Jordan is hungry. The feeling is larger than my own hunger ever is, a huge empty spot in her that needs to be filled. She put in a request for a cheeseburger with Andrew, but he’s not back with it yet. I’m excited for the cheeseburger, too. I love it when Jordan eats things she likes—things taste better to her. Eating my own meals is becoming a frustrating disappointment, because I can’t get her tastes out of my head.
We have a screen unfolded on her lap, open to a document she’s writing. The second MtLA Working Conference is in Las Vegas next week. Jordan will be delivering the opening address.
Jordan hates writing speeches, especially when her heart isn’t in the work. Speeches are boring. She’d rather write poems—her heart can find a place in poetry.
Her heart isn’t with MtLA, but her heart is with Will and he will be there, so we’re doing this. “Over the course of the two months since we last met as a team, there has been an upswelling of support for what we at the More to Life, America Working Conference are aiming to achieve . . .” It’s a lie. The word appears in her mind, a big flashing sign: “LIE.” There hasn’t been an upswelling of support. Nobody seems to care about it at all. It’s not like she’s upset about that—Jordan doesn’t care, either. She pushes past it, continues: “I hear from young people around the nation—dozens each day—hoping that we can help re-create the safe, joyous, values-based childhoods for them and their siblings that they hear about from their grandparents . . .” Too much bull. Her voice cracks and she stumbles over the word grandparents. “Dammit.”
She stops talking, watches the words and punctuation form on-screen, waits for the auto-complete to populate, offering her stronger choices and better words for the tone she’s selected. “The word dammit may not be your best choice here, Jordan,” the screen tells her. “If you’re looking for a way to strengthen your statement at this point, consider using verbal cues such as a louder voice or slower cadence.”
“Screw you,” Jordan mumbles to the screen.
“Also not appropriate for the tone and manner of speech you’ve selected. If you’re looking for a way to strengthen your statement at this point—”
“Off!” Jordan’s shaking now, her voice almost a screech.
“JJ?”
We look up. Her mom is looking at us from the Central Hall. We don’t know what she heard.
Breath. Smile. “Hi, Mom.”
“I thought I heard some frustrated language coming from over here.” She walks toward us, comes to settle next to us on the couch. “Is everything okay?”
Jordan smiles again, tries to look embarrassed. Jordan doesn’t think she’s ever been okay. “Yeah, I was just frustrated with my . . .” She points at the dark screen on her lap.
“What’s the problem?” Linda Castle smiles brightly, looks excited. “Maybe I can help.”
Jordan opens her mouth, ready to says something about how she’s got it handled, but when she tries to say it, she can’t. She takes a breath, then shakes her head. Everything feels black inside.
For a moment, things grow clear to Jordan: She can’t do this much longer—live like she’s someone she’s not. The need to tell her mom the truth starts to feel like a compulsion, unquenched, unbearable.
Truth Will Out.
Jordan knows the quote is from Shakespeare. A momentary memory of reading The Merchant of Venice with Julia invades, but is instantly crushed by the weight of Jordan’s pain. Words: “I can’t do this, Mom.” We’re whispering, trying not to cry. “I don’t believe in it.”
I want her to continue. It feels so wrong for her to keep herself hidden, but even as she says it, Jordan knows it’s wrong. The judgment, the disappointment, the hurt will all be too much. And Will. In her head Will is fading away.
Without MtLA, they will never see each other, never be able to be together. Living without the hope of Will is worse than lying. “Never mind.” She shakes her head, looks over at her mom, eyes shy, vulnerable. “I think I’m just stressed about this and . . .”
The moment passes inside Jordan. The pain lifts when Linda Castle nods sympathetically, returns our smile, though hers looks real. She reaches for us and pulls us in against her side. “I know, JJ.” She squeezes us. “We ask a lot of you, more than most families ask of their children, and more, even, than most presidents ask of theirs.” She sighs. “But you’re no ordinary kid, JJ.”
Jordan doesn’t answer. Her mind is already on to another subject—another thing that’s been weighing her down. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Dad can keep us safe from the Incursions, right?”
Linda Castle stiffens under us. “They aren’t real.” The lie is as smooth as one of Jordan’s.
“Yes they are, Mom.” Jordan pulls away and sits up. “I’ve heard Dad and Jack talking about them.”
Her mom sits up, too, looks like she’s ready to deny again, but then she falls back, looks down and takes Jordan’s hand. “I trust God, JJ.”
We nod, our chin against her shoulder. “But what if Jeffrey Sabazios is right and he has the answer already? Why isn’t Dad at least looking at Live-Tech instead of trying to get rid of it?”
Linda Castle doesn’t say anything for a moment. Jordan’s chest tightens; she’s gone too far. She pulls her head back, ready to apologize, but before she can: “There are things I don’t know, sweetheart, but God seems to trust your dad enough to have made him president.” She squeezes our hand. “Maybe you should, too.”
Jordan doesn’t reply. Doesn’t squeeze back. Her mind is filled with images from the illustrated Bible she had as kid. Pictures of Nabal, of Holofernes, of Pharaoh.
Powerful kings who weren’t up to God’s task.
Andrew comes around the corner with the cheeseburger, hesitates when he sees us with the First Lady, but then strides over and lays the tray on the coffee table in front of us.
“Miss,” he says. “Your cheeseburger.”
Jordan gives him a tight little smile. “Thank you.”
But she doesn’t reach for it. She no longer feels like eating, because her mind is occupied with thoughts of Incursions, of Abaddon the destroyer coming, and her father, the president, remaining quiet.
Live-Tech. The words light up in her head. A flash thought nestled in an image of her dad and Jack on the patio.
If her dad won’t do anything, maybe we can.
On my way back up from Jordan, I notice something—there’s another path. It’s faint compared to the one I’m on, goes in both directions, one narrow and straight, the other more like the one I take when I glide.
Over lunch, I ask Paul: “What’s the other path?”
“Other path?”
“When we go down, sometimes there’re two paths . . .”
“Yeah, that,” he says between bites of his grilled cheese sandwich. “That’s your path. You open up on that one, you’ll Zombie yourself.”
“Zombie myself?”
“Yeah. Time Zombie.” He points the sandwich at me. “You know how whatever we see gets collapsed? If we see our own future, when you get there in real time it becomes like you’re just along for the ride. Evidently you can’t do anything.” He sets the sandwich down. “Can’t even think normally.”
I flash on trying to change my letter—which I still haven’t written. Another question I haven’t asked: “What’s the loud place we go through on the way down?”
He looks at me. “Loud place?”
I don’t even know how to describe it, but I try. “On the path, just as I’m going down, I pass this area where everything is suddenly really loud. It’s like a million guitars playing on the other side of the wall—it’s like what I heard in my head before I got patched . . .” I trail off because I don’t even know what I’m saying. “It’s like walking past a jungle or something. They’re sort of like the ones I was hearing before the patch.”
“A jungle of guitars?” he asks, his eyebrows raised.
The words sound silly coming from him, but when I think about the place, the picture I get in my head is from cartoons where people are lost in some tropical place and there’re monkeys and birds and stuff yelling. “Yeah, I guess. A jungle of guitars.”
“I don’t know.” He tucks a fry into his mouth. I watch him chew. I can’t tell if he’s done or just using the fry to make a dramatic pause. “If it changed when you got the patch, then it’s got to be related to witnessing somehow.” He shrugs. “It’s probably some one-fifty-plus superpowery thing. I’m just a forty-two, so I don’t get to hear anything.”
Irritating. I want to know.