Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

And now the show had closed, finals were over, and at the end of the driveway was a Subaru with Roger the Spud Player inside. Over the past week, I’d tried to think back to see if I could recall a Roger. And I had remembered one of the neighborhood kids, one with blond hair and ears that stuck out too far, clutching a maroon superball and calling for me and Charlie, trying to get a game together. Charlie would have remembered more details—despite his extracurriculars, he had a memory like an elephant—but Charlie wasn’t exactly around to ask.

Both doors of the Subaru opened, and a woman who looked around my mother’s age—presumably Marilyn—got out, followed by a tall, lanky guy. His back was to me as Marilyn opened the hatchback and took out a stuffed army-style duffel and a backpack. She set them on the ground, and the two of them hugged. The guy—presumably Roger—was at least a head taller than she was, and ducked a little bit to hug her back. I expected to hear good-byes, but all I heard him say was “Don’t be a stranger.” Marilyn laughed, as though she’d been expecting this. As they stepped apart, she met my gaze and smiled at me. I nodded back, and she got into the car. It pulled around the cul-de-sac, and Roger stood staring after it, raising one hand in a wave.

When the car had vanished from sight, he shouldered his bags and began walking toward the house. As soon as he turned toward me, I blinked in surprise. The sticking-out ears were gone. The guy coming toward me was shockingly good-looking. He had broad shoulders, light brown hair, dark eyes, and he was already smiling at me.

I knew in that instant the trip had suddenly gotten a lot more complicated.

But I think it only fair to warn you, all those songs about California lied.

—The Lucksmiths

I stood up and walked down the steps to meet him in the driveway. I was suddenly very conscious that I was barefoot, in old jeans and the show T-shirt from last year’s musical. This had become my de facto outfit, and I’d put it on that morning automatically, without considering the possibility that this Roger guy might be disarmingly cute.

And he really was, I saw now that he was closer. He had wide hazel eyes and unfairly long lashes, a scattering of freckles, and an air of easy confidence. I felt myself shrinking in a little in his presence.

“Hey,” he said, dropping his bags and holding out his hand to me. I paused for a second—nobody I knew shook hands—but then extended my hand to him, and we shook quickly. “I’m Roger Sullivan. You’re Amy, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. The word stuck in my throat a little, and I cleared it and swallowed. “I mean, yes. Hi.” I twisted my hands together and looked at the ground. I could feel my heart pounding and wondered when a simple introduction had changed to something unfamiliar and scary.

“You look different,” Roger said after a moment, and I looked up at him to see him studying me. What he mean by that? Different from what he’d been expecting? What had he been expecting? “Different than you used to look,” he clarified, as though he’d just read my thoughts. “I remember you from when we were kids, you and your brother. But you still have the red hair.”

I touched it self-consciously. Charlie and I both had it, and when we were younger, and together all the time, people were always stopping us to point it out, as though we’d never noticed ourselves. Charlie’s had darkened over time to auburn, whereas mine stayed vividly red. I hadn’t minded it until recently. Lately it seemed to attract attention, when that was the last thing I wanted. I tucked it behind my ears, trying not to pull on it. It had started falling out about a month ago, a fact that was worrying me, but I was trying not to think about it too much. I told myself that it was the stress of finals, or the lack of iron in my mostly pizza diet. But usually, I tried not to brush my hair too hard, hoping it would just stop on its own.

“Oh,” I said, realizing that Roger was waiting for me to say something. It was like even the basic rules of conversation had deserted me. “Um, yeah. I still have it. Charlie’s is actually darker now, but he’s … um … not here.” My mother hadn’t told anyone about Charlie’s rehab and had asked me to tell people the cover she made up. “He’s in North Carolina,” I said. “At an academic enrichment program.” I pressed my lips together and looked away, wishing that he would leave and I could go back inside and shut the door, where nobody would try and talk to me and I could be alone with my routine. I was out of practice talking to cute guys. I was out of practice talking to anyone.

Right after it happened, I hadn’t said much. I didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to open the door for people to ask me how I was feeling about things. And it wasn’t like my mother or Charlie even tried. Maybe the two of them had talked to each other, but neither of them talked to me. But that was understandable—I was sure both of them blamed me. And I blamed myself, so it made sense that we weren’t exactly sharing our feelings around the kitchen table. Dinners were mostly silent, with Charlie either sweaty and jumpy or swaying slightly, eyes glazed, as my mother focused on her plate. The passing back and forth of dishes and condiments, and then the cutting and chewing and swallowing process, seemed to take up so much time and focus that it was really amazing to think we’d once had conversations around the dinner table. And even if I did think about saying something occasionally, the silence of the empty chair to my left killed that impulse.

At school my teachers had left me alone, not calling on me for the first month afterward. And then after that, I guess it just became habit that they didn’t. It seemed like people could revise who you were very quickly, and they seemed to have forgotten that I once used to raise my hand and give my opinions, that I once had something to say about the Boxer Rebellion or symbolism in The Great Gatsby.

My friends had gotten the message pretty quickly that I didn’t want to talk to them about it. And without talking about it, it became clear that then we really couldn’t talk about anything. After not very long, we just stopped trying, and soon I couldn’t tell if I was avoiding them or they were avoiding me.

Julia was the one exception. I hadn’t told her what had happened. I knew that if I told her, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook. She wasn’t going to go away easily. And she didn’t. She’d found out, of course, and had called me constantly right after, calls I let go to voice mail. The calls had tapered off, but she’d started e-mailing instead. They came every few days now, with subjects like “Checking In” and “Worried About You” and “For God’s Sake, Amy.” I let them pile up in my in-box, unread. I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing it, but I knew that if I talked to Julia about it, it would become real in some way I couldn’t quite handle.