The State Academic Excellence Championship was being held at the Franklin Convention Center in Hartford, a sprawling modern building full of glass walls, polished floors, banners from universities, and nervous teenagers wearing school blazers.
The lobby smelled of coffee, printer ink, and rain.
Students stood in clusters clutching calculators, project binders, engineering models, and identification cards.
Teachers hurried between registration tables.
Parents photographed everything.
I was looking for the sign marked
REGION FOUR CHECK-IN
when I heard a laugh that I had once known better than my own.
My body recognized it before my mind did.
I stopped.
Thirteen years disappeared.
There he was.
Michael Hartley.
Fifty-one years old now.
Silver beginning at his temples.
Expensive navy suit.
A watch that probably cost more than the car I had driven there.
He looked heavier than I remembered, broader through the shoulders, but unmistakably Michael.
Beside him stood Rebecca.
And beside Rebecca stood a teenage boy wearing the dark green blazer of St.
Augustine Preparatory Academy.
For one strange second, none of them noticed me.
Michael was bent slightly toward the boy, adjusting something on his lapel.
“Evan, relax,” he said.
“You've done harder things than this.”
The boy—Evan—gave a tight smile.
Rebecca touched his shoulder.
Then Michael looked up.
Our eyes met.
His face changed so quickly that it almost fascinated me.
Confusion.
