The Fourth Summer

by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

  Everyone was looking at the jurors as they filed in. Caitlin took her seat between Fred and Yvette. She felt a sudden thrill. This is it. We are the jury of your peers. We represent the community; we enforce the laws and the standards. We matter. This is a service.

  Was this how her father felt when he arrived at the Naval Academy, very young, but determined to serve his country? Or her something-great-grandmother who had nursed with Clara Barton during the Civil War? Okay, this wasn’t much compared to those, but Caitlin never did anything out of patriotism. She only bothered to file an absentee ballot for the national elections and any time her parents told her that a race was contested. This was something she was finally doing because she was an American.

  This was justice, not the violent revenge that counted as justice in a computer game, but real justice, grand and solemn. She looked around the courtroom, at the observers, at the lawyers. She wanted to believe that everyone felt this way, felt that they were all a part of something important.

  If this trial were such a big deal, the lawyers should be charged up, full of adrenaline. But they weren’t. One man’s tie was crumpled; he must have loosened and retightened it several times. One of the women’s hair was mussed in back; she had been rubbing the back of her neck. The defendant had on fresh lipstick, but none of the other women did. Although the lawyers had all been sitting up straight when the jury had entered, they were, only a minute or so later, resting their chins on their hands, looking down blankly at their papers. Because of her work with games, Caitlin observed people carefully, wanting to be able to convey emotions through expressions, gestures, and postures. These people were frustrated and exhausted.

  And the judge—he was sitting forward in an aggressive stance, his jaw out, as if he were in midcombat.

  This was not starting out well.

  Fred’s elbow was a good five inches into her space.

  The judge welcomed them, talking about how he ran an orderly trial. Then he told them that this was a joint trial with two different defendants, and that they need to consider each defendant separately, that the verdict for or against one should have no bearing on the verdict for or against the other. Both defendants had their own team of lawyers, and each would be allowed to have one of their representatives question each prosecution witness and to mount their own defense. It would make this one trial longer, but certainly not as long as having two separate trials. So the trials had been joined in the interest of the taxpayers of North Carolina.

  But not apparently in the interest of the jurors.

  He went on for thirty-five minutes. Then he called on the prosecutor to give his opening statement. That lawyer asked to approach the bench. The judge gestured, and in a moment a gaggle of lawyers clustered around the judge’s bench. Then they returned to their places, and the judge announced the first big decision of the trial.

  They would break for lunch so that the prosecutor’s opening statement would not be interrupted. The judge told them to leave their notebooks on their seats and then cautioned them not to discuss the case among themselves or with anyone, which would yet again be easy advice for Caitlin to follow as the only thing she would have to say was that the female defendant’s shoes looked very expensive.

  They were given ninety minutes for lunch so Caitlin ate quickly, wanting to get some more work done. Seth scooped up the rest of his lunch and rode up the elevator with her.

  “What are you doing about New Zealand?” she asked him softly.

  “Not go.”

  Seth no longer competed in many events. Instead he focused on “parts,” videos of himself snowboarding. It was a big part of the snowboarding world now. The newcomers made them, wanting to get noticed by sponsors, while established people like Seth made them to promote their current sponsors. As the videos were posted on the internet, she had seen most of Seth’s, and they were really beautiful. They were shot in the backcountry, Seth gliding through pristine snow, then taking off, soaring against a blue sky. The Street Boards logo was on his helmet, jacket, and board. There was never any red in any of the shots except the graffiti-like “& Snow” of the logo.

  He used his height, a problem in competition, to make his moves big and graceful, and sometimes he turned his left hand in a way that she knew, she absolutely knew, he had learned from her so many years ago.

  “But what about all the helicopters and cameramen, all that? Are you canceling them?”

  “That’s what my dad and I were going to do because nobody’s ever done a Street Boards part except me. But my mom thought that canceling was too expensive so she told me to get someone else. My friend Nate is going to do it.”

  “Your mother makes these decisions?” Caitlin remembered Mrs. Street as an ordinary Southern fry-chicken-and-bake-cookies kind of mom.

  “When she’s right. Dad still doesn’t like it, but I can see her point. Maybe our marketing plans don’t have to be about me all the time.”

  “That’s starting to sound pretty adult, Seth.”

  He grinned. “I’m hoping that it’s a temporary thing.”

  One woman had apparently never left the jury room. She had brought lunch with her.

  “You were smart to bring your own food,” Caitlin said to her, remembering that her name was Elizabeth. “The soup downstairs was liquid salt.”

  “Salt I can handle,” Elizabeth answered. “I have celiac disease, which I know is supposed to be a white people’s thing”—she was African American—“but if I have any gluten, I will be in the bathroom the rest of the day.”

  The afternoon court session actually started on time. The lead prosecutor, the oldest man at that table, rose to give his opening statement. He confirmed that the defendants were indeed the people Caitlin thought they were. The woman was the wife—or ex-wife, she wasn’t sure—of a former congressman, and the man was the congressman’s former law partner, and they were being accused of—

  Caitlin had absolutely no idea what they were being accused of. It was something financial, falsifying depreciation schedules, capitalizing rather than expensing, bid rigging. All those words were coming out of the lawyer’s mouth. Was it an accounting issue, a stock purchase issue, or something else altogether? She had no idea.

