Amy And Roger's Epic Detour Part 11

"No," he said, still looking serious, still holding on to his end of the CD. "Tomorrow will be better."

"But what if it's not?" I asked.

Walcott smiled and let go of the CD. "Then you say it again tomorrow. Because it might be. You never know, right? At some point, tomorrow will will be better." be better."

I nodded. "Thanks," I said, hoping he knew I didn't mean just the CD. He nodded, climbed back up on his mower, started the engine, and headed off again.

I took a moment for myself, alone in the darkness by the seventh hole-par five-of the Wichita Country Club. Then I put my flip-flops back on and headed back. Drew and Roger were waiting for me where the course began and gra.s.s met gravel. Roger looked worried, and my face must have betrayed something of what had just happened, since he didn't stop looking worried when he saw me.

"You get lost?" Drew asked.

I held up the CD. "Ran into Walcott," I said, trying to keep my voice light. "He gave me his demo."

"Told you!" said Drew. We headed out, and I saw that the girl on the practice court was still there, now practicing her serve, tossing the ball high up above her head before slamming it back to the wall.

Drew insisted on driving us back to the car, saying that it was on his way out. It seemed that while I'd been gone, Roger had been telling him about Highway 50, and they picked up this conversation again.

"You can't believe it," Roger said. "It just goes on and on, and you think it's never going to end."

"But then it does," Drew said. "Wow. That's a great story, dude."

"I'm serious!" said Roger. "You think it's going to last forever."

"But nothing lasts forever," Drew said, and then he and Roger sang together, "Even cold November rain." I looked from one to the other, baffled.

"Seriously?" asked Drew, catching my expression in the rear-view mirror. "Magellan, get this girl some GNR."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't have time to ask, because a few seconds later, the car stopped outside the country club gates. I looked out and saw the Liberty, parked in a pool of streetlight. I was unexpectedly glad to see it again.

My house might be in the process of being sold by an overly friendly Realtor, and my family might be gone or scattered across the country, but the car seemed welcome and familiar and, mile by mile, more like home.

We all got out, Drew pulling the front seat forward for me. He extended his hand again, and this time I took it, giving him a small smile that he returned, broadly. Drew and Roger hugged and hit each other on the back a few more times, and then Roger walked to the Liberty, leaving me and Drew alone. "It was nice to meet you," he said.

"Thanks for the NuWay," I said. "Crumbly is good."

"Didn't I tell you? Do me a favor," Drew said, slamming the driver's-side door closed and leaning a little closer to me. "Keep an eye on my friend Magellan, would you? Be his Sancho Panza."

I stared at Drew, surprised. My father had suddenly intruded into this conversation, when I hadn't been expecting him. "What did you say?" I asked.

"Sancho Panza," Drew repeated. "It's from Don Quixote Don Quixote. The navigator. But listen. The thing about Magellan is the thing about all these explorers. Most of the time, they're just determined to chase impossible things. And most of them are so busy looking at the horizon that they can't even see what's right in front of them."

"Okay," I said, not really sure what he meant. Was he talking about Hadley? "Will do."

"Drive safe," he called to Roger, who, I saw, was already in the car and nodded in response.

I had just opened my door when I heard Drew let out an impressive stream of expletives. I turned to see him peering sadly in through the driver's-side window. "Keys?" Roger called. "Seriously?" "Seriously?"

Drew sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket. "Don't worry about me," he said with a shrug. "Go on. I'll be fine."

I climbed into the car, shut the door, and looked around its familiar gray interior and, most familiar of all, Roger sitting behind the wheel, smiling at me. "Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," I said. I took Roger's gla.s.ses out of his case. Seeing the smudges on the lenses, I gave them a quick polish with the hem of Bronwyn's s.h.i.+rt. He put them on, started the car, and we pulled out onto the road. In my side mirror, I could see Drew waving. He continued to wave as we drove away, until he got smaller and smaller and finally faded from view.

Where they love me, where they know me, where they show me, back in Missouri.

-Sara Evans.

Around midnight, it started to rain.

We'd been driving through Kansas in the dark for three hours, not speaking much. I'd been looking out the window, feeling the reverberations of what I'd told Walcott still coursing through me, like aftershocks following an earthquake. I'd said it out loud. I had. And it hadn't made things worse-the world hadn't ended. But I didn't feel a lot better, either. It was almost as though by saying the words out loud, I'd summoned it in a more real way, because I was now having a hard time thinking about anything else. My mind kept circling around and around the things I wanted to think about the least.

