m y

A &
o ge ’
r s

E to
i c R
p u r e
D
Morgan Matson

New York London Toronto Sydney

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 An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales
are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the
author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Morgan Matson
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or
in part in any form.
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].
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information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at
1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.
Book design by Krista Vossen
The text for this book is set in Fournier.
Sunflower photo on page 183 copyright © 2010 by iStockphoto.com
Elvis impersonator photo on page 280 copyright © 2010 by iStockphoto.com
Manufactured in the United States of America
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Matson, Morgan.
Amy & Roger’s epic detour / Morgan Matson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: After the death of her father, Amy, a high school student and
Roger, a college freshman, set out on a carefully planned road trip from
California to Connecticut, but wind up taking many detours, forcing Amy
to face her worst fears and come to terms with her grief and guilt.
ISBN 978-1-4169-9065-9 (hardcover)
[1. Automobile travel—Fiction. 2. Guilt—Fiction. 3. Grief—Fiction.
4. Death—Fiction. 5. Fathers—Fiction. 6. Interpersonal
relations—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Amy and Roger’s epic detour.
PZ7.M43151Am 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009049988
ISBN 978-1-4391-5749-7 (eBook)

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 RAVEN ROCK HIGH SCHOOL
Raven Rock, CA

FINAL REPORT CARD

Student
AMELIA E. CURRY JUNIOR/500 TRACK

Class Final Grade

American Literature A
American History A
Chemistry B-
French B+
Physical Education B
Honors Theater A

Notes

This student’s academic record will be

transferred to STANWICH HIGH SCHOOL,
Stanwich, Connecticut. Student will be
matriculating as a senior in the fall.

Absences

1—Excused (A) Excused Absences

5—Excused (D) A Illness
B School-Sponsored Event
C Vacation
D Bereavement
E Other

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 NETMAI L . . . the Internet with a safety net!
INBOX [email protected]

FROM SUBJECT STATUS

Mom Made it to Connecticut! READ
Julia Andersen Worried about you UNREAD
Raven Rock HS Final Report Card READ
Mom Hope the musical went well! READ
Raven Rock Realty Showing house this afternoon READ
Julia Andersen Hello?? UNREAD
Julia Andersen Plz write back UNREAD
Raven Rock Realty Will be showing house at 4 READ
Julia Andersen Hoping you’re okay UNREAD
Mom The Trip READ

FROM: Hildy Evans ([email protected])

TO: Amy Curry ([email protected])
SUBJECT: Will be showing house at 4
DATE: June 1
TIME: 10:34 a.m.

Hi, Amy!

Just wanted to let you know that I’ll be showing the house
to some prospective buyers today at four. Just wanted to
make sure that you were aware of the time, so you could
make arrangements to be elsewhere. As we’ve discussed
before, we really want people to be able to imagine this as
their HOME. And that’s easier when it’s just the family and
me going through the house!
Also, I understand you’re going to be joining your mother
in Connecticut soon! You can feel free to lock up when you
go—I have my copy of the keys.

Thanks bunches!
Hildy

fnl2_AmyandRoger_inter.indd 2 3/15/10 5:55 PM

 FROM: Mom ([email protected])
TO: Amy ([email protected])
SUBJECT: The Trip
DATE: June 3
TIME: 9:22 a.m.
ATTACHMENT 2 : TRIP ROUTE

Hi, Amy,

Greetings from Connecticut! I was glad to hear that your

finals went well. Also glad to hear that Candide was a suc-
cess. I’m sure you were great, as usual—I just wish I could
have been there!
Can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve seen you!
Feels like much longer. I hope you’ve been on your best
behavior with your aunt. It was very nice of her to check in
on you, so I hope you thanked her.
I’m sure all will go well on the drive. I’ll expect you and
Roger no later than the tenth, according to the itinerary I’ve
mapped out for you (attached). You have reservations at
the hotels listed. Pay for them, meals, and gas with your
emergency credit card.
And please be safe! AAA information is in the glove
compartment in case of emergencies.
I know you send your brother your love. He e-mailed
me—he says hi. You can’t call at his facility, but he can
check e-mail. It might be nice for you to write him one of
these days.

