Jordan switched off the speaker. “Okay, we don’t need to hear any more of that.” He tucked the phone into his jacket pocket, then looked straight ahead, waiting for me to say something. I wanted to ask him if what his mom had said was true, and if it wasn’t, why she’d said it. But I was afraid of the answer. Jordan might have lied to her about me as part of his plan to get his parents up to the cabin. Instead, I asked, “So what was your most embarrassing moment?”
“Besides now?”
“The embarrassing thing with Krista. What were your parents talking about?”
He didn’t answer. He still wouldn’t look at me.
“Why did your mother laugh when I called your father ‘Jordan’s dad’?”
“Because he’s probably never been called that before. It’s always been the other way around. I’ve gone through life known as Christopher Hunter’s son. He’s always been himself. Movie star. Icon. Idol. Whatever.” And then Jordan turned to look at me. “You have no idea how much it stinks to have a father who’ll always be better-looking and more popular than you.”
“He’s not better-looking than you,” I said. “I mean, Jordan, he’s old, and you’re way hot.”
“Yeah, well Krista didn’t think so.” He stared at the trees around us again. One of his hands tapped against the steering wheel. “We’d been going out for four months. I spent four months telling my dad how great she was and how perfect we were for each other. I thought we were anyway. I thought she really liked me. So finally on one of his visitation weekends, he met her.” Jordan shook his head and didn’t say anything else.
“What happened?”
“She made it clear who impressed her more. Right in front of me, she went all crazy and flirty over my dad.”
“That is wrong,” I said. “I mean, that is like Jerry-Springer-wrong.”
He laughed but without much humor. “I haven’t introduced him to any girls since then, even though I know it’s not his fault.” As though he just remembered why we were sitting in the car, he took the phone back out of his pocket and held it to his ear. “It’s quiet. Maybe they reached the cabin.” He listened for a minute longer. “I don’t hear anyone in the car. They must have gone inside.” Turning back to me, he held out his hand for my keys. “Okay, it’s time for us to do our part.”
I pulled my key chain from my pocket. It sat in the palm of my hand in a jumble. “Are you sure we should do this now? In another couple of hours it will be dark. We’d be harder to see.”
“But they might leave by then. We need to do this now while we know they’re busy.”
I dropped the keys in his hand, then zipped my jacket higher. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”
We left the Jaguar pulled off on the side of the road, got in my Honda, and drove the rest of the way to the cabin. I made Jordan drive my car because I knew we’d be caught. At least one of his parents would hear a car pull up to the house, or happen to look out the window and wonder why another silver Honda Civic sat in the driveway. Worse yet, it was entirely likely that some hot-wiring hoodlum would drive by the Jaguar, see it was unoccupied, and take off with it.
When Jordan’s parents started screaming at us, I wanted to pretend I had as little to do with this as possible.
Jordan turned from the main road onto a dirt one that wound down to a small wooden cabin. He cut the engine and rolled slowly down the drive. Pine needles crunched under the wheels so loudly that every moment I expected to see the door open and one of his parents step out. I gripped the armrest and kept my gaze trained on the door.
Jordan eased my Civic next to his own, put the car in park, and slipped my keys into his pocket. “This will just take a minute,” he whispered, and was out of the door. I followed him, darting out like a fugitive. Once out in the open, I didn’t know what to do. I settled on crouching behind my car while I bit my fingernails.
Jordan retrieved the Pima charm from his car, attached it to my rearview mirror, then knelt behind his car. With a couple of swift twists of the screwdriver, his license plate fell off. He strode over to my car and repeated the procedure. While he switched the plates and screwed them back on, I stared at the house and ruined the remainder of my fingernails. Four windows faced us. Blinds covered two of them. Curtains were pulled back on the others. Through one of them, I could see movement. Jordan’s mother came into view, walking across the room. I didn’t breathe. “Your mom,” I whispered.
