I wasn't so sure about that, but I nodded. "So where should we head?" I asked. "I picked Yosemite. Where do you want to go?"

"Well," Roger said, glancing up at me for a moment, then back down at the map, and flipping to the page for Colorado. "It looks like if we get on the interstate in Utah, and follow that through Colorado, we'll hit Colorado Springs."

"Pretty close," I said. It wasn't, exactly, but it was close-ish. I looked up at him, surprised that he would want to go someplace he'd already been. "Is that where you want to go?"

"Well, it might make sense," he said, not looking at me but fiddling with the volume on the iPod. "We'll definitely have a place to crash, free. And I can show you around the campus, see which of my friends are around...." He said this last part very quickly.

"Sure," I said, turning the pages back to Nevada. "That's fine with me."

"Great," he said, looking incredibly relieved. "So, Highway 50?" he asked. "Shall we?"

"Let's," I said, nodding, and Roger signaled and pulled back on the road.

After two hours, we realized something was wrong. The highway had switched from a four-lane road to a two-lane road at some point, with one lane going in each direction. But that in itself wasn't worrying, as we'd encountered several stretches of those near Yosemite. What was different was that suddenly there just wasn't ... anything. The road stretched out ahead of us, a straight line extending as far as I could see. There were mountains in the distance in front of us and mountains in the distance behind us, but mostly there was just a huge, open, deserted landscape, cut down the center by the two-lane highway. And nothing else. The flatness of it was a big change from the winding mountainous roads near Yosemite. There were what looked like scrub brushes on the side of the road. I found it hard to believe that only a few hours ago, I'd been surrounded by pine trees.

We continued to drive, and I noticed that Roger was sitting up a little straighter, looking around as well. There was just nothing nothing. No gas stations, no mini-marts, no fast-food restaurants. And there were almost no other cars. Occasionally there would be one behind us, but it would inevitably pa.s.s us. It wasn't like there needed to be a pa.s.sing lane-you could see ahead of you for what looked like miles. Very occasionally a car or semi came roaring up the opposite lane. But in two hours, we'd only seen about three other vehicles.

"Um," I said when I couldn't take it any longer. "Is it just me, or is this kind of strange?"

"Very," said Roger. His expression was troubled, and it made me realize for the first time how cheerful he normally looked.

"Should we ...," I started. I looked out at the road, which seemed like it just continued on, more of the same, for miles. "Should we turn around?" My heart sank a little at the thought of having to retrace our steps, lose those two hours, and still not be where we wanted to be.

"I don't know," Roger said. He was sitting up very straight now, both hands on the wheel, and his brow was furrowed. We drove without speaking for a while, just the sounds of Roger's mix playing. Finally he said, "Look, we'll have to hit a town soon, right? And once we do, we can go from there."

"Okay," I said, figuring that he had to be right. Civilization hadn't totally disappeared. At some point, we would meet up with a highway town. We had to.

An hour later we hit a town.

I had never in my life been so excited to see a gas station. It was a tiny little place, two pumps and a mini mini-mart. We pulled in, and I used my mother's card to pay for the gas. As Roger filled up, he told me what he hadn't wanted to tell me before-that we'd actually been getting pretty low, and if we hadn't come upon this town of Fallon, Nevada, when we did, we might have been in serious trouble.

When the tank was full, we used our respective bathrooms and met up inside the tiny mini-mart, which actually looked more like a house. But I didn't care. I figured that we'd just hit a strange, deserted stretch of Nevada, but soon we would be back in the happy world of roadside amenities and Golden Arches and other cars on the road.

I grabbed a cream soda from the gla.s.sed-in case against the back wall, then, after hesitating a moment, grabbed a root beer as well. Roger was studying the chip selection, but I caught his eye and held up his soda, raising my eyebrows. He nodded and gave me a small smile. I pa.s.sed the candy aisle, picking up my Skittles and grabbing Roger a bag of Reese's Pieces a little grudgingly, as I'd always hated any kind of peanut b.u.t.ter candy. Peanut b.u.t.ter, in my opinion, belonged in sandwiches and nowhere else. I saw something I'd never seen before, a candy bar in a red wrapper called LOOK! It worked, because I did, and decided to try it. I met Roger up at the counter, where he was setting down a bag of BBQ chips. I added my armful of snacks, and the woman behind the counter, who was tiny and white-haired with slightly weathered skin, rang us up.

