The better version
by M. F. LuderPart one
"Smart kid like you. You got to have a plan. Some kind of a dream."
- Sandy Cohen. The Pilot.
18. black
Seth turns the corner, frowning slightly, looking out of the window to make sure he's in the right street. It's not that he minds going to pick up his mom. It's more like, well, the whole construction thing was never his thing, and he feels like a fish out of water -- or more like a fish on the plain concrete. Seth shakes his head, turns left and, just like she said, the site is impossible to miss. He can see the plywood walls securing the site, not that they secure anything.
He parks on the corner. He checks his watch as he gets out of the car. Five forty. Good timing. She was supposed to be done by five thirty. He wonders if he should knock or just call her on her cell and tell her that he's waiting outside. The question is taken away from him as one of the pieces of wood opens like a door and a couple of guys, obviously construction crew, walk out. He shrugs inwardly. Since it's opened.
He walks inside, being careful with... he frowns, looking down at the floor. Is that iron? Or... what was it she called it? Corr something iron? He shrugs, not that it matters really. It's something on the floor trying to get him to trip, actually. He's very careful around it. Because, yeah, it's only his luck that he would fall before the entire crew and make a fool of himself.
Seth eyes the first four floors of the mega thing already in place. Concrete, yes, that much he can recognize. And big. And gray. And dark and Seth has no idea what else. He turns around, looking to see his mom could be, but sees nothing, just the site and the crew. He sighs, and something catches his attention from the corner of his eye.
He turns to his right and, behold, there's a small two-room thing further down. Seth makes his way toward the place. If she isn't there, well, then, he might have to actually talk with someone and ask them about a thin blonde woman who runs the place and where exactly is she?
He notices there are portable bathrooms on the right of the rooms, five or six of them, people coming out of them. Of course. Probably changing or at least freshening up before going home.
Seth's about to knock on the wooden door of what Seth assumes are offices, when he hears voices from inside. He can recognize his mom's and then two men as well. Voices harsh and angry. It reminds him of the few times his parents fought, always quiet but very harsh, like they didn't want him to hear. Maybe this is the same thing. They don't want the crew to know that there's something going on.
He sighs, shaking his head. Oh, well. He won't intrude. Might as well just wait for her.
He chooses the corner as the perfect place, about five feet from the door and six from the bathroom. He leans back, hands in his pockets.
Seth goes over his schedule for the next couple of days. It's barely Wednesday and his mom might need him to pick her up again tomorrow. Her car's in the shop and his dad's stuck in this big trail thing. So, he has to plan in advance, be sure to have the time to pick her up. He can finish his paper for Biology tonight, maybe even get a head start in AP Literature. That thing isn't due until Friday, but might as well just do something about it. Chemistry is due Saturday, at the ungodly hour of eight in the morning. He should do that too. Seth groans in the back of his throat, sophomore year so totally sucks.
Seth tries to remember if he has anything dangling over his head when he sees a young guy, not much older than him probably, walking out of one of the bathrooms. He has blond hair that has dark stains on the ends. The guy's wearing a white t-shirt that has long ago stopped being white. It has gray stains that Seth assumes is from the concrete handled on a daily basis, and another set, dark green and yellow. Had Seth known more about construction, he could have guessed it was the mark of additives in the concrete, but he has no idea what they are. Seth frowns, head tilted to the side. Weird, the guy really doesn't look old enough to be working here full time.
He gives the guy a small smile and a raise of his head. "Hey."
The guy pauses for a moment, seeming to wonder who exactly Seth is. Seth tells himself not to fidget, not to shift his weight from one foot to the other.
"Hey."
The silence between them seems to stretch and Seth hurries himself to say. "Hmm... I'm just," he shrugs, "I'm waiting for her," he jerks his head in direction of the room on his right, "to finish. I'm her ride of the day." Seth hears the one guy inside raising his voice and Seth can't stop himself from muttering, "And if he so much as yells at her, I'll swear to God--"
"He wouldn't dare," the guy says after a moment, taking a step closer to Seth. Seth cocks his head to the side, waiting for the guy to elaborate. At first, it seems like he might leave the sentence hanging and Seth will have to ask more, because this waiting thing is really killing him, but then the guy shrugs. "He isn't stupid enough to yell at someone who holds his job in her hands."
