Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

Groaning, Peter deleted that, too. It made him sound like a Hallmark card writer, or even worse, one that Hallmark wouldn’t even hire.

He thought about what he wished he could say to her, if he had the guts, and poised his hands over the keyboard.

I know you don’t think of me.

And you certainly would never picture us together.

But probably peanut butter was just peanut butter for a long time, before someone ever thought of pairing it up with jelly. And there was salt, but it started to taste better when there was pepper. And what’s the point of butter without bread?

(Why are all these examples FOODS!?!?!??)

Anyway, by myself, I’m nothing special. But with you, I think I could be.

He agonized about the ending.

Your friend, Peter Houghton

Well, technically that wasn’t true.

Sincerely, Peter Houghton

That was true, but it was still sort of lame. Of course, there was the obvious:

Love, Peter Houghton

He typed it in, read it over once. And then, before he could stop himself, he pushed the Enter button and sent his heart across the Ethernet to Josie Cormier.

Courtney Ignatio was so freaking bored.

Josie was her friend and all, but there was, like, nothing to do. They’d already watched three Paul Walker movies on DVD, checked the Lost website for the bio on the hot guy who played Sawyer, and read all the Cosmos that hadn’t been recycled, but there was no HBO, nothing chocolate in the fridge, and no party at Sterling College to sneak into. This was Courtney’s second night at the Cormier household, thanks to her brainiac older brother, who had dragged her parents on a whirlwind tour of Ivy League colleges on the East Coast. Courtney plopped a stuffed hippo on her stomach and frowned into its button eyes. She’d already tried to get details out of Josie last night about Matt-important things, like how big a dick he had and if he had a clue how to use it-but Josie had gone all Hilary Duff on her and acted like she’d never heard the word sex before.

Josie was in the bathroom taking a shower; Courtney could still hear the water running. She rolled to her side and scrutinized a framed photograph of Josie and Matt. It would have been easy to hate Josie, because Matt was the über-boyfriend-always glancing around at a party to make sure he hadn’t gotten too far away from Josie; calling her up to say good night, even when he’d just dropped her off a half hour before (yes, Courtney had been privy to a display of that very thing just last night). Unlike most of the guys on the hockey team-several of whom Courtney had dated-Matt honestly seemed to prefer Josie’s company to anyone else’s. But there was something about Josie that kept Courtney from being jealous. It was the way her expression slipped every now and then, like a colored contact lens, so you could see what was actually underneath. Josie might have been one-half of Sterling High School’s Most Faithful Couple, but it almost seemed like the biggest reason she clung to that label was because that was the only reason she knew who she was.

You’ve got mail.

The automaton on Josie’s computer spoke; until then, Courtney hadn’t realized that they’d left the computer running, much less online. She settled down at the desk, wiggling the mouse so that the screen came back into focus. Maybe Matt was writing some kind of cyberporn. It would be fun to screw around with him a little and pretend that she was Josie.

The return address, though, wasn’t one that Courtney recognized-she and Josie, after all, had nearly identical Buddy Lists. There was no subject. Courtney clicked on the link, assuming it was some kind of junk mail: enlarge your penis in thirty days; refinance your home; real deals on printer ribbon cartridges.

The email opened, and Courtney started to read.

“Oh my God,” she murmured. “This is too fucking good.”

She swiped the body of the email and forwarded it to RTWING90@ yahoo.com.

Drew, she typed. Spam this out to the whole wide world.

The door to the bathroom opened, and Josie came back into the bedroom wearing a bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her head. Courtney closed the server window. “Good-bye,” the automaton said.

“What’s up?” Josie asked.

Courtney turned around in the chair, smiling. “Just checking my mail,” she said.

Josie couldn’t sleep; her mind was tumbling like a spring stream. This was exactly the sort of problem she wished she could talk about with someone-but who? Her mother? Yeah, right. Matt was out of the question. And Courtney-or any other girlfriend she had-well, she was afraid that if she spoke her worst fears out loud, maybe that would be enough for them to come true.

Josie waited until she heard Courtney’s even breathing. She crept out of bed and into the bathroom. She closed the door and pulled down her pajama pants.

Nothing.

Her period was three days late.

On Tuesday afternoon, Josie sat on a couch in Matt’s basement, writing a social studies essay for him about the historical abuse of power in America while he and Drew lifted free weights.

“There are a million things you could talk about,” Josie said. “Watergate. Abu Ghraib. Kent State.”

Matt strained beneath the weight of a barbell as Drew spotted him. “Whatever’s easiest, Jo,” he said.

“Come on, you pussy,” Drew said. “At this rate they’re going to demote you to JV.”

Matt grinned and fully extended his arms. “Let’s see you bench this,” he grunted. Josie watched the play of his muscles, imagined them strong enough to do that and also tender enough to hold her. He sat up, wiping his forehead and the back of the weight bench, so that Drew could take his turn.

“I could do something on the Patriot Act,” Josie suggested, biting down on the end of the pencil.

“I’m just looking out for your own best interests, dude,” Drew said. “I mean, if you’re not going to bulk up for Coach, do it for Josie.”

She glanced up. “Drew, were you born an idiot, or did that evolve?”

“I intelligently designed,” he joked. “All I’m saying is that Matt better watch out, now that he’s got some competition.”

“What are you talking about?” Josie looked at him as if he were crazy, but secretly, she was panicking. It didn’t really matter whether or not Josie had shown attention to someone else; it only mattered whether Matt thought so.

“It was a joke, Josie,” Drew said, lying down on the bench and curling his fists around the metal bar.

Matt laughed. “Yeah, that’s a good description of Peter Houghton.”

“Are you going to fuck with him?”

“Hopefully,” Matt said. “I just haven’t decided how yet.”

“Maybe you need some poetic inspiration to come up with a suitable plan,” Drew said. “Hey, Jo, grab my binder. The email’s right in the pocket in the front.”

Josie reached across the couch for Drew’s backpack and rummaged through his books. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and opened it to find her own email address right at the top, the whole student body of Sterling High as the destination address.

Where had this come from? And why hadn’t she ever seen it?

“Read it,” Drew said, lifting the weights.

Josie hesitated. “‘I know you don’t think of me. And you certainly would never picture us together.’”

The words felt like stones in her throat. She stopped speaking, but that didn’t matter, because Drew and Matt were reciting the email word for word.

“‘By myself, I’m nothing special,’” Matt said.

“‘But with you…I think…’” Drew convulsed, laughing, the weights falling hard back into their cradle. “Fuck, I can’t do this when I’m cracking up.”

Matt sank down on the couch beside Josie and slipped his arm around her, his thumb grazing her breast. She shifted, because she didn’t want Drew to see, but Matt did, and shifted with her. “You inspire poetry,” he said, smiling. “Bad poetry, but even Helen of Troy probably started with, like, a limerick, right?”