Nineteen Minutes: Part 1, Chapter 7: Ten Days After Summary & Analysis

In this scrap of handwriting, the writer describes the experience of being stared at. They admit that they used to be confused by what other people saw, until one day they looked in the mirror and it all made sense, as they finally hated themselves.   

Josie waits until Alex is asleep, then sneaks out of bed, just like she once did to go and see Matt. She manages to find the DVD she wants—a home recording of her sixteenth birthday. Courtney, Haley, Maddie, John, and Drew are there, and as soon as the camera turns to Matt, Josie starts crying. On this birthday, Matt gave her a gold locket. Pausing the DVD, she takes off the gold locket and stuffs it inside one of the couch cushions.

While Lacy is buying milk at the gas station, she notices a coffee can with the words Memorial Fund for the Victims of Sterling High on it. The cashier sees her looking at it and remarks on the horrific nature of the tragedy, mentioning that the shooter’s parents must have “known.” Shaking, Lacy cannot speak. She empties all the money in her wallet into the can and leaves without taking the milk. Meanwhile, Ervin Peabody runs a grief session for the whole of Sterling at 7pm that evening. An enormous number of people show up, representing all ages. People voice their horror at the way Sterling—which they always trusted to be a serene, tight-knit community—has turned out to be anything but.

Someone asks if the kids are going to go back inside Sterling High, and Principal McAllistar explains that because the building is still a crime scene, the rest of the school year will be completed in another location. When someone mentions that their daughter has nightmares every night and could never go back into the school building, Courtney Ignatio’s dad Mark tells them to feel lucky that their child is alive to have nightmares. At this point, Mark turns toward Jordan and asks, “How the hell can you sleep at night, knowing you’re defending that sonofabitch?” Patrick intervenes, calming Mark down.

Alex’s mother died when she was five, and thus she was raised by her distant and unemotional father. In order to win his attention, she excelled at school. He died during her second year of law school, and Alex didn’t cry, feeling like this was “what he would have wanted.” Now, Alex doesn’t know how to handle Josie’s grief. She goes into Josie’s room and tries to get her to go outside, but Josie refuses. She then brings up Peter, asking if Josie ever had any inclination he could do something like this. Alex brings up the incident with the rifle, but Josie dismisses this, saying they were just “little” and “stupid.”

Josie eventually agrees to go out somewhere with Alex, and the two of them drive to the diner. However, as soon as they get out of the car, another car speeds past and Josie, panicking, falls to the floor. Horrified by what she sees as her own foolishness, Alex rushes to Josie, telling her they will go straight home. Patrick, meanwhile, goes to see Ed McCabe’s sister Joan, who mentions that Ed was gay. She says that he was closeted at school, because he was “afraid of backlash.” Patrick notes that another victim, Natalie Zlenko, had been president of Sterling High GLAAD; he wonders if Peter was homophobic.

Selena goes to see Lacy in order to gather information for Peter’s defense. Her questions begin at Lacy’s pregnancy and Peter’s babyhood. When she asks about Peter’s relationship with Joey, Lacy explains that Joey was killed in an accident a year ago, run over by a drunk driver. Lacy explains that Peter “adored” Joey, and that because he was Joey’s brother, everyone had high expectations of him. After Joey died, she says that Peter supported his parents; yet when Selena asks if Peter had any romantic partners to “lean on” himself, Lacy admits he didn’t. Selena then asks about the music, video games, and websites Peter was looking at, and Lacy explains that they had a conversation about safety on the internet.

When Selena asks about weapons, Lacy admits that Peter knew where the key to shotgun cabinet was, but that she doesn’t know where he got the pistols from. Lacy says she thinks it’s important to give kids privacy. She then confesses that after Joey died, she found heroin paraphernalia in his room, although she has never told anyone this—not even Lewis. When Selena keeps asking about Peter’s computer use and his attitude toward his mother, Lacy gets defensive, and Selena knows that this is the point to stop asking questions. Lacy begins crying and Selena hugs her, telling her it’s not her fault.

Patrick asks Natalie if Peter ever came to a GLAAD meeting, and Natalie says he did, just once. He didn’t say anything, and he never came back. She explains that some people come to a meeting once because they are not ready to come out, whereas others come maliciously, to find out who in the school is gay. Patrick asks which category she thinks Peter would fall into, and Natalie replies that Peter was getting bullied long before he ever came to the GLAAD meeting.