  What on earth was she doing here? She didn’t understand a word of this.

  The only thing that emerged with any clarity was a picture of the defendants as people you could love to hate. They were greedy and materialistic, arrogant and selfish.

  None of these struck Caitlin as indictable offenses. If they were, Silicon Valley was going to need to build a lot more prisons.

  She glanced at her fellow jurors. Yvette had hands folded neatly in her lap. Her eyes were open, and she was sitting up straight, but Caitlin couldn’t see anything in her body language that indicated she was paying attention. She was probably just happy not to be surrounded by dead chickens. Other people had their heads forward, their eyebrows lowered, trying to follow the argument.

  After two hours the judge interrupted the lawyer, reminding him that a time limit had been agreed on. The lawyer said that he was nearly finished. Ten minutes later the judge prompted him again, and again the lawyer said that he was nearly finished. Seven minutes after that the judge told him that he was finished and excused the jurors for the afternoon break.

  As they stood up, Yvette whispered to her. “I’m so con—”

  Caitlin interrupted her. “We can’t talk about the case.”

  “Oh.”

  Back in the jury room everyone was looking a little shell-shocked. Caitlin glanced at Seth; he shrugged. He hadn’t understood anything either.

  After the break they were told that only one of the defense attorneys was going to give his opening statement now; the other would speak after the prosecution rested. This lawyer began by saying that the prosecutor had deliberately been trying to confuse them when in fact the case wa
s fairly simple.

  But instead of explaining capitalization and expensing, he argued that this was a case of overzealous prosecution, that there had been a vendetta against the defendants because of their powerful friends. The irregularities that the prosecution would cite as evidence were minor, probably typos made by a data entry clerk. He was angry, and Caitlin never liked being around anger.

  She left court that afternoon, as confused as ever, but also feeling as outraged as she had when a coworker in Silicon Valley had taken credit for her work and as unclean as she had when her pediatrician had tried to hand her a prescription for birth control pills.

  Her sophomore year, the year between her second and third summers with Seth, went well. The art teacher who had sneered at commercial graphic art had left, and the new teacher was impressed with the things Caitlin was doing on the computer.

  Her birthday was in February, and her mother made an appointment for her annual checkup. She still saw a pediatrician; she and Dylan had the same doctor. After examining her, he said that she needed to be more regular about taking a multivitamin and that she should either start eating more red meat or take a small iron supplement a few times a week. Then he asked if she was sexually active.

  “No, never.”

  “I still recommend that you start taking birth control pills.” He started writing on his prescription pad.

  “No, really,” she said. Of course lots of girls had sex at fifteen—notably her sister—but no. No. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “At least consider it.” He tried to hand her the prescription. She wouldn’t take it. He kept his hand out. He wasn’t giving her a choice. So she took it and crammed it into her pocket.

  Her mother was in the waiting room. She paid the bill, and out in the car she asked Caitlin what the doctor had said. Caitlin told her about the multivitamin and the twenty-eight milligrams of iron. “But I don’t need to take the iron every day.”

  “Was there anything else?”

  “Not really.”

  “Caitlin.”

  So Mom already knew. It must have been on the bill or something.

  “He gave me a prescription for birth control pills.”

  “I know. I talked to him about it.”

  “You did? Mom! You think I should be on birth control? I’m not having sex. You know that.”

  “Yes, yes, I do. But, honey, we can’t go through this again, and so many girls after their sisters—”

  “But not me, Mom. Not me.” Caitlin was really offended.

  “I know you say that, but it only takes one time. It will give your dad and me such peace of mind.”

  “Dad! He doesn’t know, does he?”

  She nodded. “He says we need to protect the family. Give me the prescription. I’ll fill it, and then you can decide.”

  On the phone that night Seth asked her a couple of times if she was okay. She said she was fine, but of course she wasn’t. She had always told him almost everything; it was odd not to tell him about this. But she couldn’t. What if it made him wonder? She couldn’t stand the idea of him thinking about her that way.

  The next day her mother handed her a narrow white bag with the vitamins, the iron pill, and the circular packet of birth control pills. “It’s your decision, Caitlin, and I honestly don’t know if we’re doing the right thing, if we are just making it too easy for you to start having sex, but you’re already older than Trina was.”

  “I’m not Trina.”

  “I know. I know, but...” Her mother looked very uncertain.

  “I wish you trusted me,” Caitlin said, mostly because she knew that that would really hurt her mother.

  She started taking the supplements right away, leaving them in the bathroom she shared with Trina and Dylan’s diapers. She shoved the birth control pills in the back of her underwear drawer.

  The following week her father got his orders. The family would be moving to San Diego after school was out. That’s what happened in military families. It had been unusual for them to have been in Virginia for six years.

  Like everything else in this family, the only thing that seemed to matter was Dylan.

