Sterling isn’t the inner city. You don’t find crack dealers on Main Street, or households below the poverty level. The crime rate is virtually nonexistent.

That’s why people are still so shell-shocked.

They ask, How could this happen here?

Well. How could it not happen here?

All it takes is a troubled kid with access to guns.

You don’t have to go to an inner city to find someone who meets those criteria. You only have to open your eyes. The next likely candidate might be upstairs, or sprawled in front of your TV right now. But hey, you just go right on pretending it won’t happen here. Tell yourself that you’re immune because of where you live or who you are.

It’s easier that way, isn’t it?

Five Months After

You can tell a lot about people by their habits. For example, Jordan had come across potential jurors who religiously took their cups of coffee to their computers and read the entire New York Times online. There were others whose welcome screen on AOL didn’t even include news updates, because they found it too depressing. There were rural people who owned televisions but only got a grainy public broadcasting station because they couldn’t afford the money it would take to bring cable lines up their dirt road; and there were others who had bought elaborate satellite systems so that they could catch Japanese soaps or Sister Mary Margaret’s Prayer Hour at three in the morning. There were those who watched CNN, and those who watched FOX News.

It was the sixth hour of individual voir dire, the process by which the jury for Peter’s trial would be selected. This involved long days in the courtroom with Diana Leven and Judge Wagner, as the pool of jurors dribbled one by one into the witness seat to be asked a variety of questions by the defense and the prosecution. The goal was to find twelve folks, plus an alternate, who weren’t personally affected by the shooting; a jury that could commit to a long trial if necessary, instead of worrying about their home business or who was taking care of their toddlers. A group of people who had not been living and breathing the news about this trial for the past five months-or, as Jordan was affectionately starting to think of them: the blessed few that had been living under a rock.

It was August, and for the past week the temperatures had climbed to nearly a hundred degrees during the day. To make matters worse, the air-conditioning in the courtroom was on the fritz, and Judge Wagner smelled like mothballs and feet when he sweated.

Jordan had already taken off his jacket and loosened the top button of his shirt beneath his tie. Even Diana-who he secretly believed had to be some kind of Stepford robot-had twisted her hair up and jammed a pencil into the bun to secure it. “What are we up to?” Judge Wagner asked.

“Juror number six million seven hundred and thirty thousand,” Jordan murmured.

“Juror number eighty-eight,” the clerk announced.

It was a man this time, wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeved shirt. He had thinning hair, boat shoes, and a wedding band. Jordan noted all of this on his pad.

Diana stood up and introduced herself, then began asking her litany of questions. The answers would determine if a potential juror could be dismissed for cause-if they had a kid, for example, who’d been killed at Sterling High and couldn’t be impartial. If not, Diana could choose to use one of her peremptory strikes. Both she and Jordan had fifteen opportunities to dismiss a potential juror out of gut instinct. So far, Diana had used one of hers against a short, bald, quiet software developer. Jordan had dismissed a former Navy SEAL.

“What do you do for work, Mr. Alstrop?” Diana asked.

“I’m an architect.”

“You’re married?”

“For twenty years, this October.”

“Do you have any children?”

“Two, a fourteen-year-old boy and a nineteen-year-old girl.”

“Do they go to public high school?”

“Well, my son does. My daughter’s in college. Princeton,” he said proudly.

“Do you know anything about this case?”

Saying he did, Jordan knew, wouldn’t exclude him. It was what he believed or didn’t believe, in spite of what the media had said.

“Well, only what I read in the papers,” Alstrop said, and Jordan closed his eyes.

“Do you read a certain newspaper daily?”

“I used to get the Union Leader,” he said, “but the editorials drove me crazy. I try to read the main section of The New York Times now, at least.”

Jordan considered this. The Union Leader was a notoriously conservative paper, The New York Times a liberal one.

“What about television?” Diana asked. “Any shows you particularly like?”

You probably didn’t want a juror who watched ten hours of Court TV per day. You also didn’t want the guy who savored Pee-wee Herman marathons.

“60 Minutes,” Alstrop replied. “And The Simpsons.”

Now that, Jordan thought, was a normal guy. He got to his feet as Diana turned the questioning over to him. “What do you remember reading about this case?” he asked.

Alstrop shrugged. “There was a shooting at the high school and one of the students was charged.”

“Did you know any of the students?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone who works at Sterling High?”

Alstrop shook his head. “No.”

“Have you talked to anyone involved in this case?”

“No.”

Jordan walked up to the witness stand. “There’s a rule in this state that says you can take a right on red, if you stop first at the red light. You familiar with it?”

“Sure,” Alstrop said.

“What if the judge told you that you can’t turn right on red-that you must stay stopped until the light goes green again, even if there’s a sign in front of you that specifically says RIGHT TURN ON RED. What would you do?”

Alstrop looked at Judge Wagner. “I guess I’d do what he said.”

Jordan smiled to himself. He didn’t give a damn about Alstrop’s driving habits-that setup and question was a way to weed out the people who couldn’t see past convention. There would be information in this trial that wasn’t necessarily intuitive, and he needed people on a jury who were open-minded enough to understand that rules weren’t always what you thought they were, who could listen to the new regulations and follow them accordingly.

When he finished his questioning, he and Diana walked toward the bench. “Is there any reason to dismiss this juror for cause?” Judge Wagner asked.

“No, Your Honor,” Diana said, and Jordan shook his head.

“So?”

Diana nodded. Jordan glanced at the man, still sitting on the witness stand. “This one works for me,” he said.

When Alex woke up, she pretended not to. Instead, she kept her eyes nearly closed so that she could stare at the man sprawled on the other side of her bed. This relationship-four months old now-was still a mystery to her, as much as the constellation of freckles on Patrick’s shoulders, the valley of his spine, the startling contrast of his black hair against a white sheet. It seemed that he had invaded her life by osmosis: she’d find his shirt mixed in with her laundry; she’d smell his shampoo on her pillowcase; she would pick up the phone, thinking to call him, and he’d already be on the line. Alex had been single for so long; she was practical, resolute, and set in her ways (oh, who was she kidding…those were all just euphemisms for what she really was: stubborn)-she would have guessed that this sudden attack on her privacy would be unnerving. Instead, though, she found herself feeling disoriented when Patrick wasn’t around, like the sailor who’s just landed after months at sea and who still feels the ocean rolling beneath him even when it isn’t there.

“I can feel you staring, you know,” Patrick murmured. A lazy smile heated his face, but his eyes were still shut.

Alex leaned over, slipping her hand under the covers. “What can you feel?”

“What can’t I?” Striking quick as lightning, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her underneath him. His eyes, still softened by sleep, were a crisp blue that made Alex think of glaciers and northern seas. He kissed her, and she vined around him.

Then suddenly her eyes snapped open. “Oh, shit,” she said.

“That wasn’t really what I was going for…”

“Do you know what time it is?”

They had drawn the shades in her bedroom because of a full moon last night. But by now, the sun was streaming through the thinnest crack at the bottom of the windowsill. Alex could hear Josie banging pots and pans downstairs in the kitchen.

Patrick reached over Alex for the wristwatch he’d left on her nightstand. “Oh, shit,” he repeated, and he threw back the covers. “I’m an hour late for work already.”

He grabbed his boxers as Alex jumped out of bed and reached for her robe. “What about Josie?”

It wasn’t that they had been hiding their relationship from Josie-Patrick often dropped by after work or for dinner or to hang out in the evenings. A few times, Alex had tried to talk to Josie about him, to see what she thought of the whole miracle of her mother dating again, but Josie did whatever it took to avoid having that conversation. Alex wasn’t sure herself where this was all going, but she did know that she and Josie had been a unit for so long that adding Patrick to the mix meant Josie became the loner-and right now, Alex was determined to keep that from happening. She was making up for lost time, really, thinking of Josie before she thought of anything else. To that end, if Patrick spent the night, she made sure he left before Josie could wake up to find him there.

Except today, when it was a lazy summer Thursday and nearly ten o’clock.

“Maybe this is a good time to tell her,” Patrick suggested.

“Tell her what?”

“That we’re…” He looked at her.

Alex stared at him. She couldn’t finish his sentence; she didn’t really know the answer herself. She never expected that this was the way she and Patrick would have this conversation. Was she with Patrick because he was good at that-rescuing the underdog who needed it? When this trial was over, would he move on? Would she?

“We’re together,” Patrick said decisively.

Alex turned her back to him and yanked shut the tie of her robe. That wasn’t, to paraphrase Patrick earlier, what she had been going for. But then again, how would he know that? If he asked her right now what she wanted out of this relationship…well, she knew: she wanted love. She wanted to have someone to come home to. She wanted to dream about a vacation they’d take when they were sixty and know he’d be there the day she stepped onto the plane. But she’d never admit any of this to him. What if she did, and he just looked at her blankly? What if it was too soon to think about things like this?

