Amy & Roger's Epic Detour (19 page)

“I did,” I said, a fact that still surprised me. But I had actually been having fun, until the end.

“Good,” he said, smiling at me. “I wasn’t sure, when you left early …”

“Oh, that,” I said, looking down at the ground. “I was just tired.”

“Yeah,” he said, stretching a little. “It’s been an intense couple of days.”

“It has,” I agreed, realizing as I said this that it had only been three days. And that my life before the trip was beginning to seem very far away.

“Ready to hit the road?”

“Yep,” I said, not registering my word choice until it was too late to take it back. But we were in Colorado, after all, so maybe cowboy speech was more acceptable. Or at least less random. “I need to find my suitcase, though. It wasn’t in Bronwyn’s room.”

“That’s okay,” Roger said as he grabbed his duffel from the doorway. “Bron brought it down this morning.”

“Really? That was nice of her.”

“Mmm,” he said vaguely. We walked past Leonard on our way to the door, and Roger fist-bumped the hand that was draped across the back of the sofa. “Later, dude,” he said, continuing out to the car.

“Totally,” Leonard mumbled.

I looked up at the screen and noticed that it was now flashing
Make haste! You must save Princess Amy!

I watched the words as they faded, feeling myself smile. “Bye, Leonard,” I said softly. “Good luck with your quest.” I stepped outside and pulled the door to the International House shut behind me. Then I followed Roger out to the car.

“Bron had a meeting early this morning,” he said as he put his duffel in the backseat, not making eye contact with me. He walked to the driver’s side door, and I got in the passenger seat and buckled up. “But she said to tell you good-bye.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised and trying not to be disappointed.

“I, of course, told her I wouldn’t,” Roger said, shooting a quick smile at me. He started the car, signaled, and we pulled out onto the street. “But she wanted me to give you this.” He handed me an envelope that was made of thick, cream-colored paper. AMY was written across the front in the same handwriting that had been on the Post-its. “She told me to wait until we were moving.”

“Okay,” I said, completely confused. I took the envelope and opened it.

I stared down at the note. It was sweet, except for the P.S., which was, to say the least, troubling. “Roger,” I said, glancing toward the back of the car, “is there something wrong with my suitcase?”

“Um, what?” he asked, face slightly flushed as he fiddled with the iPod. “Oh, look, the interstate.”

“Roger!”

“I don’t know anything,” he said. “I swear. I am merely a pawn in all this. She just brought down your suitcase this morning and told me not to open it, or let
you
open it, until we were on the road.”

“And you just agreed?” I asked, turning in my seat and looking to the way-back, where my suitcase was.

“Well, she threatened to turn the rabbit on me if I didn’t.”

I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help laughing at that. Roger laughed too and sounded relieved. “Look, we’re almost at Fran’s. If it’s something truly unfixable, we’re still close enough to go back and do something about it.”

As he said this, Roger took an exit off the interstate, and then pulled into a parking lot that seemed almost to be filled with as many huge commercial trucks as cars. “Wow,” I said, as we parked in the shadow of a huge semi.

“Yeah,” he said. “This place is pretty popular with truckers and students. It makes for an interesting mix. Welcome to Fran’s Pancake House.”

I got out of the car, walked quickly around to the back, and lifted the door. I unzipped my suitcase and stared down into it. All my clothes were gone.

Well, that wasn’t quite true, I realized as I dug through it. Bronwyn had left me my underwear—and given me the green thong and matching bra. She’d also left my “Anyone Can Whistle” T-shirt. But my other clothes were gone, and everything else was hers—the outfit I’d worn to the party, tank tops, dresses, skirts. I finished searching through the clothes and just stared down into the suitcase, not sure what to say.

“What?” Roger asked, hovering behind me. “Is it bad?”

“No,” I said. “She’s just given me an entirely new wardrobe, that’s all.”

“Oh.” He stepped closer, maybe figuring that it was safe, now that I didn’t seem mad enough to strike him. “But that’s a good thing, right?”

I looked down at all the beautiful things that were suddenly mine and realized that Bronwyn hadn’t given me clothes—she’d taken away my camouflage. She’d made it impossible to keep hiding. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about this, or the fact that she’d hijacked my suitcase without asking me. But the clothes
were
lovely. I’d felt prettier last night than I had in a long time. Basically, it was all just a lot to take in before breakfast. “It is,” I said, zipping the suitcase closed again, and then closing the back. “I think. Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

As we walked to the restaurant, Roger waxed rhapsodic about their pancakes, but I was only half listening. In the gleaming silver of a fuel truck, I caught my reflection in Bronwyn’s—now my—white shirt. I couldn’t help but notice that I was, in fact, standing up a little straighter.

I pushed away my empty pancake plate and looked across the table at Roger. The atlas was between us, open to the map of the country. There was still a long way to go before we reached the East Coast, but I was amazed to see how much ground we’d covered. We were a long way from Ohio, though, which was where we were supposed to be heading at this very moment. As I looked at where we were versus where we were supposed to be, I realized that I would have to call my mother—probably tonight—and tell her that we weren’t in Akron. The thought of this conversation made my stomach plunge a little, but it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as it had been a few days ago.

