Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“Nothing. What are you doing?”

“Same thing I’ve done all winter.”

“Really?”

She looked up at him. Against the beauty of the brisk outdoors, Peter seemed wildly out of place. His features were too delicate to match the craggy line of mountains in the backdrop behind him; his skin seemed nearly as white as the snow. He didn’t fit, and Lacy realized that most of the time when she saw Peter somewhere, she could make the same observation.

“Here,” Lacy said, handing him the bucket. “Help.”

Peter took the bucket and began to toss handfuls of corn on the ground. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Is it true that you were the one who asked out Dad?”

Lacy grinned. “Well, if I hadn’t, I would have probably had to wait around forever. Your father is many things, but perceptive isn’t one of them.”

She had met Lewis at a pro-choice rally. Although Lacy would be the first to tell you that there was no greater gift than having a baby, she was a realist-she’d sent home enough mothers who were too young or too poor or too overburdened to know that the odds of that child having a good life were slim. She had gone with a friend to a march at the statehouse in Concord and stood on the steps with a sisterhood of women who held up signs: I’M PRO-CHOICE AND I VOTE…AGAINST ABORTION? DON’T HAVE ONE. She had looked around the crowd that day and realized that there was one lone man-well-dressed in a suit and tie, right in the thick of the protesters. Lacy had been fascinated by him-as a protester, he was completely cast against type. Wow, Lacy had said, working her way toward him. What a day.

Tell me about it.

Have you ever been here before? Lacy had asked.

My first time, Lewis said.

Mine, too.

They had gotten separated as a new influx of marchers came up the stone steps. A paper had blown off the stack that Lewis was carrying, but by the time Lacy could grab it, he’d been swallowed by the crowd. It was the cover page to something bigger; she knew by the staple holes at the top, and it had a title that nearly put her to sleep: “The allocation of public education resources in New Hampshire: a critical analysis.” But there was also an author’s name: Lewis Houghton, Sterling College Dept. of Economics.

When she called to tell Lewis that she had his paper, he said that he didn’t need it. He could print out another copy. Yes, Lacy had said, but I have to bring this one back to you.

Why?

So you can explain it to me over dinner.

It wasn’t until they’d gone out for sushi that Lacy learned the reason Lewis had been at the statehouse had nothing to do with attending a pro-choice rally, but only because he had a scheduled appointment with the governor.

“But how did you tell him?” Peter asked. “That you liked him, you know, like that?”

“As I recall, I grabbed him after our third date and kissed him. Then again, that may have been to shut him up because he was going on and on about free trade.” She glanced back over her shoulder, and suddenly the questions all made sense. “Peter,” she said, a smile breaking over her. “Is there someone you like?”

Peter didn’t even have to answer-his face turned crimson.

“Do I get to know her name?”

“No,” Peter said emphatically.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.” She looped her arm through Peter’s. “Gosh, I envy you. There’s nothing that compares to those first few months when all you can think of is each other. I mean, love in any form is pretty fabulous…but falling in love…well.”

“It’s not like that,” Peter said. “I mean, it’s kind of one-sided.”

“I bet she’s just as nervous as you are.”

He grimaced. “Mom. She barely even registers my existence. I’m not…I don’t hang out with the kind of people she hangs out with.”

Lacy looked at her son. “Well,” she said. “Then your first order of business is to change that.”

“How?”

“Find ways to connect with her. Maybe in places where you know her friends won’t be around. And try to show her the side of you that she doesn’t normally see.”

“Like what?”

“The inside.” Lacy tapped Peter’s chest. “If you tell her how you feel, I think you might be surprised at the reaction.”

Peter ducked his head and kicked at a hummock of snow. Then he glanced up at her shyly. “Really?”

Lacy nodded. “It worked for me.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “Thanks.”

She watched him trudge back up the hill to the house, and then she turned her attention back to the deer. Lacy would have to feed them until the snow melted. Once you started taking care of them, you had to follow through, or they just wouldn’t make it.

They were on the floor of the living room and they were nearly naked. Josie could taste beer on Matt’s breath, but she must have tasted like that, too. They’d both drunk a few at Drew’s-not enough to get wasted, just buzzed, enough so that Matt’s hands seemed to be all over her at once, so that his skin set fire to hers.

She’d been floating along pleasantly in a haze of the familiar. Yes, Matt had kissed her-one short one, then a longer, hungry kiss, as his hand worked open the clasp on her bra. She lay lazy, spread beneath him like a feast, as he pulled off her jeans. But then, instead of doing what usually came next, Matt reared over her again. He kissed her so hard that it hurt. “Mmmph,” she said, pushing at him.

“Relax,” Matt murmured, and then he sank his teeth into her shoulder. He pinned her hands over her head and ground his hips against hers. She could feel his erection, hot against her stomach.

It wasn’t the way it normally was, but Josie had to admit that it was exciting. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so heavy, as if her heart were beating between her legs. She clawed at Matt’s back to bring him closer.

“Yeah,” he groaned, and he pushed her thighs apart. And then suddenly Matt was inside her, pumping so hard that she scooted backward on the carpet, burning the backs of her legs.

“Wait,” Josie said, trying to roll away beneath him, but he clamped his hand over her mouth and drove harder and harder until Josie felt him come.

Semen, sticky and hot, pooled on the carpet beneath her. Matt framed her face with his hands. “Jesus, Josie,” he whispered, and she realized that he was in tears. “I love you so goddamn much.”

Josie turned her face away. “I love you, too.”

She lay in his arms for ten minutes and then said she was tired and needed to go to sleep. After she kissed Matt good-bye at the front door, she went into the kitchen and took the rug cleaner out from underneath the sink. She scrubbed it into the wet spot on the carpet, prayed it would not leave a stain.

# include ‹stdio.h›

main ( )

{

int time;

for (time=0; time‹infinity (1); time ++)

{ printf (“I love you|n”); }

}

Peter highlighted the text on his computer screen and deleted it. Although he thought it would be pretty cool to open an email and automatically have an I LOVE YOU message written over and over on the screen, he could see where someone else-someone who didn’t give a crap about C++-would think it was just downright strange.

He’d decided on an email because that way if she blew him off, he could suffer the embarrassment in private. The problem was, his mother had said to show what was inside him and he wasn’t very good when it came to words.

He thought about how sometimes, when he saw her, it was just a part of her: her arm resting on the passenger window of the car, her hair blowing out its window. He thought about how many times he’d fantasized about being the one at the wheel.

My journey was pointless, he wrote. Until I took a YOU-turn.