Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

  “Dave,” says the man with the beard.

  “I’m, um, Lauren?” The girl with the pink and blonde hair has a Midwestern accent that peaks at the end of her sentence, turning her name into a question. “I’m in biochem.”

  “Cool,” says Dodger. “We all STEM?”

  “Chemistry,” says Dave.

  “Genetics,” says Smita. “You need a biologically accurate velociraptor, I’m not your girl. You want a terrifying hybrid of science gone wrong, give me a few years, I may be able to deliver.”

  “Cool,” says Dodger again. She has the feeling she’s going to be saying that a lot. She’s okay with the idea. This is grad school. If it wasn’t cool, she’d have to question her life choices. It’s not like she needs the degree. She doesn’t want to teach—can’t imagine shutting herself in a classroom for her entire life like her father has—and with the prizes she’s already won, the things she’s already accomplished, she could have a comfortable career without further schooling. But she wants to learn. Knowledge is more addictive than anything she could put into her body, and she should know—she’s tried everything there is and a few things there aren’t, thanks to innovative chemistry majors. None of it has held a candle to learning.

  (That’s not true. She’s never smoked. The smell makes her think of Cambridge, and thoughts of Cambridge are thoughts of something that was never real, something that almost got her killed when she was too young to know how to keep herself on an even keel. So she avoids cigarettes and things that might remind her of them. Besides, it’s not like nicotine is an effective neural stimulant. It’s the ritual that stimulates, and rituals she has in plenty.)

  Jessica has looked up from her phone again and is studying Dodger with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Dodger,” she says.

  “Yes,” says Dodger.

  “Dodger Cheswich.”

  “Yes.”

  “You solved the Monroe Equation when you were what? Nine?”

  “Something like that,” says Dodger.

  “I’ve never believed that,” says Jessica. “Who helped you?”

  “No one,” says Dodger. “Let me guess: math?”

  Jessica nods. “Applied, but definitely something computational. You?”

  “Still in flux between dynamical systems and probability, but I may stick around for an extra year and do both instead of blowing this Popsicle stand in four. What I really want to do is chaos and game theory, at least right now. I don’t know where I’ll actually land.” Dodger shrugs broadly. “That’s sort of the point of being here. There’s time to figure out what I want.”

  “Chaos theory, like the dude in Jurassic Park?” asks Snake.

  “Sort of,” says Dodger, and is privately grateful she didn’t wear her movie logo shirt. She’s replaced it over and over throughout her lifetime; thank God for Hot Topic, which is more than happy to cater to nostalgia. Other kids got Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. She got Ian Malcolm and a world where mathematicians could be rock stars.

  “I still don’t believe you did it,” says Jessica.

  Dodger shrugs again. “Suit yourself.” She’s used to this reaction: it’s lost most of its sting. There’s a lot of rivalry within the mathematical community, a lot of racing to be the first to solve a puzzle that’s broken scholars for years. She’s solved eight of those puzzles, and published the solutions to six. Some people think she’s a liar, others think she’s a hoax, and one particularly verbal group thinks she’s an actress hired as a front for a revolutionary AI. She’s not sure what that would accomplish, but it’s a charming thought, in its way.

  “So where’s our latecomer, anyway?” asks Dave. “I’m happy to do campus tours and ‘build connections within my incoming peer group,’ but not if it means I’m going to be late for everything else I have going on. There’s being social and then there’s being stupid.”

  “I think we’re going to be friends,” Dodger informs him.

  Dave grins.

  The social patterns are beginning to emerge: who wants to be here, who’s been pressured into agreeing. Who feels like they’re scoping out the competition, and who genuinely wants someone to talk to on an unfamiliar campus. Dodger has gotten better about reading the underlying logic of moments like this one, mapping them like equations. It’ll never be a perfect predictive tool—annoyingly, people are not numbers—but she can run the probabilities. It’s all part of being a better liar. She’d finished high school in long-sleeved shirts, listening to people whisper about her “mystery attacker” when they thought she couldn’t hear them, and she’ll always be aware of how narrowly she avoided them whispering about the crazy genius girl who tried to kill herself because she couldn’t handle the pressure. Social isolation wasn’t working anymore.