The rain was a welcome distraction. I leaned over and showed Roger how to adjust the wiper settings, and I looked ahead to the highway, obscured and made somehow beautiful by the rain streaking across the winds.h.i.+eld, blurring the red lines of brake lights ahead of us and the white lines of headlights to the left of us, no sound in the car except Roger's mix and the constant, muted thwap thwap of the winds.h.i.+eld wipers. of the winds.h.i.+eld wipers.

The rain was light at first, just a few droplets, but then it was as though the endless sky above us had opened, and bucketful after bucketful was being tossed down onto the car. "Wow," Roger said, fumbling with the wiper settings again. I leaned over and turned them up so they were going at their fastest setting-thwapthwapth-wapthwapthwap. "Thanks," he said.

"Sure." I leaned back and looked out into the darkness, at the rain droplets streaking diagonally across my window. I'd always felt safe driving inside cars at night when it rained. I knew most people-like Julia-had always hated being in cars when it rained, especially at night. She said it scared her. But it had never bothered me. Especially since I now knew that the worst could happen in broad daylight on a sunny Sat.u.r.day morning, fifteen minutes from home.

"You used to drive this car?" Roger asked, glancing over at me.

"Sure," I said, propping my feet on the dashboard.

"If you ever want to drive," he said, a little tentatively, like he was considering each word before he spoke it, "I mean, you absolutely could. I would be fine with that."

I put my feet down and sat up straighter. "Should we stop?" I asked. "Are you too tired?"

"No, I'm fine," he said. "I've got at least two more hours in me tonight. I just ... wanted to let you know that I'd be okay with you driving."

Something about the way he said this made me go still. Did he know what had happened? I'd thought he didn't, but maybe that was just what I'd wanted to think. And maybe he hadn't just been perceptive when Drew had been driving too fast for me. Maybe he'd known why it bothered me, and had known this whole time. "I don't want to drive," I said, trying to keep my voice steady, but hearing it quaver a little despite my best effort.

"Do you want to talk about why?" he asked. He glanced at me.

I stared at his profile, feeling my heart hammering. The car didn't feel so safe anymore. "Do you know what happened?" I asked, hearing that my voice was already sounding strangled.

Roger shook his head. "No," he said. "I just think that maybe you should talk about it."

My heart was pounding in my chest. "Well, I don't want to," I said as firmly as I could.

"I just ..." He looked at me, and I saw that his gla.s.ses had gotten smudged again somehow. I could practically see a whole fingerprint on the right lens. I chose to focus on this, and not the way he was looking at me. Like he was disappointed in what he was seeing. "You can talk to me, you know."

"I know that," I said carefully. "Haven't I been talking to you?" I asked, deciding to deliberately misunderstand what he was saying. "Have we not been talking?"

He sighed and looked out at the road, and I knew he hadn't bought it. Of course I knew what he meant. But it was one thing to tell Walcott, since I knew I wasn't going to see him again. Opening up to Roger would be a wholly different thing. I'd have to sit with him in the car afterward, for miles and miles and hours and hours. And what if it was too much for him?

"I just ...," I said. I took a breath, so I wouldn't break down before I even started. "It's just hard for me. To talk about this. I mean." Or to complete full sentences, apparently. Amy! wouldn't have had this problem. Amy! would have had no issue with sharing her feelings and the things that scared her most with the person who was offering to hear them. But then again, Amy! probably had no issues. I really, really hated Amy!.

"I know it is," Roger said quietly. The mix ended, and he didn't start it up again. The iPod's tiny screen glowed for a moment, then faded, and the only sound in the car was the rhythmic thwapping of the wipers across the winds.h.i.+eld, which remained clear for only a second before the rain engulfed it again.

"It's not that I don't want to talk," I said without thinking about it, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I realized that they were true. I did want to talk. I'd wanted to talk for months. And here was someone who was offering to listen. So why did this seem so impossible? Like I was being asked to speak Portuguese, or something equally difficult? "I just ..." I didn't even seem to possess the words to finish that sentence. I hugged my knees into my chest and looked out the window.

"All right," Roger said after a moment. "I'll start, okay? Twenty Questions."

"Oh," I said, a little surprised that we were switching topics so quickly. Because to be honest, I'd almost felt ready to talk to him. "Okay. Is it a person?"