Mom

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fnl2_AmyandRoger_inter.indd 4 3/15/10 5:55 PM
 TRIP ROUTE

Start: Raven Rock, California

First Night: Gallup, New Mexico
Second Night: Tulsa, Oklahoma
Third Night: Terre Haute, Indiana
Fourth Night: Akron, Ohio
End: Stanwich, Connecticut

I will then drive Roger to his father’s house in

Philadelphia. Please drive safe!

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fnl2_AmyandRoger_inter.indd 6 3/15/10 5:55 PM
 1

n i a
f o r
a li
s C
M i s

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 Eureka [I have found it]
—California state motto

I sat on the front steps of my house and watched the beige Subaru
station wagon swing too quickly around the cul-de-sac. This
was a rookie mistake, one made by countless FedEx guys. There
were only three houses on Raven Crescent, and most people had
reached the end before they’d realized it. Charlie’s stoner friends
had never remembered and would always just swing around the
circle again before pulling into our driveway. Rather than using
this technique, the Subaru stopped, brake lights flashing red, then
white as it backed around the circle and stopped in front of the
house. Our driveway was short enough that I could read the car’s
bumper stickers: my son was randolph hall’s student of
the month and my kid and my $$$ go to colorado college.
There were two people in the car talking, doing the awkward
car-conversation thing where you still have seat belts on, so you
can’t fully turn and face the other person.
Halfway up the now overgrown lawn was the sign that had been
there for the last three months, the inanimate object I’d grown to
hate with a depth of feeling that worried me sometimes. It was a
Realtor’s sign, featuring a picture of a smiling, overly hairsprayed
blond woman. for sale, the sign read, and then in bigger letters
underneath that, welcome HOME.
I had puzzled over the capitalization ever since the sign went
up and still hadn’t come up with an explanation. All I could
determine was that it must have been a nice thing to see if it was

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

a house you were thinking about moving into. But not so nice if
it was the house you were moving out from. I could practically
hear Mr. Collins, who had taught my fifth-grade English class
and was still the most intimidating teacher I’d ever had, yelling
at me. “Amy Curry,” I could still hear him intoning, “never end a
sentence with a preposition!” Irked that after six years he was
still mentally correcting me, I told the Mr. Collins in my head to
off fuck.
I had never thought I’d see a Realtor’s sign on our lawn. Until
three months ago, my life had seemed boringly settled. We lived
in Raven Rock, a suburb of Los Angeles, where my parents were
both professors at College of the West, a small school that was a
ten-minute drive from our house. It was close enough for an easy
commute, but far enough away that you couldn’t hear the frat party
noise on Saturday nights. My father taught history (The Civil War
and Reconstruction), my mother English literature (Modernism).
My twin brother, Charlie—three minutes younger—had got-
ten a perfect verbal score on his PSAT and had just barely escaped
a possession charge when he’d managed to convince the cop who’d
busted him that the ounce of pot in his backpack was, in fact, a rare
California herb blend known as Humboldt, and that he was actu-
ally an apprentice at the Pasadena Culinary Institute.
I had just started to get leads in the plays at our high school
and had made out three times with Michael Young, college fresh-
man, major undecided. Things weren’t perfect—my BFF, Julia
Andersen, had moved to Florida in January—but in retrospect,
I could see that they had actually been pretty wonderful. I just
hadn’t realized it at the time. I’d always assumed things would stay
pretty much the same.
I looked out at the strange Subaru and the strangers inside still
talking and thought, not for the first time, what an idiot I’d been.
And there was a piece of me—one that never seemed to appear
until it was late and I was maybe finally about to get some sleep—
that wondered if I’d somehow caused it all, by simply counting on