"So we just drove in," Roger said, as she punched numbers into the register using the eraser end of a pencil. "It was kind of ... deserted."

"Course it was," she said, not looking up from her register and continuing to punch in numbers. "What did you expect?"

"Well," said Roger. He looked at me. I didn't know how to answer this either, but I jumped in anyway.

"I guess we were just surprised that there wasn't more stuff," I said. "But that stops now, right?"

She looked up at Roger, then at me, then out at the car. "California?" she asked a little dismissively, reading the white plates. I nodded. "Figures," she said. "You kids even know where you are?"

"Fallon?" I asked tentatively, hoping she hadn't meant the name of her gas station, as I'd already forgotten it.

She shook her head. "For about another minute you're in Fallon." She rang up our total, $13.11. I dug in my pocket for my mother's cash and handed her a twenty. She gave me back my change and scooped our snacks into a plastic bag. "But you've got miles and miles of road ahead of you with not much there." She handed me the bag across the counter. "Welcome to the Loneliest Road in America."

Roger and I slammed our doors and looked at each other. "Well," he said.

"Yeah," I agreed. I could hear that I sounded as sh.e.l.l-shocked as he did. Maybe it had been my horrified expression, but the woman behind the counter had softened slightly after she'd told us exactly what road we'd ended up on. She explained to us that Highway 50 was famously deserted, and she couldn't believe that we'd managed to make our way to it by accident. She told us to always make sure we had enough gas, as there were a few towns, but they were all more than a hundred miles apart. Then she wrote down her phone number and told us her name was Barb, and that her brother-in-law was a state trooper, and that if we had car trouble, to give her a call and she'd let him know. Then she'd sent us on our way.

Roger put the keys in the ignition but didn't start the car. "I don't know what to do," he said, rubbing his hand over his face. The worried expression was back. "I mean ..." He looked over at me. I'd long since taken his sungla.s.ses off, but I played with them in the cup holder when his direct look began to make me uncomfortable. He let out a breath. "Your mother is trusting me. My mother is trusting me. And they both expect me to get you across the country, and soon, and safe. And now we've gone way off course, and we're on the saddest road in the country-"

"Loneliest," I corrected, but Roger kept on going.

"And I just don't know what the best thing to do is. Should we turn around and find an interstate? And call your mother and tell her exactly where we are? Because I'm not feeling so good about this anymore. I think we might have found the Highway to h.e.l.l. We really might be in an AC/DC song at the moment." I looked up and met his eyes, then looked right back down again. "What do you think we should do?" he asked.

"I think ...," I said. I looked down at Barb's phone number and thought about the road we'd just driven on. I thought about facing more of it. Much more of it-according to Barb, at least eight more hours on Highway 50 before we would make it to the interstate in Utah. But to my surprise, it didn't bother me. Now that I knew why we weren't seeing any cars or people-that we hadn't actually entered some kind of Lost Lost-esque purgatory-I was much more okay with it than I had been before. "I think we should keep going," I said. Roger sighed and gripped the wheel, and then let it go. "I mean, time-wise, it doesn't make sense to go back," I continued.

"But what if something happens?" he asked. "I mean, normally I stick with a road and hope it gets better, but I don't know if I can handle eight more hours of that. Do you know how to change a tire?" I shook my head. "Me neither. And despite what Barb says, I don't want to have to rely on her brother-in-law in case we have car trouble in what literally literally seems to be the middle of nowhere." seems to be the middle of nowhere."

"But we'd have to go back two hours to get on the interstate anyway," I pointed out. "And there are other people driving this road. It's an American highway. It's not like we're in the outback or something."

"No," said Roger, starting the car. "But we are on the most depressed road in the country."

"Loneliest," I said. "There is a difference."

He looked over at me. "We're doing this?" he asked. And for the first time since the trip began, it felt like we we were doing something. The two of us, making a choice, taking a leap, together. were doing something. The two of us, making a choice, taking a leap, together.

I nodded. "We're doing this."

Roger gave me a small smile. "Well, then," he said, pulling out of the gas station. "Let's. .h.i.t it."

I glanced back and saw Barb standing in the doorway, watching us. On impulse, I waved to her, and she waved back, and I looked back at her small figure until we turned a corner and she was gone from view.

Barb had been telling the truth, and Fallon ended almost as quickly as it had begun. As we left, there were signs warning that there would be no more "gas or services" for a hundred miles, and to make sure we were prepared. I saw Roger frown as he read that, but he kept going, and we were back on Highway 50.

