Nineteen Minutes (36 page)

Tonight they’d gathered at Maddie’s house because her parents had gone to visit her older brother, a sophomore at Syracuse. They weren’t drinking-it was hockey season, and the players had to sign a contract with the coach-but Drew Girard had rented the uncut version of a teen sex comedy, and the guys were discussing who was hotter, Elisha Cuthbert or Shannon Elizabeth. “I wouldn’t throw either of them out of bed,” Drew said.

“What makes you think they’d get in in the first place?” John Eberhard laughed.

“My reputation reaches far and wide…”

Courtney smirked. “It’s the only part of you that does.”

“Aw, Court, you wish you knew that for sure.”

“Or not…”

Josie was sitting on the floor with Maddie, trying to make a Ouija board work. They’d found it in the basement closet, along with Chutes and Ladders and Trivial Pursuit. Josie’s fingertips rested lightly on the planchette. “Are you pushing it?”

“Swear to God, no,” Maddie said. “Are you?”

Josie shook her head. She wondered what kind of ghost would come to hang out at a teenage party. Someone who’d died tragically, of course, and too young-in a car crash, maybe. “What’s your name?” Josie said loudly.

The planchette swiveled to the letter A, and then B, and then stopped.

“Abe,” Maddie announced. “It must be.”

“Or Abby.”

“Are you male or female?” Maddie asked.

The planchette slipped off the edge of the board entirely. Drew started to laugh. “Maybe it’s gay.”

“Takes one to know one,” John said.

Matt yawned and stretched, his shirt riding up. Although Josie’s back was to him, she could practically sense this, so attuned were their bodies. “As thrillingly fun as this has been, we’re out of here. Jo, come on.”

Josie watched the planchette spell out a word: N-O. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “I’m having fun.”

“Meow,” Drew said. “Who’s pussy-whipped?”

Since they’d started dating, Matt spent more time with Josie than with his friends. And although Matt had told her he’d much rather fool around with her than be in the company of fools, Josie knew it was still important to him to have the respect of Drew and John. But that didn’t mean he had to treat her like a slave, did it?

“I said we’re leaving,” Matt repeated.

Josie glanced up at him. “And I said I’ll come when I want to come.”

Matt smiled at his friends, smug. “You never came in your life before you met me,” he said.

Drew and John burst out laughing, and Josie felt herself flush with embarrassment. She stood, averting her eyes, and ran up the basement stairs.

In the entryway of Maddie’s house she grabbed her jacket. When she heard footsteps behind her, Josie didn’t even turn around. “I was having fun. So-”

She broke off with a small cry as Matt grabbed her arm hard and spun her around, pinning her up against the wall by her shoulders. “You’re hurting me-”

“Don’t ever do that to me again.”

“You’re the one who-”

“You made me look like an idiot,” Matt said. “I told you it was time to go.”

Bruises bloomed on her skin where he held her fast, as if she were a canvas and he was determined to leave his mark. She went limp beneath his hands: instinct, a surrender. “I…I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The words were a key-Matt’s grip relaxed. “Jo,” he sighed, and he rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t like sharing you. You can’t blame me for that.”

Josie shook her head, but she still didn’t trust herself to speak.

“It’s just that I love you so much.”

She blinked. “You do?”

He hadn’t said those words yet, and she hadn’t said them either, even though she felt them, because if he didn’t say them back then Josie was sure she’d simply evaporate on the spot from sheer humiliation. But here was Matt, saying he loved her, first.

“Isn’t that obvious?” he said, and he took her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed the knuckles so gently that Josie almost forgot all that had happened to get them to that moment.

“Kentucky Fried People,” Peter said, mulling Derek’s idea while they sat on the sidelines in gym class, as the teams for basketball were being picked. “I don’t know…doesn’t it seem a little…”

“Graphic?” Derek said. “Since when were you aiming for politically correct? See, imagine if you could go to the art room, if you had enough points, and use the kiln as a weapon.”