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 MORGA N MAT S ON

the fact that things wouldn’t change. In addition, of course, to all

the other ways I’d caused it.
My mother decided to put the house on the market almost
immediately after the accident. Charlie and I hadn’t been con-
sulted, just informed. Not that it would have done any good at
that point to ask Charlie anyway. Since it happened, he had been
almost constantly high. People at the funeral had murmured sym-
pathetic things when they’d seen him, assuming that his bloodshot
eyes were a result of crying. But apparently, these people had no
olfactory senses, as anyone downwind of Charlie could smell the
real reason. He’d had been partying on a semiregular basis since
seventh grade, but had gotten more into it this past year. And after
the accident happened, it got much, much worse, to the point where
not-high Charlie became something of a mythic figure, dimly
remembered, like the yeti.
The solution to our problems, my mother had decided, was to
move. “A fresh start,” she’d told us one night at dinner. “A place
without so many memories.” The Realtor’s sign had gone up the
next day.
We were moving to Connecticut, a state I’d never been to and
harbored no real desire to move to. Or, as Mr. Collins would no
doubt prefer, a state to which I harbored no real desire to move. My
grandmother lived there, but she had always come to visit us, since,
well, we lived in Southern California and she lived in Connecticut.
But my mother had been offered a position with Stanwich College’s
English department. And nearby there was, apparently, a great local
high school that she was sure we’d just love. The college had helped
her find an available house for rent, and as soon as Charlie and I
finished up our junior year, we would all move out there, while the
welcome HOME Realtor sold our house here.
At least, that had been the plan. But a month after the sign had
appeared on the lawn, even my mother hadn’t been able to keep
pretending she didn’t see what was going on with Charlie. The
next thing I knew, she’d pulled him out of school and installed

10

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

him in a teen rehab facility in North Carolina. And then she ’d

gone straight on to Connecticut to teach some summer courses
at the college and to “get things settled.” At least, that’s why she
said she had to leave. But I had a pretty strong suspicion that she
wanted to get away from me. After all, it seemed like she could
barely stand to look at me. Not that I blamed her. I could barely
stand to look at myself most days.
So I’d spent the last month alone in our house, except for Hildy
the Realtor popping in with prospective house buyers, almost
always when I was just out of the shower, and my aunt, who came
down occasionally from Santa Barbara to make sure I was manag-
ing to feed myself and hadn’t started making meth in the backyard.
The plan was simple: I’d finish up the school year, then head to
Connecticut. It was just the car that caused the problem.
The people in the Subaru were still talking, but it looked like
they’d taken off their seat belts and were facing each other. I
looked at our two-car garage that now had only one car parked
in it, the only one we still had. It was my mother’s car, a red Jeep
Liberty. She needed the car in Connecticut, since it was getting
complicated to keep borrowing my grandmother’s ancient Coupe
deVille. Apparently, my grandmother was missing a lot of bridge
games and didn’t care that my mother kept needing to go to Bed
Bath & Beyond. My mother had told me her solution to the car
problem a week ago, last Thursday night.
It had been the opening night of the spring musical, Candide,
and for the first time after a show, there hadn’t been anyone wait-
ing for me in the lobby. In the past, I’d always shrugged my parents
and Charlie off quickly, accepting their bouquets of f lowers and
compliments, but already thinking about the cast party. I hadn’t
realized, until I walked into the lobby with the rest of the cast, what
it would be like not to have anyone there waiting for me, to tell me
“Good show.” I’d taken a cab home almost immediately, not even
sure where the cast party was going to be held. The rest of the
cast—the people who’d been my closest friends only three months

