Callie's Perspective

The Hollywood Hills were brown when Jordan came to stay with us. You could have fried an egg on the asphalt as my family stood at the bus stop, waiting for a brown-haired stranger. The fumes came off the Greyhound in waves, causing Cameron to hide behind us, his tiny towhead not even reaching to Dad's knees. Mom promised him ice cream when we got home, and he happily scuffed his white sneakers.

That was the summer I cut my hair short, yellow wheat bobbing just above my knobby shoulders. I wore overalls that day, and a twine friendship bracelet Mara had given me as an early birthday present. We were still young enough for that sort of thing then. Before Jordan came, I was young enough for a lot of things.

When he walked off the bus, Dad knew him right away.  Jordan wore army boots and a black backpack. Dad stuck his hand out to him, unwavering. Mom balanced Cameron on one hip and smiled a wide cherry smile while she introduced herself. That was back when my dad still looked at her like she could spin the world on one small pinkie finger. I squinted a little against the sun, then looked down again, anxious to get out of the heat.

I am a walking cliché that my first love was a summer one. But it was not the kind you see in the movies, with a salty sea breeze in my hair and long sunset kisses. We lived nowhere near the sea and there was nothing breezy about it.

Jordan was not what I expected. But then again, when a strange teenage boy comes to stay with your family, what expectations are normal? I guess I thought he would be tall with soulful eyes, broad shoulders and a scruffy chin. I guess I thought we'd flirt over the breakfast table or something. But he was quiet the whole way home, gazing out the window with a stare as wide and blank as the plains of Montana.  The air conditioning was broken in the minivan, so we drove with the windows down, ears filled with the rush of hot air instead of conversation. Mom and Dad held hands in the front seat and Cameron dozed, his cheeks flushed sweetly pink. Soon, we were home.

Looking back, I wonder what Jordan thought of our square suburban life –– our patty-cake house with the red door, complete with swing set and almond tree. Maybe it felt overwhelming, maybe it felt boring, maybe it felt safe, maybe it felt uncomfortable. Maybe it didn't feel like anything except a strange, small interlude in his life.

He settled in quietly, quickly, putting his backpack upright on the futon in his basement room, following Mom and Dad around as they gave him the tour of the house. He nodded when appropriate and said "thank you" with a kind of half smile, and then asked if he could go to bed even though it was only 6:15.

Over the next weeks, I mostly just saw Jordan at meals. He kept to his room, or to the backyard, where he sat under the oak tree and read. He read big books with bland-looking covers, and seemed to be lost into that world more than a part of ours. I was too busy to really notice, though; I had a birthday party to plan, and the cute new lifeguard down at the community pool to spy on, and soccer practice, and bi-weekly sleepovers with Mara. Even Mara stopped asking gossipy questions about our house guest after she finally grasped that he really was boring, and that he wouldn't even glance in her direction.  Cameron adored him, though. The first few nights at dinner, he would babble away in his nonsense baby voice and slam his spoon on the tray of his highchair, smiling his gappy smile at Jordan as if banging his silverware was some awesome accomplishment. He set up his Tonka trucks out by Jordan's reading tree, and anywhere Jordan was, Cameron was two steps behind. I liked watching them together –– the way Jordan would tussle Cam's blonde curls, or build dirt hills for his trucks, or teach him to turn on and off the TV, which drove Mom nuts. Overall, Jordan was so quiet and faded into the background so well that it became easier to forget we had a stranger living in our house. It never occurred to me to really press why Jordan was here, or to wonder how long he'd stay. I just assumed he'd go right along eating my favorite cereal and keeping to himself until school started in the fall. And then, someone else would take him. I knew from snippets of caught conversation that his mom, who'd been a college friend of my dad's, had died –– cancer or something –– and that his dad ran off before Jordan was born, but that my parents, and lawyers or cops too, were trying to find him. I wondered if Jordan had been close to his mom. What had she been like? Was her cooking better than my mom's? Did she do her laundry on Sundays too? I figured Jordan kept her picture in his sock drawer and cried before he went to sleep, but he never showed any signs of grief that I recognized. I hadn't had much experience with death before –– only what I'd seen in the movies, where there was lots of crying and hugging. I thought about these things only briefly, in passing, between painting my nails or running out the door to soccer camp or begging my dad to take me out in his truck to practice driving.

One night, I was lying in bed listening to my iPod in the dark. It was late, and I was close to falling asleep when I heard a thud outside my window. The thump was loud enough for me to hear over the country music I was pumping into my ears, so I yanked out my headphones and hopped out of bed. I poked my head out of my open window, looking for a fallen tree limb or a burglar or Santa. Jordan was sitting on the roof, his back pressed against the siding to the left my window.

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