Derek had been road testing Peter’s new computer game, pointing out room for improvement and flaws in the design. They knew they had plenty of time for conversation, since they were bound to be the last kids chosen for teams.

Coach Spears had chosen Drew Girard and Matt Royston to be team captains-a huge surprise, not-they were varsity athletes, even as sophomores. “Look alive, people,” Coach called out. “You want your captains to think you’re hungry to play. You want them to think you’re the next Michael Jordan.”

Drew pointed to a boy in the back. “Noah.”

Matt nodded to the kid who’d been sitting next to him. “Charlie.”

Peter turned to Derek. “I heard that even though Michael Jordan’s retired, he’s still getting forty million dollars in endorsements.”

“That means he makes $109,589 a day, for not working,” Derek figured.

“Ash,” Drew called out.

“Robbie,” Matt said.

Peter leaned closer to Derek. “If he goes to see a movie, it’ll cost him ten bucks, but he’ll make $9,132 while he’s there.”

Derek grinned. “If he hard-boils an egg for five minutes, he’ll make $380.”

“Stu.”

“Freddie.”

“O-boy.”

“Walt.”

By now there were only three kids left to be picked for teams: Derek, Peter, and Royce, who had aggression issues and came complete with his own aide.

“Royce,” Matt said.

“He makes $4,560.85 more than he would working at McDonald’s,” Derek added.

Drew scrutinized Peter and Derek. “He makes $2,283 watching a rerun of Friends,” Peter said.

“If he wanted to save up for a new Maserati, it would take him a whole twenty-one hours,” Derek said. “Damn, I wish I could play basketball.”

“Derek,” Drew picked.

Derek started to stand up. “Yeah,” Peter said, “but even if Michael Jordan saved a hundred percent of his income for the next four hundred and fifty years, he still wouldn’t have as much as Bill Gates has right this second.”

“All right,” Matt said, “I’ll take the homo.”

Peter shuffled toward the back of Matt’s team. “You ought to be good at this game, Peter,” Matt said, loud enough so that everyone else could hear. “Just keep your hands on the balls.”

Peter leaned against a floor mat that had been strung on the wall, like the inside of an insane asylum. A rubber room, where all hell could break loose.

He sort of wished he was as sure of who he was as everyone else seemed to be.

“All right,” Coach Spears said. “Let’s play.”

The first ice storm of the season arrived before Thanksgiving. It started after midnight, wind rattling the old bones of the house and pellets drumming the windows. The power went out, but Alex had been expecting that. She woke up with a start at the absolute silence that came with a loss of technology, and reached for the flashlight that she’d put next to her bed.

There were candles, too. Alex lit two candles and watched her shadow, larger than life, creep along the wall. She could remember nights like this when Josie was little, when they’d crawl into bed together and Josie would fall asleep crossing her fingers that there would not be school in the morning.

How come grown-ups never got that kind of holiday? Even if there wasn’t school tomorrow-which there wouldn’t be, if Alex was guessing correctly-even if the wind was still howling as if the earth were in pain and the ice was caked on her windshield wipers, Alex would be expected to show up in court. Yoga classes and basketball games and theater performances would be postponed, but no one ever canceled real life.

The door to the bedroom flew open. Josie stood there in a wifebeater tank and a pair of boy’s boxers-Alex had no idea where she’d gotten them, and prayed they didn’t belong to Matt Royston. For a moment, Alex could barely reconcile this young woman with her curves and long hair with the daughter she still expected, a little girl with an unraveling braid, wearing Wonder Woman pajamas. She tossed back the covers on one side of the bed, an invitation.

Josie dove underneath them, yanking the blankets up to her chin. “It’s freaky out there,” she said. “It’s like the sky’s falling down.”

“I’d be more worried about the roads.”

“Do you think we’ll have a snow day tomorrow?”

Alex smiled in the dark. Josie may have been older, but her priorities were still the same. “Most likely.”

With a contented sigh, Josie flopped down on her pillow. “I wonder if Matt and I could go skiing somewhere.”

“You’re not leaving this house if the roads are bad.”

