Nineteen Minutes Read online

  Jordan McAfee walked back to the table where Peter sat and picked up a piece of paper. "Do you remember what day Peter was pantsed, Mr. Girard?"

  "No."

  "Let me show you, then, Defense Exhibit One. Do you recognize this?"

  He handed the piece of paper to Drew, who took it and shrugged.

  "This is a piece of email that you received on February third, two days before Peter was pantsed in the Sterling High School cafeteria. Can you tell us who sent it to you?"

  "Courtney Ignatio."

  "Was it a letter that had been written to her?"

  "No," Drew said. "It had been written to Josie."

  "By whom?" McAfee pressed.

  "Peter."

  "What did he say?"

  "It was about Josie. And how he was into her."

  "You mean romantically."

  "I guess," Drew said.

  "What did you do with that email?"

  Drew looked up. "I spammed it out to the student body."

  "Let me get this straight," McAfee said. "You took a very private note that didn't belong to you, a piece of paper with Peter's deepest, most secret feelings, and you forwarded this to every kid at your school?"

  Drew was silent.

  Jordan McAfee slapped the email down on the railing in front of him. "Well, Drew?" he said. "Was it a good joke?"

  *

  Drew Girard was sweating so much that he couldn't believe all those people weren't pointing at him. He could feel the perspiration running between his shoulder blades and making looped circles beneath his arms. And why not? That bitch of a prosecutor had left him in the hot seat. She'd let him get skewered by this dickwad attorney, so that now, for the rest of his life, everyone would think he was an asshole when he--like every other kid in Sterling High--had just been having a little fun.

  He stood up, ready to bolt out of the courtroom and possibly run all the way to the town boundary of Sterling--but Diana Leven was walking toward him. "Mr. Girard," she said, "I'm not quite finished."

  He sank back into his seat, deflated.

  "Have you ever called anyone other than Peter Houghton names?"

  "Yes," he said warily.

  "It's what guys do, right?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Did anyone you ever called names ever shoot you?"

  "No."

  "Ever seen anyone other than Peter Houghton be pantsed?"

  "Sure," Drew said.

  "Did any of those other kids who were pantsed ever shoot you?"

  "No."

  "Ever spammed anyone else's email out as a joke?"

  "Once or twice."

  Diana folded her arms. "Any of those folks ever shoot you?"

  "No, ma'am," he said.

  She headed back to her seat. "Nothing further."

  *

  Dusty Spears understood kids like Drew Girard, because he had once been one. The way he saw it, bullies either were good enough to get football scholarships to Big Ten schools, where they could make the business connections to play on golf courses for the rest of their lives, or they busted their knees and wound up teaching gym at the middle school.

  He was wearing a collared shirt and tie, and that pissed him off, because his neck still looked like it had when he was a tight end at Sterling in '88, even if his abs didn't. "Peter wasn't a real athlete," he said to the prosecutor. "I never really saw him outside of class."

  "Did you ever see Peter getting picked on by other kids?"

  Dusty shrugged. "The usual locker room stuff, I guess."

  "Did you intervene?"

  "I probably told the kids to knock it off. But it's part of growing up, right?"

  "Did you ever hear of Peter threatening anyone else?"

  "Objection," said Jordan McAfee. "That's a hypothetical question."

  "Sustained," the judge replied.

  "If you had heard that, would you have intervened?"

  "Objection!"

  "Sustained. Again."

  The prosecutor didn't miss a beat. "But Peter didn't ask for help, did he?"

  "No."

  She sat back down, and Houghton's lawyer stood up. He was one of those smarmy guys that rubbed Dusty the wrong way--probably had been a kid who could barely field a ball, but smirked when you tried to teach him how, as if he already knew he'd be making twice as much money as Dusty one day, anyway. "Is there a bullying policy in place at Sterling High?"

  "We don't allow it."

  "Ah," McAfee said dryly. "Well, that's refreshing to hear. So let's say you witness bullying on an almost daily basis in a locker room right under your nose . . . according to the policy, what are you supposed to do?"

  Dusty stared at him. "It's in the policy. Obviously I don't have it right in front of me."

  "Luckily, I do," McAfee said. "Let me show you what's been marked as Defense Exhibit Two. Is this the bullying policy for Sterling High School?"

  Reaching out, Dusty took a look at the printed page. "Yes."

  "You get this in your teacher handbook every year in August, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "And this is the most recent version, for the academic year of 2006-?"

  "I assume so," Dusty said.

  "Mr. Spears, I want you to go through that policy very carefully--all two pages--and show me where it tells you what to do if you, as a teacher, witness bullying."

  Dusty sighed and began to scan the papers. Usually, when he got the handbook, he shoved it in a drawer with his take-out menus. He knew the important things: don't miss an in-service day; submit curriculum changes to the department heads; refrain from being alone in a room with a female student. "It says right here," he said, reading, "that the Sterling School Board is committed to providing a learning and working environment that ensures the personal safety of its members. Physical or verbal threats, harassment, hazing, bullying, verbal abuse, and intimidation will not be tolerated." Glancing up, Dusty said, "Does that answer your question?"

  "No, actually, it doesn't. What are you, as a teacher, supposed to do if a student bullies another student?"

  Dusty read further. There was a definition of hazing, of bullying, of verbal abuse. There was mention of a teacher or school administrator being reported to, if the behavior had been witnessed by another student. But there was no set of rules, no chain of events to be set in motion by the teacher or administrator himself.

  "I can't find it in here," he said.

  "Thank you, Mr. Spears," McAfee replied. "That'll be all."

  *

  It would have been simple for Jordan McAfee to notice up his intent to call Derek Markowitz to testify, as he was one of the only character witnesses Peter Houghton had, in terms of friends. But Diana knew he had value for the prosecution because of what he had seen and heard--not because of his loyalties. She'd seen plenty of friends rat each other out over the years she'd been in this business.

  "So, Derek," Diana said, trying to make him comfortable, "you were Peter's friend."

  She watched him lock eyes with Peter and try to smile. "Yes."

  "Did you two hang out after school sometimes?"

  "Yes."

  "What sort of things did you like to do?"

  "We were both really into computers. Sometimes we'd play video games, and then we started to learn programming so we could create a few of our own."

  "Did Peter ever write any video games without you?" Diana asked.

  "Sure."

  "What happened when he finished?"

  "We'd play them. But there are also websites where you can upload your game and have other people rate them for you."

  Derek looked up just then and noticed the television cameras in the back of the room. His jaw dropped, and he froze.

  "Derek," Diana said. "Derek?" She waited for him to focus on her. "Let me hand you a CD-ROM. It's marked State's Exhibit 302. . . . Can you tell me what it is?"

  "That's Peter's most recent game."

  "What's it called?"

  "Hide-n-Shriek."