Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“Salt and pepper?” Courtney chimed in.

“Bread and butter?”

The smile on Peter’s face wilted as he realized how deep a pit he’d fallen into, and how many people had dug it. He glanced from Drew to Courtney to Emma and then back at Josie-and when he did, she had to look away, so that nobody-including Peter-would see how much it hurt her to hurt him; to realize that-in spite of what Peter had believed about her-she was no different from anyone else.

“I think Josie should at least get to sample the merchandise,” Matt said, and when he spoke she realized that he was no longer sitting beside her. He was standing, in fact, behind Peter; and in one smooth stroke he hooked his thumbs into the loops of Peter’s pants and yanked them down to his ankles.

Peter’s skin was moon-white under the harsh fluorescent lamps of the cafeteria, his penis a tiny spiral shell on a sparse nest of pubic hair. He immediately covered his genitals with his lunch bag, and as he did, he dropped his milk carton. It spilled on the floor between his feet.

“Hey, look at that,” Drew said. “Premature ejaculation.”

The entire cafeteria began to spin like a carousel-bright lights and harlequin colors. Josie could hear laughter, and she tried to match her own to it. Mr. Isles, a Spanish teacher who had no neck, hurried over to Peter as he was pulling up his pants. He grabbed Matt with one arm and Peter with the other. “Are you two done,” he barked, “or do we need to go see the principal?”

Peter fled, but by that time, everyone in the cafeteria was reliving the glorious moment of his pantsing. Drew high-fived Matt. “Dude, that was the best fucking lunch entertainment I’ve ever seen.”

Josie reached into her backpack, pretending to search for that apple, but she wasn’t hungry anymore. She just didn’t want to see them all right now; to let them see her.

Peter Houghton’s lunch bag was beside her foot, where he’d dropped it when he ran away. She glanced inside. A sandwich, maybe turkey. A bag of pretzels. Carrots, which had been peeled and cut into even strips by someone who cared about him.

Josie slipped the brown bag into her knapsack, telling herself that she’d find Peter and give it back to him, or leave it near his locker, when she knew she would do neither. Instead, she would carry it around until it started to reek, until she had to throw it out and could pretend it was that easy to get rid of.

Peter burst out of the cafeteria and careened down the narrow hallways like a pinball until he finally reached his locker. He fell to his knees and rested his head against the cold metal. How could he have been so stupid, trusting Courtney, thinking Josie might give a rat’s ass about him, thinking he was someone she could fall for?

He banged his head until it hurt, then blindly dialed the numbers on his locker. It swung open, and he reached inside for the photo of himself and Josie. He crushed it into his palm and walked down the hall again.

On the way, he was stopped by a teacher. Mr. McCabe was frowning at him, putting a hand on his shoulder, when surely he could see that Peter couldn’t bear to be touched, that it felt like a hundred needles were going through his skin. “Peter,” Mr. McCabe said, “are you all right?”

“Bathroom,” Peter ground out, and he pushed away, hurrying down the hallway.

He locked himself inside a stall and threw the picture of himself and Josie into the toilet bowl. Then he unzipped his fly and urinated on top of it. “Fuck you,” he whispered, and then he said it loud enough to rattle the walls of the stall. “Fuck you all.”

The minute Josie’s mother left the room, Josie plucked the thermometer out of her mouth and held it up against the lightbulb of her nightstand lamp. She squinted to read the tiny numbers, and then stuck it back into her mouth as she heard her mother’s footsteps. “Hunh,” her mother said, holding the thermometer up to the window to better read it. “I guess you are sick.”

Josie gave what she hoped was a convincing moan and rolled over.

“You sure you’re going to be all right here, alone?”

“Yeah.”

“You can call me if you need me. I can recess court and come back home.”

“Okay.”

She sat down on the bed and kissed her forehead. “You want juice? Soup?”

Josie shook her head. “I think I just need to go back to sleep.” She closed her eyes so that her mother would get the message.

She waited until she heard the car drive away, and even then she stayed in bed for an extra ten minutes to make sure she was alone. Then Josie got out of bed and booted up her computer. She Googled abortifacient-the word she’d looked up yesterday, the one that meant something that terminates a pregnancy.

Josie had been thinking about this. It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby; it wasn’t even that she didn’t want Matt’s baby. All she knew for certain was that she didn’t want to have to make that decision yet.

If she told her mother, her mom would curse and scream and then find a way to take her to Planned Parenthood or the doctor’s office. To be honest, it wasn’t even the cursing and screaming that worried Josie. It was realizing that-had her own mother done this, seventeen years ago-Josie wouldn’t even be alive to be having this problem.

Josie had toyed with contacting her father again, which would have taken an enormous helping of humility. He hadn’t wanted Josie born, so theoretically, he’d probably go out of his way to help her have an abortion.

But.

There was something about going to a doctor, or a clinic, or even to a parent, that she couldn’t quite swallow. It seemed so…deliberate.

So before she reached that point, Josie had chosen to do a bit of research. She couldn’t risk being caught on a computer at school looking these things up, so she’d decided to play hooky. She sank into the desk chair, one leg folded beneath her, and marveled as she received nearly 99,000 hits.

Some she already knew: the old wives’ tales about sticking a knitting needle up inside her, or drinking laxatives or castor oil. Some she’d never imagined: douching with potassium, swallowing gingerroot, eating unripe pineapple. And then there were the herbs: oil infusions of calamus, mugwort, sage, and wintergreen; cocktails made out of black cohosh and pennyroyal. Josie wondered where you even got these things-it wasn’t like they were in the aisle next to the aspirin at CVS.

Herbal remedies, the website said, worked 40-45 percent of the time. Which, she supposed, was at least a start.

She leaned closer, reading.

Don’t start herbal treatment after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Keep in mind these are not reliable ways to end pregnancy.

Drink the teas day and night, so you don’t ruin the progress you made during the day.

Catch the blood and add water to dilute it, and look at the clots and tissue to make sure the placenta has passed.

Josie grimaced.

Use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of the dried herb per cup of water, 3-4 times a day. Don’t confuse tansy with tansy ragwort, which has been fatal to cows that have eaten it growing nearby.

Then she found something that looked less, well, medieval: vitamin C. Surely that couldn’t be too bad for her? Josie clicked on the link. Ascorbic acid, eight grams, for five days. Menstruation should begin on the sixth or seventh day.

Josie got up from her computer and went into her mother’s medicine cabinet. There was a big white bottle of vitamin C, along with smaller ones of acidophilus, vitamin B12, and calcium supplements.

She opened the bottle and hesitated. The other warning that the websites all gave was to make sure you had reason to subject your body to these herbs before you started.