Along Came Jordan

by Brenda Maxfield

  "He's sedated to stop the cough," Mom told me. She pulled a cushioned metal chair up to the side of his bed and sat down. "We can stay if you want."

  "I want," I said. I needed time to take Sarah to the mental health wing. If we went back home right away, my plan was over. "I think I'll stay with Sarah for a while out in the hall, if you don't mind."

  Mom glanced up at me. "I shouldn't have said anything about her talking. I feel bad."

  "It's okay, Mom," I said, but it wasn't. It wasn't okay at all.

  I touched Dad's shoulder through the plastic. "Be back, Dad. I love you," I murmured even though he was sleeping and couldn't hear me.

  Sarah was sitting on a bench right outside Dad's door. I reached out my hand to her, and she jumped up and grabbed it. "Sarah, we're going to another part of the hospital. Come on."

  She followed me. When we were out of hearing distance of Mom, she asked, "Where are we going?"

  "I'm going to get you some help."

  She yanked on my hand and stopped walking. "What do you mean?"

  I stepped closer to her and leaned down. "Sarah, I know life has been horrid for you lately. I get it. I also know you miss Bates and your old friends. I can't help you with that, but there are some people here who can help with your talking."

  Her expression locked up as tight as a slammed door.

  "Don't be mad. It's going to be fine. I have it all planned out." I pulled on her arm, but her feet were planted into the floor. "Come on, Sarah, please."

  "I'm talking to you right now, aren't I? I talk."

  "I know you talk to me, but wouldn't you like to talk with other people, too?"

  Her nostrils flared and tears sprang to her eyes. "No."

  I put my face right up to hers. "Not true," I whispered. "Not true at all."

  She blinked rapidly, and her lips quivered.

  "Come on. It's going to be fine."

  Getting there was like walking through a maze. We followed the signs to Aspirations Mental Health Wing. Sarah did me proud. Something must've clicked, because she stopped clutching on me. Instead, she walked gracefully, like the ballet dancer she wanted to be. I had to keep looking at her from the corner of my eye to believe it. My heart swelled — I was doing the right thing.

  We entered the wing and before us stretched a curved desk behind a glass partition. The bottom third of the partition was cut open. I approached it, bending slightly to speak to the youngish man with black hair and square glasses.

  "Excuse me, but I'd like to get some counseling for my sister." I tried to sound grown-up, official.

  He glanced up and did a double take. "It's Sunday. There are no appointments today."

  I squared my shoulders. "I know. I want to make an appointment for later in the week, the sooner the better."

  "And you are…"

  "I'm the sister, Emili Jones. I'm taking care of this appointment for my mother." My confidence was sagging, so I tried lying.

  "Well, well." He motioned to some woman behind him to come.

  I kept my face smooth and managed what I hoped was an authoritative smile.

  A large toothy woman joined him at the counter. Her grin was so wide and so fake it fell off the sides of her face. "Hello, honey."

  I stiffened. This couldn't be good.

  "What seems to be the problem?"

  "There's no problem. I'm trying to make an appointment for my younger sister. She needs counseling for selective mutism."

  The lady flinched, her eyes widened, and her eyebrows raised to an upside down V. "I see. We'll need to have a parent."

  "No, you don't understand." I leaned down and spoke under the glass partition, pronouncing every word as if she were deaf. "I have money. I can make a down payment right now."

  I rummaged in my pocket and drew out my carefully folded dollar bills. "Here's seventeen dollars. I know it's not much, but I get paid next Friday and then I'll have more."

  The man and woman looked at each other.

  "Emili!" Mom's voice was sharp.

  I froze and Sarah gasped. We both turned around to see Mom, and her expression was livid. I wadded up my money and shoved it back into my pocket.

  "Mom," I said, grabbing Sarah's hand and walking toward her. I pasted an innocent look on my face. "How did you find us?"

  Her eyes drilled into mine. "I followed you. I thought you were going to the restroom. When you passed it, I kept following. What are you doing?"

