Nineteen Minutes by Jodie Picoult

Author:Jodie Picoult [Picoult, Jodie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary
Published: 2007-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

“Peter,” Mrs. Sandringham said at the end of English class. “Could I see you for a moment?”

At the sound of his teacher’s summons, Peter sank down in his chair. He began to think of excuses he could give his parents when he came home with another failing grade.

He actually liked Mrs. Sandringham. She was only in her late twenties-you could actually look at her while she was prattling on about grammar and Shakespeare and imagine not so long ago, when she might have been slouched in a seat like any ordinary kid and wondering why the clock never seemed to move.

Peter waited until the rest of the class had cleared out before he approached the teacher’s desk. “I just wanted to talk to you about your essay,” Mrs. Sandringham said. “I haven’t graded everyone’s yet, but I did have a chance to look over yours and-”

“I can redo it,” Peter blurted out.

Mrs. Sandringham raised her brows. “But Peter…I wanted to tell you that you’re getting an A.” She handed it to him; Peter stared at the bright red grade in the margin.

The assignment had been to write about a significant event that had changed your life. Although it had happened only a week ago, Peter had written about getting fired for setting the fire in the Dumpster at work. In it, he didn’t mention Josie Cormier at all.

Mrs. Sandringham had circled one sentence in his conclusion: I’ve learned you will get caught, so you have to think things through before you act.

The teacher reached out and put her hand on Peter’s wrist. “You really have learned something from this incident,” she said, and she smiled at him. “I’d trust you in a heartbeat.”

Peter nodded and took the paper from the desk. He swam into the stream of students in the hallway, still holding it. He imagined what his mother would say if he came home with a paper that had a big fat A on it-if, for just once in his life, he did something everyone expected of Joey, and not Peter.

But that would have necessitated telling his mother about the Dumpster incident in the first place. Or admitting that he’d been fired at all, and now spent his after-school hours at the library instead of at the copy center.

Peter crumpled up the essay and threw it into the first trash can that he passed.

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