Ryan shook his head as if to clear it. Laurie and Jordan giggled. Wade grinned. “Do you think you can handle it?” he asked.
“Don’t you guys do anything small around here?”
“Never,” Wade said, placing his hand over his heart. “You’re in Texas now. We don’t know the meaning of the word.”
Ryan gave Jordan an amused look of resignation. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“You said you were hungry,” Jordan said. Her expression was pure innocence.
“I ought to smear this all over your face, baby Jordan.”
Laurie looked from Jordan to Ryan and back again with a confused expression.
Jordan knew she couldn’t explain. “It’s a joke between us,” she offered vaguely.
“It seems I overestimated my appetite and your Texas bowls of ice cream,” Ryan said with a grin. “You’re all going to have to help me.”
“All right!” Wade said, and pushed his bowl forward for Ryan to fill.
“Ryan’s super, Jordan,” Laurie whispered to her friend. You’re sure lucky to have him as your boyfriend!”
All Jordan did was smile weakly. If only she could tell the truth.
Ten
BY the end of the week, Jordan had begun to feel more comfortable with Ryan at school. They arrived together in the morning and went home with each other every afternoon. By now there was no changing anyone’s mind about their relationship. Jordan simply resigned herself to letting other kids assume they were boyfriend and girlfriend. She hoped Ryan never learned the truth.
She was completing work on a portion of the newspaper one afternoon when Ryan stopped by Mrs. Rose’s room. “I’ll be finished in a minute,” Jordan told him.
“Jordan, I don’t believe Ryan and I have officially met.” Jennifer’s sugar-coated voice flowed in her ear.
“Uh—Ryan, this is Jennifer,” Jordan said tensely.
Jennifer beamed him a 100-watt smile.
“Jordan’s just gone on and on about you. Do you like it here at Martin?”
Ryan nodded. “It’s okay.” His eyes took on a mischievous twinkle. “So what’s she been saying about me?”
“Not a thing,” Jordan interrupted quickly.
“Come on, Jordan. Ryan’s all you’ve talked about for ages now.”
Jordan could have choked her. But instead, Jordan said, “You know how it is. Talking about you beats talking about this newspaper. Jennifer, could you go to the teachers’ lounge and give this to Mrs. Rose?”
Jennifer flapped long eyelashes in Jordan’s direction. “Me? You want me to take it? Why can’t you?”
“Ryan and I need to get home.”
“Yeah.” Ryan rocked back on his heels. “My mom had an important job interview today. I want to find out how it went.”
“But I wanted to talk about the Rockies with you. I’m doing a report on them for my social studies class and I was hoping I could interview you.”
Jordan bounded to her feet and thrust the newspaper copy into Jennifer’s hands. “Go, before Mrs. Rose comes looking for it.”
Jennifer put on a pouting look. “Honestly, Jordan Starling. You treat me like a slave.” But she flounced out of the room.
Jordan sagged against a nearby desk. Boy, that was close, she thought to herself.
Ryan screwed up his face. “The Rockies? Are you sure your friends know I’m from outside Washington, D.C., and not from Washington the state? I’ve never been east of the Mississippi until I moved here.”
Jordan dismissed his concern with a flip of her hand. “Don’t pay any attention to Jennifer. Geography was never her best subject.” She scooped up her books and managed a big, bright smile. “Let’s go home, and I’ll make you a milkshake in the blender.”
“That sounds safe enough. I still haven’t recovered from the Hog Wallow.”
Jordan herded him down the hall, half afraid that Jennifer would pop out at any second to do an in-depth interview with Ryan about a vacation he never had. She didn’t breathe easy again until they were safely seated on the bus and headed home.
Later, in her kitchen, she scooped ice cream into the blender and then filled it with milk. “A Starling original,” she told Ryan while he watched. “Do you want a banana in it?”
“Sure.” He paused for a minute. “You know I’ve been thinking . . .”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“I think I will go out for the basketball team.”
