Nineteen Minutes

by Jodi Picoult

When you don’t fit in, you become superhuman. You can feel everyone else’s eyes on you, stuck like Velcro. You can hear a whisper about you from a mile away. You can disappear, even when it looks like you’re still standing right there. You can scream, and nobody hears a sound.

“Ask ten people, and half of them won’t even be able to remember something concrete from high school—they’ve blocked it out. The other half will recall an incredibly painful or embarrassing moment. They stick like glue.”