Jordan was nestled in the rear quilted, white leather seats of his father's Mercedes Benz saloon car just after being picked up for what he felt was the thousandth time flying between school and home. The novelty of the frequent travels long wore off, Jordan just wanted high school down with, more so the boarding part of it.
He never went in with any major expectations, as a result, he had not been hating it as much. Jordan was relatively popular, especially in the academic fraternity. Perhaps what he appreciated most was how his identity was entirely separate from Elijah's, a polarizing experience to his primary school days at Crawford School in Lonehill – where he was known as "Letsatsi 2.0" for directly following in his brother's footsteps.
In Michaelhouse he was simply known as Jordan Letsatsi, the hard worker. Well, to be fair everyone was, but for him, it meant far more than it would to a regular person. With his challenging mix of school-leaving subjects: English, Afrikaans, French, Life Orientation, Advanced Mathematics, Information Technology, Physical Sciences and Biology, and extra-curriculars of cricket – his favourite sport – being called a hard worker truly meant far much more than what anyone would think.
Growing older changed people, Elijah was his greatest case study.
Elijah was once a deeply social person. He genuinely loved being around people and having a great time. Still, over the years the social Elijah he knew only became a façade that shielded everyone from the new Elijah, who would force himself to be around people – let alone get out of bed each day.
Jordan also noticed how it had slowly eaten into his relationships – especially with those closest to him. He was barely seeing eye-to-eye with their father, he'd ended things with his girlfriend of two years and Elijah was not the same to converse with these days.
It was a Friday evening, and this was going to be a long weekend. Since the explosive exchange between Musa and Elijah, there'd been a dramatic shift in the house. His father had seemingly become even more reclusive, burying himself deeper in his work, Alice was growing increasingly worried about how things were going to be going forward and Elijah simply did not want to talk about it.
He placed his phone to sleep as the car entered the driveway, stopping right in front of the stone patio.
Jordan grabbed his duffel bag and sought to make an uninterrupted journey to his bedroom. As usual, Sabine and Churchill would be the most excited to see him come home and they followed him up to his bedroom.
It was an organized room. White walls, vertical wooden slats above his bed and an opening in the middle that both had its lighting and housed childhood photos and little ornaments like his Rubrik's cube, healthy succulent plant, and a collector's metallic Longines Spirit watch among others.
Jordan threw his bag on the bed, which was suspended right above the evaluated section of the room near his window. He quickly set up his HP Spectre laptop before going to the bathroom to run his shower.
Out of everyone in the house, Jordan took the longest showers. Of the standard ten minutes that was often achieved by everyone else, he could go on for a good thirty minutes before remembering that he had other things to get done.
Alice cursed herself for designing the bathroom so beautifully because she believed that's why he spent so much time there. It was worse on days when the family was running late for a function they had been attended to.
Jordan reached for a white towel on a nearby rack, dried himself up, got moisturized and changed into more comfortable clothes. The next step in his homecoming ritual, one that was practised every time he came back home from school, was making something light to eat before heading back upstairs to either binge-watch a show, play video games, or video his best friends.