If he asked her right now, she wouldn’t answer, because answering was the surest way to get your heart handed back to you.

Alex rummaged underneath the bed, searching for her slippers. Instead, she located Patrick’s belt and tossed it to him. Maybe the reason she hadn’t openly told Josie she was sleeping with Patrick had nothing to do with protecting Josie, and everything to do with protecting herself.

Patrick threaded the belt through his jeans. “It doesn’t have to be a state secret,” he said. “You are allowed to…you know.”

Alex glanced at him. “Have sex?”

“I was trying to come up with something a little less blunt,” Patrick admitted.

“I’m also allowed to keep things private,” Alex pointed out.

“Guess I ought to get back the deposit on the billboard, then.”

“That might be a good idea.”

“I suppose I could just get you jewelry instead.”

Alex looked down at the carpet so that Patrick couldn’t see her trying to pick apart that sentence, find the commitment strung between the words.

God, was it always this frustrating when you weren’t the one running the show?

“Mom,” Josie yelled up the stairs, “I’ve got pancakes ready, if you want some.”

“Look,” Patrick sighed. “We can still keep Josie from finding out. All you have to do is distract her while I sneak out.”

She nodded. “I’ll try to keep her in the kitchen. You…” She glanced at Patrick. “Just hurry.” As Alex started out of the room, Patrick grabbed her hand and yanked.

“Hey,” he said. “Good-bye.” He leaned down and kissed her.

“Mom, they’re getting cold!”

“See you later,” Alex said, pushing away.

She hurried downstairs and found Josie eating a plate of blueberry pancakes. “Those smell so good…I can’t believe I slept this late,” Alex began, and then she realized that there were three place settings at the kitchen table.

Josie folded her arms. “So how does he take his coffee?”

Alex sank into a chair across from her. “You weren’t supposed to find out.”

“A. I am a big girl. B. Then the brilliant detective shouldn’t have left his car in the driveway.”

Alex picked at a thread on the place mat. “No milk, two sugars.”

“Well,” Josie said. “Guess I’ll know for next time.”

“How do you feel about that?” Alex asked quietly.

“Getting him coffee?”

“No. The next time part.”

Josie poked at a fat blueberry on the top of her pancake. “It’s not really something I get to choose, is it?”

“Yes,” Alex said. “Because if you’re not all right with this, Josie, then I’ll stop seeing him.”

“You like him?” Josie asked, staring down at her plate.

“Yeah.”

“And he likes you?”

“I think so.”

Josie lifted her gaze. “Then you shouldn’t worry about what anyone else thinks.”

“I worry about what you think,” Alex said. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re any less important to me because of him.”

“Just be responsible,” Josie answered, with a slow smile. “Every time you have sex, you can get pregnant or you can not get pregnant. That’s fifty-fifty.”

Alex raised her brows. “Wow. I didn’t even think you were listening when I gave that speech.”

Josie pressed her finger against a spot of maple syrup that had fallen onto the table, her eyes trained on the wood. “So, do you…like…love him?”

The words seemed bruised, tender. “No,” Alex said quickly, because if she could convince Josie, then she surely could convince herself that what she felt for Patrick had everything to do with passion and nothing to do with…well…that. “It’s only been a few months.”

“I don’t think there’s a grace period,” Josie said.

Alex decided that the best road to take through this minefield was the one that would keep both Josie and herself from being hurt: pretend this was nothing, a fling, a fancy. “I wouldn’t know what being in love felt like if it hit me in the face,” she said lightly.

“It’s not like on TV, like everything’s perfect all of a sudden.” Josie’s voice shrank until it was barely a thought. “It’s more like, once it happens, you spend all your time realizing how much can go wrong.”

Alex looked up at her, frozen. “Oh, Josie.”

“Anyway.”

“I didn’t mean to make you-”

“Let’s just drop it, okay?” Josie forced a smile. “He’s not bad-looking, you know, for someone that old.”

“He’s a year younger than I am,” Alex pointed out.

“My mother, the cradle robber.” Josie picked up the plate of pancakes and passed it. “These are getting cold.”

Alex took the plate. “Thank you,” she said, but she held Josie’s gaze just long enough for her daughter to realize what Alex was really grateful for.

Just then Patrick came creeping down the stairs. At the landing, he turned to give Alex a thumbs-up sign. “Patrick,” she called out. “Josie’s made us some pancakes.”

Selena knew the party line-you were supposed to say that there was no difference between boys and girls-but she also knew if you asked any mom or nursery school teacher, they’d tell you differently, off the record. This morning, she sat on a park bench watching Sam negotiate a sandbox with a group of fellow toddlers. Two little girls were pretending to bake pizzas made out of sand and pebbles. The boy beside Sam was trying to demolish a dump truck by smashing it repeatedly into the sandbox’s wooden frame. No difference, Selena thought. Yeah, right.

She watched with interest as Sam turned from the boy beside him and started to copy the girls, sifting sand into a bucket to make a cake.

Selena grinned, hoping that this was some small clue that her son would grow up to act against stereotype and do whatever he was most comfortable doing. But did it work that way? Could you look at a child and see who he’d become? Sometimes when she studied Sam, she could glimpse the adult he’d be one day-it was there in his eyes, the shell of the man he would grow to inhabit. But it was more than physical attributes you could sometimes puzzle out. Would these little girls become stay-at-home Betty Crocker moms, or business entrepreneurs like Mrs. Fields? Would the little boy’s destructive behavior bloom into drug addiction or alcoholism? Had Peter Houghton shoved playmates or stomped on crickets or done something else as a child that might have predicted his future as a killer?

The boy in the sandbox put down the truck and moved on to digging, seemingly to China. Sam abandoned his baking to reach for the plastic vehicle, and then he lost his balance and fell down, smacking his knee on the wooden frame.

Selena was out of her seat in a shot, ready to scoop up her son before he started to bawl. But Sam glanced around at the other kids, as if realizing he had an audience. And although his little face furrowed and reddened, a raisin of pain, he didn’t cry.

It was easier for girls. They could say This hurts, or I don’t like how this feels, and have the complaint be socially acceptable. Boys, though, didn’t speak that language. They didn’t learn it as children and they didn’t manage to pick it up as adults, either. Selena remembered last summer, when Jordan had gone fishing with an old friend whose wife had just filed for divorce. What did you talk about? she asked when Jordan came home.

Nothing, Jordan had said. We were fishing.

This had made no sense to Selena; they’d been gone for six hours. How could you sit beside someone in a small boat for that long and not have a heart-to-heart about how he was doing; if he was holding up in the wake of this crisis; if he worried about the rest of his life.

She looked at Sam, who now had the dump truck in his hand and was rolling it across his former pizza. Change could come that quickly, Selena knew. She thought of how Sam would wrap his tiny arms around her and kiss her; how he’d come running to her if she held out her arms. But sooner or later he’d realize that his friends didn’t hold their mothers’ hands when they crossed the street; that they didn’t bake pizzas and cakes in the sandbox, instead they built cities and dug caverns. One day-in middle school, or even earlier-Sam would start to hole himself up in his room. He would shy away from her touch. He would grunt his responses, act tough, be a man.

Maybe it was our own damn fault that men turned out the way they did, Selena thought. Maybe empathy, like any unused muscle, simply atrophied.

Josie told her mother that she had gotten a summer job volunteering with the school system to tutor middle and elementary school kids in math. She talked about Angie, whose parents had split up during the school year and who had failed algebra as an indirect consequence. She described Joseph, a leukemia patient who’d missed school for treatment and had the hardest time understanding fractions. Every day at dinner, her mother would ask her about work, and Josie would have a story. The problem was, it was just that-a fiction. Joseph and Angie didn’t exist; and for that matter, neither did Josie’s tutoring job.

This morning, like every morning, Josie left the house. She got on the Advance Transit bus and said hello to Rita, the driver who’d been on this route all summer. When the other passengers got off at the stop that was closest to the school, Josie stayed in her seat. She didn’t get up, in fact, until the very last stop-the one that was a mile south of the Whispering Pines Cemetery.

She liked it there. At the cemetery, she didn’t run into anyone she didn’t feel like talking to. She didn’t have to speak at all if she wasn’t in the mood. Josie walked up the winding trail, which was so familiar to her by now that she could tell, with her eyes closed, when the pavement was going to make a dip and when it would veer left. She knew that the violently blue hydrangea bush was halfway to Matt’s grave; that you could smell honeysuckle when you were only steps away from it.