"No," Roger said, smiling. "I mean, I'll ask you questions. And that way it might be easier for you to talk. Maybe?"

I was both relieved and anxious that we were staying on me, that I would have to talk. "Twenty seems like a lot," I said. "How about five?"

"Five Questions? Doesn't exactly have the same ring to it."

"And I get to ask you, too," I added on impulse. "It's only fair that way."

Roger drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then nodded. "Okay," he said. "Ready?" I nodded. Mostly, I wanted to just get this over with. "Why don't you want to drive?" he asked.

I swallowed and concentrated on the wipers going back and forth. And even though Roger could see me and I him, I was suddenly glad for the darkness in the car. It made it easier to pretend that he couldn't see that I was trying hard not to cry, that my chin had apparently taken on a life of its own, and I no longer had any control over it. "There was an accident," I said finally, forcing the words out.

"A car accident?"

"Yes," I said. I was working very, very hard to keep control of myself, but I was on the verge of bursting into tears, and there was nowhere to go if that happened. No bathroom stall to hide in, nowhere to run.

"When was this?" Roger was asking me these questions gently, and quietly, but he might as well have been shouting them at me, that was how it felt to hear them, knowing I would have to answer.

"Three months ago," I said, and felt my voice crack a little on the last word. "March eighth."

"That's all?" Roger asked, sounding surprised, and sad.

"Yes," I said. I took a deep breath and tried to take a lighter tone. "That counts as one of your questions, you know." From the way my voice was shaking, and the way it sounded thick to me, I had a feeling that my lighter tone had not been successful.

"Last one," he said. He glanced at me again and asked, more quietly than ever, "Do you want to tell me what happened?"

I'd known this was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to hear him ask. Because there was a piece of me that wanted to talk about it. Deep down, somewhere, I knew that it would be better in the long run, to face it. That the bone would have to be set in order to heal properly, not weak and crooked. I had seen a flash of the Old me in Bronwyn's mirror in Colorado. I wanted to see her again. I wanted to try to get back to who I had once been. And the rational piece of me knew that not talking about it was keeping me from sleeping and was probably making my hair fall out.

But there was another piece of me, the part I'd been listening to for the past three months, that told me to turn away, not answer, pull the covers over my head and keep on hiding.

Because Roger didn't know what had happened. If he had, he wouldn't be looking at me the way he had been. Once he found out, he'd turn away from me, then leave me altogether, just like Mom and Charlie had done. And I didn't want to have to face the look in his eyes when I stopped being whatever he thought I was and turned into something else. I unclasped my knees, placed my feet on the floor, and looked at him. "No," I said quietly. But my voice seemed to reverberate in the silent car nonetheless.

Roger looked over at me, then back at the road, pressing his lips together, nodding. Then he brought the iPod to life again and turned up the music, beginning his mix again.

I felt like I'd let him down, but I knew that it was better, in the end, to keep this inside. I'd gotten good at that. And soon he'd stop asking. Soon this would just be who I was. Soon Old me would be dead too. I tipped my head against the cold gla.s.s of the window. When I felt myself begin to cry, I didn't fight against it. And when I caught my reflection in the dark window, I wasn't able to tell what was tears and what was rain.

I called your line too many times.

-Plushgun.

MARCH 8- 8-THREE MONTHS EARLIER.

I headed back inside the house, pocketing my cell phone. My mother wasn't in the kitchen, but I could hear her in the family room, talking on the phone, her words clipped and anxious. "Charlie," "Charlie," I muttered, hating that my brother was doing this to us. I muttered, hating that my brother was doing this to us.

I took the stairs two at a time up to his room and opened the door, and the strong scent of Glade Plug-Ins. .h.i.t me. I always thought it might have raised my parents' suspicions that Charlie's room consistently smelled like potpourri, but they had never seemed to think anything of it. Or if they had, it was like they didn't want to deal with it, so they never said anything.

Charlie hadn't appeared in his room, and it looked just like it always did. His posters of James Blake and Maria Sharapova were tacked to the walls, and the bed, never made, was rumpled as usual. Charlie told me that he'd discovered if you never made your bed, it was harder for people to tell if you'd slept in it the night before. I closed the door and checked my phone again. Charlie was usually good at covering his tracks; it was how he'd been able to get away with things for so long.

