Amy & Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

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 glassed-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 passed 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 butter candy. Peanut butter, 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 shell-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 sunglasses 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