By now, there was a headstone, a pristine block of white marble with Matt’s name carefully carved. Grass had started to grow. Josie sat down on the raised hummock of dirt, which was warm, as if the sun had been seeping into the earth and holding that heat in wait for her. She reached into her backpack and took out a bottle of water, a peanut butter sandwich, a bag of saltines.

“Can you believe school’s starting in a week?” she said to Matt, because sometimes she did that. It wasn’t like she expected him to answer; it just felt better talking to him after so many months of not talking. “They’re not opening the real school yet, though. They said maybe by Thanksgiving, when the construction’s done.”

What they were actually doing to the school was a mystery-Josie had driven by enough to know that the gymnasium and library had been torn down, as had the cafeteria. She wondered if the administration was naïve enough to think that if they got rid of the scene of the crime, the students could be fooled into thinking it had never happened.

She’d read somewhere that ghosts didn’t just hang around physical locations-that sometimes, a person could be haunted. Josie hadn’t really considered herself big on the paranormal, but this she believed. There were some memories, she knew, you could run from forever and never shake.

Josie lay down, her hair spread over the newborn grass. “Do you like having me here?” she whispered. “Or would you tell me to get lost, if you were the one who could talk?”

She didn’t want to hear the answer. She didn’t even really want to think about it. So she opened her eyes as wide as she could and stared into the sky, until the brilliant blue burned the backs of her eyes.

Lacy stood in the men’s department at Filene’s, touching her hands to the bristled tweeds and hallowed blue and puckered seersucker fabrics of the sports jackets. She’d driven two hours to Boston so that she would have the best choices to outfit Peter for his trial. Brooks Brothers, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, Ermenegildo Zegna. They had been made in Italy, France, Britain, California. She peeked at a price tag, sucked in her breath, and then realized she did not care. This would most likely be the last time she would ever buy clothes for her son.

Lacy moved systematically through the department. She picked up boxer shorts made of the finest Egyptian cotton, a packet of Ralph Lauren white tees, cashmere socks. She found khaki trousers-30 x 30. She plucked a button-down oxford shirt off a rack, because Peter had always hated having his collar peek out from a crewneck sweater. She chose a blue blazer, as Jordan had instructed. We want him dressed as if you’re sending him to Phillips Exeter, he had said.

She remembered how, when Peter was around eleven, he’d developed an aversion to buttons. You’d think it would be easy to get around something like that, but it eliminated most pants. Lacy could remember driving to the ends of the earth to find elastic-waist flannel plaid pajama pants that might double for daily wear. She remembered seeing kids wearing pajama bottoms to school as recently as last year and wondering if Peter had started the trend, or simply been slightly out of sync.

Even after Lacy had gathered what she needed, she continued to walk through the men’s department. She touched a rainbow of silk handkerchiefs that melted over her fingers, choosing one that was the color of Peter’s eyes. She rifled through leather belts-black, brown, stippled, alligator-and neckties printed with dots, with fleurs-de-lis, with stripes. She picked up a bathrobe that was so soft it nearly brought her to tears, shearling slippers, a cherry-red bathing suit. She shopped until the weight in her arms was as heavy as a child.

“Oh, let me help you with those,” a saleswoman said, taking some of the items from her arms and carrying them to the counter. She began to fold them, one by one. “I know how it feels,” she said, smiling sympathetically. “When my son went away, I thought I was going to die.”

Lacy stared at her. Was it possible that she wasn’t the only woman who had gone through something as awful as this? Once you had, like this salesperson, would you be able to pick others out of a crowd, as if there were a secret society of those mothers whose children cut them to the quick?

“You think it’s forever,” the woman said, “but believe me, once they come home for Christmas break or summer vacation and start eating you out of house and home again, you’ll be wishing college was year-round.”

Lacy’s face froze. “Right,” she said. “College.”

“I’ve got a girl at the University of New Hampshire, and my son’s at Rochester,” the saleswoman said.

“Harvard. That’s where my son’s going.”

They had talked about it once-Peter liked the computer science department at Stanford better, and Lacy had joked around, saying she’d throw away any brochures from colleges west of the Mississippi, because they were so far away.

The state prison was sixty miles south, in Concord.

“Harvard,” the saleswoman said. “He must be a smart one.”

“He is,” Lacy said, and she continued to tell this woman about Peter’s fictional transition to college, until the lie did not taste like licorice on her tongue; until she could nearly believe it herself.

Just after three o’clock, Josie rolled over onto her belly, spread her arms wide, and pressed her face into the grass. It looked like she was trying to hold on to the ground, which, she supposed, wasn’t all that far from the truth. She breathed in deeply-usually, she smelled nothing but weeds and soil, but every now and then when it had just rained, she got the barest scent of ice and Pert shampoo, as if Matt were still himself just under that surface.

She gathered the wrapper from her sandwich and her empty water bottle and put them into her backpack, then headed down the winding path to the cemetery gates. There was a car blocking the entrance-only twice this summer had Josie been present when a funeral procession came, and it had made her a little sick to her stomach. She started to walk faster, in the hope that she would be long gone and sitting on her Advance Transit bus before the service began-and then she realized that the car blocking the gates was not a hearse, not even black for that matter. It was the same car that had been parked in their driveway this morning, and Patrick was leaning against it with his arms crossed.

“What are you doing here?” Josie asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

She shrugged. “It’s a free country.”

Josie didn’t really have anything against Patrick Ducharme himself. He just made her nervous, on so many counts. She couldn’t look at him without thinking of That Day. But now she had to, because he also was her mother’s lover (how weird was it to say that?) and in a way, that was even more upsetting. Her mother was on cloud nine, falling in love, while Josie had to sneak off to a graveyard to visit her boyfriend.

Patrick pushed himself off the car and took a step toward her. “Your mother thinks you’re teaching long division right now.”

“Did she tell you to stalk me?” Josie said.

“I prefer surveillance,” Patrick corrected.

Josie snorted. She didn’t want to sound like such a snot, but she couldn’t help it. Sarcasm was like a force field; once she turned it off, he might be able to see that she was this close to falling to pieces.

“Your mother doesn’t know I’m here,” Patrick said. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I’m going to miss my bus.”

“Then I’ll drive you wherever you want to go,” he said, exasperated. “You know, when I’m doing my job, I spend a lot of time wishing I could turn back the clock-get to the rape victim before it happened, stake out the house before the thief comes by. I know what it’s like to feel like nothing you do or say is ever going to make things better. And I know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night replaying one moment over and over so vividly that you might as well be living it again. In fact, I bet you and I replay the same moment.”

Josie swallowed. In all these months, out of all the well-meaning conversations she’d had with doctors and psychiatrists and even other kids from the school, no one had captured, so succinctly, what it felt like to be her. But she couldn’t let Patrick know that-couldn’t admit to her weakness, even though she had the feeling that he could spot it all the same. “Don’t pretend we have anything in common,” Josie said.

“But we do,” Patrick replied. “Your mother.” He looked Josie in the eye. “I like her. A lot. And I’d like to know that you’re okay with that.”

Josie felt her throat closing. She tried to remember Matt saying that he liked her; she wondered if anyone would ever say it again. “My mother’s a big girl. She can make her own decisions about who she f-”

“Don’t,” Patrick interrupted.

“Don’t what.”

“Don’t say something you’re going to wish you hadn’t.”

Josie stepped back, her eyes glittering. “If you think that buddying up to me is going to win her over, you’re wrong. You’re better off with flowers and chocolate. She couldn’t care less about me.”

“That’s not true.”

“You haven’t exactly been around long enough to know, have you?”

“Josie,” Patrick said, “she’s crazy about you.”

Josie felt herself choke on the truth, even harder to speak than it was to swallow. “But not as crazy as she is about you. She’s happy. She’s happy and I…I know I should be happy for her…”

“But you’re here,” Patrick said, gesturing at the cemetery. “And you’re alone.”

Josie nodded and burst into tears. She turned away, embarrassed, and then felt Patrick fold his arms around her. He didn’t say anything, and for that one moment, she even liked him-any word at all, even a well-meaning one, would have taken up the space where her hurt needed to be. He just let her cry until finally it all stopped, and Josie rested for a moment against his shoulder, wondering if this was only the eye of the storm or its endpoint.

“I’m a bitch,” she whispered. “I’m jealous.”

“I think she’d understand.”

Josie drew away from him and wiped her eyes. “Are you going to tell her I come here?”

“No.”

She glanced up at him, surprised. She would have thought that he’d take her mother’s side.

“You’re wrong, you know,” Patrick said.

“About what?”

“Being alone.”

Josie glanced up the hill. You couldn’t see Matt’s grave from the gates, but it was still there-just like everything else about That Day. “Ghosts don’t count.”

