“Hadn’t you better go check in?”
“I suppose.” He dropped his backpack on the chair next to her. “Hold this place for me.”
He returned to the line, and as he checked in, it occurred to him that if she knew that he had left the line without checking in, then she had seen him, been watching him.
When we were kids you said that you wouldn’t play games. Let’s not start now.
It took him a while to get back to the table. Too many people knew who he was. He sat down just as the jury coordinator called for their attention, welcomed them, then dimmed the lights in order to show a video. The screen was behind Seth so he had to turn his chair away from Caitlin. The video explained the court procedures and talked about how important it was for them to serve, how a trial by jury was a right first guaranteed by the Magna Carta, and—
Caitlin touched his arm and whispered. “You aren’t supposed to say the Magna Carta. It’s Latin so no article. Just Magna Carta.”
He looked over his shoulder. “How do you know that?”
“I’m kind of nerdy.”
One of their other tablemates gave them a stern look so they shut up and learned that if they were admitted to a jury, they would be issued red tags that they needed to wear whenever they were in the courthouse.
At the end of the video, the jury coordinator flicked the lights back on, and a different person, the Clerk of the Court, told them that there were two trials scheduled for that day, one civil, one criminal. He explained the difference between civil and criminal trials, repeating pretty much the same words that the video had just used. Then he told them about the little red tags, again using the same words as the video.
Within a few minutes fifteen people were called for the civil trial. Neither he nor Caitlin was called.
During the presentations he had been wondering if he should say something about what had happened. No, it hadn’t “happened.” He had done it. But, come on, it had been years ago, high school shit. There was no reason to mention it. Pretend that everything was fine. That worked for him. Ignore the sticky stuff, and it usually went away. Avoid the edges of the map; just have a good time with other people who wanted to have a good time. He was a snowboarder, after all. Having fun was part of the job description.
But when she started to lift the screen on her computer, he spoke quickly. “I kind of disappeared on you, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t disappear at all,” she said evenly. “I knew exactly where you were. Your face was on the front of the Wheaties box, and you did start sending me form replies to emails.”
“Oh, man, those autoreplies.” He didn’t like being reminded of them. Hi, the Olympics were a great time for all the US teams, weren’t they? Thanks so much for... “I wish I hadn’t done that. But it was a pretty bad time for me, and I did a lot of things wrong. “
“Bad time? You had just won an Olympic medal.”
“Yeah. It was complicated. But tell me about yourself. What are you doing? Where do you live?”
She was a freelance graphic artist living in San Francisco. Yes, she liked it out there. And her parents and her grandmother, they were all fine. Her sister? “And her baby...who’s probably not a baby anymore.”
She smiled. “No, he’s not. He’ll be in fifth grade next year. My sister and Trevor, Dylan’s father, actually got married a few years ago.”
“They got married? After all the crap you went through, they’re married now?”
“Yes, but if they had gotten married back then, they would be divorced by now.”
Good point.
Seth noticed someone hovering by the table. He looked up. The man said that he worked for Seth’s dad. Seth stood up and made nice. Caitlin put her earbuds in and went back to work. She didn’t look up when he sat down.
He watched her work. Her fingers tattooed across the keyboard. Sometimes she would stop, hunching forward, staring at the screen, one hand over her mouth, obviously thinking. Then most of the time she sat back quickly as if she had had an “aha” moment and started the rapid-fire typing again. Other times she’d type slowly as if she wasn’t sure of her solution.
The morning was starting to drag. He had stuff he could do, but he couldn’t get started. This sucked. Such a waste of time. Since the assembly room had Wi-Fi, most people were on their phones or computers. A few older people had newspapers or actual books, the kind with paper and all.
Caitlin eventually took out her earbuds and stood up to go to the ladies’ room. When she got back, he asked her what she was working on. She said that a lot of her clients designed video games, and she helped with the art and some of the coding.
“I had a game out there for a while.” Kids were supposed to be able to get the experience of being Seth Street snowboarding.
“I know.”
She did? “It wasn’t very good.”
“I know that too.”
“We weren’t on the same page as the developer.” His family didn’t make many mistakes, but that had been one.
The jurors were given an hour for lunch. He walked down to the basement cafeteria with Caitlin, but the other people eating there recognized him, and he had to go back to being the Olympic medalist, the face of Street Boards. Seth Sweep, the media had dubbed him after he had won Olympic bronze in a shocking upset. His bronze meant that the United States had swept the event, taking all three medals.
“You’re certainly sounding grown up,” Caitlin said when they were gathering up their trash.
“It’s an act. If I were really grown up, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have changed my address.”
“They don’t have jurors in Oregon?”
She knew where he lived. “Undoubtedly. And actually scruffy riders are a lot more mainstream out there. Someone might actually want one of us on a jury. So maybe procrastinating was a good choice.”
“You don’t want to serve?”
“God, no. Deciding if someone is innocent or guilty? If they deserve to be in jail? Talk about grown up, that’s above and beyond.”
He had to go out and feed his parking meter. He offered to take care of hers. No, she hadn’t driven. Her mother had brought her; her grandmother would pick her up. “It’s like being fifteen again,” she said, “and having to call for a ride.”
Oh, good, she didn’t want a car. He had been looking for an opening. “Remember if you’re fifteen,” he said lightly, “then I’m sixteen and have a license. I can run you home.”
Sixteen... Memories suddenly started swirling in his brain, shapes in a snowstorm. Look up at me. Look at me with those dark eyes of yours and admit that you’re remembering too, remembering how great that third summer was because I could drive and we could go anywhere.
What was going on in his brain? All this past stuff...he was a here-and-now kind of guy.
But it was good stuff, wasn’t it?
“It’s completely out of your way.”
What? Oh, she was still talking about him driving her home. “All of ten minutes. And then maybe you will let me take you out to dinner.”
He hadn’t been able to get a read on her. Was she going to agree to have dinner with him? He wouldn’t be surprised either way.
“They are paying us a whole twelve dollars for our service today,” she answered. “I can buy my own food.”
So it was a yes to spending the evening with him, but no to something that would make it seem like a