11

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 MORGA N MAT S ON

ago—were laughing and talking together as I packed up my show

bag and waited outside the school for my cab. I’d told them repeat-
edly I wanted to be left alone, and clearly they had listened. It
shouldn’t have come as a surprise. I’d found out that if you pushed
people away hard enough, they tended to go.
I’d been standing in the kitchen, my Cunégonde makeup heavy
on my skin, my false eyelashes beginning to irritate my eyes, and
the “Best of All Possible Worlds” song running through my head,
when the phone rang.
“Hi, hon,” my mother said with a yawn when I answered the
phone. I looked at the clock and realized it was nearing one a.m. in
Connecticut. “How are you?”
I thought about telling her the truth. But since I hadn’t done
that in almost three months, and she hadn’t seemed to notice, there
didn’t seem to be any point in starting now. “Fine,” I said, which
was my go-to answer. I put some of last night’s dinner—Casa
Bianca pizza—in the microwave and set it to reheat.
“So listen,” my mother said, causing my guard to go up. That
was how she usually prefaced any information she was about to
give me that I wasn’t going to like. And she was speaking too
quickly, another giveaway. “It’s about the car.”
“The car?” I set the pizza on the plate to cool. Without my
noticing, it had stopped being a plate and had become the plate. I
was pretty much just using, then washing, the one plate. It was as
though all the rest of the dishes had become superfluous.
“Yes,” she said, stifling another yawn. “I’ve been looking at the
cost to have it shipped on a car carrier, along with the cost of your
plane fare, and well . . .” She paused. “I’m afraid it’s just not pos-
sible right now. With the house still not sold, and the cost of your
brother’s facility . . .”
“What do you mean?” I asked, not following. I took a tentative
bite of pizza.
“We can’t afford both,” she said. “And I need the car. So I’m
going to need it driven out here.”

12

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

The pizza was still too hot, but I swallowed it anyway, and felt
my throat burn and my eyes water. “I can’t drive,” I said, when
I felt I could speak again. I hadn’t driven since the accident, and
had no plans to start again any time soon. Or ever. I could feel my
throat constrict at the thought, but I forced the words out. “You
know that. I won’t.”
“Oh, you won’t have to drive!” She was speaking too brightly
for someone who’d been yawning a moment before. “Marilyn’s
son is going to drive. He needs to come East anyway, to spend
the summer with his father in Philadelphia, so it all works out.”
There were so many things wrong with that sentence I wasn’t
sure where to begin. “Marilyn?” I asked, starting at the beginning.
“Marilyn Sullivan,” she said. “Or I suppose it’s Marilyn Harper
now. I keep forgetting she changed it back after the divorce.
Anyway, you know my friend Marilyn. The Sullivans used to live
over on Holloway, until the divorce, then she moved to Pasadena.
But you and Roger were always playing that game. What’s it
called? Potato? Yam?”
“Spud,” I said automatically. “Who’s Roger?”
She let out one of her long sighs, the kind designed to let me
know that I was trying her patience. “Marilyn’s son,” she said.
“Roger Sullivan. You remember him.”
My mother was always telling me what I remembered, as if that
would make it true. “No, I don’t.”
“Of course you do. You just said you used to play that game.”
“I remember Spud,” I said. I wondered, not for the first time,
why every conversation I had with my mother had to be so dif-
ficult. “I don’t remember anyone named Roger. Or Marilyn, for
that matter.”
“Well,” she said, and I could hear her voice straining to stay
upbeat, “you’ll have a chance to get to know him now. I’ve mapped
out an itinerary for you two. It should take you four days.”
Questions about who remembered what now seemed unim-
portant. “Wait a second,” I said, holding on to the kitchen counter

13

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 MORGA N MAT S ON

for support. “You want me to spend four days in a car with some-
one I’ve never met?”
“I told you, you’ve met,” my mother said, clearly ready to be
finished with this conversation. “And Marilyn says he’s a lovely
boy. He ’s doing us a big favor, so please be appreciative.”
“But Mom,” I started, “I . . .” I didn’t know what was going
to follow. Maybe something about how I hated being in cars now.
I’d been okay taking the bus to and from school, but my cab ride
home that night had made my pulse pound hard enough that I
could feel it in my throat. Also, I’d gotten used to being by myself
and I liked it that way. The thought of spending that much time
in a car, with a stranger, lovely or not, was making me feel like I
might hyperventilate.
“Amy,” my mother said with a deep sigh. “Please don’t be
difficult.”
Of course I wasn’t going to be difficult. That was Charlie’s job.
I was never difficult, and clearly my mother was counting on that.
“Okay,” I said in a small voice. I was hoping that she’d pick up on
how much I didn’t want to do this. But if she did, she ignored it.
“Good,” she said, briskness coming back into her voice. “Once
I make your hotel reservations, I’ll e-mail you the itinerary. And I
ordered you a gift for the trip. It should be there before you leave.”
I realized my mother hadn’t actually been asking. I looked
down at the pizza on the counter, but I had lost my appetite.
“Oh, by the way,” she added, remembering. “How was the show?”
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.