Patrick smiled. “Mothers do.”

What Lewis hated the most was the sound of the metal doors slamming. It hardly mattered that, thirty minutes from now, he’d be able to leave the jail. What was important was that the inmates couldn’t. And that one of those inmates was the same boy he’d taught to ride a bike without training wheels; the same boy whose nursery school paperweight was still sitting on Lewis’s desk; the same boy he’d watched take his very first breath.

He knew it would be a shock for Peter to see him-how many months had he told himself that this would be the week he got up the courage to see his son in jail, only to find another errand to run or paper to study? But, as a correctional officer opened up a door and led Peter into the visitation room, Lewis realized that he’d underestimated what a shock it would be for him to see Peter.

He was bigger. Maybe not taller, but broader-his shoulders filled out his shirt; his arms had thickened with muscle. His skin was translucent, almost blue under this unnatural light. His hands didn’t stop moving-they were twitching at his sides and then, when he sat down, on the sides of the chair.

“Well,” Peter said. “What do you know.”

Lewis had rehearsed six or seven speeches, explanations of why he had not been able to bring himself to see his son, but when he saw Peter sitting there, only two words rose to his lips. “I’m sorry.”

Peter’s mouth tightened. “For what? Blowing me off for six months?”

“I was thinking,” Lewis admitted, “more like eighteen years.”

Peter sat back in his chair, staring at Lewis. He forced himself to return the stare. Could Peter grant him absolution, even if Lewis still wasn’t entirely sure he could return the favor?

Rubbing a hand down his face, Peter shook his head. Then he started to smile. Lewis felt his bones loosen, his muscles relax. Until this moment, he hadn’t really known what to expect from Peter. He could reason with himself all he wanted and assert that an apology would always be accepted; he could remind himself that he was the parent here, the one in charge-but all of that was extremely hard to remember when you were sitting in a visiting room at a jail, with a woman on your left who was trying to play footsie with her lover across that forbidden red line, and a man on your right who was cursing a blue streak.

The smile on Peter’s face hardened, twisted into a sneer. “Fuck you,” he spat out. “Fuck you for coming here. You don’t give a shit about me. You don’t want to tell me you’re sorry. You just want to hear yourself say it. You’re here for yourself, not me.”

Lewis’s head felt as if it were filled with stones. He bent forward, the stalk of his neck unable to bear the weight anymore, until he could rest his forehead in his hands. “I can’t do anything, Peter,” he whispered. “I can’t work, I can’t eat. I can’t sleep.” Then he lifted his face. “The new students, they’re coming onto the college campus right now. I look at them, out my window-they’re always pointing at the buildings or down Main Street or listening to the tour guides who take them across the courtyard-and I think of how much I was looking forward to doing those same things with you.”

He had written a paper years ago, after Joey was born, about the exponential increases of happiness-the moments that the quotient changed by leaps and bounds after a triggering incident. What he’d concluded was that the outcome was variable, based not on the event that caused the happiness, but rather the state you were in when it happened. For example, the birth of your child was one thing when you were happily married and planning a family; it was something entirely different when you were sixteen and had gotten a girl knocked up. Cold weather was perfect if you were on a skiing vacation, but disappointing if you happened to be enjoying a week at the beach. A man who was once rich might be deliriously happy with a dollar in the middle of a depression; a gourmet chef would eat worms if stranded on a desert island. A father who’d hoped for a son that was educated and successful and independent might, under different circumstances, simply be happy to have him alive and safe, so that he could tell the boy he’d never stopped loving him.

“But you know what they say about college,” Lewis said, sitting up a little straighter. “It’s overrated.”

His words surprised Peter. “All those parents forking over forty thousand a year,” Peter said, smiling faintly. “And here I am, getting the most out of your tax dollar.”

“What more could an economist ask for?” Lewis joked, although this wasn’t funny; never would be funny. And he realized that this was a sort of happiness, too: you would say anything-do anything-to keep your son smiling like that, as if there was something to still smile about, even if every word felt like you were swallowing glass.

Patrick’s feet were crossed on the prosecutor’s desk, as Diana Leven scanned the reports that had come from ballistics days after the shooting, in preparation for his testimony at the trial. “There were two shotguns, which were never used,” Patrick explained, “and two matching handguns-Glock 17s-that were registered to a neighbor across the street. A retired cop.”

Diana glanced up over the papers. “Lovely.”

“Yeah. Well, you know cops. What’s the point of putting the gun in a locked cabinet when you have to get at it quickly? Anyway, Gun A is the one that was fired around most of the school-the striations on the bullets we recovered match it. Gun B was fired-ballistics told us that-but there hasn’t been a bullet recovered that matches its barrel. That gun was found jammed, on the floor of the locker room. Houghton was still holding Gun A when he was apprehended.”

Diana leaned back in her chair, her fingers steepled in front of her chest. “McAfee’s going to ask you why Houghton would have pulled out Gun B at all in the locker room, if Gun A had worked so splendidly up till that point.”

Patrick shrugged. “He might have used it to shoot Royston in the belly, and then when it jammed, switched back to Gun A. Or then again, it might be even simpler than that. Since the bullet from Gun B wasn’t recovered, it’s possible it was the very first shot fired. The slug could be lodged in the fiberglass insulation in the cafeteria, for all we know. It jammed, the kid switched to Gun A and stuffed the jammed gun in his pocket…and then at the end of his killing spree, he either discarded it or dropped it by accident.”

“Or. I hate that word. It’s two letters long and stuffed to the gills with reasonable doubt-”

She broke off as there was a knock at the door, and her secretary stuck her head inside. “Your two o’clock’s here.”

Diana turned to him. “I’m preparing Drew Girard for testifying. Why don’t you stay for this one?”

Patrick moved to a chair on the side of the room to give Drew the spot across from the prosecutor. The boy entered with a soft knock. “Ms. Leven?”

Diana came around her desk. “Drew. Thanks for coming in.” She gestured at Patrick. “You remember Detective Ducharme?”

Drew nodded at him. Patrick surveyed the boy’s pressed pants, his collared shirt, his manners on display. This was not the cocky, big-man-on-campus hockey star, as he had been painted by students during Patrick’s investigations, but then again, Drew had watched his best friend get killed; he’d been shot himself in the shoulder. Whatever world he had lorded over was gone now.

“Drew,” Diana said, “we brought you in here because you got a subpoena, and that means you’re going to be testifying sometime next week. We’ll let you know when, for sure, as we get closer…but for now, I wanted to make sure you weren’t nervous about going to court. Today, we’ll go over some of the things you’ll be asked, and how the procedure works. If you have any questions, we can cover those as well. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Patrick leaned forward. “How’s the shoulder?”

Drew swiveled to face him, unconsciously flexing that body part. “I still have to do physical therapy and stuff, but it’s a lot better. Except…” His voice trailed off.

“Except what?” Diana asked.

“I’ll miss hockey season this whole year.”

Diana met Patrick’s eye; this was sympathy for a witness. “Do you think you’ll be able to play again, eventually?”

Drew flushed. “The doctors say no, but I think they’re wrong.” He hesitated. “I’m a senior this year, and I was sort of counting on an athletic scholarship for college.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, as no one acknowledged either Drew’s courage or the truth. “So, Drew,” Diana said. “When we get into court, I’ll start by asking your name, where you live, if you were in school that day.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s try it out a bit, all right? When you got to school that morning, what was your first class?”

Drew sat up a little straighter. “American History.”

“And second period?”

“English.”

“Where did you go after English class?”

“I had third period free, and most people with free periods hang out in the caf.”

“Is that where you went?”

“Yeah.”

“Was anyone with you?” Diana continued.

“I went down by myself, but when I got there, I hung out with a bunch of people.” He looked at Patrick. “Friends.”

“How long were you in the cafeteria?”

“I don’t know, a half hour, maybe?”

Diana nodded. “What happened then?”

Drew looked down at his pants and drew his thumb along the crease. Patrick noticed that his hand was shaking. “We were all just, you know, talking…and then I heard this really big boom.”

“Could you tell where the sound was coming from?”

“No. I didn’t know what it was.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No.”

“So,” Diana asked, “what did you do when you heard it?”

“I made a joke,” Drew said. “I said it was probably the school lunch, igniting or something. Oh, finally, that radioactive mac and cheese.”

“Did you stay in the cafeteria after the boom?”

“Yeah.”

“And then?”

Drew looked down at his hands. “There was this sound like firecrackers. Before anyone could figure out what it was, Peter came into the cafeteria. He was carrying a knapsack and holding a gun, and he started shooting.”