Ten
Jordan didn’t look up. He just twisted the screws faster.
His mom walked into what must be the kitchen and dropped a box on the counter. Then she stood in front of the window sorting through its contents.
“Is she looking out here?” Jordan whispered.
“Not right now, but she’s standing by the window.”
He gave the screw a last twist, took my hand, and pulled me over to the back of his Honda. “Okay, now comes the hard part. We’ve got to get out of here without being heard or seen.” Personally, I hadn’t thought the easy part had been that easy, and I was not thrilled to hear that what came next would be harder.
Jordan looked over at the cabin. “My mom can’t be standing there when we start the engine. She’ll hear us and look up.”
“So you want to wait here until she moves?”
“We can’t wait. She might glance out the window and see two cars.”
We stared at one another. I tried to think of something to help instead of reminding him that I’d told him this would never work. “Call the cabin,” I said. “If the phone rings, she’ll go answer it.”
Jordan dug his phone out of his pants pocket. While we squatted behind the car he punched several buttons. After a moment Jordan’s mom turned away from the counter and walked out of sight. As soon as she did, we both scurried around the sides of Jordan’s car and climbed in. I slid down in my seat to be less visible. Jordan slipped his key into the ignition, but didn’t turn it. “Hi Mom, did you make it up to the cabin?” A pause. “Great.” Another pause. “No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just whispering because I’m . . . in the movie theater.” Another pause. “Jessica and I decided to hit a matinee before dinner.” Using his free hand, Jordan snapped his safety belt in place. “I was just wondering, does the CD player at the cabin work?” Jordan put his hands on the key, ready to start the ignition. “I want to know just in case I ever decide to hang out there before you rent out the place.” Another pause. “Can you check just to make sure? And turn it up loud to make sure that the speakers work okay too.” A longer pause. “Humor me, Mom. I’m the only offspring you have.”
As soon as Jordan heard music coming from the phone, he turned the car on and backed up the drive. It seemed loud. The engine, the pine needles, his voice. I wasn’t sure the stereo inside the cabin would be noisy enough to drown it all out. I also wasn’t sure that Jordan—driving one-handed, quickly, and backward—was going to make it to the main road without taking out a few pine trees or bushes along the way.
But neither happened.
After our car pulled onto the main road, Jordan told his mom, “Thanks, I gotta go now. The movie is about to start,” and hung up. Two minutes later we parked beside the Jaguar. He turned to me with a grin. “See, the whole thing was simple.”
“That wasn’t simple,” I told him. “Look at my fingernails.”
“Now if switching the Hondas back after this is over proves just as easy . . .”
“I’ll have nothing on the end of my fingers except for bloody nubs.”
“You worry too much.” He sent a contented sigh in the direction of the cabin. “Well, I guess we can split up and drive home. Do you want to come back with me when my parents call for a jump start? If it’s too much of a hassle, I’ll tell them I dropped you off at home before I came up.”
“It’s no hassle,” I said a bit too quickly, and then added, “I mean, I’m the loyal type of girlfriend who doesn’t bail out on dates just because car maintenance is suddenly involved.” I knew in a
moment he would leave to drive the Jaguar, and I’d have to drive his Honda home. I wanted to spend more time with him. I looked at my hands instead of his eyes, just in case he could read my mind.
Jordan took my keys from his pocket, twisted my Honda key off of the chain so he could start my car when he went up to help his parents, then handed the rest of my keys to me. “When I come back up for the jump start, I’ll tell my dad to drive the Jaguar home. That way I can drive your Civic to your house so we can switch our cars again. See how simple it will be? Your fingernails will be spared.”
“What if they realize it’s not the battery and just call a tow truck?”
“Then you’ll have to go into the auto mechanic’s and cause a distraction while I swap the cars. Or the keys. Whichever is easiest.”
“And just how am I supposed to cause a distraction?”
He shrugged. “You’re the actress. It should be easy for you. Consider it your first real acting job. You can flirt with the mechanic.”