Roger traced a path with his finger across the states that sat between Colorado and Connecticut. As I watched, he moved across to Kansas, through Missouri, then to Kentucky, and stopped.

“You want to go to Kentucky,” I said. Roger looked up at me, surprised, then looked down to where his finger was resting on the map.

“Oh,” he said. He sighed, tapping his finger on the state. “I don’t know. It’s just what I’ve been thinking about this morning.” He ran both hands through his hair, and the cowlick in the back, as though happy to be freed, stood up jauntily.

“Hadley?” I guessed. It felt strange for me to be saying her name, especially after seeing the picture and hearing Bronwyn’s take on her.

“It’s obvious, huh?” he asked. “I just thought she’d be here, and I could talk to her. I was all prepared for it. And then she wasn’t….” He looked out the window, at the cars rushing by on the interstate. “I swear I don’t want to stalk her,” he said. “I just need to know what happened. And she’s not returning my calls….”

“Well,” I said, looking down at the map, “I’ve never been to Kentucky.”

Roger smiled at that, then turned back to me. “We don’t have time,” he said. “We’re supposed to be in …”

“Akron,” I supplied.

“Akron,” he repeated. “And then in Connecticut by tomorrow. I don’t think we can make it to Kentucky.”

I stared down at the map. I wasn’t ready to be in Connecticut yet. For some reason, I really wasn’t in any hurry to see my mother again. And if we were a day—or two—late, what could my mother do about it? It seemed like Roger was on a quest of his own, just like Virtual Leonard. And who was I to stop that? “I think we should go,” I said, making a decision.

“Really?”

“Really,” I said. “It’s just a detour, right?”

“It’s a big detour,” he said. “Your mother—”

“Will just have to deal with it. I’ll just … tell her we hit lots of traffic in the mid-Atlantic states.” I could barely believe that I was saying these things. My mother was going to kill me. She’d left another message on my phone that morning, and I hadn’t listened to it yet, or responded. Even though I had been trying to push these thoughts away, I knew she was probably worried. Guilt twisted my stomach and made my Francakes churn. But Roger looked up at me, and I tried to shake off these feelings. After all, she was the one who had gone off and left me for a month; I couldn’t do the same to her for four days?

“Let’s do it,” I said as firmly as I could, even though my heart was pounding. “Kentucky.”

Roger stared at me for a moment longer, then nodded and offered me his pencil. “Want to figure out our route, Chekov?” he asked. He peered at the map. “I don’t think it’s actually going to take us long. And if we go through Kansas, we can meet up with my friend Drew….”

“I think we’ll go through Kansas,” I said. As I flipped through the state maps, looking at the interstates we’d have to take, a thought occurred to me that made my stomach clench a little bit. “Roger,” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer, but making myself ask it anyway, “is this—the Hadley thing—why you agreed to come on this trip in the first place?”

He looked up at me and met my eyes, a little guiltily, and I knew the answer was yes. This shouldn’t have bothered or disappointed me, but it did. “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “I mean—”

“Well, yes,” Roger said, interrupting me. “It was, at first. I mean, my mother asked me, but I didn’t have to agree. I could have gotten my father to pay for my flight. But I thought it would be a good way to see the country, and I thought that Hadley was here, and if I could just see her, and talk to her …”

I nodded, telling myself not to be bothered by this. Of course he hadn’t been excited about taking a trip with a high schooler he barely knew. I hadn’t been happy about the trip; why was I suddenly upset that he hadn’t been either?

“But seriously,” he said, with enough gravity in his tone that I looked up at him. “It’s not what I thought it was going to be. I’m having fun. I mean, it’s an adventure, right?”

“Right,” I said, looking down at the country. “An adventure.” And since he’d just put his cards down on the table, I thought that I should probably return the favor. “I didn’t want to do this at all,” I said. “I mean, at first. But now … I mean, I’m glad. That we’re doing this, I mean.”

“Me too,” he said, smiling at me. A busboy came and cleared away our plates with a loud sigh, which I took as our cue to leave. We headed out of Fran’s, causing the bell at the top of the door to jingle, and stepped out of the way of two bleary-eyed truckers who were stumbling in.

“One thing,” I said, as he unlocked the car with the clicker from a few feet away. “The guy last night at the party,” I went on, as we walked around to our opposite sides of the car and looked at each other across the hood. This had been bothering me since it happened. “The one who said that you had fire. What—what did he mean?”

“Oh,” Roger said, and I noticed that he wasn’t looking at me. “I guess that must be a guy thing. It’s stupid.” He looked down at the key chain, fiddled with it.

“Was it about my hair?” I asked, sure that this was the answer and dreading it.

“What?” he asked, looking up at me. “No. Your hair’s great. It meant that he thought you were hot. And he thought that we were … together.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding Roger’s reaction now and feeling my face get warm.