  I glanced around. There was one woman standing against a wall, and her eyes were glued on our happy little scene.

  "Getting Sarah some help." My voice was low.

  Mom grabbed my arm. "You've no right…"

  I threw her arm off. "I have every right. You've done nothing. Nothing! All you do is come home late and pretend everything is fine. Well, everything isn't fine."

  Sarah had let go of my hand and was backing away from us. I glanced at her startled face then back at Mom. "She doesn't talk. Do you hear me? She doesn't talk!"

  My voice was getting higher and louder. The guy behind the desk had stood up and was peering at us through the glass shield.

  Mom pivoted on her heel and marched down the nearest hallway. I ran after her.

  "It's true, Mom." Then to my horror, I heard the reception guy coming after us. I clamped my hand over my mouth and stopped moving.

  Mom stopped, too, and turned on me with a look to kill. She was breathing rapidly, and her chest was heaving.

  "We're fine," she called over my shoulder to the guy, putting on her calm voice. "A tiny misunderstanding is all."

  I twisted to see him study us for a minute, shrug, and return to his post.

  Mother focused back on me. "For your information, I come home late because I'm trying to get us more money. Every lousy day, I've been working with Tyler, trying to come up with new software for small businesses. Last week, we thought we had the bugs worked out. We stayed late every night testing it." She took a step closer. "And for what? Nothing. We were wrong — so wrong. We're nowhere close."

  We locked eyes. I shook my head and stared at her, incredulous. "Software? You were working on software?" My voice climbed the scale again. "Then why didn't you say so? Why the big secret?"

  My mother pursed her lips, and the tiny wrinkles around her mouth popped out like a relief map. "It's hard enough on your dad right now. If he knew what I was trying to do, he'd tell me to stop. He thinks he's going to get another job any day, which is delusional. I'm not sure the software will ever pay off. But if it does, I wanted it to be a surprise — a good surprise, for a change."

  "Do you have any idea what I was thinking?"

  She rubbed the sides of her forehead. "I can guess. Lately, I'm too exhausted to wonder about anything."

  The hardness on her face softened, and for a second, she looked like the old Mom. Sarah walked up behind me and leaned against my back.

  "Let's sit." Mom's voice was quiet now and soft. "Come on. You too, Sarah."

  We followed her to a bank of chairs around a low coffee table piled with magazines. We all sat. For a long minute, there was no sound but the soft bustle of nurses and the clinking of bottles on a tray some chubby man in white carried from room to room.

  Mom studied both Sarah and me. "So, you were asking for help for Sarah?"

  I nodded. "She needs counseling."

  Mom's expression was solemn, but there was no anger. My breathing slowed, and my heartbeat relaxed.

  "They wouldn't help you?" she asked.

  "No."

  "They wanted an adult."

  "Yes."

  "How were you going to pay for this counseling?"

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the now wrinkled bills. I offered them to her. "My down payment."

  One of Mom's eyebrows shot up. She took the money and counted it. "Hmmm. Seventeen dollars. I imagine they were mighty impressed."

  Her words were so ridiculous, I laughed. Mom's face loosened, and she smiled. My paltry amount of
money seemed beyond absurd. The receptionist guy was probably still smirking over the dumb teenage sister. I bit my lips together, but my laughter kept coming.

  Mom's expression contorted, and she laughed with me. She held up the money like a fan and waved it, making a breeze. "Seventeen dollars! Counseling is going cheap these days!"

  It wasn't funny, but it was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. It came rolling up from the pit of my stomach, cracking through months of stored tension. A nurse scuttled out from somewhere and told us to be quiet; we were in a hospital, and people were trying to recover. Mom and I apologized and fell against each other in a heap panting. When I ventured a glance at Sarah, she was smiling.

  Smiling.

  Beautiful.

  Mom wiped her eyes, stood, and adjusted her shirt. She looked down at us and, for the first time in a long time, there was no frustration or annoyance on her face. Affection softened her features, and for a moment, I had the distinct impression she was proud of me.

