Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

“It’s a midwestern thing,” Roger said, turning his head to the left to talk to me. When he did, I sat back a little—I hadn’t realized how close together our faces would be if he did that. “I discovered it this year. It’s like ice cream, but a little thicker. It’s good.”

“I bet it’s no Twenty-one Choices, though,” I said, referring to the frozen yogurt place in Pasadena, taking a chance that Roger would know it too.

He smiled at the name. “Love that place,” he said. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I was thinking about home, about California, and how it seemed very far away at the moment. Roger leaned forward a little and turned around more toward me. “Frozen yogurt,” he said, looking at me with a smile. “Such a California girl.”

I smiled back, and silence fell between us. I took a breath to say something, when the driver’s door opened again.

“And I’m back,” Drew said, dropping into the car and handing three plastic Freddy’s cups, red spoons sticking out of the top, to Roger. “Prepare to experience a Concrete,” he said. “Nirvana contained in a frozen treat.” He pulled out of the parking lot with a screech of tires and sped out into the intersection, throwing me back against the seat, causing Roger to slam against the passenger-side window, and prompting a cacophony of honking from all around us.

I felt myself begin to panic, and my stomach started to churn. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, tried to block out the memory of a screech of tires and the terrible scraping metal sound, the feeling that I no longer had control of the car, the sickening spinning sensation and the way that time had seemed to slow down.

“Drew!” Roger said sharply. I opened my eyes and saw that he was looking at me, worried. “Could you slow down a little?”

“Why?” asked Drew, above the rap that he had cranked up.

“Just do it,” Roger said, an edge I hadn’t heard before still in his voice.

“Fine,” Drew said a little petulantly, but he slowed down and started driving more calmly. I felt my own heart rate begin to decrease and my breath start to come more normally. It wasn’t happening again. I was here, now. And Roger was here with me. I was safe.

You okay? Roger mouthed to me, and I nodded and tried to give him a smile. I’d thought that I was getting better at reading him, but I hadn’t considered until then that it could be going both ways.

In about twenty minutes, we pulled into the staff entrance of the Wichita Country Club and swung around into the employee parking lot, which was almost totally deserted. It was fully dark out now, and clearer than it had been before. There were still clouds in the sky, but they were moving across the blackness, revealing the moon and stars, then blocking them out again.

“What are we doing back here?” Roger asked. “You putting in some overtime?”

“I promised you the ultimate Wichita experience,” said Drew, putting the car into park. “I’m delivering.” He got out, pushed his seat forward, and offered me his hand to help me out of the backseat. “Milady?”

I looked away from the hand and climbed out on my own. Old me would have smiled and taken his hand and said, Why, thank you, good sir and maybe made a Camelot reference. I just stared down at the ground while Drew locked the door.

Roger held out his free hand, the one that wasn’t carrying our dessert, to Drew. “Keys,” he said. “It’s for your own good.”

“Good call,” Drew said, handing them over. “Where were you yesterday?” Drew led the way forward, and I fell in step next to Roger. Two of the cups were looking precarious, and I reached over and took them from him. He gave me a quick smile, and we hurried to keep up with Drew, who was a surprisingly fast walker. We crossed the parking lot and passed in front of what must have been the main country club building. It was imposing and white, with columns and bored-looking valets in red jackets, who were hanging out in front, smoking.

“Cheeks!” two of them called to Drew as he passed.

“I’m not here,” he said. “Or on the back nine. You didn’t see me.”

“Got it,” one of the valets called, and Drew gave him a salute as we walked by.

“They call you Cheeks here?” asked Roger.

“Word got out,” he said, glancing back to where Roger and I were power walking behind him. “It caught on.”

We had walked beyond the main building by this point and passed a large swimming pool that reflected the moonlight, a lone water wing bobbing in the shallow end. A little farther on, I could see deserted tennis courts and a practice wall with a white line painted across it to represent the net. The lights above the practice wall were turned on, and as we got closer, I could see that there was a girl there, playing. I slowed for a moment and watched her slamming the ball against the wall, and then returning her own hit as it came back to her, over and over again.

When Charlie had been playing, back when we were younger, when he’d been ranked and the hope of the local tennis coach, my father had painted the same line on the side of our garage, and on most nights, I’d hear the rhythmic smacking of the ball against the wall. When he quit two years ago—or was kicked off the team, I was never sure which—the absence of the sound was the hardest thing to get used to. It was like I kept listening for it, even though I knew it wasn’t going to come back.

The girl missed one of her own shots and walked to pick up her ball, stretching a little as she did so. She saw us and waved with her racket. Then she turned back to the wall and continued playing, switching to her backhand. She was wearing all-white tennis clothes, and under the bright lights, she looked exotic and out of place, a large moth in a spotlight that shone directly down on her.

Drew made a sharp turn to the right, and Roger and I followed, as he led us onto the golf course.

“Dude, can we be here?” Roger asked.

“Of course not,” said Drew, not slowing at all. “Have you a point?”

Roger glanced at me and shrugged, then hurried to keep pace with Drew. On impulse, I kicked off my flip-flops and carried them, walking barefoot. The golf course grass was dense and close-cropped, and it almost felt like I was standing on top of it, not sinking down at all. I dragged my toes back and forth across it for just a moment before running to keep up with the boys.

The three of us walked in a horizontal line across the fairway, empty open space all around us, the hills gently rolling, the woods close and dark on either side. It was utterly quiet, and very still, and none of us spoke as we walked. Every now and then we’d pass a sand trap, which seemed unnaturally bright against the darkness of the course. The traps must have been manicured recently; all of them had a complicated swirled pattern raked in. This made them look serene, like something I’d seen in pictures of Japanese Zen gardens, and not at all like the sources of great distress that they probably were. Even though it was dark out, we could easily see where we were going, lit by the course’s occasional floodlight and the moon, bright in the huge sky, the stars shining through here with much more ease now that there were no streetlights or neon signs to obscure them.