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

Both doors of the Subaru opened, and a woman who looked

around my mother’s age—presumably Marilyn—got out, fol-
lowed 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 back-
pack. 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.

15

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 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 consid-
ering 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

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

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 pro-
cess, seemed to take up so much time and focus that it was really
amazing to think we’d once had conversations around the dinner

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 MORGA N MAT S ON

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 hap-
pened. 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.
But as I looked at Roger, I also realized that it had been awhile since
I’d had an interaction with a guy. Not since the night of the funeral,
when I’d invited myself to Michael’s dorm room, knowing exactly
what was going to happen. When I left an hour later, I was disap-
pointed, even though I’d gotten exactly what I thought I wanted.
“It’s not true, you know,” said Roger. I looked at him, trying
to figure out what he meant. “Your shirt,” he said, pointing. I glanced
down at the faded blue cotton, emblazoned with anyone can whistle.
“I can’t,” he continued cheerfully. “Never have been able to.”
“It’s a musical,” I said shortly. He nodded, and silence fell, and
I couldn’t think of anything else to say on the subject. “I should get

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

my things,” I said, turning to the house, wondering how the hell

we were ever going to get through four days.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll load my stuff in. Do you need a hand?”
“No,” I said, heading up the stairs. “The car’s open.” Then I escaped
inside, where it was blessedly cool and dark and quiet and I was alone.
I took a breath, savoring the silence, then continued into the kitchen.
The gift my mother had sent was sitting on the kitchen table. It
had arrived a few days ago, but I hadn’t opened it. If I opened it,
it meant that the trip was actually going to happen. But there was
no denying it now—the proof was making comments about my
T-shirt and putting his duffel bag in the car. I tore open the pack-
age and shook out a book. It was heavy and spiral-bound, with a
dark blue cover. AWAY YOU GO! was printed in white fifties-
style script. And underneath that, Traveler’s Companion. Journal/
Scrapbook/Helpful Hints.
I picked it up and flipped through it. It seemed to be mostly
blank pages, with a scrapbook section for preserving “Your Lasting
Memories” and a journal section for recording “Your Wandering
Thoughts.” There also seemed to be quizzes, packing lists, and
traveling tips. I shut the book and looked at it incredulously. This
was the “present” my mother sent me for the trip? Seriously?
I tossed it on the counter. I wasn’t about to be tricked into
thinking this was some sort of fun, exciting adventure. It was a
purely functional trip that I was being forced to take. So I didn’t
see any reason to make sure I’d always remember it. People didn’t
buy souvenirs from airports they’d had layovers in.
I walked through the rooms on the first floor of the house, mak-
ing sure that everything was in order. And everything was—Hildy
the Realtor had made sure of that. All our furniture was still there—
she preferred not to sell empty houses—but it no longer even felt like
ours. Ever since my mother hired her, she’d taken over our house to
the point where I sometimes had trouble remembering what it used
to feel like when we were all just living in it, and it wasn’t being sold
to people as the place where they’d always be happy. It had started