“That’s great!” Jordan said. “I’ll come and cheer for you. What if your mother moves before school’s out?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head and his blond hair shimmered. “All I know is that I’d like to play. But first, I’ll have to make the team.”
“No sweat. One of our reporters just did a news story that said that the team isn’t doing very well. A couple of players quit.” She turned on the blender, but the ring of the phone made her turn it off immediately. She picked up the receiver. A man’s voice asked for Ryan. Jordan could tell by the crackle on the line that the call was longdistance. “For you,” she said to Ryan.
Ryan took the phone carefully, as if it might bite him. She heard him say, “Hello. Oh . . . hi, Dad.” Then there was silence. “Yeah, things are fine.” There was another pause. “She’s doing all right. No job yet.” Jordan saw that Ryan’s knuckles had turned white from holding the receiver too tightly. “Sure. I’ll write. Bye.” Ryan hung up, and the air in the room seemed to grow thick and heavy. Jordan swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure what to do or say.
Suddenly Ryan bolted from the room. “I’m going jogging.”
She scampered after him. But he’d darted up the stairs and into his room before she could catch him. In minutes he came out, dressed in sweats and a headband. His face looked pale and pinched.
“Wait a minute and I’ll go with you,” she offered.
“No,” he said. “I want to go alone.” He brushed past her on the landing.
“But your milkshake . . .”
“I don’t want a stupid milkshake! Tell Mom I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder as the front door slammed behind him.
Shaken, Jordan returned to the kitchen. She glared at the phone. In one brief minute, Ryan’s great mood had turned dark. She felt awful for him. And she hated Ryan’s father for making it happen. She stared down into the blender, where the ice cream and banana floated in milk. Then she dumped the mess into the garbage disposal.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Are you still speaking to me?”
Ryan’s question caused Jordan to glance up from her intense study of the back of the cereal box the next morning at breakfast. He’d come in the night before and gone directly to the room he shared with Jamey and spent all evening there. Jordan had explained to Mrs. Elliot what had happened. “Ryan has to work it out for himself,” she’d told Jordan. “I wish I could do it for him, but I can’t.”
“Of course, I’m still speaking to you,” Jordan said. “Would I complain because you left me behind and went jogging alone?”
He dropped his gaze. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“No big deal. Here, have some cornflakes.”
“Regular or Texas-sized?” Jordan laughed and pushed the box of cereal toward him. “Where is everybody?” he asked.
“Mom’s taken Jamey to school because his class is going on a field trip and she’s a driver.” She licked her lips and chose her next words carefully. “Is everything all right now?”
Ryan’s eyes turned cloudy. “I just wasn’t expecting my dad to call. It caught me off guard.”
“Don’t you miss him?”
Ryan stared absently into space. “We did everything together. He took me to all my games and cheered in the stands for me. But I feel like he dumped me when he moved out.”
“Even so, he did call you,” Jordan pointed out. “I’ll bet he misses going to your games, too.”
“Big deal.”
She cleared her th
roat and decided to change the course of the conversation. “Are you still going out for the basketball team?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Good. Maybe I’ll do an interview with you for the school newspaper.”
“As long as I’m on your good side,” he said, “how about ten extra minutes in the bathroom in the morning?”
“Watch it, buster! Don’t get pushy.”
“Sorry. I lost my head.”
Their eyes locked, and Jordan felt a warmth for him flood through her. He wasn’t her boyfriend in the way that Wade was Laurie’s. But Ryan Elliot was becoming more and more special to her. She had to admit that she cared about him in ways she’d never cared about anyone else. She only wanted the best for him. “Come on,” she said, breaking the silence. “We’d better get to school before they think we’re skipping classes.”
He darted to the door. “Last one to the bus stop has to jog an extra ten laps around the park tonight.”
She bounded after him into the sunlight.
