Letters to Nowhere(75)

Jordan let out a long breath and set down his giant sandwich. “I’m sorry. I feel so bad for sticking you in the middle of that. Kind of embarrassed, too.”

I gave him a half–smile and continued pouring dressing on my salad. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re not right in the middle of my family drama or anything.”

He shrugged. “I guess, but my dad and I haven’t had a fight like that for a long time. Usually we just brood in silence, or at least I do.”

“Maybe it was a good thing, then?” I ate a few bites before speaking again. “What did he say last night?”

“Not much,” Jordan said. “He didn’t yell at me or say that I proved his point about memories causing me to go out of control. I know he’s wrong about that, because I look at those pictures all the time. He just doesn’t know it.”

“You do?” I felt that all–too–familiar flutter in my stomach. This boy was just too cute for his own good. I could totally picture Jordan in that garage, looking through those albums. Jordan, the one person who made me say out loud that my parents were dead, would be able to handle remembering his loss.

“The problem is this,” Jordan said, turning very serious all of a sudden. “When I try to remember what my mom and my sister and grandparents really looked like, how they moved around, little things like that, the mental picture is getting more blurred every day, and then I’m seeing the photos and not remembering the actual memories.”

“And you want him to tell you stuff so you can remember?”

Jordan’s eyes dropped to his food in front of him. “Yeah, I do.”

“Will it help if I tell you what he told me?” I asked, a little tentatively because I didn’t want to hit a sore spot.

He nodded, and we both went back to eating our food while I relayed every detail of the conversation Bentley and I had in the garage yesterday.

“I have another question about last night,” I said, after we’d exhausted the garage topic. “What exactly were you doing on the swing set?”

Jordan laughed. “Oh, that was kind of awesome, actually. A couple guys dared me to try a giant swing on the metal pole across the neighbors’ swing set.”

I slapped my hands over my face. “Oh man, did you do it? Or fall trying?”

“I did it,” he said. “But then I got cocky and tried a flyaway, I held on too long and came back and hit my head on the bar, then my arm must have broken the fall.”

“You may have a career as a Hollywood stunt man.” Now I really wanted to see that video. Maybe someone else had recorded it, since Tony had deleted his version on my instruction last night.

He smiled and lifted his eyes to meet mine. “Then I’d be in LA, like you, right?”

I tried not to linger too long on the awesomeness of that plan because there were a lot of maybes involved. Especially after my big announcement to Coach Cordes today. “Where are you going to college, anyway?”

“So far I’ve gotten a yes from Missouri State, Iowa State, and University of Illinois,” he said. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“U of I is a good school. That’s where my dad went.”

I think both of us didn’t want to think about the fact that Jordan might be sticking around the Midwest while I headed for the West Coast. I decided maybe it was a good time to tell Jordan that I might be around a bit longer. “I’m competing at Nationals for sure,” I said for the second time today. “You think I’ll be allowed to stick around here longer?”

Jordan set his fork down and stared at me. “I can tell you for sure that my dad has never planned on training you for NCAA competition. My guess is, he was already planning on you competing at Nationals. Maybe he didn’t want to pressure you into making a decision right now, considering everything going on.”

I thought about that for a minute, remembering Bentley telling me on the flight to Houston to put the college stuff on the back burner for now. That was exactly what I wanted to do. At least we’d agreed on one thing. I wasn’t sure if that would carry over to adding new skills soon.

“So, Coach Cordes…” Jordan said, interrupting my thoughts. “I’m not sure I like him too much.”

“That’s because he’s not your dad.”

“Sometimes I don’t like him too much either.” He frowned. “He seemed like one of those people who listens but isn’t really listening. And Stevie has obviously put him in her not–favorite people pile.”

“We had a really weird fight about that in the locker room.” Both of us stood up to toss our trash, and I explained everything I could to him as we got in the car and drove around.

“Want to go to the park?” he asked.

“Sure.” I’d been hoping we could go somewhere besides home. If only Jordan could skip school every day. Maybe the summer would be like this, now that I’d decided to stick around. Or would he coach at camp again? With Liberty. Ugh. “What do you think Stevie meant that I’m supposed to figure out? And do you think Cordes is right? Should I just focus on staying healthy for college? Stevie acts like competing in college is for total losers or something.”

“First off, you are a hundred percent making the right choice, competing through Nationals. You haven’t gotten to do an all–around senior meet yet and you should at least have that experience before college, regardless of what happens.” He grinned at me. “And yes, I’m partly influenced by the fact that it means you’ll be here longer.”