  "Girls, if you'll excuse me." She turned away and retraced our steps back toward the mental health area.

  I sprang off the couch and followed her, staying far enough behind so she wouldn't see me. When I got to the end of the hallway, I paused behind a rubber potted plant right inside the lobby area and watched her approach the same curving counter I had just left. She bent down below the partition and spoke to the young man, who by then must have thought we were a bunch of loonies. I saw him nod and look at his computer screen.

  Mother stood again to her full height and waited. The guy put something on the counter, wrote on it, and passed it to my mother. She stuck it in her purse.

  I scurried back down the hallway to the couch where Sarah sat waiting.

  Mom rejoined us. "Thursday, the fifteenth, three o'clock."

  She patted her purse where she'd stashed what must have been an appointment card. It was a small gesture — but one full of promise for a better tomorrow.

  "Girls, shall we go?" Mom opened an embrace, and Sarah and I went to her. She tucked each of us under an arm, and we flanked her down the hall toward Dad's room.

  ****

  More people showed up at the hospital around dinnertime. I guess relatives got off work and came in to visit. I was the only one with Dad, because Mom had taken Sarah to get some burgers and fries. The doctors told Mom earlier that Dad was showing steady improvement and would probably be released from ICU the next day. He'd be transferred to a regular room, for maybe six to eight days. I was happy for Mom — it wouldn't be a two-week stay after all.

  Dad slept nonstop. It was the best thing for him, but it was boring. I meandered out of his room and sat on the bench across from the nurse's station. I leaned my head against the glass and watched as the nurses scurried from one room to another.

  I closed my eyes, and my mind drifted.

  "Emili?"

  It was Jordan's voice. I squeezed my eyes tighter, afraid if I opened them, he'd be an illusion.

  "Emili?" he repeated.

  I dared to look, and he was bending over me, tender concern written on his face. My heart surged and filled me with a fluttering hope. "Jordan, you came."

  "Margo told me you’d be here. I had to come." He took my hand, and his touch was warm and firm. The tightness in me unwound as he spoke. "How's your dad doing?"

  "Better. Much better."

  "I'm glad." He eyes searched mine. "Emili, I was worried."

  "He's going to be fine. The doctors all agreed."

  "No. About you."

  My gaze fell to our clasped hands. His hand was so big that mine was almost hidden inside his.

  "I wanted to talk about last night…" he said.

  "You don't owe me any explanations. You didn't know Pamela was coming, and of course you wanted to see her." My words were self-inflicted wounds, but I had to say them. We weren't an official couple, and his arrival could mean a thousand different things.

  Jordan said nothing, but when he removed his hand from mine, my hope died. I pulled my hand back into my lap. It felt strangely empty, like I'd taken off all my favorite rings.

  "I'm glad for you and Pamela," I said, swallowing past the growing lump in my throat.

  "Emili…"

  "It's not often you get a second chance." My heart squeezed. I’d never gotten a second chance with Marc, and I'd barely gotten a first chance with Jordan.

  "Will you please be quiet?" His voice was firm.

  My eyes darted to his. He looked at me with such kindness I had to force myself not to fall against him and bury myself in his chest.

  He gripped my shoulder. "You don't give a guy a chance to say a word." His voice became soft, teasing, and his tenderness filled me with wonder. "Pamela apologized for how awful she was to me. She said she was trying to protect herself. Her mom warned her and warned her about long-distance relationships at our age."

  The muscles in Jordan's jaw twitched. He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. "At first, Pamela ignored her, but her mom wouldn't stop. So Pamela started to listen and even to agree."

  He moved closer to me until our noses touched. "She listened, Emili. I still can't believe she would do that. She gave up on us before we had a chance to even try."

  I backed away so I could look into his eyes. What was he saying?

  "Four years. We'd been together four years. How could she give up so easily?"

  I saw the hurt cloud his eyes. I said nothing, and he went on. "She shouldn't have listened to her mom."

  "But now she's changed her mind, right?" I asked, and dark dread moved through me.

