Two-way Street

Day Three, 7:45 p.m.

Courtney doesn’t say one word to me for the rest of the trip. We drive almost straight through to Boston, only stopping to go to the bathroom and grab snacks at a gas station. For the last six hours or so, she sleeps, probably because she didn’t last night. Neither did I, but crazily enough, I don’t feel tired.

“Court,” I say when we finally pull into the front parking lot of school. “We’re here.”

“Mmmm,” she says, opening her eyes slowly. I’m half hoping she doesn’t wake up so that I’ll have an excuse to touch her, to gently shake her awake, but she rubs her eyes and sits up.

There’s a throng of people milling around, parents, students, all trying to find their dorm rooms. Jesus Christ. It looks like fucking Grand Central Station. I figured getting here so late would spare us most of the craziness, but apparently not.

“How was your nap?” I ask. She looks cute, her hair rumpled from sleep, her cheek red from where it was pressed against the seat.

“Can you help me with my stuff?” Courtney asks, ignoring my question. She reaches into the backseat, grabs her sweatshirt, and pulls it on.

“Yes,” I say. “Court, listen, I don’t—”

“Jordan,” she says, holding her hand up. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

“But if we don’t—”

She opens the car door and jumps down into the parking lot. After a second, I pop open the back of my truck, and then follow her around to the back of the car.

A perky blond girl holding a clipboard and wearing a maroon polo shirt emerges from the crowd before we have a chance to start unloading any of the stuff. “Hello!” she says. “I’m Jessica, part of your welcome orientation committee. Do you need help finding your dorm?”

“No, thanks,” Courtney says. “I know where my dorm is. I mapped it all out during my tour in the fall.”

Jessica’s face falls, but she recovers quickly. She turns to me. “What about you?” She gives me a dazzling smile.

“No, thanks,” I say. “I’m cool.” I open the back of my truck, sending Jessica the silent message to go away. I want to be able to talk to Courtney before we go our separate ways, and Jessica’s screwing up the plan.

“Well,” she says, acting like we’ve made some sort of huge mistake by not taking her help. “Here are your welcome packets, map, etc.” She hands us each a huge stack of papers. Courtney and I take them obediently, even though I know I’m going to lose half this shit by tomorrow. “Do you have any questions?”

“No,” Courtney says. She starts tapping her foot.

“No,” I say.

“Then let me explain a little bit to you about how our meal plan works. You won’t have to worry about it tonight of course, because—”

“Listen,” Court starts. “We said we didn’t want to hear any of this.” She takes a step toward Jessica. Whoa. She must be really pissed off if she’s cutting off the orientation committee chick. Wasn’t her whole thing about getting oriented?

“Um, Jessica, listen,” I say, deciding to step in before anything can get out of hand. I can’t have Courtney fighting some girl in the parking lot, no matter how hot that would be. “We’ve had a really long drive, we’re both tired and cranky”—Courtney raises her eyebrows—” and we just want to get to our rooms. So, thanks, really, for all your help, but we’ll come and find you if we need anything.”

“Okay,” Jessica says, still sounding uncertain. She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something else, glances at Courtney, and then changes her mind. She turns around and disappears back into the crowd.

Courtney reaches up and pulls a blue suitcase out of the truck and sets it down on the pavement.

“‘Thank you, Jordan, for saving me from the scary orientation girl,’” I recite.

She ignores me and continues to unload her stuff. Okay, so apparently, trying to lighten the mood isn’t the way to go. Check.

I decide to try and make normal conversation. “You have a lot of stuff,” I try. “Seriously.” I set a huge box down in the parking lot. “What do you have in here?”

“My books,” she says. She reaches up and gathers her hair into a ponytail, then slides a hair tie around it with her other hand.

“Why would you bring books to college?” I ask her. “You know they give you books, right?” I mean it as a joke, but she gives me one of those looks, one of those “You’ll never understand me” looks, so I decide it might be better to keep my mouth shut until we’re done unloading everything. We spend the next half hour making trips back and forth to her dorm room. I was kind of hoping she’d want to start setting stuff up, maybe let me hang around for a while, but she just deposits stuff in a pile on her floor, presumably to deal with later. By herself.

I realize that once we’re done unloading the stuff, I’m going to have to leave. So I take my time, but there’s only so much and finally, all of it is in Courtney’s room.

“Thanks,” she says. She’s standing in the doorway of her room, and I’m in the hall, and she starts to shut the door.

“Court, are we going to talk about this?” I ask, putting my hand on the door so that she can’t shut it. Well, she can shut it. Just not without breaking my hand. Hmm. On second thought, I drop my hand.

“No,” she says. “We’re not.”

“I understand you’re mad,” I say. “But I want to talk about it, make you understand.”

“I already understand,” she says simply. She shrugs.

“You’re upset now,” I say, starting to become frantic. “I know that. But you need to just take a breather, I think. Take a break from me and from the trip. You’re tired.” I realize once I leave this room, I won’t have anything to look forward to. No trip with Courtney. No seeing her every day in math. It’s over. We’re at college now. “Let’s have breakfast tomorrow. Before orientation. I know you don’t want to miss it.” I smile at her then, to let her know it’s okay, that I’m making a joke.

“Jordan,” she says. “Please leave.”

And then she shuts the door.