Trying to get his baby son Sam to sleep, Jordan puts him in the car to go for a drive, but immediately realizes his tires have been slashed. Selena gets back and tells Jordan about Joey’s death. She expresses pity for the Houghton family and the immense distress they’ve been through. However, Jordan smiles, saying, “Our client’s just become sympathetic.” Meanwhile, Sterling High moves into the Mount Lebanon School, a former elementary school that is no longer in use. Alex tells Josie that she doesn’t have to go back yet. Although Josie doesn’t want to go, she also craves the feeling of being among people who understand what she’s going through.

Josie snaps at Alex and feels horrified by the two versions of herself that are simultaneously inside her: the innocent little girl still clinging to the belief that everything that’s happened is just a nightmare, and the cynical, cruel adult. She hears a car in the driveway and for a brief second thinks it’s Matt, who always drove her to school. Instead it’s Drew, who still has one arm in a sling. Alex says that she will take Josie to school, but Josie replies that she’d rather go with Drew. Inside the car, they discuss how their parents are behaving in a suffocating manner. Drew says he feels guilty for having survived at all. When they arrive at school, Drew gives Josie Matt’s baseball cap. Both of them begin to cry.

At work, Alex finds herself distracted, obsessively wondering if Josie is ok. She calls an hour-long recess and goes outside to smoke a cigarette. She finds Patrick there, who speaks to her in a surprisingly flirtatious manner. She notices that he has a white streak in his hair, which he explains is caused by albinism. Although their conversation is casual, Alex is horrified to find herself crying, and she pretends to Patrick that she isn’t. In school, there are a host of new rules to heighten security, and Principal McAllistar announces a moment of silence at the beginning of the day.

At the jail, Jordan asks Peter about Joey, and Peter replies, “He got his golden boy straight-A self rammed by a drunk driver.” Jordan points out that there’s no way to live up to a perfect person who’s killed in a tragedy, and Peter immediately agrees. Peter then says that Joey used to drop him half a mile away from school so no one would see them arrive together. He adds that Joey was often the instigator of his bullying, and that he used to tell Peter he was adopted. Peter concludes that he’s “glad he’s dead.” At home that night, Jordan laments that he won’t be able to use Joey’s story to make Peter seem sympathetic, because Peter hated Joey.

Selena accuses Jordan of wanting Peter not to be acquitted because he’s scared of him. She says that Jordan doesn’t understand what it’s like to be marginalized. She does because she is black, and she explains feeling trapped by the injustice of the world. Suddenly, Jordan has an epiphany. He’s realized that Selena is echoing his defense of a woman who killed her husband, wherein he claimed she was suffering from “battered woman syndrome.” Women who experience intimate partner violence feel trapped, and when they become violent themselves they see it as a necessary act of self-protection. This is also how Peter thinks. Like these women, he has post-traumatic stress disorder.

Selena points out that no one has applied battered woman syndrome outside of the context of an abusive relationship before. Jordan confidently replies that he will be the first to do so. Meanwhile, at the police station, Patrick is playing the computer game that Peter created. It is set in Sterling High, and each room contains weapons that the player must retrieve. The aim of the game is to kill “the jocks, the bullies, and the popular kids.” Each time the player does so, they accrue points, and enough points allows them to destroy the entire school with a nuclear missile. The game is called Hide-n-Shriek.

Jordan goes to visit Peter in jail and tells him they are going to waive the probable cause hearing. Peter is annoyed about this, but Jordan promises that it’s the right move. When the judge announces to the court that Peter has decided to waive, the members of the press sigh, disappointed to be robbed of “spectacle.” After, Lewis angrily asks Jordan why he isn’t doing his job properly, but Jordan again explains that this will work out better for Peter. Meanwhile, Patrick races to a gun shop in Plainfield, where he finds the owner sitting outside, crying. He explains that Yvette Harvey came into the shop, asked to look at a gun, and immediately shot herself.

Jordan is at the jail talking to Peter and fantasizing about dropping the case altogether. He asks Peter about Josie, and why he wrote the words “LET LIVE” next to her yearbook picture. Peter asks if Josie is ok, but he is evasive in answering Jordan’s questions. Jordan likes Alex, who he thinks is a “tough, but fair” judge. Tension rises between Jordan and Peter, and Jordan warns Peter that all the evidence is making him look like a “cold-blooded killer.” Peter says that it’s true he deliberately planned the whole thing, but that the ten people who were killed “got in the way” of his true target—himself.