“You will.”

“I don’t have a choice,” Alex said.

Josie turned to her, her eyes reflecting the candlelight. “Everyone has a choice,” she said. She came up on an elbow. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t you marry Logan Rourke?”

Alex felt as if she’d been thrust out into the storm, naked; she was that unprepared for Josie’s question. “Where did this come from?”

“What was it about him that wasn’t good enough? You told me he was handsome and smart. And you had to love him, at least at one point…”

“Josie, this is ancient history-and it’s stuff you shouldn’t worry about, because it has nothing to do with you.”

“It has everything to do with me,” Josie said. “I’m half him.”

Alex stared up at the ceiling. Maybe the sky was falling down; maybe that’s what happened when you thought your smoke and mirrors would create a lasting illusion. “He was all of those things,” Alex said quietly. “It wasn’t him at all. It was me.”

“And then there was the whole married part.”

She sat up in bed. “How did you find out?”

“It’s all over the papers, now that he’s running for office. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist.”

“Did you call him?”

Josie looked her in the eye. “No.”

There was a part of Alex that wished Josie had talked to him-to see whether he’d followed Alex’s career, if he’d even asked about her. The act of leaving Logan, which had seemed so righteous on behalf of her unborn baby, now seemed selfish. Why hadn’t she talked to Josie about this before?

Because she’d been protecting Logan. Josie may have grown up without knowing her father, but wasn’t that better than learning he’d wanted you to be aborted? One more lie, Alex thought, just a little one. Just to keep Josie from being hurt. “He wouldn’t leave his wife.” Alex glanced sideways at Josie. “I couldn’t make myself small enough to fit into the space he wanted me to fit into, in order to be part of his life. Does that make sense?”

“I guess.”

Beneath the covers, Alex reached for Josie’s hand. It was the kind of action that would have seemed forced, had it been in visible sight-something too openly emotional for either of them to lay claim to-but here, in the dark, with the world tunneling in around them, it seemed perfectly natural. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For not giving you the choice of having him around when you were growing up.”

Josie shrugged and pulled her hand away. “You did the right thing.”

“I don’t know,” Alex sighed. “The right thing sets you up to be incredibly lonely, sometimes.” Suddenly she turned to Josie, stretching a bright smile on her face. “Why are we even talking about this? Unlike me, you’re lucky in love, right?”

Just then, the power came back on. Downstairs, the microwave beeped to be reset; the light in the bathroom spilled yellow down the hallway. “I guess I’ll go back to my own bed,” Josie said.

“Oh. All right,” Alex answered, when what she meant to say was that Josie was welcome to stay right where she was.

As Josie padded down the hallway, Alex reached over to reset her alarm clock. It blinked 12:00 12:00 12:00 in panicked LED, like Cinderella’s red-flag reminder that fairy-tale endings are hard to come by.

To Peter’s surprise, the bouncer at the Front Runner didn’t even glance at his fake ID, so before he had time to think twice about the fact that he was actually, finally here, he was pushed inside.

He was hit in the face with a blast of smoke, and it took him a minute to adjust to the dim light. Music filled in all the spaces between people, techno-dance stuff that was so loud it made Peter’s eardrums pulse. Two tall women were flanking the front door, checking out the new entrants. It took Peter a second glance to realize that one had the shadow of a beard on her face. His face. The other one looked more like a girl than most girls he’d ever seen, but then again, Peter had never seen a transvestite up close. Maybe they were perfectionists.

Men were standing in groups of two or three, except for the ones that perched like hawks on a balcony overlooking the dance floor. There were men in leather chaps, men kissing other men in the corners, men passing joints. Mirrors on every wall made the club look huge, its rooms endless.

It hadn’t been hard to find out about the Front Runner, thanks to Internet chat rooms. Since Peter was still taking driver’s ed, he had to take a bus to Manchester and then a taxi to the club’s front door. He still wasn’t sure why he was there-it was like an anthropology experiment, in his mind. See if he fit in with this society, instead of his own.

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.