He nodded. “Colorado College, in Colorado Springs. It’s a good school. And I have a lot of great friends….” I thought I saw something pass over Roger’s face for a second when he said this, but then it was gone. “Anyway, I’d planned on being here all summer. But after finals, my father began insisting that I spend the summer with him in Philly.”
“That’s where your father lives?” I regretted the sentence as soon as I’d said it. First of all, he’d told me that back in the kitchen. Second of all, I’d already known it. Third of all, I had a feeling that it was going to be a very long four days unless I could stop acting like such a moron.
But if Roger noticed, he wasn’t letting on. “Yeah,” he said, shaking the bag again and coming up with more fries. “He lives there with his new wife and her son. He freaked out when he saw my grades and said he wanted me there so I can, and I quote, ‘learn some discipline.’ Which sounds like a great way to spend a summer. I don’t know anyone there. And what am I supposed to do in Philadelphia?”
“Eat cheesesteak?” I asked, on impulse.
Roger laughed for the first time, a loud, reverberating laugh that seemed to fill the whole space. “Right,” he said. “Cheesesteak and cream cheese.”
I guess neither of us could think of any more Philadelphia-related foods after that, because silence fell between us. I took another long sip of my milk shake and could feel Roger looking at me. I glanced over at him and saw that he was reading the back of my T-shirt, with the list of the cast members printed on it.
“This musical,” he said. I noticed he pronounced “musical” like it was in a foreign language, like it wasn’t a word he’d said very often. “You were in it?” He sounded surprised.
“Yeah,” I said, turning to face him so he would stop reading my back. “I was, um, the lead.” I saw Roger’s eyebrows shoot up, and I looked back down at the plastic lid of my milk shake cup. I could understand his surprise. Even before it had happened, people had always seemed surprised to hear I was an actor. But I’d always loved the chance to become someone else for a few hours. Someone for whom the words had been written, every gesture and emotion plotted, and the ending figured out. Almost like life. Just without the surprises.
“So,” I said after a moment, “we should probably get back on the road, right?”
Roger nodded. “Probably.” He took a sip of his root beer and looked out at the freeway. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I don’t think it’s going to take us four days. Some friends of mine drove cross-country, and they did it in thirty-six hours.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Though I don’t think they ever stopped—I think they just drove straight through. And they probably sped a lot,” he added.
“Huh,” I said, not exactly sure how to respond to that. It hit me that, while I didn’t want to do this, Roger probably wanted to do it even less. Why would a college almost-sophomore want to spend four days transporting a high schooler across the country? Maybe this was Roger’s way of saying that he wanted to get it over with as fast as possible.
“Have you ever taken a road trip?” he asked.
I turned to squint at him and shook my head, feeling very lame. I knew that he didn’t mean a family excursion to see a historical landmark. He meant a road trip, the kind that cool people took in college. “Have you?” I asked, even though I had a feeling the answer was yes.
He nodded. “Just in-state, though. Up to San Fran, down to San Diego. And I don’t know …” He paused and peered into the bag. He shook it hopefully, fished around inside, and came up with three fries. He took one and offered the rest to me. “Last two,” he said. “Go for it.” I took one, leaving one for him. He smiled and ate it, looking pensive. “I guess I just thought that this trip might be more of a real road trip,” he said. “I don’t know. More interesting places. And at least a route we could pick ourselves.”
I took a sip of my shake, hoping my relief wasn’t obvious. So it wasn’t me he had a problem with, just my mother’s version of the trip. Which was entirely understandable, given the places that she’d chosen for us to stop.
I thought about what I’d just reread in my father’s book. About going out and just driving, and how you can only do it when you’re young. For the first time, it struck me that this trip could be something worth recording in the scrapbook, after all. “Well,” I said, not entirely able to believe I was about to suggest this. “I mean, I guess we could go other places. As long as we’re there in four days, does it really matter which way we go?”
“Really?” Roger asked. “What about your mother’s reservations?”
I shrugged, even though my heart was pounding. It was a legitimate question. Knowing my mother, she’d probably be calling every hotel to make sure we’d checked in. But there was a tiny, reckless piece of me that wanted to be the difficult one for once. That wanted to make her worry about me for a change. That wanted to show her what it felt like to be left behind. “I don’t care,” I said. This wasn’t exactly true, but I liked the way it felt to say it. It was something Charlie would have done. And something Amy! would never do in a million years. And as I thought about the four hundred dollars in my front pocket, it occurred to me that we might be able to use it to buy just a little bit of freedom.
Roger blinked at me. “Okay,” he said. He turned to face me more fully and leaned back against the window. “So where should we go?”
“We’ll still get there by the tenth, right?” I asked quickly. My mother was not going to be happy we were ignoring her route, but I knew she would have a conniption if we took longer than the allotted time. “This is just a detour,” I clarified.
“Just a detour,” Roger agreed, nodding. He smiled at me, and I felt the impulse to smile back. I didn’t, but the feeling was there, for the first time in months.
The In-N-Out employee to our left suddenly raised her volume and began screaming at her soon-to-be-ex. Apparently, his name was Kyle, and he knew exactly what he’d done. Feeling like I was overhearing something I probably shouldn’t, I jumped to my feet and began to walk around to the front of the car when I saw that Roger hadn’t moved. He was still listening to the breakup with a slightly nauseated expression on his face.
“Roger?” I asked.
“Right,” he said quickly, getting up as well and crumpling the white paper bag. We buckled ourselves in, and Roger started the engine. “So if this is going to be a real road trip,” he said, backing out of the parking space and heading toward the exit, “we need to get some road trip essentials.”
“Like gas?”
“No,” he said. “Well, yes,” he amended, looking down at the gauge. “But there are two things that are absolutely necessary if you’re going to be hitting the road.”
“And what are those?”
Roger smiled at me as he paused at a stoplight. “Snacks and tunes,” he said. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“How do you feel about Billy Joel?” Roger asked, scrolling through his iPod. We were still sitting in the parking lot of the Sunshine Mart, as Roger insisted that we couldn’t start driving until there was a soundtrack. He’d offered to play one of my mixes, but I had put him off, letting him pick the music. Most of what was on my iPod was Broadway musical soundtracks or oldies, and it didn’t seem like Roger was a secret Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.