Chapter 5: : Chapter 5

Day One, 9:12 a.m.

“So,” I say, putting on my seat belt and settling in to the car. “Now that we’re completely late and are going to miss orientation…” I trail off, hoping he realizes the error of his ways. The error of his ways being, you know, that we’ll miss orientation and end up failing out of college because of it. Who knows what could happen if we don’t get oriented? It could be bad. We could end up lost and out of it for four years, wrecking our future because we missed some vital information that was given out exclusively during orientation.

“We’re not going to miss orientation,” he says, pulling down the rearview mirror and checking his reflection.

“Hello? Could you spend less time grooming yourself and more time, like, actually driving?” His hair is a mess. Rumpled, like he just got out of bed. It’s actually kind of cute. But I’m not going to miss college just because he didn’t have time to do his hair. Or because he’s cute. I’ve lost enough of my self-respect.

“Like, okay,” he says, doing a pretty good impression of my voice. He smiles and pulls the sunglasses on his head back down over his eyes. He starts the car. It sputters and stops, and I look at him in alarm.

“Just kidding,” he says. He winks and starts the car. Ugh. What an ass. How can he joke at a time like this? I mean, even if he’s not concerned about the fact that we’re going to miss our orientation, he should still be upset that we’re going on this trip and are broken up.

There’s silence for a few minutes as he pulls out of my driveway. I reach into my bag and pull out my book, determined to ignore him. I’m reading The Catcher in the Rye for the millionth time, figuring it’s funny about a kid who goes crazy, so I won’t feel so bad about myself, and I won’t have to worry about comprehending it, since I’ve already read it a million times.

I reach down and push my seat back.

“Whatcha readin’?” Jordan asks politely.

“Like you care.” I snort. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jordan pick up a book in his life. I reach over and turn down the car CD player, which is playing some kind of ridiculous rap music. “I can’t concentrate on my book.”

He shrugs.

“Hey,” I say, realizing he’s not headed the right way. “You’re not going the right way.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, I know. I thought we could grab some breakfast.” He says this like he doesn’t know it will upset me, which upsets me even more than if he had been apologetic.

“But I have a schedule,” I say, trying not to start a fight this early in the game. The last thing I want is to set him off. “And we’re already behind.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Well, you should have eaten before you left,” I say. If he wasn’t eating breakfast, then what was he doing?

“I told you,” he says, “I was packing my stuff.”

“Well, whatever,” I say. “You should have planned properly.”

“Look, we can stop really quick at Johni’s Diner,” he says. “We can pick up the highway right there, and it won’t be that much out of our way.”

“Yes, but we’re already behind schedule,” I say, waving the itinerary in front of his face. “So we should actually be trying to make up time, not get further behind.”

“Look, if we don’t stop now, we’re just going to have to—” The sound of his cell phone rings, cutting him off. He has it programmed to play Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” which is so corny, because that song is so 1999. And he doesn’t even like big butts. I don’t think. Unless I have a huge ass and don’t know it.

He checks the caller ID briefly and then slides the phone open. He has one of those phones that’s also a mini computer and plays MP3s. Of course. His parents buy him everything.

“Hey,” he says into the headpiece, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. He catches me looking at him, and I turn away, reaching into the backseat. I rummage around in one of my bags for the CD I burned last night.

“No, we’re on our way,” Jordan says, sounding strained. It’s probably his MySpace girl. I don’t exactly know her name, or anything about her, but that’s not from lack of trying. I searched his MySpace profile obsessively but I couldn’t find anything. You’d think she would have left him a comment or something, right? But then I thought maybe he figured I would have searched, so he told her not to. Or deleted them. And then, just when I was starting to really obsess, he switched the age of his profile to “14” so that no one could look at it. MySpace has this rule where if you’re fourteen or younger, your profile automatically gets set to private, and only the people you have friended can view it. So Jordan switched his age and then took me off his friends list! Which was really a horrible thing to do when you think about it, because it was, like, an actual act of aggression. I mean, it’s one thing to dump me for another girl, but to actually block me on MySpace? That’s just rude. He blocked me on instant messenger, too. And I couldn’t even go through and make up a fake screen name, because he had everyone who wasn’t on his buddy list blocked.

