“Don’t worry about it, Jordan,” I say. Why won’t he go away? “Really.”
“Hey.” One of the drug dealers blocks our path on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you that guy?”
“No,” Jordan says to the drug dealer. To me, he says, “Heather, slow down. We’ve got to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I assure him, in my most cheerful voice. “I’m good. Everything’s good.”
“Everything’s not good,” Jordan cries. “I can’t stand to see you hurting like this! It’s tearing me up inside—”
“Oh, hey,” I say to the drug dealer who is trailing after us. “This is Jordan Cartwright. You know, from Easy Street.”
“The dude from Easy Street!” the drug dealer cries, pointing at Jordan. “I knew it! Hey, look!” he calls to his friends. “It’s the dude from Easy Street!”
“Heather!” Jordan is swallowed up in a crowd of autograph seekers. “Heather!”
I keep right on walking.
Well, what exactly was I supposed to do? I mean, he’s engaged. ENGAGED. And not to me.
What more is there to say? It’s not like I don’t have more pressing concerns right now, too.
Rachel seems kind of surprised to see me walk through the doors of Fischer Hall at night. She’s standing in the lobby just as I come in, and her eyes get kind of big.
“Heather,” she exclaims. “What are you doing here?”
“They asked me to judge,” I say.
For some reason, she looks relieved. I realize why a second later. “Oh good! Another judge for the lip-synch! How great! I was hoping Sarah and I wouldn’t have to judge on our own. What if there’s a tie?”
“Heather.” Jordan comes bursting into the lobby.
And all around us, breaths are sucked in as he is immediately recognized. Then the whispering begins: “Isn’t that—no, it couldn’t be. No, it is! Look at him!”
“Heather,” Jordan says, striding up to Rachel and me. His gold necklaces rise and fall beneath the puffy shirt as he pants. “Please. We’ve got to talk.”
I turn to Rachel, who is staring at Jordan with eyes that are even bigger than when I’d walked in.
“Here’s another judge for you,” I say to her.
Which is how Jordan and I end up sitting in the front row of about three hundred cafeteria chairs, facing the closed-off grill and salad bar, clipboards in our laps. You can imagine how difficult this makes it for Jordan to talk to me about our relationship, as he is so desperately longing to.
But this is just fine by me. I mean, the truth is I’m only here to hunt for the mysterious Mark and/or Todd, and my being a judge isn’t exactly helpful in this capacity.
But if it keeps me from having to listen to Jordan as he tries to make excuses for his behavior—though why he should care what I think of him, when he’s made it so perfectly obvious he doesn’t want to be with me anymore, I can’t imagine…maybe Sarah can explain it—it’s fine.
The kids are all in a dither about Jordan. They hadn’t known there was going to be a celebrity judge. (I don’t count. The few kids who’d recognized me at check-in could not have cared less. Tonight, it’s all about Jordan…even though I’m afraid some of them are making fun of him, on account of the puffy shirt and Easy Street and everything.) Jordan’s presence does seem to give the contest an air of legitimacy it lacked before.
It also seems to make the competitors even more nervous.
There’s an elaborate sound and light system set up over by the salad bar, and all sorts of students are milling around, chatting and noshing on free soda and chips. I look for couples, trying to single out any boys and girls in close conversation, thinking that if Mark or Todd is going to strike again, there is a bevy of freshwomen here for him to choose from.
But all I see are groups of kids, boys and girls, white, African American, Asian, you name it, in baggy jeans and T-shirts, screaming happily at one another, and tossing back Doritos.
Mmmm. Doritos.
Sarah, seated next to Jordan, can’t take her eyes off him. She keeps asking him searching questions about the music industry, the same ones she’d asked me when she’d first met me. Like, had he felt like a sellout when he’d done that Pepsi ad? And hadn’t he felt that performing at the Super Bowl halftime show had been degrading to his calling as a musician? And what about that calling? Did it bother him that he knew how to sing, but not how to play a single instrument? Didn’t that, in a way, mean that he wasn’t a musician at all, but merely a mouthpiece through which Cartwright Records could deliver their message of corporate greed?
By the time the lights go down, and the hall president, Greg, gets up to welcome everyone, I’m feeling a little sorry for Jordan.
Then the first act comes on, a trio of girls lip-synching Christina’s latest, with choreography and everything. With the lights down, I’m able to scan the audience without looking too obvious.
There are a lot of students there. Nearly every seat is filled, and the cafeteria can hold four hundred. Plus there are people lining the back of the room, hooting and applauding and, in general, acting like eighteen-year-olds away from home for the first time. Beside me, Jordan is staring at the Christina wannabes, his clipboard clutched tightly in his hands. For someone who’s been shanghaied into the job, he seems to be taking it way seriously.
Or maybe he’s only acting interested in order to keep Sarah from asking him any more questions.
The first act comes to a hip-grinding stop, and a quartet of boys leaps into the spotlight. Heavy bass begins to shake the cafeteria walls—they’re performing “Bye Bye Bye” by ’N Sync—and I feel pity for Fischer Hall’s neighbors, one of which is an Episcopalian church.
The boys throw themselves into their act. They have the choreography down pat—so much so I practically wet my pants, I’m laughing so hard.
I notice Jordan isn’t laughing at all. He doesn’t seem to understand that the boys are making fun of boy bands. He is carefully scoring them on originality and how well they know the lyrics.
Seriously.
Glancing over my clipboard as I score the boys’ act—I give them mostly fives out of ten, since they don’t have costumes—I notice a tall man wander into the dining hall, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his khakis.