Nineteen Minutes (58 page)

“Math, with Mr. McCabe.”

“Did you go to class?”

“Yes.”

“And what time did that class start?”

“Nine-forty,” Zoe said.

“Did you see Peter Houghton at all before math class?”

She couldn’t help it, she let her glance slide toward Peter sitting at the defense table. Here was the weird thing-she had been a freshman last year and didn’t know him at all. And even now, even after he’d shot her, if she’d walked down a street and passed him, she didn’t think she would have recognized him.

“No,” Zoe said.

“Anything unusual happen at math class?”

“No.”

“Did you stay for the entire period?”

“No,” Zoe said. “I had an orthodontist appointment at ten-fifteen, so I left a little before ten to sign out in the office and wait for my mom.”

“Where was she going to meet you?”

“On the front steps. She was just going to drive up.”

“Did you sign out of school?”

“Yes.”

“Did you go to the front steps?”

“Yes.”

“Was anyone else out there?”

“No. Class was in session.”

She watched the prosecutor pull out a big overhead photograph of the school and the parking lot, the way it used to be. Zoe had driven by the construction, and now there was a big fence around the entire area. “Can you show me where you were standing?” Zoe pointed. “Let the record show that the witness pointed to the front steps of Sterling High,” Ms. Leven said. “Now, what happened while you were standing and waiting for your mother?”

“There was an explosion.”

“Did you know where it came from?”

“Somewhere behind the school,” Zoe said, and she glanced at that big poster again, as if it might even now just detonate.

“What happened next?”

Zoe rubbed her hand over her leg. “He…he came around the side of the school and started to come up the steps…”

“By ‘he,’ do you mean the defendant, Peter Houghton?”

Zoe nodded, swallowing. “He came up the steps and I looked at him and he…he pointed a gun and shot me.” She was blinking too fast now, trying not to cry.

“Where did he shoot you, Zoe?” the prosecutor asked gently.

“In the leg.”

“Did Peter say anything to you before he shot you?”

“No.”

“Did you know who he was at that point in time?”

Zoe shook her head. “No.”

“Did you recognize his face?”

“Yes, from around school and all…”

Ms. Leven turned her back to the jury and gave Zoe a little wink, which made her feel better. “What kind of gun was he using, Zoe? Was it a small gun he held in one hand, or a big gun that he carried with two hands?”

“A small gun.”

“How many times did he shoot?”

“One.”

“Did he say anything after he shot you?”

“I don’t remember,” Zoe said.

“What did you do?”

“I wanted to get away from him, but my leg felt like it was on fire. I tried to run but I couldn’t do it-I just sort of crumpled and fell down the stairs, and then I couldn’t move my arm either.”

“What did the defendant do?”

“He went into the school.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

“No.”

“How’s your leg now?” the prosecutor asked.

“I still need a cane,” Zoe said. “I got an infection because the bullet blew fabric from my jeans into my leg. The tendon’s attached to the scar tissue, and that’s still really sensitive. The doctors don’t know if they want to do another surgery, because it might do more damage.”

“Zoe, were you on a sports team last year?”

“Soccer,” she said, and she looked down at her leg. “Today they start practice for the season.”

Ms. Leven turned to the judge. “Nothing further,” she said. “Zoe, Mr. McAfee might have a few questions for you.”

The other lawyer stood up. Zoe was nervous about this part, because even though she’d gotten to rehearse with the prosecutor, she had no idea what Peter’s attorney would ask her. It was like any other exam; she wanted to have the right answers. “When Peter was holding the gun, he was about three feet away from you?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t look like he was running right toward you, did he?”

“I guess not.”

“He looked like he was just trying to run up the stairs, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you were just waiting on the stairs, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So it’s fair to say that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Objection,” Ms. Leven said.

The judge-a big man with a mane of white hair who sort of scared Zoe-shook his head. “Overruled.”

“No further questions,” the lawyer said, and then Ms. Leven rose again. “After Peter went inside,” she asked, “what did you do?”

