Chapter 11

Friday started with a practice that quickly ended the joy from our previous win when our coach reminded us that we were still the bottom-ranked team in the league and were doing little to prove to the school that we were worth their multi-million-dollar investment. What followed were more skating drills and a shit ton of shooting at tiny targets. I didn’t have the same manic energy that I’d brought to the ice at the last night’s game, but I wasn’t feeling the exhaustion and heaviness that had plagued me since Josh had disappeared. If anything, I just felt like I was going back to being regular Trent, and that was pretty good for me.

That evening, after receiving texts from every other player on the team, I finally relented and joined them at the bar for drinks. What was supposed to be a beer or two turned into full pitchers, yards of shot glasses and I’m pretty sure a round of martinis at some point. I vaguely remember stumbling home and falling on my bed. My next memory was my phone ringing incessantly, not stopping no matter how many times I tried to turn it off.

Eventually I answered it. “’ello?” I groaned, my throat feeling as dry and scratchy as the voice it produced.

“Oh God, Trent, are you only waking up now?”

I pulled my phone from my ear and looked at it. Ten forty-three. “It—it’s the weekend.”

“We’re supposed to go to the courthouse!” Shit. Right.

“Okay, okay.” I rolled over in bed. A sharp pain echoed through my head. “Just go on without me.”

“Oh, go to Hell.” I pulled the phone away from my ear again. I swear, she was deliberately trying to be as loud and screechy as possible. “I’m out here, waiting in the car, where I’ve been trying for the last ten minutes to get you to pick up the damn phone. No, I am not going without you. This is your boyfriend and you—”

“Wait. You’re in the car? What car?” Cait didn’t own a vehicle. None of my friends did.

“Cameron’s car.” In the background I heard “Hi Trent!”

I sighed and slowly stood up. The room spun around me for a few rotations. “Okay. Fine. Gimme a few minutes.”

“You have three minutes, and then I’m storming in there and dragging you along. I don’t care if you’re in your boxers and nothing else.”

“Please, I think you’d like that.”

“Three minutes!” Again with the screaming. She hung up and I struggled to get out of bed. I was still in my clothes from the night before, so getting dressed was fortunately nothing more than replacing my worn, wrinkled, slightly wet (I didn’t want to even guess with what) shirt with a clean, collared one to reflect the reverence of the city’s courthouse. That, and I didn’t want Cait yelling at me for dressing down.

I was out the door, greedily drinking from a plastic water bottle, in two minutes and fifty seconds. Caitlyn and Cameron were waiting for me in a silver sedan. I climbed in the backseat and immediately lay my head against the window.

“Good night?” Cameron asked. The car pulled away from my house.

“We were celebrating,” I muttered.

“A bit too much for just one win, if you ask me,” Caitlyn said.

“Pretty sure I didn’t ask you.” My whole body slumped against the door. Fuck it. We deserved that night. I deserved that night. I regretted nothing.

Except everything.

Fortunately, I was feeling a bit less woozy as Cameron parked outside the courthouse. Despite it being a Saturday morning, the lot was nearly packed with vehicles. I got out of the car and was immediately hit with a wave of nausea, which passed after closing my eyes and taking several deep breaths. Cait came up beside me and linked our elbows. “I swear, if you throw up in there, I will murder you and then represent myself at my trial.”

“Wonderful.”

The three of us made the trek up the grand staircase to the courthouse. I had to admit it wasn't exactly what I had imagined it would be. I’d pictured a large, imposing building with granite columns and a statue of Lady Justice holding balancing scales. Instead, I was facing a three-story building with nothing particularly architectural to show for. It could have been any old place in the city.

We checked in at a reception desk, where Caitlyn very convincingly explained that we were all pre-law students looking to do research for a case. I just nodded my head and smiled as she motioned to me and Cameron. A minute later we’d signed in, been given cheap plastic badges and were being escorted down the hall, passing a few men and women dressed quite exquisitely. If I’d had the mental capacity at the time, I probably would have felt a bit embarrassed to be wearing such casual clothing.

We were brought into a small meeting room with a table and several cushioned chairs. I fell into one of them, while Caitlyn was given some paperwork to fill out. “What’s this for?” Cameron asked, looking over her shoulder.

“Our request for the files related to Josh’s case.” She was writing up a storm on the pages, barely taking any time to even read all the forms she was signing. “If anyone asks, we’re doing a project on Legal Guardianship, which is why we want the files.”

“Works for me.” I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I could have fallen asleep right then and there. Though at that moment there were few places I couldn’t have drifted off.

Caitlyn finished and dropped the pen. She may as well have banged a gong. “I’ll be right back. You two sit tight.” She left the room with purpose, closing the door behind her. I winced as it slammed shut.

“So,” Cameron said, after a few seconds of silence, which I had very much appreciated, “fun times last night?”

I laughed painfully. “It kind of reached a point where it wasn’t even fun. Just very, very drunk.” I forced myself to sit straight and face him. “How about you? Get up to anything fun last night?”

He shrugged. “I’m working on a new camera for my drone. Want to try to make one that can move on its own, instead of having to turn the drone in order to turn the camera.”

“That’s cool. Though not really the best way to spend a Friday. Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked. “Or boyfriend?”