  She’d started college a new woman. Smiling, laughing, engaging with the people around her, all while keeping copious notes on how and why they reacted the way they did. She’d approached the issue of social interaction like it was another puzzle to be solved, another prize to be won. She has friends now, people who swore they’d keep in touch via the Internet, since they aren’t at the same school anymore. She has people who would notice if she disappeared.

  She wishes that meant more, or that she actually cared about them the way they seem to care about her, but no one gets everything in this world. As long as she can feign connection believably enough that people will answer it in kind, that will be enough. That has to be enough.

  Dave and Smita could be friends, if she takes the time to cultivate them. She thinks she will. Friends are useful things, and she gives as good as she gets, following the established rules of friendship. If she brings people soup when they’re sick because the rules say she should and not out of empathy, what does that matter? They still get the soup. She still gets the contact. The math is good. Lauren is an unknown quantity. Snake would probably like to be friends, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off her breasts in almost five minutes, and Dodger has moved out of the phase of her life where that would seem like a good thing. It was nice to have the boys noticing her for a little while, when she was trying to work out social interaction; boobs were like a cheat code for getting along. As her grasp of the math improved, she stopped wanting to cheat.

  Jessica is going to be a problem. That’s all right. She likes problems.

  “Where did you do your undergrad?” asks Smita.

  “Stanford,” says Dodger. This is the most common question in her world right now, and she volleys it back without pause: “You?”

  “Brown.”

  The others offer their own answers as the minutes move, until Dodger’s late arrival is completely overshadowed by their tour guide, who is going for the record.

  “If this guy weren’t showing us around campus, I’d suggest ditching him,” says Snake. Everyone murmurs agreement, even Dodger and Jessica, who might never agree on anything again. (Not that this is a bad thing. Rivalry inspires good work. Not peaceful work, but since when does peace have anything to do with the march of scientific progress?)

  “Maybe we should ditch him anyway?” Lauren ducks her head like she’s ashamed of her own question. “We could all get lost together? It might be fun?”

  The way the girl sounds as if she’s constantly questioning things is going to get old soon. But they’re not in the same discipline, so it’s not like they’re going to share advisors, and besides, this is Amiable Dodger time, Friendly Dodger time, Dodger-who-gives-a-damn time. Dodger slaps a smile on her face and says, “I think I saw a Starbucks just off campus.”

  “I know I did!” says a new voice. The group turns to see a tall, rail-thin man walking toward them. His brown hair is long enough to be pulled into a ponytail; his glasses are wire-framed and as stylish as mud. The cup in his hand bears the familiar green mermaid, complementing his blue-and-gold UC Berkeley sweatshirt. He looks like a campus tour guide out of a student handbook, and he puts Dodger’s teeth instantly on edge. Something about him is familiar enough to hurt. She�
��s learned, over time, to fear the overly familiar.

  “Are you our guide?” asks Smita. “Because you’re late. There was almost a mutiny.”

  “Wouldn’t be my first,” says the man. “Something about my face inspires people to rebel against me. Even when my face isn’t there, they rebel against me. I’m Roger Middleton, and I’m going to be your gateway to the wonders of the UC Berkeley campus. Please watch your step, forgive my tardiness, and don’t feed the squirrels, as they have been known to mug people for their—Miss? Where are you going?”

  The group turns again, this time to look at Dodger, who has grabbed her bike and is in the process of swinging her leg over the seat, hands already tight on the handlebars. She blanches when she sees them—when she sees him—staring at her.

  Then she slaps her smile back into place like it was never gone. “Sorry, just realized I didn’t feed the cat before I left. I’ll see you guys around, right?” The cat came with her apartment, and he’s already been fed, and that doesn’t matter. What’s one more lie in the face of the lies she’s already told, the ones she’s telling every time she smiles like she means it, or doesn’t open her mouth and scream? Lies are nothing. They’re the currency she uses to pay for the rest of her life.