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 MORGA N MAT S ON

to feel more like a set than a house. Too many deluded young mar-
rieds had traipsed through it, seeing only the square footage and
ventilation, polluting it with their furniture dreams and imagined
Christmases. Every time Hildy finished a showing and I was allowed
to come back from walking around the neighborhood with my iPod
blasting Sondheim, I could always sense the house moving further
away from what it had been when it was ours. Strange perfume lin-
gered in the air, things were put in the wrong place, and a few more
of the memories that resided in the walls seemed to have vanished.
I climbed the stairs to my room, which no longer resembled the
place I’d lived my whole life. Instead it looked like the ideal teen girl’s
room, with everything just so—meticulously arranged stacks of
books, alphabetized CDs, and carefully folded piles of clothing. It
now looked like “Amy!’s” room. It was neat, orderly, and devoid
of personality—probably much like the imaginary shiny-haired girl
who lived in it. Amy! was probably someone who baked goods for
various sports teams and cheered wholeheartedly at pep rallies with-
out contemplating the utter pointlessness of sports or wanting to liven
things up with a little torch song medley. Amy! probably babysat ador-
able moppets up the street and smiled sweetly in class pictures and was
the kind of teen that any parent would want. She probably would have
giggled and flirted with the cute guy in her driveway, rather than fail-
ing miserably at a simple conversation and running away. Amy! had
not, in all probability, killed anyone recently.
My gaze fell to my nightstand, which had on it only my alarm
clock and a thin paperback, Food, Gas, and Lodging. It was my father’s
favorite book, and he’d given me his battered copy for Christmas.
When I’d opened it, I’d been disappointed—I’d been hoping for a
new cell phone. And it had probably been totally obvious to him that
I hadn’t been excited about the present. It was thoughts like that,
wondering if I had hurt his feelings, that ran through my head at
three a.m., ensuring that I wouldn’t get any sleep.
When he’d given it to me, I hadn’t gotten any further than the
title page. I’d read his inscription: To my Amy—this book has seen me

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

through many journeys. Hoping you enjoy it as much as I have. With love,
Benjamin Curry (your father). But then I’d stuck it on my nightstand
and hadn’t opened it again until a few weeks ago, when I’d finally
started reading it. As I read, I found myself wondering with every turn
of the page why I couldn’t have done this months ago. I’d read to page
sixty-one and stopped. Marking page sixty-two was a note card with
my father’s writing on it, some notes about Lincoln’s secretary, part
of the research he’d been doing for a book. But it was in the novel as
a bookmark. Page sixty-one was the place he’d gotten to when he’d
last read it, and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to turn the page and
read beyond that.

dging
Food, Gas, and Lo
a note. In
ye or leaving
saying good-b of clothes,
slam without ed a ch an ge
Walter had pack and the postc
ard
the paper sack D . MacDonald
ac k Jo hn nt ra l Pa rk
a paperb picture of Ce
at N an cy ha d sent with a s on it, an ad dress
th dres
ere was an ad aded.
on the front. Th and that’s where he was he
Ci ty , fifty-five
in New York hi s ow n an d
y-six dollars of off the dresser
He had sevent that he’d taken
hi s fa th er ’s the hall
dollars of er was down
at m or ni ng while his fath w ou ld be missed
th
H e fi gu re d that the money w ou ld be.
shaving. ard, than he
r longer afterw en his
sooner, and fo r th at ha d be
the car, the ca to him in the
He walked to at her had left it
hi s gr an df before.
ever since -eight hours
th at ha d be en read forty an d ju st drive,
will ay
go in g to ge t on the highw s ha d urged
He was and movie
e al l th os e so ngs and books te r al l th os e miles
lik af
do . A nd at the end of it, th e en d of it.
him to waiting at
ould be Nancy this, he
passed, there w a tri p lik e
chance to take ys into the igni
-
You got one gr andfather’s ke
he pu t hi s ak e ey es .
thought as coming up sn
n, di ce ke yc hain dangling, yo un g an d ha d the
tio ere
it when you w re about the
You had to do ni gh t and didn’t ca
energy to dr iv e al l
’t ev en re ally matter
ity of th e m otel and it didn th ou ght about,
qual
en de d up . Th is is what he’d de d by the
where you day, surroun
or ki ng in th at museum every ng th at th e young
w
ca re fu lly la beled, everythi H e just fig-
artifacts t quests.
n on their spiri pressed
braves had take rte d th e ca r,
th at th is w ou ld be his. He sta ay , re solving
ured
n on th e ga s, and drove aw , see-
his foot do w it immedia ly te
lo ok ba ck but breaking or , se ei ng his
not to e rearview m irr
n ey es in th
ing his ow 61