He shook his head and laughed. “Nah, I’m not that kind of person.”

“Human?”

“Don’t make me pound this table,” he said. “No, I guess I’m asexual or something. Never really cared about guys or girls. There’s more important things in life when you think about it.”

I smiled and leaned back in my chair once again. “If you say so.”

We didn’t speak any further, and after a minute or so I felt myself dozing off. I think I briefly lost consciousness, as the next thing I remember was Caitlyn coming back into the room with a stack of folders in her hands. “Is that his case?” I asked, looking at the massive amounts of paper pouring out from the manila folders.

“His, and a bunch of other cases and documents related to it. The Clerk thought she was being helpful by providing them. I didn’t want to be rude.”

“Yeah, God forbid you ever act that way.” She shot me a glare as she dropped the files on the desk. I stood up, grimacing at another rush of blood to the head, and grabbed one of them. “So, what are we looking for?”

She yanked the file right out of my hands. “You’re looking for nothing. Did you not hear what I just said? Most of these are useless to us.” She started rummaging through the folders until she found one about two-thirds of the way down. “Here we go. This is Josh’s case.”

“And it’s just accessible like that?” Cameron asked. “Like, we just ask them for it, and they have to provide it?”

“Pretty much. One of the great things about our country.” She opened the file and started rifling through the pages. She pulled a few out and looked them over. Every few seconds she’d mutter a “ooh” or a “hmm”.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m still reading.” Her eyes didn’t leave the page. “I’ll tell you when I’m done.” She carried on for another five minutes, before finally putting the pages on the table and looking up at us. “Okay, do you want the complex version or—”

“The second one,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks so much for letting me finish. And don’t even think about making a joke.” She stared me down so hard, I was pretty sure I was on the verge of turning into stone. “Here’s the deal, and I have to preface this by saying that this is really crazy.”

She wasn’t kidding. It was as we had suspected: Josh’s parents had used his suicide attempts—one at fourteen and another at sixteen—and history with depression to make a claim of guardianship for when he turned eighteen, which had happened in March. The judge had agreed with them that Josh’s care should be in their hands until he turned twenty, essentially turning him into a minor for those years. He’d also said that Josh should have the opportunity to take on adult responsibilities, including going to college, in order to grow and break out of his depressive habits.

Then it got weird. Caitlyn read through Josh’s own statements, in which he was adamant that his parents were over exaggerating his mental state, and that felt his actions were being blown out of proportion. She read a transcript of part of the judge’s conversation with Josh, in which the judge asked Josh if he’d tried to kill himself. Josh didn’t deny it but said that it was a dark point that he didn’t feel he was in anymore. He went on to say that he was not struggling with school or social interactions as much as his parents had argued, pointing out that his most-recent report card was just a few points below what he normally achieved, and that contrary to what they had said, he had not demonstrated signs of further suicide risk, for the very simple reason that he wasn’t suicidal.

“Despite what he’d said, the judge had still issued the guardianship,” Caitlyn finished, putting the papers down. She shook her head. “This doesn’t clear things up much, does it?”

“No,” I said slowly, “but I’m glad we found it. I’d thought that maybe Josh’s parents were justified in his disappearance, like there was something serious that they were addressing. But now… well, at least now there’s room for doubt.”

“So, you believe him?” Cameron asked. “You believe what Josh told the judge?”

“I mean, I’m more inclined to believe him than his parents.”

“Okay, Trent.” Caitlyn crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at me. “Let’s play devil’s advocate here. Why? Why do you think Josh is the one telling the truth and his parents are lying?”

I looked away, to the pale beige walls that surrounded us, and thought for a second. “Because I trust him,” I said. I looked back to Cameron and Caitlyn. “I trust that when he says his parents were exaggerating his depression, that they were. And maybe that’s not a good enough reason to take some sort of drastic action yet, but it at least means I have more investigating to do.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough. I agree—there’s still so much more to this story that we need to uncover. I guess the question is, where do we go next?”

I looked back at the court files and sighed. “I think we have a few different paths to take, so it’s good that there are three of us.”

“Is that so?” Caitlyn asked. “You’re not just using me for my legal knowledge?”

“Of course not. Every team needs a hot member, right?” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. Cam, how would you feel about doing some espionage?”

He rubbed his hands together. “I can’t think of anything more fun.”

“That’s the spirit. I need you to find out where Josh went to high school, then locate his friends and see what he was really like during this whole court episode. Was he as depressed and non-functional as his parents said, or were they blowing the whole thing out of proportion?”

“Or flat-out lying,” Caitlyn added.

“That too. Think you can do that?”

He grinned. “Sounds like a blast.”

“I think it will be. Now, Cait.” I turned to her. “I need more legal knowledge. In particular, if we can prove that Josh’s parents have done something bad to him—sent him away against his will or something like that—are there any avenues we can take to try to revoke their guardianship?”

Her face scrunched up. “That’s a very good question. I’ll take a look, maybe talk to some of my professors.”

“Excellent.”

“Wait a minute,” Cameron said. “You’re sending us off to do these things. What’re you going to do, Trent?”

I sighed again and looked to the door. “I need to get some more information firsthand.”

“And that means…”

“I’m going to talk to Josh’s dad.”