Diana held up her hand. “I’m going to stop you there for a moment, Drew…. When you’re on the stand, and you say that, I’ll ask you to look at the defendant and identify him for the record. Got it?”

“Yes.”

Patrick realized that he was not just seeing the shooting the way he’d have seen any other crime. He wasn’t even visualizing it playing out as a prequel to the chilling cafeteria videotape he’d watched. He was imagining Josie-one of Drew’s friends-sitting at a long table, hearing those firecrackers, not imagining in the least what came next.

“How long have you known Peter?” Diana asked.

“We both grew up in Sterling. We’ve been in the same school, like, forever.”

“Were you friends?” Drew shook his head. “Enemies?”

“No,” he said. “Not really enemies.”

“Ever have any problems with him?”

Drew glanced up. “No.”

“Did you ever bully him?”

“No, ma’am,” he said.

Patrick felt his hands curl into fists. He knew, from interviewing hundreds of kids, that Drew Girard had stuffed Peter Houghton into lockers; had tripped him while he was walking down the stairs; had thrown spitballs into his hair. None of that condoned what Peter had done…but still. There was a kid rotting in jail; there were ten people decomposing in graves; there were dozens in rehab and corrective surgery; there were hundreds-like Josie-who still could not get through the day without bursting into tears; there were parents-like Alex-who trusted Diana to get justice done on their behalf. And this little asshole was lying through his teeth.

Diana looked up from her notes and stared at Drew. “So if you get asked under oath whether you’ve ever picked on Peter, what’s your answer going to be?”

Drew looked up at her, the bravado fading just enough for Patrick to realize he was scared to death that they knew something more than they were admitting to him. Diana glanced at Patrick and threw down her pen. That was all the invitation he needed-he was out of his chair in an instant, his hand grabbing Drew Girard’s throat. “Listen, you little fuck,” Patrick said, “don’t screw this up. We know what you did to Peter Houghton. We know you were sitting front and center. There are ten dead victims, and eighteen more who are never going to have the lives they thought they would, and there are so many families in this community that are never going to stop grieving that I can’t even count them. I don’t know what your game plan is here-if you want to play the choirboy to protect your reputation, or if you’re just scared to tell the truth-but believe me, if you get on that witness stand and you lie about your actions in the past, I will make sure you wind up in jail for obstruction of justice.”

He let go of Drew and turned away, staring out the window in Diana’s office. He had no authority to arrest Drew for anything-even if the kid did perjure himself-much less send him to jail, but Drew would never know that. And maybe it was enough to scare him into behaving. Taking a deep breath, Patrick bent down and picked up the pen Diana had dropped and handed it to her.

“Let me ask you again, Drew,” she said smoothly. “Did you ever bully Peter Houghton?”

Drew glanced at Patrick and swallowed. Then he opened his mouth and started to speak.

“It’s barbecued lasagna,” Alex announced after Patrick and Josie had each taken their first bite. “What do you think?”

“I didn’t know you could barbecue lasagna,” Josie said slowly. She began to peel the noodles back from the cheese, as if she were scalping it.

“How’s that work, exactly?” Patrick asked, reaching for the pitcher of water to refill his glass.

“It was regular lasagna. But some of the insides spilled out into the oven, and there was all this smoke…and I was going to start over, but then I sort of realized that I was only adding an extra, charcoal sort of flavor into the mix.” She beamed. “Ingenious, right? I mean, I looked in all the cookbooks, Josie, and it’s never been done before, as far as I can tell.”

“Go figure,” Patrick said, and he coughed into his napkin.

“I actually like cooking,” Alex said. “I like taking a recipe and, you know, going off on a tangent to see what happens.”

“Recipes are kind of like laws,” Patrick replied. “You might want to try to stick to them, before you commit a felony…”

“I’m not hungry,” Josie said suddenly. She pushed her plate away, stood up, and ran upstairs.

“The trial starts tomorrow,” Alex said, by way of explanation. She went after Josie, not even excusing herself first, because she knew Patrick would understand. Josie had slammed the door shut and turned up her music; it would do no good to knock. Alex turned the knob and stepped inside, reaching to the stereo to turn down the volume.

Josie lay on her bed facedown, the pillow over her head. When Alex sat down on the mattress beside her, she didn’t move. “You want to talk about it?” Alex asked.

“No,” Josie said, her voice muffled.

Alex reached out and yanked the pillow off her head. “Try.”

“It’s just-God, Mom-what’s wrong with me? It’s like the world’s started spinning again for everyone else, but I can’t even get back on the carousel. Even you two-you both must be thinking like crazy about the trial, too-but here you are, laughing and smiling like you can put what happened and what’s going to happen out of your head, when I can’t not think about it every waking second.” Josie looked up at Alex, her eyes filling with tears. “Everyone’s moved on. Everyone but me.”

Alex put her hand on Josie’s arm and rubbed it. She could remember delighting in the sheer physical proof of Josie after she was born-that somehow, out of nothing, she’d created this tiny, warm, squirming, flawless creature. She’d spend hours on her bed with Josie beside her, touching her baby’s skin, her seed-pearl toes, the pulse of her fontanel. “Once,” Alex said, “when I was working as a public defender, a guy in the office threw a Fourth of July party for all the lawyers and their families. I took you, even though you were only about three years old. There were fireworks, and I looked away for a second to see them, and when I turned back you were gone. I started to scream, and someone noticed you-lying at the bottom of the pool.”

Josie sat up, riveted by a story she had never heard before.

“I dove in and dragged you out and gave you mouth-to-mouth, and you spit up. I couldn’t even speak, I was so scared. But you came back fighting and furious at me. You told me you’d been looking for mermaids, and I interrupted you.”

Tucking her knees up under her chin, Josie smiled a little. “Really?”

Alex nodded. “I said that next time, you had to take me with you.”

“Was there a next time?”

“Well, you tell me,” Alex said, and she hesitated. “You don’t need water to feel like you’re drowning, do you?”

When Josie shook her head, the tears spilled over. She shifted, fitting herself into her mother’s arms.

This, Patrick knew, was his downfall. For the second time in his life, he was growing so close to a woman and her child that he forgot he might not really be part of their family. He looked around the table at the detritus of Alex’s awful dinner and started clearing the untouched plates.

The barbecued lasagna had congealed in its serving dish, a blackened brick. He piled the dishes in the sink and began to run warm water, then picked up a sponge and started to scrub.

“Oh my gosh,” Alex said behind him. “You really are the perfect man.”

Patrick turned, his hands still soapy. “Far from it.” He reached for a dish towel. “Is Josie-”

“She’s fine. She’ll be fine. Or at least we’re both going to keep saying that until it’s true.”

“I’m sorry, Alex.”

“Who isn’t?” She straddled a kitchen chair and rested her cheek on its spine. “I’m going to the trial tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t have expected any less.”

“Do you really think McAfee can get him acquitted?”

Patrick folded the dish towel beside the sink and walked toward Alex. He knelt in front of her chair. “Alex,” he said, “that kid walked into the school like he was executing a battle plan. He started in the parking lot and set off a bomb to cause a distraction. He went around to the front of the school and took out a kid on the steps. He went into the cafeteria, shot at a bunch of kids, murdered some of them-and then he sat down and had a bowl of fucking cereal before he continued his killing spree. I don’t see how, presented with that kind of evidence, a jury could dismiss the charges.”

Alex stared at him. “Tell me something…why was Josie lucky?”

“Because she’s alive.”

“No, I mean, why is she alive? She was in the cafeteria and the locker room. She saw people die all around her. Why didn’t Peter shoot her?”

“I don’t know. Things happen that I don’t understand all the time. Some of them-well, they’re like the shooting. And some of them…” He covered Alex’s hand with his own where it gripped the chair rail. “Some of them aren’t.”

Alex looked up at him, and Patrick was reminded again of how finding her-being with her-was like that first crocus you saw in the snow. Just when you assumed winter would last forever, this unexpected beauty could take you by surprise-and if you did not take your eyes off it, if you kept your focus, the rest of the snow would somehow melt.

“If I ask you something, will you be honest with me?” Alex asked.

Patrick nodded.

“My lasagna wasn’t very good, was it?”

He smiled at her through the slats of the chair. “Don’t give up your day job,” he said.

In the middle of the night, when Josie could still not get to sleep, she slipped outside and lay down on the front lawn. She stared up at the sky, which clung so low by this time of the night that she could feel stars pricking her face. Out here, without her bedroom closing in around her, it was almost possible to believe that whatever problems she had were tiny, in the grand scheme of the universe.

Tomorrow, Peter Houghton was going to be tried for ten murders. Even the thought of it-of that last murder-made Josie sick to her stomach. She could not go watch the trial, as much as she wanted to, because she was on a stupid witness list. Instead, she was sequestered, which was a fancy word for being kept clueless.

