Infinite Cashback System

Chapter 359: 359 | Phase One: Rope Drop Rush

Kumiko’s face ignited. "I picked it out at three in the morning. I went through fourteen options. I almost wore the one with strawberries but it wrinkles in car seats."

"Good call." Chloe turned to Jordan and examined him with the same clinical efficiency she used to review balance sheets. Her eyes tracked from his face to his bare chest to his sweatpants to his feet and back up. "Go shower. Wear the gray henley I put on your desk last night and the dark jeans. Don’t gel your hair. I want the bedhead thing."

"You left me a henley."

"I left you the henley that makes your shoulders look wide. There’s a difference."

"You have a ranking system for my own shirts."

"Top three. Don’t ask about the other two." Chloe drained the rest of her coffee and walked toward the bathroom, pausing at the door. "Kumiko, sit down and eat something before you pass out. There’s toast in the bread box and the strawberry jam is second shelf. We leave at six-fifteen. If anyone is late, I will leave them on the curb."

The bathroom door closed with the finality of a corporate memo.

Kumiko and Jordan looked at each other.

"She’s scary in the morning," Kumiko whispered.

"She’s scary at all hours. The morning just removes the filter."

Jordan showered in four minutes flat, a personal record achieved through the raw terror of missing Chloe’s departure deadline. He dressed in the henley she had laid out, dark jeans, clean white sneakers, and a light jacket for the evening when Anaheim temperatures dropped into the fifties. The henley fit the way Chloe wanted it to fit, which meant his shoulders filled the seams and the fabric stretched across his chest without bunching. He caught his reflection and had the brief, stupid thought that six weeks ago this body belonged to someone who couldn’t do five pushups without lying down afterward.

By six-twelve, Jordan had the Honda Civic idling in the parking structure with the heat running, the GPS locked on Disneyland Resort via the 73 to the 55 to the 5, estimated arrival sixty-two minutes barring traffic. His gym bag sat in the trunk, replaced by Chloe’s small overnight duffel and Kumiko’s cat backpack containing Mr. Snuggles, a phone charger, and presumably seven pages of documentation about Jordan’s freckle constellation.

Chloe emerged from the elevator at six-fourteen wearing a white cropped sweater, high-waisted black jeans, and clean white Nikes, her blue streak deliberately styled to frame the left side of her face. She had put in her contacts, and the electric blue of her irises caught the parking garage fluorescents as she walked toward the car with the controlled purpose of someone approaching a business meeting. Her overnight bag hung from one shoulder, compact and efficient, containing exactly what she needed and nothing else.

Kumiko walked beside her carrying a bag of snacks she had apparently acquired between five-thirty and six-fourteen, including Pocky, rice crackers, and four juice boxes arranged by flavor. She had also managed to clip her phone into a pink lanyard around her neck, which Jordan suspected was part of the seventeen-point tactical overview.

They reached the car at six-fourteen and forty seconds.

Chloe took the passenger seat without comment, adjusting the mirror half a degree and buckling her seatbelt with a single practiced click. Kumiko climbed into the back with her snack bag and her phone already open to the Google Sheet, the screen glowing pink and lavender and green with her color-coded itinerary.

Jordan pulled out of the parking structure at six-fifteen on the dot.

The 73 was empty at this hour, a ribbon of concrete winding through brown hills and sparse development, and the Honda Civic ate the miles with the steady hum of a car that had been cleaned, maintained, and treated with more respect than it probably deserved. February sunlight cracked the horizon in stages, first gray, then amber, then a blinding gold that forced Jordan to flip the visor down and squint through the windshield.

Kumiko narrated the sunrise from the back seat.

"Oh my god it’s happening. Chloe-chan look, look, the sky is doing the thing. It’s going orange and pink and there’s a cloud that looks like a bunny. Jordan-kun do you see the bunny cloud."

"I see the road."

"The road doesn’t have a bunny on it."

"The road is what keeps us alive."

Kumiko pressed her face against the window and made a sound that fell somewhere between a gasp and a prayer. Chloe, who had been reviewing something on her phone with the intensity of a surgeon reading a chart, glanced up and out the windshield for exactly one second.

"It’s nice," Chloe said, and returned to her phone.

Jordan merged onto the 55, and traffic began to thicken with commuters and early risers heading north toward LA. The drive settled into a rhythm, Jordan handling lane changes while Chloe controlled the music through the Bluetooth with absolute authority, playing a mix of lo-fi hip hop and Korean ballads that created the kind of atmosphere that made the inside of a Honda Civic feel like a private universe. Kumiko sang along to every Korean song despite knowing approximately sixty percent of the lyrics, her voice carrying a sweet, slightly off-key quality that made Jordan smile without turning around.

Twenty minutes into the drive, Kumiko’s hand appeared between the front seats holding an open Pocky box.

"Fuel," she said.

Jordan took a stick with his driving hand. Chloe took one without looking up from her phone. The three of them ate strawberry Pocky in silence for thirty seconds, which constituted the longest period of quiet Kumiko had maintained since arriving at the apartment.

"Phase One," Kumiko announced from the back seat, shattering the record. "Rope Drop Rush. The gates open at eight. We need to be in the esplanade by seven-fifteen for security, seven-thirty for tram loading, seven-forty-five for positioning outside the main gate. When they open, we go left, through the castle hub, through Adventureland, through the Critter Country bypass into Galaxy’s Edge. Jordan-kun, you handle the virtual queue on your phone at exactly eight o’clock. Chloe-chan, you hold the bags and my lanyard because I run faster without accessories."

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