"Oh. Right."
At times, Seth forgets that she's not the nice lady in a hundred committees, the one who likes to help at fundraisers, who offered him as a white knight in this year's cotillion, no matter how much he didn't want to be part of that. She's not only his mother, who still pesters him about going out more, finding a nice girl and having friends. She's the woman who holds all power here, the boss of the boss. The one.
Seth glances back from the floor, looking at the guy. "Hmm. So. Like, what happened?"
The guy ponders for a moment, shifting his gaze toward the construction on the other end of the lot. "You a CE?"
Oh. No wonder. Seth shakes his head when the guy turns to look back at him, a glare in his eyes. Seth raises his hand in mock surrender. "Dude. No. Nothing like that. I'm the last microbe in the food chain. Hell, I'm not even in the food chain. I'm plankton, that's what I am."
The guy gives him a small smile, nothing but a curl upward of his lips, but that's enough for Seth. Seth grins at him, shifting in his place. He pulls away from the wall and takes a step closer.
"I'm Seth, by the way." Seth grins. "Like I said, nothing but her ride."
The guy nods. "I'm Ryan."
Seth bounces on his feet, nodding as he does so. "Ryan. Cool. Ryan. I'm Seth."
"You already said that."
Seth chuckles, head tilted to the side. "Right. Right. Sorry." He pauses for a moment, thinking back to the question. "Hmm. Sorry to ask this, and yeah, I have no idea what goes on over here, but, what's a CE?"
Ryan gives him another small smile. "Civil Engineer."
"Oh." Seth shakes his head. "No, no. I had it right. I'm not that. I'm in Harbor High school, sophomore year, see?"
"Then I'll restructure my thoughts about the Resident Engineer. He's an asshole."
"That bad?" Ryan nods, searching in his back pocket for something. Seth notices Ryan takes out a rather battered pack of cigarettes, offering them to Seth. "No, no. Thanks."
Ryan lights one himself, taking a long puff before continuing his thought. "Yeah. Asshole. He treats the whole crew like shit." He shrugs. "I mean, not that Patterson is much better."
"Patterson?"
Ryan nods. "The architect. He's in there with Mrs. Cohen." He pauses for a moment, looking at Seth square in the eyes. Ryan's gaze seems to shift around Seth's face before stopping back on his eyes. "You her son, right?"
"Yeah. Hmm. Not that could tell by looking at me, but yeah."
"You have her manners."
Seth doesn't quite understand what Ryan means by this, but doesn't ask. "Still. You haven't told me what happened."
"Not much to tell. There were some problems with the contour lines. The base station must have been off, for the error it gave."
Seth has to go over the words once more in his mind, slowly, making sure each meaning is carved into his brain. It takes him a minute to understand the meaning of it all. Or at least have some idea of what they are talking about here.
"Hmm. Okay. So. It was off. No big deal, right?"
Ryan smirks, taking another long puff from his cigarette. "Not exactly. It was off by three feet."
So, yes, three feet is quite a lot, but if that means that one room is bigger than another one by three square feet, then really Seth doesn't see the problem. "I mean, it's just ground area, right?"
Apparently, Seth has it all wrong, because Ryan shakes his head. "No, the contour lines doesn't give you area, it gives you the shape of the land above sea level." Ryan, cigarette still in his right hand, points at the construction with his left. "See, we've already built three underground floors. Two are parking space, one is storage. We've done work on the first three ground floors as well, put up the reinforced steel for the fourth floor. But they've just noticed that, compared to the blue prints, we're three feet above the label."
"Sorry, dude. Label?"
Ryan smiles. "It's the number written on the contour lines. Like, say, the top of the first floor's 9 feet over the ground level, right? So in the blue prints it'll say 9 feet, in that contour line."
It takes a moment for the words to sink in, again, and Seth wonders how this guy, again, not much older than him, can know so much. "So?"
"So, if we keep this up, by the time we reach the top floor, the fortieth floor, we'll still be three feet above the required height. We should have dig three feet deeper, to make the mark."