Josie took a deep breath and thought about a social studies class she’d taken in middle school where they’d learned that someone-Eskimos, maybe?-believed stars were holes in the sky where people who’d died could peek through at you. It was supposed to be comforting, but Josie had always found it a little creepy, as if it meant she was being spied on.

It also made her think of a really dumb joke about a guy walking past a mental institution with a high fence, who hears the patients chanting Ten! Ten! Ten! and goes to peek through a hole in the fence to see what’s going on…only to get poked in the eye with a stick and hear the patients chant Eleven! Eleven! Eleven!

Matt had told her that joke.

Maybe she’d even laughed.

Here’s what the Eskimos don’t tell you: Those people on the other side, they have to go out of their way to watch you. But you can see them any old time. All you have to do is close your eyes.

On the morning of her son’s murder trial, Lacy picked a black skirt out of her closet, along with a black blouse and black stockings. She dressed like she was headed to a funeral, but maybe that wasn’t so far off the mark. She ripped three pairs of hose because her hands were shaking, and finally decided to go without. By the end of the day her shoes would rub blisters on her feet, and Lacy thought maybe this was a good thing; maybe she could concentrate instead on a pain that made perfect sense.

She did not know where Lewis was; if he was even going to the trial today. They hadn’t really spoken since the day she had tracked him to the graveyard, and he had taken to sleeping in Joey’s bedroom. Neither one of them went into Peter’s.

But this morning, she forced herself to turn left instead of right at the landing, and she opened the door of Peter’s bedroom. After the police had come, she had put it back in some semblance of order, telling herself that she didn’t want Peter to come home to a place that had been ransacked. There were still gaping holes-the desk looked naked without its computer, the bookshelves half empty. She walked up to one and pulled down a paperback. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Peter had been reading it for English class when he was arrested. She wondered if he’d had the time to finish.

Dorian Gray had a portrait that grew old and evil while he remained young and innocent-looking. Maybe the quiet, reserved mother who would testify for her son had a portrait somewhere that was ravaged with guilt, twisted with pain. Maybe the woman in that picture was allowed to cry and scream, to break down, to grab her son’s shoulders and say What have you done?

She startled at the sound of someone opening the door. Lewis stood on the threshold, wearing the suit that he kept for conferences and college graduations. He was holding a blue silk tie in his hand and did not speak.

Lacy took the tie out of Lewis’s hand and walked behind him. She noosed it around his neck, gently pulled the knot into place, and flipped down the collar. As she did, Lewis reached for her hand and didn’t let go.

There weren’t words, really, for moments like this-when you realized that you’d lost one child and the other was slipping out of your reach. Still holding Lacy’s hand, Lewis led her out of Peter’s room. He closed the door behind them.

At 6:00 a.m., when Jordan crept downstairs to read through his notes in preparation for the trial, he found a single place setting at the table: a bowl, a spoon, and a box of Cocoa Krispies-the meal he always used to kick off a battle. Grinning-Selena must have gotten up in the middle of the night to do this, since they’d headed up to bed together last night-he sat down and poured himself a healthy serving, then went into the fridge for the milk.

A Post-it note had been stuck to the carton. GOOD LUCK.

Just as Jordan sat down to eat, the telephone rang. He grabbed it-Selena and the baby were still asleep. “Hello?”

“Dad?”

“Thomas,” he said. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Well, um, I sort of didn’t go to bed yet.”

Jordan smiled. “Ah, to be young and collegiate again.”

“Anyway, I just called to wish you luck. It starts today, right?”

He looked down at his cereal and suddenly remembered the footage taken by the cafeteria video camera at Sterling High: Peter sitting down, just like this, to have a bowl of cereal, dead students flanking him. Jordan pushed the bowl away. “Yes,” he said. “It does.”

The correctional officer opened up Peter’s cell and handed him a stack of folded clothes. “Time for the ball, Cinderella,” he said.

Peter waited until he left. He knew his mother had bought these for him; she’d even left the tags on so that he could see they hadn’t come from Joey’s closet. They were preppy, the kind of clothes he imagined were worn to polo matches-not that he’d ever actually been to one to see.

Peter stripped out of his jumpsuit and pulled on the boxer shorts, the socks. He sat down on his bunk to pull up his trousers, which were a little tight at the waist. He buttoned the shirt wrong the first time and had to do it over. He didn’t know how to do his tie right. He rolled it up and stuffed it into his pocket so that Jordan could help him.

There wasn’t a mirror in his cell, but Peter imagined he looked ordinary now. If you beamed him from this jail into a crowded New York street or into the stands of a football game, people probably wouldn’t glance twice at him; wouldn’t realize that underneath all that washed wool and Egyptian cotton was someone they’d never imagine. Or in other words, after all this, nothing had changed.

He was about to leave the cell when he realized he had not been given a bulletproof vest, as he had for the arraignment. It probably wasn’t because he was any less hated now; more likely, it had been an oversight. He started to ask the guard about it, but then snapped his mouth shut.

Maybe, for the first time in his life, Peter had gotten lucky.

Alex dressed like she was going to work, which she was, except not as a judge. She wondered what it would be like to sit in court in the role of civilian. She wondered if the grieving mother from the arraignment would be there.

She knew it was going to be hard to listen to this trial, and to understand all over again how close she had come to losing Josie. Alex was through pretending that she was listening only because it was her job; she was listening because she had to. One day Josie would remember and would need someone to hold her upright; and since Alex hadn’t been there the first time to protect Josie, she’d bear witness now.

She hurried downstairs and found Josie sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in a skirt and blouse. “I’m going,” she announced.

It was déjà; vu-this was exactly what had happened the day of Peter’s arraignment, except that seemed so long ago, and she and Josie had both been very different people back then. Today, she was on the defense’s witness list, but she hadn’t been served with a subpoena, which meant that she didn’t actually have to be in the courthouse at all during the trial.

“I know I can’t go in, but Patrick’s sequestered, too, isn’t he?”

The last time Josie had asked to go to court, Alex had flatly refused. This time, though, she sat down across from Josie. “Do you have any idea what it’s going to be like? There are going to be cameras, lots of them. And kids in wheelchairs. And angry parents. And Peter.”

Josie’s gaze fell into her lap like a stone. “You’re trying to keep me from going again.”

“No, I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.”

“I didn’t get hurt,” Josie said. “That’s why I have to go.”

Five months ago, Alex had made this decision for her daughter. Now she knew that Josie deserved to speak for herself. “I’ll meet you in the car,” she said calmly. She held this mask until Josie closed the door behind herself, and then bolted upstairs to the bathroom and got sick.

She was afraid that reliving the shooting, even from a distance, would rattle Josie past the point of recovery. But mostly she worried that for the second time, she would be powerless to keep her daughter from being hurt.

Alex rested her forehead against the cool porcelain lip of the bathtub. Then, standing, she brushed her teeth and splashed her face with water. She hurried to the car, where her daughter was already waiting.

Because the sitter was late, Jordan and Selena found themselves fighting the crowd on the courtroom steps. Selena had been expecting it-and still wasn’t entirely prepared for the hordes of reporters, the television vans, the spectators holding up their camera phones to capture a snapshot of the melee.

Jordan was playing the villain today-the vast majority of the onlookers were from Sterling, and since Peter would be transported to the court via underground tunnel, Jordan was their fall guy. “How do you sleep at night?” a woman shouted as Jordan hurried up the steps past her. Another held up a sign: There’s still a death penalty in NH.

“Ooh boy,” Jordan said under his breath. “This is gonna be a fun one.”

“You’ll be fine,” Selena replied.

But he had stopped moving. There was a man standing on the steps holding up a piece of posterboard with two large mounted photos-one of a girl, one of a pretty woman. Kaitlyn Harvey, Selena realized, recognizing the face. And her mother. At the top of the display were two words: NINETEEN MINUTES.

Jordan met the man’s gaze. Selena knew what he was thinking-that this could be him, that he had just as much to lose. “I’m sorry,” Jordan murmured, and Selena looped her arm through his and pulled him up the stairs again.

There was a different crowd up here, though. They wore startling yellow shirts with BVA printed across the chest, and they were chanting: “Peter, you are not alone. Peter, you are not alone.”

Jordan leaned closer to her. “What the fuck is this?”

“The Bullied Victims of America.”

“You must be joking,” Jordan said. “They exist?”

“You better believe it,” Selena said.

Jordan started to smile for the first time since they’d started driving to court. “And you found them for us?”

Selena squeezed his arm. “You can thank me later,” she said.