fnl2_AmyandRoger_inter.indd 21 3/15/10 5:55 PM

 MORGA N MAT S ON

I still had no idea what Walter saw. I wasn’t sure I was ever
going to know. But I wasn’t about to leave the book behind. I
picked it up and tucked it carefully in my purse. I gave the room
a last look, turned out the light, dragged my rolling suitcase out
into the hall, and closed the door behind me. It was actually a
relief not to see the room anymore. In the past month, I’d spent
almost no time in it, crashing downstairs on the couch most nights
and just heading up to get clothes. It was too stark a reminder of
my life Before. And it still didn’t make any sense to me that abso-
lutely everything in my life could have changed, that it all could
have become After, but the pictures on my walls and the junk in
the back of my closet remained the same. And after Hildy’s Amy!
makeover, it seemed like the room had become a version of myself
that I would never live up to.
I was about to drag my suitcase downstairs, but I stopped and
looked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I hadn’t been in it
since the morning of the funeral, when I’d stood in the doorway so
my mother could see if the black dress I’d chosen was appropriate.
I walked down the hall, passing Charlie’s bedroom, which was
adjacent to mine. The door to Charlie’s room had been closed
ever since my mother slammed it behind her after she had literally
yanked him out of it one month earlier. I opened the door to the
master bedroom and stood on the threshold. Though tidier than
it once had been, this room was at least still recognizable, with its
neatly made king-size bed and stacks of  books on each nightstand.
I noticed that the books on my father’s side, thick historical biogra-
phies alternating with thin paperback mysteries, were beginning to
gather dust. I looked away quickly, reminding myself to breathe. It
felt like I was underwater and running out of oxygen, and I knew I
wasn’t going to be able to stay there much longer. The door to my
father’s closet was ajar, and I could see inside it the tie rack Charlie
had made for him in fifth-grade woodshop with his ties still hang-
ing on it, all preknotted to save him time in the morning.
Trying to quash the panicky feeling that was beginning to rise,

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

I turned away from my father’s side of the room and crossed to my

mother’s dresser. On an impulse, I pulled open her top drawer—
socks and stockings—and reached into the very back, on the left side.
The drawer was emptier than usual, but even so, it took me a second
to find it. But when my fingers closed around something smooth and
plastic, I knew that Charlie had been telling the truth. I pulled it out
and saw that it was an ancient pantyhose egg, with l’eggs printed on
the side in gold script that was flaking off. I cracked the egg open and
saw, as promised, that the egg was stuffed with cash.
Charlie had told me that he’d found it sometime last year—I
hadn’t wanted to ask how or why. But there was a piece of me
that registered how desperate he must have been to have found
the money my mother kept hidden in her sock drawer. That was
about the time I started noticing just how far gone he actually was.
Charlie had told me that he only dipped into it in case of emergen-
cies and was always careful to put the money back, since he was
sure Mom would notice. It always had six hundred dollars in it,
mostly hundreds and fifties. Maybe Charlie had been too out of
it by the end to care, or maybe he hadn’t had time to replenish it
before he found himself on a plane to North Carolina, but there
was only four hundred dollars in it now.
I heard the front door slam downstairs and realized that Roger
was probably wondering why it was taking me so long to get my
suitcase. Not stopping to think about what I was doing, I pocketed
the cash, snapped the egg shut, and put it back in its place. A piece
of me was running through justifications—you couldn’t trust
these house hunters and shady Realtors, really I was just helping
my mother out—but I knew none of them were the real reason I’d
taken the money. So then why had I?
I pushed the thought away and hurried out of the room, clos-
ing the door behind me and dragging my suitcase down the stairs.
When I reached the kitchen, I saw Roger standing in front of the
fridge, staring at it. He looked at me as I thumped my suitcase onto
the landing.

