Fakebook (23 page)

It was Thursday, February 11, and I was exhausted. The trip for Thai food had pushed my work routine well into the early morning, and with very little sleep, I was happy to leave the office and head to court for my four-hour break. Saturday was both Toy Fair and Valentine's Day, and I had a lot to get done before both. I walked into the court, eager to focus on other people's problems for a few hours.

The first case we saw was the continued “Yellow Brick Road.” We assigned all cases that spanned multiple days an arbitrary code name. To keep things fun, we had a
Wizard
of
Oz
theme that week and found “Yellow Bricks” kind of clever for a graffiti case.

It was a fairly cut-and-dried case. In fact, it only had been continued because there was simply too much evidence to cover in a single session. The deliberations went quickly, with the only hiccup being crazy Juror 8 choosing to singlehandedly legislate that street art is not a crime on the grounds of her membership to the Whitney. She was easily outvoted and we took a break.

I saw Juror 10 drinking a bottle of water in the break area. We seemed pretty like-minded in all the deliberations and had bonded a little over our shared reactions to Juror 8's weird antics.

“How often do you think they replace the burgers in there?” I asked, pointing to the White Castle vending machine.

“Oh god, I don't want to think about that. Those things are sketchy enough when you buy them from a restaurant,” she said.

“I've never actually had one. I'm afraid of taking that step…buying hamburgers by the sack.”

“Wise decision.”

“So…have you heard?” she asked.

“Heard what?”

“Juror 8. She's an art critic.”

“You don't say.” We laughed.

“Yeah,” I continued. “I like how she wants to put herself above the entire legislative process because she found an opportunity to remind us she has a newsletter.”

“I'm sure it's the hit of her halfway house,” she joked and we both laughed.

Juror 8 walked by and we quieted down quickly.

“Probably time to head back to the room,” I said.

We were queued up for the next case, something about an alleged gang member who was found with a gun and then fled arrest. We'd seen this prosecutor before, a young guy who was a bit on the doughy side and came across as a little mean spirited. He called in the arresting officer, also young but with a muscular build. He seemed like the kind of guy who didn't see a lot of nuance in the world. After the initial and formal protocol questions, we got into the meat of the case.

“I was on a routine patrol when I saw the defendant, Amadi, reach under a wheel well of a parked SUV. He removed a suspicious object and proceeded to place the object into the leg of his boot.”

“Did you recognize the defendant?”

“I have not interacted with him prior, no, but I did know of him. He is known to be affiliated with NYZ, an Uptown gang.”

“Upon seeing reasonable cause, what happened next?”

“As I approached the defendant, he fled.”

The officer had a certain…I don't know if “attitude” is the right word, but impatience. It was the tone of a guy who clearly had other things he'd rather be doing. “My partner and I pursued him, and after a few blocks' chase, we subdued the suspect. Upon search, we recovered an illegal handgun.”

The heavyset prosecutor submitted a photo of a handgun as evidence to the court, went through the usual legalese of confirming for the record that this was the gun in question, and read the official forensics report, where we learned the gun was loaded and its serial numbers filed off.

The police officer left the room. It seemed obvious that this was either a gun being sold or a gun about to be used, and this cop had probably stopped something nasty from happening in a nasty part of town.

The defendant's lawyer, a middle-aged woman with red hair, walked in. She began shuffling some papers around as we waited for the defendant to enter. I can't say what exactly our expectations were—or even if we had any—but no one was prepared to see the scared child who entered our courtroom.

He was sixteen, but he looked about twelve. He was skinny—maybe malnourished—and was wearing an old, oversized sweatshirt with a small tear at the collar.

“State your name for the court,” the prosecutor said.

“I went to the youth center with seven dollars…”

“No, I said ‘state your name.'”

This kid was overwhelmed. The prosecutor seemed…well…like an asshole.

“What?”

“I said ‘state your name,' for the record.”

“Amadi Johnson.”

“Please recall for the court your recollections of the night of February 3.”

“I went to the youth center with seven dollars. I had two dollars for my MetroCard and five dollars to go to the dance.”

Juror 8's ears perked up at the mention of the MetroCard.

“Then what happened?”

“I was walking to the youth center, and I saw something on the ground, next to a Dumpster. I thought to myself, ‘Whoa, I think that is a gun.'” His words were slow, deliberate. It took a lot of effort for him to get them out.

“What did you do then?”

“I put it in my boot to take it home. I had a phone number written down at home that I saw on the news. If I called this number, the police would take the gun and I would get a reward.”

His lawyer squeezed his forearm and nodded in a comforting, encouraging way.

“What did you do when the police officer approached you?”

“I was scared, and I ran away.”

“Why did you run away if you had nothing to hide?”

“I was scared and I ran away.”

“What were you scared of?”

It's uncomfortable watching a kid get grilled. Your emotional response is to protect him. The whole dynamic was fucked. The kid was weak, uneducated, poor. He felt like the victim.

“Have you ever heard of NYZ?”

“No, I do not know who they are.”

“You were not delivering a gun for NYZ?”

“I saw something on the ground, next to a Dumpster. I thought to myself, ‘Whoa, I think that is a gun.'”

It was hard not to notice these lines he kept repeating—verbatim. It almost sounded rehearsed, but at the same time…If I were in his position, I would rehearse what I'd say too, even if it was the truth. And I was an adult—an adult from a good family with an education. This kid could barely afford the two-dollar MetroCard to get to the dance. If he was, in fact, in the wrong place at the wrong time, this is how I think he'd act. Everything he said was possible, and his words were convincing, particularly when his whole life made me feel guilty.