His client looked like he was going to faint. Jordan nodded at the deputy who let him into the holding cell where Peter was being kept at the courthouse, and then sat down. “Breathe,” he commanded.

Peter nodded and filled up his lungs. He was shaking. Jordan had expected this, had seen it at the start of every trial he’d ever been a part of. Even the most hardened criminal suddenly panicked when he realized that this was the day his life was on the line. “I’ve got something for you,” Jordan said, and he took a pair of glasses out of his pocket.

They were thick and tortoiseshell, Coke-bottle glasses, very different from the thin wire ones Peter usually wore. “I don’t,” Peter said, and then his voice cracked. “I don’t need new ones.”

“Well, take them anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone will notice these on your face,” Jordan said. “I want you to look like someone who could never in a million years see well enough to shoot ten people.”

Peter’s hands curled around the metal edge of the bench. “Jordan? What’s going to happen to me?”

There were some clients you had to lie to, just so that they’d get through the trial. But at this point, Jordan thought he owed Peter the truth. “I don’t know, Peter. You haven’t got a great case, because of all the evidence against you. The likelihood of you being acquitted is slim, but I’m still going to do whatever I can for you. Okay?” Peter nodded. “All I want you to do is try to be quiet out there. Look pathetic.”

Peter bowed his head, his face contorting. Yes, just like that, Jordan thought, and then he realized that Peter had started to cry.

Jordan walked toward the front of the cell. This, too, was a familiar moment for him as a defense attorney. Jordan usually allowed his client to have this final breakdown in private before they went into the courtroom. It was none of his business, and to be honest, Jordan was all about business. But he could hear Peter sobbing behind him; and in that sad song was one note that reached right down into Jordan. Before he could think better of it, he had turned around and was sitting on the bench again. He wrapped an arm around Peter, felt the boy relax against him. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, and he hoped he was not lying.

Diana Leven surveyed the packed gallery, then asked a bailiff to turn off the lights. She pushed the button on her laptop, beginning her PowerPoint presentation.

The screen beside Judge Wagner filled with an image of Sterling High School. There was a blue sky in the background and some cotton-candy clouds. A flag snapped in the wind. Three school buses were lined up like a caravan in the front circle. Diana let this picture stand alone, in silence, for fifteen seconds.

The courtroom grew so quiet you could hear the hum of the transcriptionist’s laptop.

Oh, God, Jordan thought. I have to sit through this for the next three weeks.

“This is what Sterling High School looked like on March 6, 2007. It was 7:50 a.m., and school had just started. Courtney Ignatio was in chemistry class, taking a quiz. Whit Obermeyer was in the main office getting a late pass, because he’d had car trouble that morning. Grace Murtaugh was leaving the nurse’s office, where she’d taken some Tylenol for a headache. Matt Royston was in history class with his best friend, Drew Girard. Ed McCabe was writing homework on the blackboard for the math classes he taught. There was nothing to suggest to any of these people or any other members of the Sterling High School community at 7:50 a.m. on March sixth that this was anything other than a typical school day.”

Diana clicked a button, and a new photo appeared: Ed McCabe, lying on the floor with his intestines spilling out of his stomach as a sobbing student pressed both hands against the gaping wound. “This is what Sterling High School looked like at 10:19 a.m. on March 6, 2007. Ed McCabe never got to give his homework assignment to his math class, because nineteen minutes earlier, Peter Houghton, a seventeen-year-old junior at Sterling High School, burst through the doors with a knapsack that contained four guns-two sawed-off shotguns, as well as two fully loaded, semiautomatic 9-millimeter pistols.”

Jordan felt a tug on his arm. “Jordan,” Peter whispered.

“Not now.”

“But I’m going to be sick…”

“Swallow it,” Jordan ordered.

Diana flicked back to the previous slide, the picture-perfect image of Sterling High. “I told you, ladies and gentlemen, that none of the people in Sterling High School had any inclination this would be something other than a typical school day. But one person did know that it was going to be different.” She walked toward the defense table and pointed directly at Peter, who stared steadfastly down at his lap. “On the morning of March 6, 2007, Peter Houghton started his day by loading a blue knapsack with four guns and the makings of a bomb, plus enough ammunition to potentially kill one hundred and ninety-eight people. The evidence will show that when he arrived at the school, he set up this bomb in Matt Royston’s car to divert attention away from himself. While it exploded, he walked up the front steps of the school and shot Zoe Patterson. Then, in the hallway, he shot Alyssa Carr. He made his way to the cafeteria and shot Angela Phlug and Maddie Shaw-his first casualty-and Courtney Ignatio. As students started running away, he shot Haley Weaver and Brady Pryce, Natalie Zlenko, Emma Alexis, Jada Knight, and Richard Hicks. Then, as the wounded were sobbing and dying all around him, do you know what Peter Houghton did? He sat down in the cafeteria and he had a bowl of Rice Krispies.”

Diana let this information sink in. “When he finished, he picked up his gun and left the cafeteria, shooting Jared Weiner, Whit Obermeyer, and Grace Murtaugh in the hall, and Lucia Ritolli-a French teacher trying to shepherd her students to safety. He stopped off in the boys’ bathroom and shot Steven Babourias, Min Horuka, and Topher McPhee; and then went into the girls’ bathroom and shot Kaitlyn Harvey. He continued upstairs and shot Ed McCabe, the math teacher, John Eberhard, and Trey MacKenzie before reaching the gym and firing at Austin Prokiov, Coach Dusty Spears, Noah James, Justin Friedman, and Drew Girard. Finally, in the locker room, the defendant shot Matthew Royston twice-once in the stomach, and again in the head. You might remember that name-it’s the owner of the car that Peter Houghton bombed at the very beginning of his rampage.”

Diana faced the jury. “This entire spree lasted nineteen minutes in the life of Peter Houghton, but the evidence will show that its effects will last forever. And there’s a lot of evidence, ladies and gentlemen. There are a lot of witnesses, and there’s a lot of testimony to come…but by the end of this trial, you will be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Peter Houghton purposefully and knowingly, with premeditation, caused the deaths of ten people and attempted to cause the deaths of nineteen others at Sterling High School.”

She walked toward Peter. “In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. You can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist. You can fold laundry for a family of five. Or, as Peter Houghton knows…in nineteen minutes, you can bring the world to a screeching halt.”

Jordan walked toward the jury, his hands in his pockets. “Ms. Leven told you that on the morning of March 6, 2007, Peter Houghton walked into Sterling High School with a knapsack full of loaded weapons, and he shot a lot of people. Well, she’s right. The evidence is going to show that, and we don’t dispute it. We know that it’s a tragedy for both the people who died and those who will live with the aftermath. But here’s what Ms. Leven didn’t tell you: when Peter walked into Sterling High School that morning, he had no intention of becoming a mass murderer. He walked in intending to defend himself from the abuse he’d suffered for twelve straight years.

“On Peter’s first day of school,” Jordan continued, “his mother put him on the kindergarten bus with a brand-new Superman lunch box. By the end of the ride to the school, that lunch box had been thrown out the window. Now, all of us have childhood memories of other kids teasing us or being cruel, and most of us are able to shake that off, but Peter Houghton’s life wasn’t one where these things happened occasionally. From that very first day in kindergarten, Peter experienced a daily barrage of taunting, tormenting, threatening, and bullying. This child has been stuffed into lockers, had his head shoved into toilets, been tripped and punched and kicked. He has had a private email spammed out to an entire school. He’s had his pants pulled down in the middle of the cafeteria. Peter’s reality was a world where, no matter what he did-no matter how small and insignificant he made himself-he was still always the victim. And as a result, he started to turn to an alternate world: one created by himself in the safety of HTML code. Peter set up his own website, created video games, and filled them with the kind of people he wished were surrounding him.”

Jordan ran his hand along the railing of the jury box. “One of the witnesses you’re going to hear from is Dr. King Wah. He’s a forensic psychiatrist who’s examined Peter and has spoken with him. He’s going to explain to you that Peter was suffering from an illness called post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a complicated medical diagnosis, but it’s a real one-and children who have it can’t distinguish between an immediate threat and a distant threat. Even though you and I might be able to walk down the hall and spy a bully who’s paying no attention to us, Peter would see that same person and his heart rate would speed up…his body would sidle a little closer to the wall…because Peter was sure he’d be noticed, threatened, beaten, and hurt. Dr. Wah will not only tell you about studies that have been done on children like Peter, he’ll tell you how Peter was directly affected by the years and years of torment at the hands of the Sterling High School community.”

