“No, it’s not that,” he said, looking across at me. He ran his hands through his hair, bringing it from its post-shower neatness to its normal messiness, and sighed. “I’m supposed to be the responsible one here. My mother is not going to be happy about this either. And I don’t want to get you into trouble.”
“You’re not,” I said quickly. “I did that on my own, believe me.”
“I just feel guilty about this.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Really.” I looked at him closely. “Do you want to stop?” I held my breath, hoping for the sake of my health that he wouldn’t take long to answer.
Roger looked across the table at me for a long moment, then shook his head. “I don’t,” he said, sounding a little surprised by the answer. I let out a long breath and felt my stomach unclench a little.
Our waiter passed by then, dropping our check and a handful of cellophane-wrapped mints on the table.
Roger took out his phone. “I should make some calls,” he said. “I still haven’t been able to talk to Hadley. And I should probably call my mother before yours does.”
“I’ll take care of this,” I said, counting out money for the check.
“You want to hold on to that?” Roger asked, nodding at the rest of the money. “I’d be worried I’d lose it.”
“Sure,” I said, folding the bills and tucking them in my wallet.
“Meet you at the car,” he said, grabbing one of the mints off the table and heading out the door, the bell above signaling his exit.
I looked down at the map and traced the route we’d take to Kentucky. We’d estimated about eight hours to get there, so we should be there by early evening, six or seven. I looked below Kentucky and saw Tennessee. And in the corner of the state, almost to Arkansas, was Memphis. I let my finger rest on the bolded name for a moment, thinking about the trip I was supposed to be on this summer—the trip that would have taken me there. To Memphis, but specifically to Graceland. It was strange to think how close we were going to be to it once we got to Louisville. Probably only a few hours away. But it would be backtracking. And I didn’t want to go without my father. Which meant, then, that I never would.
I closed the atlas, trying to push this unsettling thought away. I paid the bill, placing the money on the check and securing the waiter’s tip under my water glass. I figured I’d given Roger enough time to make his calls in private and got up to leave. As I did, my eyes caught the graffiti again. I wondered who Ryan and Megan were. And if, wherever they were, they’d made it. I wondered how anyone could have been so sure about a concept so tenuous and impossible as always that they’d be willing to carve it into a tabletop.
I glanced at it for a moment longer, then headed out of the diner, squinting against the sun.
I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill.
—Elvis Presley
SEVEN YEARS EARLIER
My father swung the car around into a spot in front of the Raven Rock tennis complex and leaned back so that I could reach over and honk the horn. I used the honk we always used for Charlie, honk-honk-honkhonkhonk, what my father for some reason called “shave and a haircut.”
We sat back to wait, and a moment later, From Nashville to Memphis, the CD that had gotten us from home to 21 Choices and then to the tennis complex ended, and started over at track one. This was not permitted in my father’s car. In his mind, once you started listening to a CD on repeat, you stopped hearing its nuances. “Maestro?” he asked, turning to me.
“I’m on it,” I said, opening up the glove compartment and flipping through the Elvis CDs. I pulled out Elvis at the Movies, bringing us solidly to the sixties. “All That I Am” started playing, and my father tapped his fingers along to the rhythm of the song, smiling.
“Nice choice, pumpkin,” he said, looking over at me with a nod of approval. “You know, I think this is my favorite of His songs?” The way my father said it, Elvis’s name was always capitalized. He’d told us once, scandalizing my grandmother, who happened to be visiting, “I hope there’s a God. I know there’s an Elvis.”
“It’s my favorite song too,” I said, making the decision on the spot.
My father laughed, leaned over, and ruffled my hair, causing me to scowl and smooth it down.
There was knock on the back window, and I turned to see Charlie tapping on the glass, his racket in its case slung over his shoulder, looking tired and grumpy. My father unlocked the car, and Charlie got in the back, buckling himself into the middle seat.
“Hey, champ,” my father said as he started the car. “How was practice?”
“Lame,” Charlie said.
“Why lame?” I asked, turning around to face him.
“It just was, okay?” he said, pushing his hair, dark with sweat, back from his forehead. “I don’t know if I want to play anymore. I mean, what’s the point?”
“The point,” said my father, “is that you can do something extraordinary, and something that a lot of people can’t do. And if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to. I mean, it’s just weakness to quit because something becomes too hard. Am I right?”