We drove. Time seemed to pa.s.s a little differently when there was nothing to mark how far you had come, or what you were heading to. I would look at my watch, thinking an hour had pa.s.sed when it had been five minutes. Or I would catch the car's clock and realized forty-five minutes had gone by in what I would have sworn was fifteen. Now that I knew what to expect from this road, it wasn't so stressful. There were still moments when the sheer aloneness of it all would cause me to have a momentary panic. But then it would subside, and I would look out the window, take in the view, and feel myself calming down.

Maybe it was because I'd never really seen anything like it before. But even though it was scary and isolated, the scenery out the window was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was just stunning. I could see much more of the world than I was used to. It was like someone had opened the pages of a pop-up book, where the pop-up was our car, and everything else all around us was totally flat. It was sunny, but not squint-inducing, and Roger had since reclaimed his sungla.s.ses. The sky was a bright, clear blue, and the few clouds that filled it seemed too picturesque to be real. There were mountains in front of us, way off at the horizon, and we never seemed to be getting any closer to them. But I didn't mind. They just added to the picture-how I'd imagined the desert looking, even though I probably wouldn't have been able to put it into words until now. And even the isolation was beginning to seem kind of cool-the shadow our car made was the only thing on the road. It was like the two of us were getting to see something n.o.body else was, and something that not many other people had seen.

After an hour, my b.u.t.t beginning to hurt from sitting in the same position, I kicked off my flip-flops and placed one foot on the dashboard, then the other, looking over at Roger to see if he was bothered by this. But he didn't seem to be. He just looked over at me and gave me a small smile before turning back to the road. He'd put on cruise control, and it looked a little strange to see both his legs bent at the same angle, feet flat on the car's mat, like the car was driving itself into the endless horizon. I slid down a little farther in the seat and looked out the window.

We drove. Just outside a mini-town called Middlegate, we pa.s.sed an enormous cottonwood tree that had hundreds-or thousands-of shoes dangling from it, casting shadows on the highway. Roger slowed down to look at it-which was easy to do, since there were no cars behind us. "You know, I've always wanted to do that," he said, looking at the tree.

"Go for it," I said, looking at the sheer oddness of the spectacle, all these sneakers and shoes and boots, joined by their laces and tossed over the branches. The car slowed even more, and I thought Roger was going to stop and do it. But then he shook his head. "It's probably pretty wasteful," he said. But I noticed him looking back at the tree in the rearview mirror as we sped up again.

About half an hour after the shoe tree, I made Roger pull over so that I could take a picture, and I realized that there was no way to ever capture the entire landscape. So I turned in a circle, taking a picture in every direction, knowing that was the only way I could come close to capturing what it looked like. I lowered my camera and stood still for a moment, just taking in the silence. Even though it probably should have been scary, standing by the side of a deserted desert highway, it wasn't. It felt strangely peaceful.

There were no other cars on the road. Just the sound of the wind, and the motor idling, and through his open window, the faint clicking sounds of Roger making another mix. I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair around my face, letting out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.

We're on the road to nowhere. Come on inside.

-Talking Heads.

When we reached Eureka, one of the little mini-towns, it started to get dark. We hadn't stopped to eat dinner-partly because there didn't seem to be anywhere to to stop and get dinner, but mostly because Roger seemed to want to get across Highway 50 as quickly as possible. We loaded up on more snacks at another little gas station mart, and I added some granola bars and trail mix this time, feeling like we should have something that was closer to real food than, say, Fritos. stop and get dinner, but mostly because Roger seemed to want to get across Highway 50 as quickly as possible. We loaded up on more snacks at another little gas station mart, and I added some granola bars and trail mix this time, feeling like we should have something that was closer to real food than, say, Fritos.

We headed back on the highway, the sunset beginning with a line of pink at the bottom of the horizon, and then slowly taking over the whole sky. The car's shadow was lengthening far in front of us, and I leaned my head back and took in the sunset.

"Amy?" Roger asked. I looked over to see that he was playing with the various b.u.t.tons and levers around the steering wheel. "I don't know what happened-the lights came on automatically last night. Maybe I turned that off...."

He was right; it was dark enough now that the headlights should have come on. "Let me see," I said, looking over to see, but soon realizing I wasn't going to be able to get close enough with my seat belt on. I unbuckled it and leaned over to Roger's side, fully aware of how close together we now were. "Um," I said. I looked at the b.u.t.tons on my side of the steering wheel but didn't see the light controls anywhere. "I think they might be on your side," I said.