  They’re not going to be enough. Roger went pale the second she spoke, and how could he not? He can’t see the color of her hair, her most recognizable feature, with his own eyes, but her voice had been echoing through his head for such long stretches of their childhood. They grew up in one another’s pockets, hand and glove switching positions whenever the need arose, and he knows what she sounds like better than anyone else in the world—better than her, even, because he’d heard what she sounded like to her own ears as well as to his own. There’s no way she can hide from him. She never could. And she shouldn’t have to, because he’s not real, he’s not real, he’s not real.

  He’s just a dream that almost killed her, and she can’t fall asleep again. Not when she’s come so far. She doesn’t give him time to speak. Just waves, and kicks off, and she’s away, she’s away, she’s pedaling as fast as she can, and it’s never, never going to be fast enough.

  * * *

  Roger stands frozen in front of the library, entire body numb, staring at Dodger’s swift-receding back. Of course she’s here, he thinks, half-nonsensically. He’s been waiting for her to fall back into his life since the day he woke, drenched and bleeding, on the sidewalk in Harvard Square. He’d seized, over and over, his body fighting to live while Dodger’s fought to die. In the end, he was able to hold on, and they both survived. He knew that, because the “mysterious attack” on a “California math prodigy” by an unidentified teenage boy had made the papers all the way to Massachusetts. The local angle didn’t hurt, since that was all the authorities had to go on: the boy, whoever he was, had a New England accent.

  It took a shamefully long time for Roger to realize they were looking for him, that Dodger had convinced them he was the one who’d attacked her. In his defense, he had problems of his own to worry about. Ms. Brown called the office to find out how he was, only to learn he’d never shown up. When they discovered he was no longer on campus, they contacted his parents, and a brief manhunt had ensued before they found him sitting next to the payphone, back to the wall, holding a wadded-up handkerchief—Alison’s, stuffed carelessly into his pocket at some point, forgotten until it proved useful—against his still-bleeding nose.

  There was screaming. There were lectures. There were a series of X-rays and MRIs, and the discovery that somehow, he’d been bleeding into his brain; a small bleed, but enough to cause the complications he’d experienced. He didn’t know the applicable words back then. He knows them now: aneurism, hematoma, ecchymosis. At the time, all he was worried about was brain damage, losing the thin, indefinable edge that made him who he was. Then, once it was clear that no such thing had happened, he started worrying about Dodger, calling out to her, waiting for a response.

  He’d always known she wasn’t dead. But she never answered, until he began to wonder if that was what had been lost: not natural ability, but preternatural. Their quantum entanglement had been severed by whatever she’d done to herself, and while he’d managed to save her, he hadn’t been able to keep them together.

  He’d been in the hospital for a week before Alison came to see him, carrying a box that contained everything he’d left at her house over the duration of their relationship. She didn’t need to break up with him after that; he looked at the box, and he knew exactly what it was. To her credit, she didn’t yell. To his credit, he didn’t try to explain. She just placed the box gently beside his bed, turned, and walked away.

  Now it’s five years later and he’s surrounded by shiny new grad students, coming in from schools around the country if not the world, all watching him watch Dodger riding away. He could try to call her back, close his eyes and say her name and hope she hears him, but that would be a great way to cement himself as a stalker or obsessed ex-boyfriend in the eyes of his peers. Plus she’s on her bike. Even if they can still make contact the way they used to, the shock of hearing him in her head might cause her to lose her balance and crash. Not a good way to renew an acquaintance that has been … troubled, at best.

  Roger takes a long drink of his coffee before turning to the remaining members of his tour group and saying, “I didn’t think we’d lose one of you so soon. If anyone else is going to run out on me, could you do it now, so my ego takes all its blows at once? It would be a big favor. Anyone? No? In that case, let’s try this again: my name is Roger Middleton, and I’m going to be your gateway to the wonders of campus. How many of you have been here before? Show of hands.”