Charlie slumped back against the seat. “How come Amy doesn’t have to play tennis?”
I rolled my eyes. Charlie had been using variations on this argument whenever he threatened to quit, for about two years now, and it was getting old.
“Because Amy didn’t like tennis,” my father said with a sigh.
“I liked the clothes,” I pointed out. I had stuck with it for a few years because my mother had bought me a new tennis outfit every year, and I’d really liked them. After a while, though, I’d decided that it wasn’t worth spending hours trying to hit a fuzzy yellow ball just to get a white shirtdress.
“That’s right,” my father said with a smile and a shake of his head.
“Did you guys go to 21 Choices already?” Charlie asked, leaning forward, looking at the crumpled napkins on the console. “I thought we were all going to go after practice!”
“Sorry, champ,” my father said, casting his eyes into the rearview mirror. “Your sister wanted to go beforehand. But how about we make a quick stop right now?”
“Forget it,” Charlie muttered, slamming himself back against the seat and staring out the window. “I don’t want to go anyway.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror and looked back at my brother. We’d never had that secret twin connection I read about in books, and more often than not, it felt like we were battling for something that had never even been named, so couldn’t ever be won.
“Do we have to keep listening to this?” Charlie asked petulantly after a few minutes of Elvis’s crooning. “We’re always listening to Elvis. And I’m sick of it.”
Saying this, in my father’s car, was akin to swearing in front of your teacher, and I felt my pulse begin to quicken a little, wondering what Charlie thought he was doing.
“Hey now,” my father said, as he made a left, and I realized that we were passing University, heading for downtown and away from our house. “You can’t insult the King like that. You have to pay him his proper respect.”
“I just think his music’s stupid,” Charlie muttered, but more quietly, and I had a feeling that he realized he’d gone too far.
“It’s not just the music, son,” my father said. “Though it’s mostly the music. But it’s what he represented. You’ll see. Someday we’ll all go down to Graceland, and you’ll see.”
“All three of us?” Charlie asked.
My father laughed, and I began to relax a little bit. “Maybe even all four of us, if we can talk your mother into it. I was there once years ago. I even wrote my name on the graffiti wall.”
I turned to my father, and out of the corner of my eye, saw my brother grinning in surprise in the backseat. “You did graffiti?” I asked, shocked. “At Elvis’s house?”
“Everyone does it,” my father said with a laugh. He made another turn, and I realized where we were going,
but I didn’t think Charlie had yet. “It was probably sandblasted away years ago. But I’d like to go back and see if it’s still there.”
“Awesome,” Charlie said. “Can I do it too?”
“Sure,” said my father. “You too, Amy.”
“No, thank you,” I said firmly, causing both my father and Charlie to laugh. I didn’t mind, though. Sometimes it seemed like the only time the three of us could all get along was when they were teasing me.
“All right,” my father said. “You can be the law-abiding one. But I’m telling you, kids, when I die and go on to the great classroom in the sky, I want you to scatter some of my ashes at Graceland. Because that’s where I’m going to be. Hanging out in the Jungle Room with the King.”
“Don’t talk about that,” I said, more sharply than I’d intended to.
“I’m just kidding, pumpkin,” he said, glancing over at me. “Don’t worry.” I nodded and let out a breath. When I looked up, I saw we were pulling into a parking space right in front of 21 Choices. “Why, look at where we are,” he said with mock surprise. “Now, I think it’d be a shame to waste this parking spot. So who wants dessert?”
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home.
—Kentucky State song
“Snacks?” Roger asked, starting the ignition.
“Roger that,” I said, lifting up the bag we’d just bought from MO Mart. I saw Roger roll his eyes at that, but I felt myself smile, realizing the bad pun had just slipped out, before I’d thought it over. It felt like something the Old me would have done.
“Drinks?” he asked.
“Check,” I said, placing the cream soda and root beer in our respective cup holders, then loosening Roger’s root beer bottle top a little for him, as we’d found out this was challenging to do without taking both hands off the wheel.
“Tunes?” he asked.
“Check,” I said, looking at him. “Presumably.”
“Check,” he said, scrolling through his iPod. “But I’m seriously getting sick of my music. I wish you’d take a turn.”
