A Life Guide To Prolonging the Inevitable

Chapter 3

 Tuesday, June 7th, 2011: Part 2

Jordan shoved the door open with her shoulder and tossed her keys onto the kitchen counter. My ears immediately filled with a million noises at once—the blare of the television and the dogs’ barking and Jordan’s four younger siblings running around the living room—and it was the strangest feeling ever. Like stepping out of a time machine, except now I could see the tops of the counters and it took twice as much effort for the German Shepherds to knock me onto my ass.

Her house had always been like this—loud and chaotic and disorganized—but it fit. Her family was old fashioned like that. They believed in tons of kids and bringing home stray animals and the art of learning everything through raw experience. Jordan had never been babied or indulged or pampered in her life, and it showed even when we were little. When she’d fall off her bike, she’d clean the scrape herself without a word and be back outside in no time. When we’d hang out on a Saturday, she’d stay out all morning, afternoon, and evening, and wouldn’t check home until dark. When we’d go to my house for dinner, she’d be in awe at the silence and the structure and the fact that my room always stayed exactly the way I left it.

“I’m just gonna go make sure none of the cats are stuck in the garage again,” Jordan told me. “Every time my dad cuts the lawn, he goes in there to get the mower and closes it without checking if they got in. You wanna go wait in my room for a few minutes and I’ll be right there?”

“Yeah, sure thing.”

“You remember where it is?”

“I think so. Probably,” I said. I nudged my shoes to the side of the door and started to head through the kitchen. “No worries, I’ll find it.”

Before any of the Carvalho kids had been born, Jordan’s parents had bought the small cabin at the top of the hill on Walnut Street. It wasn’t anything more than a kitchen, a bathroom, and a small bedroom, so when it became very apparent that the popping out of babies was going to be done rabbit-style around here, they bought the cabin next door, too. They built a bunch of rooms going from one to the other, linking the two buildings, and as a result, Jordan’s house was like an RV, only scaled up a hundred times. You had to walk through every goddamn place in the house just to get where you were going, and after trudging awkwardly through everyone else’s bedroom, I finally reached Jordan’s.

I knew it was Jordan’s because it had the same bohemian-type style that I remembered. Her furniture was dark brown with vine patterns carved on the drawers, and there were earthy-colored tapestries on the walls. She had paper lanterns and sun-shaped mirrors and candles in jars and a redheaded man lying on her bed.

My heart smacked against my ribcage and I stumbled backwards into Jordan’s bookshelf. I hadn’t expected anyone to be in here—least of all a six-foot-four ginger sprawled out on a mattress—and it was a few seconds before I’d calmed down enough to figure out who he was. “Bobby Duncan?” I asked, and there was shock in every ounce of my voice.

He glanced over the top of the comic book he’d been reading. “Charlotte Moyer,” he said, his voice dull and nonchalant as though we’d just happened to run into each other at the supermarket or something.

“Ho-ly-shit.” I emphasized each syllable as it left my mouth. “You did some hardcore growing up, dude.”

Five years ago, Bobby had been short and skinny and had a shaved head, and his entire wardrobe had been comprised of Wolverine shirts and cargo pants. Now his hair was straight and long—probably almost halfway down his back—and he had a pretty epic beard going on, too. He wasn’t anywhere near what I’d call muscular, but his chest and shoulders had certainly broadened out, and he’d definitely gotten taller.