“I started screaming for help.” Zoe looked into the gallery, trying to find her mother. If she looked at her mother, then she could say what she had to say next, because it was already over and that was what you had to keep remembering, no matter how much it felt like it wasn’t. “At first nobody came,” Zoe murmured. “And then…then everybody did.”

Michael Beach had seen Zoe Patterson leaving the room where the witnesses were sequestered. It was a weird collection of kids-everyone from losers like himself to popular kids like Brady Pryce. Even stranger, no one seemed to be inclined to break into their usual pods-the geeks in one corner, the jocks in another, and so on. Instead, they’d all just sat down next to each other at the one long conference table. Emma Alexis-who was one of the cool, beautiful girls-was now paralyzed from the waist down, and she rolled her wheelchair up right beside Justin. She’d asked him if she could have half of his glazed donut.

“When Peter first came into the gym,” the prosecutor asked, “what did he do?”

“Wave a gun around,” Michael said.

“Could you see what kind of gun it was?”

“Well, like a smallish one.”

“A handgun?”

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything?”

Michael glanced at the defense table. “He said ‘All you jocks, front and center.’”

“What happened?”

“A kid started to run toward him, like he was going to take him down.”

“Who was that?”

“Noah James. He’s-he was-a senior. Peter shot him, and he just collapsed.”

“Then what happened?” the prosecutor asked.

Michael took a deep breath. “Peter said, ‘Who’s next?’ and my friend Justin grabbed me and started dragging me to the door.”

“How long had you and Justin been friends?”

“Since third grade,” Michael said.

“And then?”

“Peter must have seen something moving, so he turned around and he just started to shoot.”

“Did he hit you?”

Michael shook his head and pressed his lips together.

“Michael,” the prosecutor said gently, “who did he hit?”

“Justin got in front of me when the shooting started. And then he…he fell down. There was blood everywhere and I was trying to stop it, like they do on TV, by pushing on his stomach. I wasn’t paying any attention to anything anymore, except Justin, and then all of a sudden I felt a gun press up against my head.”

“What happened?”

“I closed my eyes,” Michael said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”

“And then?”

“I heard this noise, and when I opened my eyes, he was pulling out the thing that had all the bullets in it and jamming in another one.”

The prosecutor walked up to a table and held up a gun clip. Just seeing it in her hand made Michael shudder. “Is this what went into the gun?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened after that?”

“He didn’t shoot me,” Michael said. “Three people ran across the gym, and he followed them into the locker room.”

“And Justin?”

“I watched it,” Michael whispered. “I watched his face while he died.”

It was the first thing he saw in the morning when he awakened, and the last thing he saw before he went to bed: that moment where the shine in Justin’s eyes just dulled. When the life left a person, it wasn’t by degrees. It was instant, like someone pulling down a shade on a window.

The prosecutor came closer. “Michael,” she said, “you all right?”

He nodded.

“Were you and Justin jocks?”

“Not even close,” he admitted.

“Were you part of the popular crowd?”

“No.”

“Had you and Justin ever been bullied by anyone in school?”

Michael glanced, for the first time, at Peter Houghton. “Who hasn’t?” he said.

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter’s behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

Lewis had a bigwig economist from London coming to dinner, and in preparation, Lacy had taken the day off work to clean. Although she had no doubts about her prowess as a midwife, the nature of her work meant that toilets didn’t get cleaned on a regular basis; that dust bunnies bloomed beneath the furniture. Usually, she didn’t care-she thought a house that was lived in was preferential to one that was sterile-unless company was coming over; then pride kicked in. So that morning, she’d gotten up, made breakfast, and had already dusted the living room by the time Peter-a sophomore, then-threw himself angrily into a chair at the kitchen table. “I have no clean underwear,” he fumed, although the rule in the house was that when his laundry bin filled, he had to do his own wash-there was so little that Lacy ever asked him to do, she didn’t think this one task was unreasonable. Lacy had suggested that he borrow some from his father, but Peter was disgusted by that, and she decided to let him figure it out on his own. She had enough on her plate.