“Flirt with the mechanic? Jordan, have you ever gotten a good look at a mechanic? They’re all, like, old greasy guys named Gus.”
He opened the car door, letting in a blast of cool air mingled with pine scent. “Yeah, but you can flirt with people you don’t like if it means getting something you want. After all, that’s what you did with me.”
The accusation hit me like a slap. My head jerked back, and I gasped out, “I did not.”
He lifted an eyebrow in a gesture of disbelief.
“Jordan, my feelings for you were real.”
“Then it’s too bad they weren’t strong enough to keep you from trading me in for a part in the play.”
I wanted to reach over and grab him, to keep him in the car with me until he understood. Instead, he climbed out. “That isn’t fair,” I called after him. “I didn’t know Mrs. Shale would tell everyone.”
He turned around, tilting his head down to look at me. “Which is why the point of keeping a secret is that you don’t tell anyone.” He looked over at the Jaguar and shrugged as though he’d grown tired of the conversation. “It’s okay, Jessica. I understand why you did it. I understand because my dad used to be the same type of person. He loved acting so much that he traded his family in for all the fame. I don’t blame you for wanting to be a star. I’m sure you have the talent and the drive to make it. I’m just tired of being traded.” He turned and walked over to the Jaguar.
“It wasn’t that way,” I called after him, but I’m not sure he heard me.
With a shaky hand I shut the door, then started Jordan’s Honda. I hadn’t traded him. I’d just made a mistake. Couldn’t he find even an ounce of forgiveness for me? I wasn’t his father. I didn’t want fame more than anything else. I didn’t.
As I put the car in gear I thought of the daydreams I’d nurtured over the last few years. I saw myself on the screen, at a movie premiere, lounging by the pool, walking down a red carpet, and through all of it, I was alone.
The Jaguar pulled onto the street ahead of me. I eased over the dirt and back to the road so I could follow him. This time the sound of crushed pine needles sounded like hundreds of little pieces of my heart.
On the way home I didn’t tail Jordan closely. I didn’t want him to see my face in his rearview mirror. It’s bad enough to try and drive while tears keep blurring your vision, I didn’t want him to witness the whole event. Besides, by the time we made it to the highway, I knew how to get home on my own. I let the Jaguar pull so far ahead of me I didn’t see it anymore.
I regretted telling Jordan I’d go back to the cabin with him. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be stuck in a car with him. An hour of trapped silence up to the mountain, and then another hour coming back. I almost called Jordan and told him I’d changed my mind, but I decided against it. What was the point of making myself look childish? Christopher Hunter wasn’t going to call his son when he had car problems. He’d call a tow truck.
at six my phone rang. “I just got the call from my dad,” Jordan told me. “I’ll be by to pick you up in a half an hour.”
It was fifty minutes later that he rang the doorbell. Which in guy-time is only a little late. “I stopped by the Texaco station to fill up a gas can for my parents,” he told me with a half smile. “Just in case that’s the problem.”
I followed Jordan out to the Jaguar. As I slid into the passenger’s side I glanced into the backseat. “So where’s the gas can?”
“Well protected in the trunk. My father would probably rather walk home from the cabin than have me spill gasoline inside a Jaguar.”
I could think of nothing else to say. Well, nothing except for a treatise on how telling your drama teacher a guy’s true identity in order to get a play funded is not trading him in for a part in a play. Only I needed to think of a better way to put it because said like that, it sort of did sound like I traded him in for a part in a play.
Which I hadn’t.
Jordan pulled into the street and headed into town.
“When your parents called, did they sound like they were getting along?” I asked.
“It’s hard to say, but they’re through fixing things and sorting stuff, so they’ll have to talk until we get there. There’s nothing else to do. The place doesn’t even have a TV. With any luck she’ll be calling him Kit by the time we get there.”
“Kit?”