But I know she’s from Tampa (the new girl, I mean), and that she’s going to Boston College. Which is supposedly how she found him. She was searching MySpace profiles for people who were going to college in Boston. I’m surprised he didn’t offer her a ride.

How I imagine Jordan’s new girlfriend (A Psychotic Delusion by Courtney Elizabeth McSweeney):

She’s blonde. I have dark hair and fair skin. (Even though I live in Florida, I tend to burn when I sit out in the sun, which sucks, because everyone at school is always tan. At least in Boston, I won’t have to worry about that.) She also has blue eyes and dark skin. She looks like one of those girls on Laguna Beach. I have no idea why I think this, because one time we were watching Laguna Beach together, and Jordan told me he thought all the girls on that show looked alike. I guess it’s because I figure he would leave me for someone who was completely my opposite, and that includes physically.

She has a tattoo of a butterfly or some sort of pink design on her lower back. She wears lots of low-rise jeans.

She likes pop music, and she loves to go dancing. In my deluded fantasies, her and Jordan are always going clubbing. She’s also one of the worst kind of girls, the kind that all the guys want and drool all over, but is completely trustworthy and never does anything behind her boyfriend’s back.

She’s rich.

She’s not a virgin, and her and Jordan do it all over the place. In fact, she wants to do it so much that Jordan can’t even keep up with her. He’s tired all the time. She’s always tearing off her clothes and throwing herself at him.

I find the CD in my bag and rustle around some more, trying to make it out like I’m looking for something else. The last thing I want is for him to think I’m listening to his conversation with Mercedes (that’s what I imagine her name to be), even though that’s totally what I’m doing.

“Okay, cool,” he says. He snaps the phone shut and drops it onto the console between our seats. I rustle around some more, wondering what a good amount of time is to come back up without being obvious. At least he didn’t say “I love you” when they hung up. Although maybe they usually do, but he didn’t want to say it in front of me, since he was afraid I’d go psychotic on him or something. Which I wouldn’t have done. Gone psychotic, I mean. At least not out loud.

“What are you looking for?” he asks. Although it may be a little too early for them to be saying “I love you” to each other, right? I mean, they’ve only been together two weeks. The thought of Jordan saying “I love you” to another girl makes me feel like I want to throw up. I sit back up quickly, holding the CD.

“This,” I tell him.

Then my phone starts ringing, and I ignore it, because:

I think it’s rude to talk on cell phones when you’re in the car with someone, and since I want to reserve the right to give Jordan shit about it in the future, I don’t think I should be hypocritical now.

It’s probably Jocelyn, calling to ask me if I’m okay, and she’s going to ask a million questions, and I won’t be able to really talk to her, because I’ll only be able to give one-word answers, like “yes” and “no” and Jordan will obviously know that we’re talking about him, otherwise why would I be giving one-word answers?

“I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor comes from my phone, and I curse myself for not changing my ringtone before this trip. How ridiculously lame. I search through my bag, looking for the phone, but by the time I find it, it stops ringing. And then starts again.

“Are you going to answer it or what?” Jordan asks, sounding annoyed.

“Yeah,” I say, “as a matter of fact, I am.” Which makes no sense, because five seconds ago I wasn’t going to answer it, but that was before “I Will Survive” came out of my phone, and now I want Jordan to think I’m fine, and that I just really like seventies disco music. And I know answering my phone will annoy him, which I really, really want to do. This trip is making me mentally exhausted already, and we haven’t even crossed state lines.

“Hello!” I say brightly, without checking the caller ID.

“Courtney?” Lloyd asks, sounding like he just woke up.

“Hey,” I say, my heart sinking. Lloyd is going to ask even more questions than Jocelyn would have, and there’s no way he’s going to let me get away with “yes” or “no” answers. It’s not that Lloyd is nosey by nature or anything. It’s just that he’s going to be superconcerned about what’s going on with me and Jordan.