She usually let Peter’s room stand in utter pigsty disarray, but as she passed by that morning, she noticed his laundry bin. Well, she was already home working, and he was at school. She could do this one thing for him. By the time Peter got home that day, Lacy had not only vacuumed and scrubbed the floors, cooked a four-course meal, and cleaned the kitchen-she had also washed, dried, and folded three loads of Peter’s laundry. They were piled on the bed, clean clothing that covered the entire six-foot span of the mattress, segregated into pants, shirts, undershorts. All he had to do was set them into his closet, his drawers.

Peter arrived, sullen and moody, and immediately hurried upstairs to his room and his computer-the place he spent most of his time. Lacy-arm deep in the toilet, at that point, scouring-waited for him to notice what she’d done for him. But instead, she heard him groan. “God! I’m supposed to put all this away?” Then he slammed his bedroom door so loud that the house shook around her.

Suddenly, Lacy couldn’t see straight. She had-of her own volition-done something nice for her son-her ridiculously spoiled son-and this was how he acted in return? She rinsed off the scrubbing gloves and left them in the sink. Then she stomped upstairs to Peter’s room and threw open the door. “What is your problem?”

Peter glared at her. “What’s your problem? Look at this mess.”

Something inside Lacy had snapped like a filament, igniting her. “Mess?” she repeated. “I cleaned up the mess. You want to see a mess?” She reached past Peter, knocking over a pile of neatly folded T-shirts. She grabbed his boxer shorts and threw them on the floor. She shoved his pants off the bed, hurled them at his computer, so that his tower of CD-ROMs fell over and the silver disks scattered. “I hate you!” Peter yelled, and without missing a beat, Lacy yelled back, “I hate you, too!” Only then did she realize that she and Peter were now the same height; that she was arguing with a child who stood eye-level with her.

She backed out of Peter’s room, and he slammed the door behind her. Almost immediately, Lacy burst into tears. She hadn’t meant it-of course she hadn’t. She loved Peter. She just, at that moment, hated what he’d said; what he’d done. When she knocked, he wouldn’t answer. “Peter,” she said. “Peter, I’m sorry I said that.”

She held her ear to the door, but there was no sound coming from the inside. Lacy had gone back downstairs and finished cleaning the bathroom. She had moved like a zombie through dinner, making conversation with the economist without really knowing what she was saying. Peter had not joined them. She did not see him, in fact, until the next morning, when Lacy went to wake him up and found his room already empty-and spotless. The clothes had been refolded and placed in their drawers. The bed was made. The CDs organized again, in their tower.

Peter was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal, when Lacy went downstairs. He did not meet her eyes, and she did not meet his-the ground between them was still too tender for that. But she poured him a glass of juice and set it on the table. He said thank you.

They never spoke of what they’d said to each other, and Lacy had vowed to herself that no matter how frustrating it got, being the parent of a teenage boy, no matter how selfish and self-centered Peter became, she would never again let herself reach a point where she truly, viscerally hated her own son.

But as the victims of Sterling High told their stories in a courtroom just down the hall from where Lacy sat, she hoped that she wasn’t too late.

At first, Peter didn’t recognize her. The girl who was being led up the ramp by a nurse-the girl whose hair had been cropped to fit underneath bandages and whose face was twisted with scar tissue and bone that had been broken and carved away-settled herself inside the witness box in a way that reminded him of fish being introduced to a new tank. They’d swim around the perimeter gingerly, as if they knew they had to assess the dangers of this new place before they could even begin to function.

“Can you state your name for the record?” the prosecutor asked.

“Haley,” the girl said softly. “Haley Weaver.”

“Last year, you were a senior at Sterling High?”

Her mouth rounded, flattened. The pink scar that curved like the seam on a baseball over her temple grew darker, an angry red. “Yes,” she said. She closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her hollow cheek. “I was the homecoming queen.” She bent forward, rocking slightly as she cried.

Peter’s chest hurt, as if it were going to explode. He thought maybe he would just die on the spot and save everyone the trouble of going through this. He was afraid to look up, because if he did he would have to see Haley Weaver again.