said, using her free arm to circle Josie’s shoulders. “You must be Josie, right? This here’s Sam.”

Josie smiled shyly at the baby. “Hi, Sam.”

“Baby, why don’t you get the judge some coffee or juice?”

Jordan stared at his wife, wondering what the hell she was up to now. “Right. Why don’t you come on in?”

Thankfully, the house looked nothing like it had the first time Cormier had showed up unannounced: there were no dishes in the sink; no papers cluttered the tables; toys were mysteriously missing. What could Jordan say-his wife was a neat freak. He pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table and offered it to Josie, then did the same for the judge. “How do you take your coffee?” he asked.

“Oh, we’re fine,” she said. She reached under the table for her daughter’s hand.

“Sam and I, we’re just going into the living room to play,” Selena said.

“Why don’t you stay?” He gave her a measured glance, one that begged her not to leave him alone to be eviscerated.

“You don’t need us distracting you,” Selena said, and she took the baby away.

Jordan sat down heavily across from the Cormiers. He was good at thinking on his feet; surely he could suffer through this. “Well,” he said, “it really isn’t anything to be scared of at all. I was just going to ask you some basic questions about your friendship with Peter.”

“We’re not friends,” Josie said.

“Yes, I know that. But you used to be. I’m interested in the first time you met him.”

Josie glanced at Alex. “Around nursery school, or maybe before.”

“Okay. Did you play at your house? His?”

“Both.”

“Did you have other friends who used to hang out with you?”

“Not really,” Josie said.

Alex listened, but she couldn’t help tuning a lawyer’s ear to McAfee’s questions. He’s got nothing, she thought. This is nothing.

“When did you two stop hanging around?”

“Sixth grade,” Josie answered. “We just kind of started liking different things.”

“Did you have any contact with Peter after that?”

Josie shifted in her chair. “Only in the halls and stuff.”

“You worked with him, too, right?”

Josie looked at her mother again. “Not for very long.”

Both mother and daughter stared at him, anticipatory-which was awfully funny, because Jordan was making this all up as he went. “What about the relationship between Matt and Peter?”