Eleven
RYAN made the basketball team the same day his mother landed a job with a prestigious law firm. Jordan’s mother celebrated by ordering a cake from the bakery that announced “Congratulations to the Elliot Team!” in mounds of sugary green icing. As they sat at the dinner table and passed around slices of the dessert, Ryan asked, “Should I start the season if we might be moving soon?”
“Absolutely,” his mother told him. “I don’t think we’ll move right away. We’ll stay here until I can save up a few paychecks. Then I’ll look for an apartment and arrange to have our furniture shipped from Virginia. You go ahead and play basketball.
Jordan had mixed emotions. She liked Ryan. She liked his mother. But it was becoming harder to keep pretending he was her boyfriend to her friends at school. Still, if he moved, she knew she’d miss him terribly. “I’ll be in the bleachers to cheer for you, Ryan,” Jordan said.
“Aw, that’s okay. You don’t have to waste your time after school going to my games. I know you’re busy with the newspaper.”
“Well, with your mom working, I figure she can’t come to cheer. So I’ll do it for her. Besides, I’d like to see you play.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Not a bit. Martin hasn’t had a winning season in years. Maybe you’ll be our good-luck charm.”
“Yeah,” Jamey interrupted. “With Jordan yelling in the bleachers, it’ll scare the other team off.”
Jordan shot Jamey a murderous glance as he doubled over laughing at his own joke.
After cake and ice cream, Jordan put on her jogging clothes and ran with Ryan to the park. A numbing December chill set her teeth chattering. She tugged her knit cap lower over her ears and paused to rest on a bench near the play area. “Boy, it’s cold. Just think, Christmas is only a few weeks away.” Then she saw the sad look on Ryan’s face. She cleared her throat. “Is everything all right?”
“Sure.”
She watched him scuff the toe of his running shoe in the hard-packed earth. “You don’t act like everything’s all right. Come on, you can tell your old buddy, Jordan . . .” She regretted mentioning Christmas. She realized that it would be hard for Ryan to be separated from his dad over the holidays.
“I’ve never started a basketball season without my dad,” Ryan said. His voice sounded shaky.
“Maybe you could call him and tell him about your making the team.”
“Forget it. When he left us, I decided I never wanted to see him again,” Ryan said bitterly.
“But he’s your father,” Jordan said.
“So what? He ruined our lives. He changed everything when he left us. Why did he do that, Jordan? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “But you live here now. And you just made the basketball team. And your mom’s got a neat job. And you’re doing great in school. Maybe that’s enough for now.”
Ryan said nothing for a long time. When he did speak, his voice sounded as if it were coming from a long way off. “Maybe it is.” Then there was another short silence until he said, “When we get home, do you think you could make one of your special milkshakes?” His tone was lighter, more positive.
“Only if you promise not to run off like last time. It was one of my masterpieces, and I ended up dumping the whole thing.”
“Scout’s honor,” he said solemnly.
“I should make you fix it for me,” she said.
“Tell you what,” he told her. “I’ll race you to the corner. If I win, you fix it. If you win . . .” He left the remainder of the sentence for her to complete.
“But you’re faster than I am,” she insisted.
He stooped to retie his shoe. “I’ll give you a head start.” He pointed to the side of the playground. “Start from there and I’ll still beat you.”
“No contest,” she announced. She took one step and nearly fell. Glancing down, she saw that he’d somehow tied her shoelaces together. “Hey,” she yelped. “No fair!”
“I’ll meet you back at the house,” Ryan teased as started jogging away. The last thing he called was, “And remember, don’t skimp on the ice cream. I like extra scoops in mine.”
Jordan was so glad to see Ryan smile again that she didn’t mind the trick he’d pulled on her. “I’ll beat you someday, Ryan Elliot!” she shouted after him.