Jordan faced the jurors again. “Do you remember earlier this week, when we were talking to you about whether you’d be an appropriate juror to sit on this case? One of the things I asked each and every one of you during that process was whether you understood that you needed to listen to the evidence in the courtroom and apply the law as the judge instructs you. As much as we learned from civics class in eighth grade or Law & Order on Wednesday-night TV…until you’re here listening to the evidence and hearing the instructions of the court, you don’t know what the rules really are.”

He held the gaze of each juror in turn. “For example, when most people hear the term self-defense, they assume it means that someone is holding up a gun, or a knife to the throat-that there’s an immediate physical threat. But in this case, self-defense may not mean what you think. And what the evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, is that the person who walked into Sterling High and fired all those shots was not a premeditated, cold-blooded killer, as the prosecution wants you to believe.” Jordan walked behind the defense table and put his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “He was a very scared boy who had asked for protection…and had never received it.”

Zoe Patterson kept biting her nails, even though her mother had told her not to do that; even though a zillion pairs of eyes and (holy cow) television cameras were focused on her as she sat on the witness stand. “What did you have after French class?” the prosecutor asked. She’d already gone through her name, address, and the beginning of that horrible day.

“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.

Once, when he was little, he’d been playing with a Nerf football in his parents’ bedroom and he knocked over an antique perfume bottle that had belonged to his great-grandmother. It was made out of glass and it broke into pieces. His mother told him she knew it was an accident, and she’d glued it back together. She kept it on her dresser, and every time he passed by he saw the lines. For years, he’d thought that might have been worse than being punished in the first place.

“Let’s take a short recess,” Judge Wagner said, and Peter let his head sink down to the defense table, a weight too heavy to bear.

The witnesses were sequestered by side, prosecution in one room and defense in another. The policemen had their own room, too. Witnesses were not supposed to see each other, but nobody really noticed if you left to go to the cafeteria to get a cup of coffee or a donut, and Josie had taken to leaving for hours at a time. It was there that she’d run into Haley, who’d been drinking orange juice through a straw. Brady was with her, holding the cup so she could reach it.

They’d been happy to see Josie, but she was glad when they left. It hurt, physically, to have to smile at Haley and pretend that you weren’t staring at the pits and gullies of her face. She’d told Josie that she had already had three operations with a plastic surgeon in New York City who had donated his services.

Brady never let go of her hand; sometimes he ran his fingers through her hair. It made Josie want to cry, because she knew that when he looked at Haley, he was still able to see her in a way that no one else would again.

There were others there, too, that Josie hadn’t seen since the shooting. Teachers, like Ms. Ritolli and Coach Spears, who came over to say hello. The DJ who ran the radio station at the school, the honors student with the really bad acne. They all cycled through the cafeteria while she sat and nursed a cup of coffee.

She glanced up when Drew flung himself into a chair across from her. “How come you’re not in the room with the rest of us?”

“I’m on the defense’s list.” Or, as she was sure everyone in the other room thought of it, the traitors’ side.

“Oh,” Drew said, as if he understood, although Josie was sure he didn’t. “You ready for this?”

“I don’t have to be ready. They’re not actually going to call me.”

“Then why are you here?”

Before she could answer, Drew waved, and then she realized John Eberhard had arrived. “Dude,” Drew said, and John headed toward them. He walked with a limp, she noticed, but he was walking. He leaned down to high-five Drew and when he did, Josie could see the pucker in his scalp where the bullet had entered his head.

“Where have you been?” Drew asked, making room for John to sit down beside him. “I thought I’d see you around this summer, for sure.”

He nodded at them. “I’m…John.”

Drew’s smile faded like paint.

“This…is…”

“This is fucking unbelievable,” Drew murmured.

“He can hear you,” Josie snapped, and she crouched down in front of John. “Hi, John. I’m Josie.”

“Jooooz.”

“Right. Josie.”

“I’m…John,” he said.

John Eberhard had played goalie on the all-star state hockey team since his freshman year. Whenever the team won, the coach had always credited John’s reflexes.

“Shoooo,” he said, and he shuffled his foot.

Josie looked down at the undone Velcro strap of John’s sneaker. “There you go,” she said, fixing it for him.

Suddenly she could not stand being here, seeing this. “I’ve got to get back,” Josie said, standing up. As she walked away, blindly turning the corner, she crashed into someone. “Sorry,” she murmured, and then heard Patrick’s voice.

“Josie? You all right?”

She shrugged, and then she shook her head.

“That makes two of us.”

Patrick was holding a cup of coffee and a donut. “I know,” he said. “I’m a walking cliché;. You want it?” He held the pastry out to her, and she took it, even though she wasn’t hungry. “You coming or going?”

“Coming,” she lied, before she even realized she was doing it.

“Then keep me company for a few minutes.” He led her to a table across the room from Drew and John; she could feel them looking at her, wondering why she might be hanging out with a cop. “I hate the waiting part,” Patrick said.

“At least you’re not nervous about testifying.”

“Sure I am.”

“Don’t you do this all the time?”

Patrick nodded. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to get up in front of a room full of people. I don’t know how your mom does it.”

“So what do you do to get over the stage fright? Imagine the judge in his underwear?”

“Well, not this judge,” Patrick said, and then, realizing what he’d just implied, he blushed deep red.

“That’s probably a good thing,” Josie said.

Patrick reached for the donut and took a bite, then handed it back to her. “I just try to tell myself, when I get out there, that I can’t get into trouble telling the truth. Then I let Diana do all the work.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You need anything? A drink? More food?”

“I’m okay.”

“Then I’ll walk you back. Come on.”

The room for the defense’s witnesses was tiny, because there were so few of them. An Asian man Josie had never seen before was sitting with his back to her, typing away at a laptop. There was a woman inside who hadn’t been there when Josie left, but Josie couldn’t see her face.

Patrick paused in front of the door. “How do you think it’s going in court?” she asked.

He hesitated. “It’s going.”

She slipped past the bailiff who was babysitting them, heading toward the window seat where she’d been curled before, reading. But at the last minute she sat down at the table in the middle of the room. The woman already seated there had her hands folded in front of her and was staring at absolutely nothing.

“Mrs. Houghton,” Josie murmured.

Peter’s mother turned. “Josie?” She squinted, as if that might bring Josie into better focus.

“I’m so sorry,” Josie whispered.

Mrs. Houghton nodded. “Well,” she said, and then she just stopped, as if the sentence were no more than a cliff to jump from.

“How are you doing?” Josie immediately wished she could take back her question-how did she think Peter’s mother was doing, for God’s sake? She was probably using all of her self-control right now to keep from dissolving into foam, blowing off into the atmosphere. Which, Josie realized, meant they had something in common.

“I wouldn’t have expected to see you here,” Mrs. Houghton said softly.

By here she didn’t mean the courthouse; she meant this room. With the other meager witnesses who had been tapped to stick up for Peter.

Josie cleared her throat, to make way for the words she hadn’t said for years, the words she still would have been afraid to use in front of nearly anyone else, for fear of the echo. “He’s my friend,” she said.

“We started running,” Drew said. “It was like this mass exodus. I just wanted to get as far away from the cafeteria as I could, so I headed for the gym. Two of my friends had heard the shots, but they didn’t know where they were coming from, so I grabbed them and told them to follow me.”

“Who were they?” Leven asked.

“Matt Royston,” Drew said. “And Josie Cormier.”

At the sound of her daughter’s name being spoken aloud, Alex shivered. It made it so…real. So immediate. Drew had located Alex in the gallery, and was staring right at her when he said Josie’s name.

“Where did you go?”

“We figured if we could get to the locker room, we could climb out the window onto the maple tree and we’d be safe.”

“Did you get to the locker room?”

“Josie and Matt did,” Drew said. “But I got shot.”

Alex listened as the prosecutor walked Drew through the extent of his injuries and how they had effectively ended his hockey career. Then she faced him squarely. “Did you know Peter before the day of the shooting?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“We were in the same grade. Everyone knows everyone.”

“Were you friends?” Leven asked.

Alex glanced across the aisle at Lewis Houghton. He was sitting directly behind his son, his eyes fixed straight on the bench. Alex had a flash of him, years ago, opening the front door when she’d gone to pick Josie up from a playdate. Here come da judge, he’d said, and he laughed at his own joke.

Were you friends?

“No,” Drew said.

“Did you have any problems with him?”

Drew hesitated. “No.”

“Did you ever get in an argument with him?” Leven asked.

“We probably had a few words,” Drew said.

“Did you ever make fun of him?”

“Sometimes. We were just kidding around.”

“Did you ever physically attack him?”

“When we were younger, I might have pushed him around a little bit.”

Alex looked at Lewis Houghton. His eyes were squeezed shut.

“Have you done that since you’ve been in high school?”

“Yes,” Drew admitted.

“Did you ever threaten Peter with a weapon?”

“No.”