  "Yeah, she has."

  And there it was, the end of Jordan and me, before we even got started. I expected him to back away, but he was motionless, and I sensed an urgency behind his expression.

  "The thing is, I wouldn't have listened to such advice, and I don't think Pamela should have either." He took an expansive breath. "What's really strange is I don't even care anymore. While she was talking, all I could think about was you."

  He shifted his position, and I saw his hands clench and unclench at his sides. "Emili, if it had been you and me, would you have listened?"

  The question hung between us, alive, pulsating, waiting for an answer.

  I shook my head. His shoulders relaxed, and the urgency behind his eyes cleared. He gathered me into his arms, and his lips brushed mine, tenderly, lightly.

  "No, I wouldn't have listened," I said against his lips. "Not even a little."

  "I didn't think so." Jordan nuzzled my neck, and I leaned my head on top of his, feeling his smooth hair rub against my cheek. I wanted to burrow into him, to stay next to him forever. But I knew it wouldn't be fair. He wasn't the only one with baggage dragging him down. I squirmed out of his arms.

  "I was horrible to my ex," I whispered, my voice barely audible.

  Jordan's hands dropped to his sides and he moved away.

  "Yeah, I know," he said. "You've already told me."

  He reached into his coat pocket and pulled something out. It was a piece of folded cardboard, and he handed it to me. I unfolded it, and there was my copy of our ball picture, the one I'd left on the table. It was crinkled and creased but still intact. I gazed at us, smiling for the goofy photographer.

  "The thing is, you're not that girl anymore," Jordan said, pulled me back into a tight embrace. "I trust you."

  I shook my head, afraid to believe he was really there and afraid to believe he was holding me with such affection I could barely breathe.

  But I did believe it. I snuggled into his shoulder, and it dawned on me he was right — I wasn't the same girl as before. I wasn't the same girl who'd dumped Marc. She was gone — different, changed. I leaned back and smiled up at Jordan.

  "So are we together then?" I asked.

  "We're together then."

  I raised my head, put my lips to his, and kissed him.

  Hard.

  More than once.

  Also by Brenda Maxfield

>   Chapter One

  Farah leaned close to my ear. “Watch and learn,” she whispered.

  Oh, no. Not again.

  She propelled herself deftly through the clusters of students who were thronging around the cafeteria line. Steel vending machines dinged like casino slots. Every kid balanced a lunch tray teetering with globs of macaroni and piles of tortilla chips and oatmeal cookies.

  Farah carried her tray with its plate of green beans as if it were the royal jewels. She sashayed toward our regular table in the corner, her hips lightly brushing the backs of the entire football team who’d already grabbed the table nearest the food. The catcalls began immediately.

  “Hot stuff,” one player yelled, and then whistled.

  With practiced innocence, Farah paused, and turned to face the guys. She rolled her green eyes and shook her head, feigning annoyance. A smile played on her lips. Then she fluttered her thick lashes and continued on, skirting her way to our table in the back.

  Oh yeah, she was a master at everything I’m not. All Farah has to do is show up and the boys follow, frolicking like puppies around a bone. So, shameful as it sounds — I made it my business to become her friend, even if it meant dropping everyone in my tight circle. I was done being the boring, straight-A girl. I wanted the hot guys to drool around me for once, and I figured the connection couldn’t hurt.

  Watch and learn, Farah had said. Right.

  I stood with my tuna sandwich stuffed inside my crumpled lunch sack, sighed heavily and followed her, trying not to let my shoes clack out my progress. Nobody’s eyes followed my every move.

  Well, there’s a surprise.

  I slid onto the bench across from her. It was Monday — the only day Farah was halfway civilized because she was tired from the weekend — and we were eating lunch together as usual.

  Farah opened her milk carton, and took a drink. She tipped her head, letting her thick red hair cascade down her back. The soft curls nearly touched her waist. Farah was well aware how flat-out gorgeous she was, and she quickly glanced around to see who might be watching.