  His other grandparents were stunned at the thought that he would be moving all the way across the country. They consulted a lawyer. As long as the McGraws were open to them visiting—which, of course, the McGraws were; they just weren’t buying the plane tickets—there wasn’t much Trevor’s family could do. Trevor could sue for joint custody if Trevor wanted joint custody—which he didn’t—but he probably wouldn’t get it. The courts did not look kindly on fathers who didn’t pay any child support.

  So there were tears and pleas, which grieved Caitlin’s mother and enraged her father. Did these people seriously expect him to refuse a lawful, in fact, a desirable reassignment? Trevor’s parents bought Dylan cute clothes and enormous toys, but what paid for his health insurance, his diapers, his baby food? That navy paycheck.

  Caitlin liked seeing her dad so angry. It was about time that somebody got mad at that other family.

  Not that anyone cared, this move would be okay for her. The skate parks in San Diego were amazing, and the school she would be going to had very sophisticated technology. She’d be fine...as long as she could spend the summer in North Carolina.

  Seth’s parents had decided that he was old enough that his mother didn’t have to travel with him, and so he had been in Oregon from April until June when they insisted that he come home for two months, believing that taking a break from intensive training was important for his long-term health. That drove him nuts. Everyone else was training year-round. But it meant that he would be there. She had to be there too.

  When things calmed down with Trevor’s parents, Caitlin raised the issue with her parents. “I will be able to spend the summer with MeeMaw, won’t I?”

  “Ah...” Her parents looked at each other, and Caitlin felt sick. Were they going to say no? How could they?

  “For a week or so,” her mother said, “of course.”

  No. That was not what Caitlin had in mind, not at all.

  “We were thinking,” her father said, “that you ought to get a job this summer. If you start saving now, you will have a little bit of extra spending money in college.”

  “You won’t mind working,” her mother said. “You’ll probably like having a job.”

  “I could get a job in North Carolina. MeeMaw would help me find one.” Or she could work at Street Boards. Seth’s parents would give her a job.

  “But don’t you want to meet other kids?” her mother asked. “Working at a mall...that will be a great way to meet other teens.”

  The kind of teens who worked at a mall. Those were Trina’s friends, not hers.

  “We’re a family, Caitlin,” her father said. “We have to do what’s right for the family as a whole.”

  “No,” she snapped, “we do what’s right for Dylan and Trina.”

  She stormed upstairs and slammed the door of her room. A half an hour later she heard her mother coming upstairs. She went out to the hall to meet her.

  “Caitlin, I—”

  “Listen,” Caitlin interrupted. “Those pills. If you let me go, I’ll start taking them.”

  The next afternoon her mother came into her room. “Your dad and I talked about it. You can go, but you don’t have to make a bargain with us over the birth control pills. You don’t have to take them if you don’t want to. It’s totally your decision.”

  It didn’t feel like it. “I took the first one this morning.”

  MeeMaw said that she could easily get Caitlin a job in one of the doctors’ offices, but she would look around to see if she could find a place that employed more teens. A day or so later she called back to say that the Dairy Queen manager used to be a patient in Caitlin’s grandfather’s practice, and he would take her on without he
r having to fill out an application in person as was the usual requirement. She could start as soon as she arrived, but she would have a weeknight schedule at first.

  So in early June Trina and Dylan went to the mall with her to buy the black jeans and midthigh black shorts that she would need to work at the Dairy Queen. And new bras. Thanks to the birth control pills, her old ones were too small.

  The bus ride from Charlotte seemed to take forever. MeeMaw picked her up at the station. Caitlin could barely answer MeeMaw’s questions about her school year and the move to San Diego. All she could think about was seeing Seth.

  Once again he was waiting on her grandmother’s front steps.

  “Go on. Go on.” MeeMaw stopped the car in front of the garage to let Caitlin out.

  She seized the handle of the car door. It was stuck. How could it be stuck? Of all times, not to be able to get out of the car. Oh, right. Out and then down. She went running up the sidewalk.

  Then stopped. Seth...he wasn’t Seth.

  Of course he was taller. She had expected that. That had happened last year. But this year he was so...so grown, so manly. His jaw was squarer, his face fuller, his shoulders broader. She felt awkward.

  He didn’t. He threw his arms around her, squeezed her, and—not even intending to, he just straightened his knees—lifted her off her feet.

  “Whoops, I didn’t mean to do that,” he said, putting her on her feet, steadying her for a moment. “You’re so light.”

  “I weigh more than I did last summer.”

  “Really?” He stepped back and looked at her. “You look the same.”

  Because I have a sweatshirt on.

  MeeMaw left the garage door open and asked Seth to carry Caitlin’s bags upstairs. He swung them out of the trunk easily and answered MeeMaw’s questions about his family.

  “Your mother did call me,” MeeMaw said.

  “She did?” Suddenly Seth looked a whole lot less adult and a lot more like an annoyed teen.

  Mrs. Street had called to alert MeeMaw that Seth had a driver’s license now, but that they would understand if Caitlin’s family wouldn’t let her ride with him.