  They show their hands. All of them have been here before, touring the place in the company of their fellow applicants while trying to settle on which campus they were going to grace with their brilliance.

  Roger has been here for five years, combining undergrad and graduate work in one smooth sweep that doesn’t require winnowing his shit for the move back to Massachusetts a second before he absolutely has to. Even moving from dorm to dorm to off-campus apartment has been enough to make him give serious thought to staying in California. There aren’t real seasons here—California still doesn’t know how to do Februarys right—and people put avocado on everything, but staying would mean not needing to figure out how to part with or pack five years’ worth of carefully curated books. That might be worth it.

  “All right, so that’s all of you,” he says. “How many of you want the facilities and library tour, and how many of you want me to take you down to Telegraph and introduce you to the food options that will be keeping body and soul together for however long you’re here?”

  As expected, all of them choose burritos over blackboards. Roger keeps smiling as he leads them toward the edge of campus. That’s really all he can do right now. Just keep smiling.

  * * *

  Dodger is sharing an off-campus apartment with two other grad students: Candace, who’s studying child development and leaves wooden blocks scattered around the entryway, and Erin, who’s studying theology, keeps odd hours, and has only been seen twice since the three of them moved in. Both her roommates are out when she gets home. That’s good. That’s very, very good. She needs to think.

  Propping her bike against the wall, Dodger walks down the bookshelf-lined hallway to her room: a small white box with a bed and a desk both situated well away from the glistening walls. The first thing she did upon moving in was get permission to paint the room with high-gloss paint, effectively turning the whole thing into one giant whiteboard. Her clothing is stored in the closet, and her books are on the communal shelves outside. This is the room where she lives. She can’t live where she can’t work.

  Uncapping a marker, she turns to the nearest wall, and begins.

  It’s a horror movie cliché: the unstable genius who spends all their time writing on the walls, chasing an equation that might as well be a dream. Dodger kn
ows that. But the horror movie geniuses never take the time to buy special paint and never erase their work; she does both. The advent of cellphone cameras has made it easier to capture things in a more lasting medium. She works big, photographs small, transcribes into her computer, and continues virtual, moving the numbers and equations in a space where size doesn’t matter, where ink never smears and chalk never wears away. As long as this is just a ritual to calm herself down, she doesn’t see the harm.

  She’s still writing when the front door opens and Candace calls, “Hello, the house!”

  “Hi, Candy,” Dodger calls back, and keeps writing. She’s removed her sweatshirt. The scars running from her wrists to her elbows are visible, thin white lines that tell their terrible story to anyone who cares to look. What she finds interesting is the way the story is interpreted. Some people see the scars, see her face, and flash directly onto the newspaper articles identifying her as the victim of a vicious attack. Others see the scars and understand them, even if they saw the same articles. Those are usually the people with scars of their own, she’s found; people who have reason to know them for what they are. People who have no reason to judge.

  Footsteps pad down the hall—Candace is one of those crunchy granola “shoes are for the outdoors, not the house” people—and Candace herself appears in the doorway, short and softly rounded, the kind of woman made for blue jeans and cable-knit sweaters. Her hair is a sensible brown only a few shades darker than her eyes. She likes to say she’s a survivor of the diet industry still learning how to be fat and happy, but she seems more comfortable in her own skin than Dodger’s ever been.

  Candace’s eyes go to the walls. Two of them are already covered in numbers; Dodger is well along the way to filling the third. “Do I even need to ask how the tour went, or should I back away slowly and hope you don’t decide to start covering me with algebra?”

  “If this looks like algebra to you, it’s time to add some remedial math classes to your course load,” says Dodger. She puts the cap back on her marker. “This is all bad math. I’m trying to solve something that doesn’t want to be solved, and I fucked up somewhere back there”—she waves a hand vaguely toward the first wall, the snarl of incomprehensible symbols scrawled in black on white—“so now I need to start it over.”