"Really?" he asked, looking down, causing the car to swerve slightly.

"Yeah," I said. I took a breath and leaned over him, making sure to keep looking straight ahead, very aware that if I turned my head, we'd be close enough to kiss. I saw the dial that controlled the lights on Roger's side of the steering wheel. "Hold on," I said. I reached over, being careful not to touch him, and turned the dial to the setting for the automatic lights, and they came to life immediately, two spots of light on the dark road. I moved back to my side of the car and buckled my seat belt, feeling my heart beating a little faster than usual.

"Thanks," Roger said, turning his brights on. The headlights were absolutely the only light on the road, but it wasn't pitch-black out, because the moon was huge and bright above us in the clear, enormous expanse of sky. And the stars were even better than they were at Yosemite, because there seemed to be more of them, as the sky seemed much bigger than normal. Roger reached around behind his seat, and seeing what he was looking for, I reached back and grabbed his backpack.

"This?" I asked.

"Thanks," he said. "Would you mind grabbing my gla.s.ses? They're in a brown case."

I unzipped his backpack and reached in, wishing it was light enough to see what was in there. But I found the gla.s.ses case, opened it, and handed him the gla.s.ses.

He put them on and adjusted them a little self-consciously. "I know," he said. "I only wear them for driving at night. Well, and movies. Things in the dark that are far away, I guess."

"They're nice," I said, taking in this new version of him. And they were-he now seemed a little more approachable, a little dorkier, and a lot less perfect.

"They make me look like a subst.i.tute math teacher," he said ruefully. "According to some people, that is," he added after a moment.

"But like the really cool cool subst.i.tute math teacher," I said, and was rewarded with another of his booming laughs. subst.i.tute math teacher," I said, and was rewarded with another of his booming laughs.

"Thanks," he said. "I appreciate the support."

I put the empty case back in his bag and went to zip it when a small sketch pad at the bottom caught my eye. "You draw?" I asked, then realized he probably thought I was snooping. Which I kind of was, but unintentionally. "Sorry-I just saw it in there...."

"It's fine. I draw," he said, nodding. "Not well, though. It's just something I do for fun."

"Do you mind?" I asked, lifting out the sketch pad.

Roger laughed. "Sure," he said. "But don't mock me." I held the sketchbook over the dashboard, flipping through the pages by moonlight. Almost every page was filled with small sketches. Roger had a cartoon-ish style, unless he was doing little miniportraits, when the drawings became more realistic. Most of the portraits seemed to be of a stunningly beautiful girl with long, light hair. I figured that this was Hadley but didn't want to ask about it, feeling I'd pried enough for one night. I closed the book and zipped it back inside his bag.

"They're good," I said, but Roger just smiled and shook his head. "Are you an art major?"

"Definitely not," he said. "I'm leaning toward a history major, political science minor."

"Oh," I said. Normally, this would have been when I would have said that my father was a history professor. I pushed away the impulse. It wasn't even an option-I wasn't talking about that. But the fact that I couldn't even manage to make this simple statement caused a wave of sadness to hit me. I turned away from Roger and curled up, facing my window. I looked outside, to the endless empty landscape and zillions of stars above. Then I rested my head against the cool gla.s.s of the window and closed my eyes.

"Amy. Hey, Amy."

I started and jerked awake-I'd been dreaming. It had been March, and warm, the gra.s.s freshly cut and sticking to my bare feet. I blinked at Roger, driving in the dark, the deserted highway stretching on and on forever in front of us. Right. I was on the Loneliest Road in America. Naturally.

I tried to turn my head, immediately feeling the pull in my neck. "Agh," I muttered. It seemed that I had managed to find the most uncomfortable sleeping position possible. "Hey," I murmured, rubbing my eyes. I looked at the clock and saw that it was two a.m. "Jesus," I said, sitting up straighter. "Roger, shouldn't we stop so you can get some sleep?" The road in front of us was still dark, and still utterly deserted, the stars shining as brightly as they had been a few hours ago. It felt a little bit like we were the only two people on earth at that moment, like it was just us and our car under all that sky, the stars shining for us alone.