And, from a distance Jordan heard the sound of his deep laughter.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Looking back over the holiday season, Jordan thought Christmas had gone well for both families. Her dad’s arrival and the way he befriended Ryan in his open, good-natured manner, helped cheer up the Elliots’ first holiday alone. Ryan’s dad did send a box of Christmas gifts, and Mrs. Elliot placed them under the gaily decorated tree in Jordan’s living room. But Jordan noticed that although Ryan opened all of his dad’s presents, he put every one away. He never wore any of the nice clothes his father had sent.
Since most of the basketball games were after school, Jordan made it a point to be in the stands for both Martin Junior High and Ryan. The team needed all the help they could get. “They’re not too good, are they?” she asked Laurie and Wade one afternoon as the team was being trounced by the opponent.
“Ryan’s playing well,” Wade observed. “He’s already put twelve points on the board for us.”
“Our only twelve point,” Laurie grumbled.
“Honestly, watching these guys play is like watching a rerun of the Three Stooges.”
Jordan giggled. But her good humor evaporated when Jennifer shouted greetings to them from the floor of the gym. “Oh, no . . . she’s climbing up to sit with us,” Jordan groused.
Jennifer scurried up the bleachers with a flourish. Then she scooted between Jordan and Laurie. “I just love basketball,” she said, ignoring the fact that there was no room for her on their row. Jordan felt like a sardine wedged in a tin can.
“Since when?” Laurie asked skeptically.
“Since I discovered Scott Lewis was playing center.”
Jordan searched the court for Scott. He was tall and downright skinny, with brown hair and brown eyes. He was very shy and sometimes stuttered if a girl so much as spoke to him. Jordan liked him, but he didn’t seem like Jennifer’s type. “He’s passing to Ryan, who’s shooting a lot,” Jordan observed.
“Yes, Ryan is saving us on the court today,” Jennifer said, never taking her green eyes off Ryan Elliot. “In fact, Ryan’s downright incredible out there. Did you see the way he dribbled around that guy on the other team?”
“So how long have you been interested in Scott?”
“Who?” Jennifer asked with a frown.
Jordan gritted her teeth. “Scott Lewis. You remember. . . the tall guy down there in the middle of the game.”
Jennifer’s gaze never left Ryan. “Oh, since school started after New Year’s.”
“Two weeks. How nice,” Jordan muttered.
“How’s it working out with Ryan living with your family?” J
ennifer asked.
“Fine,” Jordan said with a vague toss of her head. “But why all this talk about Ryan? We should be talking about Scott.”
Jennifer raised an eyebrow and turned her almond-shaped eyes on Jordan. “You never want to discuss you and Ryan, Jordan. Why is that?”
Jordan squirmed. “What a question. Just because I don’t go blabbing my personal life to everyone . . .” She deliberately left the sentence unfinished.
“Well, it’s just kind of weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The way you and Ryan act around each other.”
Jordan’s heartbeat grew faster. “Oh? And just how are we supposed to act?”
“For starters, I never see the two of you holding hands or walking arm in arm or passing notes. You know. . . stuff like that.”
Jordan felt panicked. She couldn’t be found out! Not like this. And definitely not by Jennifer. “So maybe we don’t like hanging all over each other in public. Maybe we’re more private.”
“Just making a comment,” Jennifer said with a sugary-sweet smile. “You and Ryan seem more like buddies than steadies. That’s all.”
Jordan stood up. “Things aren’t always the way they look,” she said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go to the girls’ room.”
“Hurry back,” Jennifer called. “I’ll let you know if Ryan does anything spectacular.”
Jordan picked her way past a surprised Laurie, and hurried as best she could down the crowded bleachers. A roar went up as Ryan sank a shot from the far outside. She ignored the shouting and dashed into the restroom where she leaned against the concrete wall.
Jennifer’s comments had struck on the truth. No, she wasn’t Ryan’s girlfriend. Yes, there was nothing more between them than friendship. But how could she ever tell the truth and hold up her head in school again? Jordan knew she couldn’t. She was too much of a coward. She had to allow her friends to continue thinking that she and Ryan were nuts about each other. When would this mess end?