“I like your music,” I said. And I did, to my continued surprise. It turned out that his strangely named bands made hummable, accessible music. I didn’t know how I’d gone this long in life without the Lucksmiths. I was missing my musicals a little, though.
“Sunglasses,” Roger said, slipping his on. He turned to me, raising an eyebrow above the frames. “You know, MO Mart had a lovely selection, for only three dollars plus tax.”
“I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head. Roger had taken my refusal to buy sunglasses as some kind of challenge. But I didn’t want to buy any. It just didn’t feel right somehow.
“All right,” he said. “Shall we hit it?”
“Let’s,” I said, and Roger signaled to turn out of the mini-mart parking lot and back onto the interstate on-ramp.
“Is it a man?” I asked an hour later, as Missouri, slightly overcast, flew by the window.
“Nope,” said Roger, picking up his phone from the cup holder and checking it, frowning. “Nineteen.”
“I’m telling you, you can do this,” I said encouragingly. “Just purse your lips and try.”
“And I’m telling you,” he said, smiling at me, “despite what your shirt said, not everyone can whistle. And I am that person.”
“What do you think a Chick-fil-A is?” Roger asked, as we pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot.
“I don’t know,” I said. “So why don’t we go to a nice diner instead?”
“You and your diners,” he said, shaking his head.
I felt the same way about his fast-food restaurants, but kept that to myself. “Is it supposed to be ‘filet,’ and just spelled wrong?” I stared up at the red sign with its curly writing. “I don’t know.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” asked Roger, swinging around into the drive-thru lane. Maybe the routine had been set after our first meal together at In-N-Out, but when Roger won and we ate fast food, we almost always got it to go and then ate it in the car. He pulled the car up to the speaker, which clicked on with a loud, staticky hiss. “Hello,” he said, leaning forward. “This is our first time here. What would you recommend?”
Ten minutes later, back in the parking lot, I took a doubtful bite of my chicken sandwich. “Oh my God,” I murmured around my mouthful. It was seasoned, breaded chicken on a soft roll. And we were sharing an order of spicy fries. I looked up and saw Roger nodding, his sandwich almost all gone. “This is amazing.”
Roger smiled. “I’m not going to say I told you so,” he said. “But …”
“Okay,” I said, once we were back on the road, and I’d taken a sip of my soda. “Let me make sure I’ve gotten this. She’s female, probably dead, famous, and kind of an explorer?”
“Correct,” he said, putting down his visor against the sun, which had started to peek out of the clouds. “The answer is closer than you think. Sixteen.”
While I racked my brain so that I might have a chance of winning this round of Twenty Questions, Roger checked his phone. He’d go a few minutes, leaving it in the console behind the cup holders, but then would seem to lose some internal battle with himself and would flip it open, checking the screen for something that just wasn’t there.
“How do you know if you don’t try?” I asked him as Illinois flew past the window. “You just make an O shape with your lips….” I demonstrated for him, whistling along with Paul Simon.
“I’ve tried,” said Roger. “But not all of us can be as talented as you.”
“Indiana,” I said, pointing out the window, as we crossed another invisible state line. “The Hoosier State,” I read off the sign.
“Hey,” Roger said, putting his phone back in the console and turning to me. “Did you ever see that movie? Hoosiers?”
It started to get hot. The sun was beating down on the car, and I had flipped my visor down as well. I couldn’t help wishing I hadn’t grabbed a black shirt that morning. I stretched my arm out in the sun hitting my side of the car and saw that I was already starting to get a few freckles.
“So it’s 1951,” Roger said. “Gene Hackman is the coach of this Indiana high school basketball team. And they’re the underdogs. And nobody expects them to win the big game, let alone the championship.”
“But they do anyway?” I guessed.
Roger turned to me, surprised. “I thought you said you hadn’t seen it.”
“I just don’t understand,” I said an hour later, slouching down in the seat, putting my feet up on the dashboard and pulling my hair off my neck. It was getting really hot in the car now, and Roger and I had been having a battle as to whether we should have the AC on (his vote) or the windows down (my vote). But I had to admit, it was getting to be a little too hot to keep the windows down. I rolled up my window, and Roger cranked the AC.
“Don’t understand what?” Roger asked. He drove up next to a huge truck, pulling the car into the shadow it cast and cooling us down considerably.
“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?”