"But. Dude. It's only three feet."
Ryan shakes his head. "There are regulations and permits. I'm pretty sure ours doesn't cover the three feet error. City hall could shut us down for that."
"Oh. Well." No wonder his mom is on the verge of yelling at the guy, from the way he can hear her voice inside, not quite raising, but very much on the verge of it. "No wonder."
Ryan nods. "It was the resident's fault. He should have gone over the blue prints and the topography map. Made sure the contour lines were right. He should have made sure the base station was calibrated when we dug the basements." He jerks his head toward the room. "The architect is probably trying so save his neck as well."
Seth shifts, looking over his shoulder at the window looking inside the room. He can see the outline of his mom through the thin drapes.
"You know a lot about this," Seth mentions off handedly, turning to look back at Ryan, who shrugs. "You a CE?"
The question leaves Seth's lips before he knows what he's asking, and he notices, plainly visible under the darkening light of late afternoon, the way Ryan's face seems to close up at the question, hardening, his jaw setting. Still, Ryan shakes his head.
"Hmm. Sorry. I didn't--"
"I've worked at this long enough."
Ryan's voice is slow and only slightly harsher than before, but Seth gets the drift. And that comment was way too stupid from him. Even from him. "How long is long enough?"
Ryan shrugs. "Two years."
Seth swallows, doing the math in his brain. "How old are you?"
"Twenty."
Seth doesn't say anything at that. Twenty. Twenty. Two years, meaning he started at eighteen. Seth can't quite buy that. Ryan, really, he can't be more than eighteen. He looks young, if only the edges of his eyes, the hardness in his jaw, making it look like he's older. Seth's certain Ryan can't be older than him, and he's only sixteen. Something in the back of Seth's mind tells him that Ryan might be lying to him. Ryan might not have given the entire truth because he didn't want to get the supervisor in a jam, hiring an underage kid for a work so hard in construction. God.
Seth's about to ask something else, doesn't know exactly what, but something else, when the door on his right opens. He turns around, looking at his mother, standing her ground as a guy, barely a year older than him probably, walks out. The CE, Seth assumes, and then an older guy in an expensive suit following, the architect. His mom sighs and shakes her head before walking out last, smile on her lips as she sees him.
"Seth, sweetie. I hope you didn't wait long."
Seth shakes his head, leaning slightly forward for her to place a kiss on his cheek. "No. Ten minutes, tops. Actually, I was talking with this Ryan guy..." He's about to do the introductions, in case his mom hasn't met the guy, but when he turns around, Ryan's gone. Seth turns once again and can see him, Ryan, walking toward the entrance to the site, not looking back at him. Seth sighs.
"Sweetie?"
Seth smiles at his mom, shaking his head. "Nothing. This guy I met. Very nice. Told me there was a problem with..." The name of the thing Ryan was explaining eludes him. "Hmm. Something."
Kirsten nods. "Yes, horrible. I'll explain in the car."
They make their way out, slowly, Kirsten going over the files in her hand, the blueprints, making sure she hasn't forgotten anything inside. From what she tells him, she'll start making calls as soon as she gets home.
"It was because of the topography map, the contour lines." She says when they're in the car, Seth driving her home, then he'll drive back to the campus. Probably take out a couple of books from the library, then back to the dorm room. "They were all wrong. Three feet error. Can you believe that? Now I'll have to change the permits and that won't be cheap."
Seth half listens to her, understanding less and less the more technical the conversation becomes. She talks about base stations, about the percentage for error in this kind of thing. The cost for the company to get the permits straightened out and the base calibrated. She's worried, and he understands that much, so he lets her talk and nods when he has to, telling her he hopes things work out.
Arriving home, Seth thinks about the guy he met barely hours ago and how right he was about the root of the problem. It was that was base thing Ryan talked about. Kirsten reminds Seth that she might call him tomorrow to pick her up again.
Seth nods. "Sure," he says, getting out of the car. "Mom, if your car keeps acting up on you, not only you'll have to take it to the dealer, you might even have to change it."
She doesn't think it'll come to that, but still. Walking into the house, Seth half thinks about the papers that need to get done, the memory of blue eyes and a small smile already drifting to the background.