“I thought you were going to call me before you left,” he says, yawning.

“I was,” I say, “but it was so early, I thought I’d let you sleep.”

“So how’s it going?” he asks. “Are you in the car?” I push the volume down button on my phone, so Jordan won’t be able to overhear any of Lloyd’s side of the conversation. Who knows what kind of embarrassing things he’ll be prone to say.

“Um, yup,” I say, “I am.” I glance at Jordan out of the corner of my eye. He’s staring straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel.

“Is he acting like an asshole?” Lloyd asks.

“Uh, no, not really,” I say, as Jordan reaches over and ups the volume on the CD player by about five notches, making it extremely hard to hear Lloyd over the rap music.

“It’s probably kind of hard for you to talk right now, huh? With him there and everything?” Ya think?

“Yeah, sort of.”

“Okay, well, call me back later. When you’re at a rest stop or something.”

“I will,” I promise.

Lloyd hesitates, like he wants to say something else, but then clicks off.

“Can you please knock it off with the rap?” I say, snapping my cell phone shut and sliding it back into my bag.

“Was that Lloyd?” Jordan asks, trying to sound nonchalant. He’s never liked Lloyd, mostly because in the spirit of total relationship honesty, I once made the mistake of telling Jordan about the huge crush I used to have on Lloyd. Have. Had. Shit. The thing is, the first night Jordan and I hung out, I was all set to tell Lloyd that I’d been lusting after him since junior high. And then some, uh, circumstances got in the way, and things didn’t work out exactly according to plan.

But then Jordan had to go and dump me for that stupid Internet girl, and Lloyd was being so supportive about the whole thing, and then last night when Lloyd and Jocelyn came over to say good-bye, I was getting all nostalgic, and I started thinking how things would have turned out if I’d never met Jordan. You know, like if Lloyd and I had ended up together. Which was a really stupid thing to start thinking about, since you should never start thinking about “what might have been,” and you should also never start thinking about another boy when you’re heartbroken over someone else. Although Jocelyn says the only way to get over someone is to get under someone else. So I started thinking maybe that was true, and maybe I needed to date just to get the one “jerk” out of my system, because, let’s face it, Jordan was my first real boyfriend, and who ends up with their first real boyfriend? Yeah, no one.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was feeling nostalgic and Jocelyn left early because she had to have her mom’s car home by eleven, and then it was just Lloyd and me, and right before he left he gave me a hug good-bye, and I kissed him. I know. And then, instead of pulling away, he kissed me back, and it turned into this whole big make-out session, and when he left, I started crying, because it turned out that:

making out with Lloyd was just weird, and not at all like I thought it would be I should have made out with him sooner, because maybe then I would have gotten over him way before turns out the best way to get over someone is NOT to get under someone else, because after Lloyd left, I missed Jordan more than ever.

Anyway, now it’s totally weird, because I don’t know what happens next. Especially since Jordan and I are supposed to be stopping in North Carolina tomorrow to visit Lloyd (he’s taking a flight to NC later today), and Jordan’s brother, Adam, who also goes to school at Middleton. I suppose at some point Lloyd and I are going to have to talk about our hookup, which is going to be awkward. Or maybe we’ll just never mention it again. Stuff like that happens all the time, right? People hook up, and then realize it was a mistake, and since it would be way too awkward to talk about, they just don’t.

“What’s Lloyd doing up so early?” Jordan asks, smirking.

“Nothing,” I snap. I push the eject button on the stereo and pull out the CD that’s in the player, which has “Jordan’s Gangsta Mix” written on it in black Sharpie. I roll my eyes and replace it with my CD. “Wide Open Spaces” by the Dixie Chicks fills the car, and Jordan rolls his eyes.

“Get used to it,” I say, turning back to my book. “We’re listening to country.”

“Half and half,” he says, grinning. “The music on this trip will be fifty-fifty.”

“Riiight,” I say. “Just like our relationship, right?”

He doesn’t say anything, but when we pass the diner, he keeps on driving.