“May it please the court, may I approach the witness?” Heather says.
I wince at the awkward phrasing.
“No,” Randall interrupts loudly. “Say ‘May I approach the witness, your honor.’”
Heather slams her hand on the side of the table. “You just told me to say ‘May it please the court’ every time,” she hisses through clenched teeth.
“No, we told you to ask for permission,” Randall glares back. “It’s redundant when you say ‘May it please the court, may I approach.’”
“This is fucking stupid as hell!” Heather yells and storms out.
I drop my head to the desk and wonder if I can go to sleep now and wake up sometime after I’ve graduated.
“Can we take a break?” Emily asks.
“Yes. Take a break,” I mumble against the table.
“We shouldn’t even go to Regionals,” Randall remarks as he slides into the seat next to me. It’s a week away. I don’t bother to lift my head, which Randall takes as permission to keep complaining. “I don’t know why you asked her to join us,” he snipes.
I finally do raise my head to glare at him. “You were there. Don’t try to pretend you weren’t. She had the best closing of everyone who tried out. She was fucking moving. I think you were near tears.”
He averts his face. “I was not.”
“Liar.”
He sighs and swivels back to face me. “You could have done it. You could do the closing just as well as anyone.”
“Not really.” This time it’s my turn to look away. I stack my already neat pile of papers and tap them so their edges are all perfect.
“You know what your problem is?”
“Gosh, Randall, that question is such a fun one to hear and to answer. I’ve got so many faults, though, we’d be here all night listing them all.” I curl up the edges of the papers and fantasize about smacking Randall in the face with them.
“Your problem is you don’t take enough chances.”
My stomach clenches at his accusation. “I took a chance on Heather.”
He scoffs. “That’s not taking a chance. That’s you hiding again.”
The team files in before I can respond, but his criticism burns as hot as if he held a flame under my chair. As I watch everyone take their places—Emily on the witness stand, Randall back behind the two desks we set up to be the judge’s bench, Heather at the table opposite me—I wonder if Randall’s right.
Is that what I’m doing? Hiding behind Heather? Behind Ace? Do I use all these excuses so I don’t get hurt? So I won’t fail? Do I take the easiest path? And pretend that makes me happy?
“Ahem,” Heather clears her throat next to me. “Are we going to do this thing?” She gestures toward Emily.
“Yes.” I try to shake off Randall’s hurtful words. “Yes, we’re doing this thing.”
The rest of the team springs to action, and we make it all the way through the trial without stopping. None of us corrects Heather’s errors, or our own for that matter. We let it all slide. I’m too tired, still stinging from Randall’s rebuke, and too heartsore to really care.
“We’ll take a ten-minute break and do closings,” I say after finishing with the last examination. Beside me, Heather looks fresh and invigorated as if the last two hours weren’t completely draining. “Heather, I have some notes I typed up—”
“No, thanks,” she interrupts me. “I’ve got this. In fact, we can start now if you want.”
Randall wiggles his eyebrows at me, but I’m still angry at him to join in any of his games.
“Sure.” I slump against my chair. Anything for this practice to be over.
She stands and strides confidently toward the open space in front of the fake jury box. She extends one hand toward Randall. “May it please the court? Opposing counsel?” The other hand floats toward me. “Women and men of the jury. On behalf of my client and co-counsel, we thank you for your time. The right to trial by jury is as fundamental to this country as owning a gun or the right to vote or the right to practice one’s religion. It’s in both the 6th and 7th Amendments to the Constitution. By sitting here today, you are upholding the very document that created this country.”
Her reference to the Constitution is smart. I jot a note to make sure she includes it every time. Heather proceeds to tell the room full of weary students exactly why her client was victimized by a callous corporation seeking profits over safety.
Her rich voice, unhurried, weaves a tale of a hard worker, taken advantage of by a shoddily designed product that was inevitably going to hurt someone. In this case, that someone was our client.
By the end, we’re sitting there with our mouths hanging open, and I, pretending to be the counsel for the manufacturer, want to throw myself at her feet and beg for forgiveness.
After her last thank you, the entire room is silent until Randall releases an awe-filled, “Damn.”
And he keeps repeating it as our teammates jump out of their seats and rush Heather. They clap and smile and hug her. Every mistake she’s made, every insulting word she’s said, it’s all forgotten.
And seeing my whole team embrace her makes me feel even shittier than when I thought we were going to send another losing team to Regionals.
Maybe I’ve been too hard on Ace.
“What?” Heather demands. “Why are you looking at me like that? Did I fuck up again?”