I thought back to the conversation I'd had with him on our porch six months ago, my failed attempt at an intervention. When I'd threatened to tell Mom and Dad, I'd also threatened to stop covering for him. But I hadn't done either, just like he'd said I wouldn't, and here I was ready to try to fix the situation, if only he would give me some information. I sent him a text-WHERE ARE YOU???-and waited, staring down at my phone. But I didn't get a reply.

I headed back downstairs and heard my parents' voices in the kitchen. I sat on the bottom step, partially hidden but able to hear what was being said.

"Who else should we call?" my mother asked, and I could hear the raw worry in her voice. I couldn't help thinking that if it had been me who had disappeared, she wouldn't be worried. She'd be furious. But then, Charlie always had been her favorite.

"Maybe we should just hold tight," said my father. "I mean, he's sure to turn up...."

The kitchen phone rang, and I stood up and stepped into the kitchen, leaning back against the counter. My father smiled at me when he saw me, but I could see how stressed he was. The whistling figure pus.h.i.+ng the lawn mower was gone.

"h.e.l.lo," my mother said, grabbing the kitchen phone. Her expression changed as she listened to what was being said on the other end. Genuine fear was now mixed in with the worry. "I don't understand," she said. "He's where where?"

I hadn't been able to sleep. We'd checked into a hotel when it became clear that Roger was. .h.i.tting his wall. He'd gone right to sleep, but I'd spent three hours lying awake, looking at the s.p.a.ce between Roger's bed and my own, watching the clock. Roger was sleeping peacefully, and as I saw his back rise and fall, I envied him that sense of peace. I had taken my cell phone out and placed it next to me on the bed, and every time I opened it, I saw my voice mail icon illuminated. My sense of dread was growing. I knew I'd have to call my mother soon-in theory, we were supposed to be heading in from Ohio and getting to Connecticut that afternoon. We were not supposed to be in Missouri and heading for Kentucky. We were not supposed to be in a different time zone. When six a.m. rolled around, I gave up on the idea of sleep entirely. I grabbed the purple plastic room key card and my phone and headed out to the hallway, closing the door slowly behind me so it wouldn't slam and wake Roger.

I walked to the end of the hallway, where a large window overlooked the highway. Then I took a deep breath and pressed the speed dial for my mother's cell phone.

She answered on the second ring, sounding much more awake than I would have imagined she'd be at seven in the morning, her time. "Amy?" she asked. "Is that you?"

"Hi, Mom," I said.

"Hi, honey," she said. I felt myself blinking back tears, just hearing her voice. I knew that this was why I had avoided talking to her for as long as possible. Because I was feeling so many things right now, I wasn't even sure how to process them all. It was like I was in overload. It felt so good to hear her voice, but a second later I was furious, and I wasn't even sure exactly why.

"I'm so glad you called. I have to say, Amy," she said, and the sharpness was coming back into her tone, what Charlie called her "professor voice," even though she had hardly ever used it on him, "I've been very disappointed with how out of touch you've been during this whole process. I feel like I've barely heard from you, I hardly ever know where you are-"

"We're in Missouri," I interrupted her, which was something I almost never did, since I always knew her next words would be, Don't interrupt me, Amy. Don't interrupt me, Amy.

"Don't interrupt me, Amy," my mother said. "It's just incredibly irresponsible, and-did you say Missouri?"

"Yes," I said. I felt my heart hammering again, the same feeling that I always used to get whenever I knew I was going to get in trouble.

"What," said my mother, her voice low and steady, always a bad sign, "on earth earth are you doing in Missouri?" are you doing in Missouri?"

"Just listen for a second, okay?" I asked, swallowing and trying to get my bearings.

"Am I stopping you?"

"No. Okay." I held the phone away from my ear for a moment and looked out on the highway. I thought I could see a little tiny ribbon of light creeping up on the horizon, bringing the dawn. But it might have just been brake lights. "So Roger and I," I said, trying not to think about how mad my mother was probably growing on the other end of the phone, "we decided to take a little bit of a scenic route. We're fine, I promise, he's driving safely and we're stopping whenever he gets tired." There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Mom?" I asked tentatively.

"Did you just say," she asked, sounding more incredulous than angry, "that you're taking the scenic route scenic route?"

"Yes," I said, swallowing. "But I promise we'll be there before too long. We're just-"

"What you will do," she said, the anger now back in her voice, full force, "is get in the car and drive straight to Connecticut. I will put Roger on a train to Philadelphia, and then you and I will discuss your consequences."