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“All set?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said, then immediately wondered why I’d just started
talking like a cowboy. I pulled the suitcase toward the door and
glanced back at Roger in the kitchen. He was back to looking at the
refrigerator, which gave me a moment to study him undetected. He
was tall, and the kitchen, which had been so quiet and still lately,
seemed filled up with his presence. My mother had told me that he
was nineteen and that he’d just finished his freshman year. But there
was something about him that made him seem older than that—or at
least made me feel young. Maybe it was the hand shaking.
“These are incredible,” Roger said, pointing at the refrigerator.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, crossing into the kitchen, knowing he was
talking about the magnets. The fridge was covered with them,
many more than were needed to hold up Classic Thai takeout
menus and grocery lists. They were all from different places—
cities, states, countries. My parents had started collecting them on
their honeymoon, and they’d kept it up until a few months ago,
when my mother spoke at a conference in Montana and came back
with a magnet that was just a square of bright blue with big sky
country printed on it.
“My parents—” I heard my voice catch a little on the word.
Words I’d always taken for granted had turned into landmines,
traps for me to stumble over and fall into. I saw that Roger had
averted his eyes to the fridge, pretending he hadn’t noticed any-
thing. “They, um,” I continued after a moment, “collected them.
From all the places they’d been.”
“Wow,” he said, stepping back and taking in the whole fridge,
as though it was a piece of art. “Well, it’s impressive. I’ve never
been anywhere.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Really,” he said, eyes still on the fridge. “Only California and
Colorado. Pretty lame, huh?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve barely been out of California.”
This was incredibly embarrassing, something I had told nobody

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 Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour

except Julia. I’d been out of the country once—we’d all spent a
very damp summer in the Cotswolds, in England, while my mother
did research for a book. But California was the only state I’d ever
been in. Whenever I had complained about this, my mother had
told me that once we’d seen all there was to see in California, we
could move on to the other states.
“You too?” Roger smiled at me, and as though it was an auto-
matic reaction, I looked down at my feet. “Well, that makes me
feel a little better. The way I justify it is that California’s a pretty
big state, right? It’d be worse if I’d never been out of New Jersey
or something.”
“I thought,” I started, then regretted saying anything. It wasn’t
like I really wanted to know the answer, so why had I started to ask
the question? But I couldn’t just leave that out there, so I cleared my
throat and continued. “I mean, I thought my mother said your father
lived in Philadelphia. And that’s why you’re, um, doing this.”
“He does,” said Roger. “I’ve just never been out there before.
He comes out here a couple times a year, for business.”
“Oh,” I said. I glanced up at him and saw that he was still look-
ing at the fridge. As I watched, his face changed, and I knew he’d
seen the program, the one held up by the ithaca is gorges! mag-
net in the lower left corner. The program I tried to avoid looking
at—without success—every time I opened the fridge, but hadn’t
actually done anything about, like removing it or anything.
It was printed on beige card stock and had a picture of my
father on the front, one that someone had taken of him teaching.
It was in black and white, but I could tell that he was wearing
the tie I’d gotten him last Father’s Day, the one with tiny hound
dogs on it. He had chalk dust on his hands and was looking to the
left of the camera, laughing. Underneath the picture was printed
benjamin curry: a life well-lived.
Roger looked over at me, and I knew that he was about to say
a variation on the same sentence I’d been hearing for the past
three months. How sorry he was. What a tragedy it was. How he

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didn’t know what to say. And I just didn’t want to hear it. None
of the words helped at all, and it’s not like he could have possibly
understood.
“We should get going,” I said before he could say anything. I
grabbed my suitcase by the top handle, but before I could lift it,
Roger was standing next to me, hoisting it with ease.
“I got it,” he said, carrying it out the front door. “Meet you
at the car.” The door slammed, and I looked around the kitchen,
wondering what else I could do to delay the moment when it would
just be the two of us, trapped in a car for four days. I picked up the
plate from where I’d left it to dry in the empty dishwasher, put it in
the cupboard, and closed the door. I was about to leave when I saw
the travel book sitting on the counter.
I could have just left it there. But I didn’t. I picked it up and, on
impulse, pulled the program out from behind the Ithaca magnet
and stuck it in the scrapbook section. Then I turned out the kitchen
lights, walked out the front door, and locked it behind me.

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