"That's why I wanted to wake you up," he said. Even by dashboard light, I could see he looked exhausted. His eyes seemed bleary behind his gla.s.ses. "I want to make it to Utah tonight. I'm ready to be off this road, and if we can get to Delta, we should be almost to the interstate, and then we can definitely make Colorado Springs tomorrow." Even though I appreciated this urgency, it was surprising, since he'd been the one saying we had lots of time. I wondered where this rush to get to Colorado Springs was coming from. "But I'm going to need you to keep me awake," he said.

"Oh," I said. "Sure." I looked at him, waiting for more instructions. "How should I do that?" I saw the headlights of another car coming toward us. It looked miles off in the distance, but as the only light on the horizon, it was easy to spot. Roger turned his brights down, even though the car was probably a good five minutes from reaching us.

"Just talk to me," he said, rubbing a hand across his forehead. "Make sure I answer your questions. And if you could put some new music on, that would be great."

"Okay," I said, picking up his iPod. "But we can always stop in Ely and get some sleep." On the map, it had looked like Ely was the last mini-town in Nevada before hitting Utah.

Roger shook his head. "We need to make it to Utah," he said. Since it was my choice of detour that had gotten us off schedule, I wasn't going to argue with him. "Something upbeat," he said, gesturing to the iPod. "I didn't make a new customized playlist, but I should have some older ones saved on there."

I scrolled through it and saw that most of the playlists had very generic t.i.tles-"Mix #1," "Mix #2." I scrolled up to the top, figuring I would just have to look at them and try and guess what kind of music went with his oddly named bands, when I saw a mix t.i.tled "Had to be there ...[image] " Figuring the smiley face was a good sign, I selected it and put the iPod back in the cradle. The first song that started playing was pretty and slow, with lyrics about a love-struck Romeo. " Figuring the smiley face was a good sign, I selected it and put the iPod back in the cradle. The first song that started playing was pretty and slow, with lyrics about a love-struck Romeo.

"What mix is that?" Roger asked sharply, and I turned to him, surprised.

"The smiley-face one," I said. "I thought-"

"Something else," he said, the edge still in his voice. I noticed his hands were clenching the wheel, and he no longer seemed tired at all.

"Sure," I murmured. I hit pause, and the song stopped playing, leaving silence in the car. As I scrolled through the other mixes, the clicking of the trackball suddenly seemed very loud. I found one called "Mix #4," hoped that was safe, and selected it. Some very upbeat horns started playing, and Roger's hands unclenched. "Better?"

"Much," he said. "Sorry. I should have deleted that one."

I figured it had something to do with Hadley-which I now realized was probably part of the t.i.tle-but I wasn't about to ask. So I just nodded.

"It was a mix she made me," he said after a moment. "Hadley." Her name floated between us in the car for a moment, and I couldn't help but notice that he'd p.r.o.nounced her name differently, like her name, and only her name, contained all the good letters. "My ex," he added unnecessarily. But maybe it was for his own benefit, since he seemed to be having trouble remembering that part.

"Ah," I murmured, not sure what else to say. Amy! probably would have known exactly what questions to ask. She would have been sympathetic and kind, inviting Roger to talk about his feelings without reservation. She probably would not have sat silently next to him, looking out the window, afraid to ask him anything in case he returned the favor.

"Utah," Roger said, pointing out the window at the sign. We slowed, and I leaned over and looked at it. WELCOME TO UTAH WELCOME TO UTAH! it read. And then in smaller letters underneath that, MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME ZONE MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME ZONE.

As we drove past it, I thought about the imaginary line we'd just crossed, and how even though I was two states out of California, nothing felt any different. Not that I'd really been expecting it to.

"So!" said Roger, turning to look at me. "You're falling down on your job here. I need to be kept awake. Ask me questions. Recite poetry. Whatever you've got."

"Is it a person?" I asked, yawning, six rounds of Twenty Questions later.

"Yes," Roger said. "Nineteen. Stay with me, Curry!"

I smiled at that, and it happened automatically, surprising me enough that I stopped immediately. "Are they alive?" I asked.

"No. Eighteen."

"Are they male?"

"Yes. Seventeen."

I looked at Roger, who no longer seemed in danger of falling asleep at the wheel. I had learned the hard way that history majors had a distinct advantage when playing games like Twenty Questions. But I was beginning to get a sense of the kind of answer he was continually choosing. "Is he an explorer?"

Roger glanced over at me, one eyebrow raised, looking maybe a little impressed. "Yes. Sixteen."