“The nickname she uses for him when she’s feeling happy, nostalgic, or has just finished one of her Christopher Hunter movie marathons. The rest of the time she calls him ‘your father’.”
“Oh.”
We drove through Three Forks and out onto the highway. I did a lot of armrest tapping and looking out the window. Jordan tuned the radio to an oldies station and sang along to a Beach Boys tune.
How can guys be so clueless to the stress level in their environment?
“Twist and Shout” came on. He sang along to that one too. Halfway through “Blue Suede Shoes,” I leaned over and turned down the radio.
“I didn’t trade you in,” I said. “I made a mistake. I let your secret slip out while I was talking to Mrs. Shale, but I didn’t think she’d tell everyone about it.”
He shrugged. “So the moral of the story is: Don’t trust people who value drama over keeping their word?”
“Yes,” I said, and then just as quickly, “No, because you’re about to say that applies to me too.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. There are lots of things more important to me than drama.”
“Name some.”
“My family. My friends. My values. Eating.” A long pause in which I tried to think of something else to add to the list. “Air.”
“Too bad I didn’t make the list,” he said.
“You did. I thought you were a friend. But I guess we were both wrong.” I went back to looking out the window, and after that, neither of us said anything else.
We pulled up to the cabin and parked the Jaguar adjacent to my Honda. Jordan’s dad was sitting on the steps underneath the porch light reading a magazine. His mom was nowhere around. I didn’t take this as a good sign that anything romantic had transpired between them.
Mr. Hunter stood up as we got out of the car. “Thank goodness you’re here. My joints are all starting to freeze together.”
Jordan walked around to the back of the Jaguar and opened the trunk. “Why didn’t you wait inside?”
“Because there are colder things inside. Namely your mother.”
Jordan picked up the jumper cables, then held them limply in one hand. “You and Mom have been fighting?”
Mr. Hunter flipped the hood of the Jaguar up, then went around to the driver’s side and turned the car on. He took the cables out of Jordan’s hands and strode over to the Honda. “Sorry, Jordan. I shouldn’t have said that about your mother. It’s just this stupid cabin. It’s brought back all the old memories—and apparently I was a villain in every one of them.”
Jordan leaned up again
st the Jaguar and watched his father connect the cables to the Honda’s battery. “You don’t have any good memories of the cabin?”
“Well, I did until tonight.”
Jordan’s mom walked out of the front door. She folded her arms when she saw us. “There you are. It’s eight thirty. I nearly called the police to see if you’d been attacked by wild bears on the way up.”
“Uh, sorry, Mom,” Jordan said. “I got a gas can in case that was the problem, then I had to drive slow so none of it would spill.”
She trudged down the steps. “Well, let’s get on with this and see if the car will work.”
Mr. Hunter walked toward the front seat of the Honda, but Jordan beat him there. He plopped into the driver’s seat. “I’ve got it, Dad.” Mr. Hunter returned to the Jaguar, sat in the front seat, and revved the engine.
I stood in front of my car because I didn’t know where else to go. Jordan’s mom walked up beside me. “I’m really sorry to ruin your date this way,” she said with forced cheerfulness. “But what can I say? It’s not like you plan for these things to happen.”
Well, not unless you’re Jordan anyway.
I nodded at her. “It’s fine.” Or at least I hoped it would be once my car started.
Mr. Hunter gave Jordan the signal to start his engine. He tried. The car made a whining sound, but didn’t start.
“Try it again,” Mr. Hunter said, and gunned the Jaguar harder.
My Civic made another sound, this time with more grinding and less whining, but it still didn’t start.
I saw Jordan’s look of dismay through the windshield. “It’s not working,” he said.
I stepped over to him. “Try speaking to it gently.”
Jordan didn’t say anything, but he turned the key again. It only clicked this time.
I leaned against the car and tilted my head in the driver’s side window. “Try telling it that it’s a good car—oh, and if that doesn’t work, threaten to push it over a cliff.”