Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

“How can someone be probably dead?”

“You know that counts as one of your questions, right?” he asked. “Fifteen.”

“And then Shooter—I mean, Dennis Hopper—who everyone has written off, starts coaching along with Gene Hackman. And nobody thinks it’s going to work out. Because they all think he’s a loser.”

“Maybe that’s because his name is Shooter,” I suggested.

Roger frowned at me. “Amy,” he said gravely, “this is a very important movie.”

“Then maybe I should see it for myself,” I suggested. “Rather than just hearing about it. In detail.”

“So it’s the big game,” Roger continued, undaunted. “And nobody thinks they’re going to win….”

I realized it after we’d been driving for an hour in Indiana. I’d learned that the underdogs had, shockingly, won the big game and proved all the naysayers wrong. But while Roger drummed on the steering wheel and checked his phone, I looked out the window—theoretically coming up with possibly dead females who were kind of explorers—and realized that we were free. I don’t know why it had taken so long for it to hit me, but suddenly there it was, making my heart pound a little harder, with excitement this time. I no longer had to worry about how I was going to lie to my mother. I was in big trouble, yes, and we were more broke than I’d have liked, but the two of us were also on our own. The damage was done. We could do anything—go anywhere—that we wanted. We were crossing America. We had a car and gas money and a destination. The road was open ahead of us. I looked at the rolling green hills passing by outside my window and saw my smile reflected in the side mirror.

“Amelia Earhart?” I asked, staring at Roger, once I’d finally given up. “Seriously?”

“What?” he asked. “We don’t know that she’s dead, after all. It’s just presumed. I like to think that she landed on some fabulous South Sea island and has been having a great time for the last seventy years.” He looked over at me and smiled. “I told you the answer was closer than you thought. Amelia.”

Four songs later, I leaned back against my window and looked over at him, running his hand through his hair, something I’d noticed that he did when he was nervous. I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that we were slowly, inexorably, getting closer to Kentucky. “So,” I said, not sure how to begin. “Hadley.” Which was a terrible segue, but I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Yeah,” said Roger, running his hand through his hair again.

“Are you worried about it?” I asked. “About seeing her?”

“A little,” he said, glancing over at me, as though surprised that

I’d picked up on this. “I mean, an unannounced visit is always a risk, you know?”

“But you’ve called her, right?”

“I have—repeatedly. In the last message I left, I told her I was going to be in her neck of the woods. But she’s not calling me back.”

“Maybe …,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words. “I mean, do you think it means something that she’s not calling you back?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “I got that. But I just have to try. And if she doesn’t want to see me or talk to me, that’s fine. But at least I’ll have attempted it.”

“You’re on your quest,” I said, thinking of Drew and what he’d said about Don Quixote.

“Something like that, I guess,” said Roger. “I just really need some answers, that’s all.”

“Mind if I ask some questions?” I asked. “Like, say, five?”

Roger glanced over at me. “I had a feeling that was going to come back to haunt me,” he said. He sighed and turned down the music. “Fine. Shoot.”

“Are you sure?”

“That counts as one, you know,” he said.

“All right,” I said, realizing that I was going to have to be careful around him. And though I wanted to know more about Hadley, I also didn’t want to hear him talk about her. But I felt like we had gone looking for this girl, and the only impressions I had of her were from Drew and Bronwyn. I decided to go for it. If he could ask these questions, so could I. “Do you love her?”

“Wow,” he said, glancing over at me. “Jump right in, why don’t you?”

“Sorry,” I said, feeling like maybe I’d overstepped. “Was that too much?”

“That makes three, you know,” Roger said. “No, it’s okay. I … hmm.” There was silence in the car for much longer than a normal pause. This one was at Harold Pinter levels. Amy! probably would have jumped in to fill the silence. Actually, Amy! most likely wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. I pressed my fingernails into my palm to make myself wait for the answer. But Roger kept looking out the window, and after a few more moments, I couldn’t take it any more.

“Roger?” I prompted.

“That’s four,” he said. “You’re really not very good at this.”

“I think you’re cheating,” I said, mostly just glad that the silence had been broken.

“I’m just following your lead,” he said. “Do I love her? You’d think it would be an easier answer, right?”

I was certainly not the person to ask this of. To ask of this. “I don’t know,” I said, careful not to let my inflection rise at the end of the sentence.

He sighed, and changed lanes. “I thought I loved her,” he said. “If you’d asked me that a month ago, I would have said definitively yes. I even told her so.”

“You did?”

“And that’s five,” he said. “Yeah. Not one of the best moments of my life.” I wanted to ask why not, but I’d run out of questions. Roger glanced at me and must have realized this, because he smiled faintly and continued. “She didn’t say it back,” he said quietly.

“Oh,” I said. Even though I’d never said it to anyone romantically, I could imagine that not hearing it back would feel pretty crushing.

“Yeah,” Roger agreed. “She just smiled and kissed me, but didn’t say anything. And I think that’s when things started to change. I don’t know, maybe I freaked her out. Hadley wasn’t really one for big emotional displays. Maybe it was too much for her….” His voice trailed off, and I waited as long as I could before jumping in again.