When the deliberations began, the experience was tense and draining in a way none of us had felt before. It was heavy. It was so less abstract than any of our other cases.

The thing is, there was no overt victim that day. We weren't certain that what happened that day was even a crime. If we voted one way, Amadi was just a kid in the middle of a big misunderstanding.

If we voted another, Amadi was a criminal…or our victim.

We were an arm of the same society that allowed him to fall through its cracks. It didn't feel like duty to send this kid to trial, and it damn sure didn't feel like we were doing good work.

There was a handful of adamant factions on either side, but by and large, no one knew what to do, what to think. There was a very soft middle of weak votes, and the handful of absentees ensured that we couldn't reach the necessary eleven votes for either conviction or dismissal. The case would have to be continued another day when more evidence could be gathered.

We assigned the case the code name “Tin Man” for no particular reason. We walked out of the courthouse and exchanged some quiet and awkward good-byes.

A weird mix of vulnerability, exhaustion, and emotion made me impulsively text Dhara.

“Hey, just wanted to say I'm looking forward to Saturday. It means a lot to me.”

I knew the text was a mistake even before I sent it. We'd only been on a few dates. It was a dumb thing to say because it made Valentine's Day serious instead of frivolous—adding an expectation into our early courtship.

I distracted myself with a long meandering walk home through Chinatown. Eventually I made it to my street. It was barely seven, but it was pitch black and the wind was cutting. I wanted to just go to bed, but I couldn't. I had work to do, at least for a few hours. No more breaks, and I could be in bed by ten.

I grabbed my mail as I entered my building. There was a red envelope with a heart drawn on the back with the initials “KF.” I smiled in recognition of my secret foil's handiwork and proudly read “Katie Fisher's” card to me. “All the roads I've taken have led me to you. Happy Valentine's Day.” I tossed the card onto my coffee table and sat at the desk.

While my laptop was booting, I get the call I was expecting.

“Hey,” Dhara said. “So…I got your text.”

“Yeah…about that. I realized right after…”

“I just want to be clear, because sometimes I worry that I give the wrong signals. It's something I'm working on, but sometimes I make people think I like them more than…That's not right.”

“I understand what you're getting at,” I said. “You are worried we have uneven expectations.”

“Yeah…the text you sent made me worry. Like, I haven't seen any reason to run away from you or anything. I just want to make sure we're on the same page.”

“Totally,” I said. “I just had a really emotional case…it wasn't…I don't know.”

“All right,” she said. “Good.”

“We're still on for Saturday, right? The Valentine's Day date? I promise you an event appropriate to your moderate affection toward me.”

She politely laughed. “Yeah, that's the other thing. I was invited to go and visit some friends down in D.C. this weekend…Can we move it to Friday?”

“Yeah, that's fine,” I said. “Works out better for me, actually. Saturday I have to work all day. You know, the Toy Fair. Got to get there early before all the good toys are taken.”

“Okay, great,” she said. “I have to leave early Saturday morning, so let's just keep it low key and have an early night.”

“Sure.”

Valentine's Day. I could feel the words unpack a series of complications I was not equipped to handle with this new dynamic. By establishing uneven expectations, I had trapped myself. Any effort I showed would be mounting evidence that I was a situation she'd eventually need to handle. A lack of effort, on the other hand, would just compound her waning interest.

What was I thinking? She was an Ivy League–educated stunner in a lucrative industry. I was a publicly educated graphic designer with inconsistent gym habits. Emotional day or not, it was just hubris for me to push this forward.

I looked over at my card from my other “girlfriend.” Dipping into my other life seemed appealing at the moment, so I logged on to Facebook.

I looked back at the card and picked up my phone. Grasping at hope, I texted the 732 number of my anonymous rival. “Are you Jamie McAllister?”

I placed the phone down on the table, next to the card. I leaned back on my couch with my eyes closed and waited.

The phone vibrated. “No.”

I just stared at the text, feeling the last lingering hope that this was some sort of trick—a ruse from my secret foil—get dashed. All along, I'd held on to the rationalization that Fakebook wasn't hurting anyone. I was just telling a story. Playing a joke. That rationalization was shattered as my lie claimed its first victim.

Instead I just felt the burden of it all. This stupid commitment to a dumb idea I'd had four months ago…I could barely manage it when it only disrupted my life. Now I felt the full weight of Jamie's uncertain future. I placed my shaking palms on my forehead and pressed my fingertips into my scalp. I wanted to scream but couldn't…I was still far too lucid to not worry about how ridiculously dramatic that would be.

I just wanted to sleep, to take a break. I wanted eight hours to forget about this dumb fucking joke—to not worry about having a reasonable answer when people like Jamie eventually and inevitably asked why I would do this. I wanted one life again.

Oh god, my life…I wanted a break from that, too. I didn't want to think how I actually dreaded Friday night with Dhara. I wanted to not think about the sixteen-year-old kid and the gun concealed in his boot. I just wanted some fucking sleep. I'd been working every day and every night…with my only downtime while I was in transit between obligations. I just wanted to rest, to go to bed, and rest…to have nothing at stake for a few hours…to have no responsibilities for a few hours…to have no one watching.