Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

  Roger doesn’t ask how she knows that: her words are accompanied by a strong sense of déjà vu, or maybe déjà entendu, like she’s describing something he witnessed once, long ago, and never wants to see again. We’ve been here before, he thinks, almost deliriously, and then: We got it wrong.

  Dodger slackens her grip and pulls back, eyes wide and shiny with tears. She looks more confused than frightened. That’s a good thing, because Roger is terrified, and one of them needs to not be scared.

  “Why do I know that?” she asks. “Because I do know that. It’s not a guess and it’s not a suspicion, I know.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But Dodger, please. Please don’t ever think I’m better off without you. Do you have any idea how many makeup exams I had to take to finish math my senior year? I was nearly the first person in my school’s history with an early admission to Berkeley who couldn’t graduate with his class.”

  She giggles, the sound small and thick with snot, before wiping her nose with the back of her hand and saying, “My teachers took pity on me, since I was clearly traumatized, and let me switch my English and History classes to pass/fail. I passed by the skin of my teeth, but I passed, and it wasn’t like Stanford was going to keep me out. Not with Daddy teaching there and my face in all the papers.”

  “See, if you’d been speaking to me, you could have passed without needing to look pathetic.”

  “I didn’t look pathetic, I … Okay, I looked pathetic. It worked, don’t knock it.” Dodger grins, the left side of her mouth twisting sharply upward while the right side remains where it is. Then, with no warning but that, she flings her arms around Roger, hugging him tightly. “I missed you so much.”

  “I missed you too,” he says, and stays where he is, just holding her, just being held, until the sound of the front door slamming jerks them both out of the moment. Roger pulls away. Dodger turns to blink at the door, eyes first wide, then narrowing.

  “Candace?” she calls. “Is that you?”

  There’s no sound from the hallway, no footsteps or hint of breath.

  “I think it was your other roommate going out,” says Roger.

  Dodger blinks at him. “What, Erin? She’s not here.”

  “No, because she just went out,” he says. “She was here when I got here. Out on the balcony, having a cigarette. This is a two-story apartment?”

  “Only on a technicality,” says Dodger. “Upstairs is Erin’s bedroom, the master bathroom, and the balcony. She got the upstairs bedroom because it’s the smallest and she’s a smoker. She said giving up a little personal space was worth it if she could go outside to smoke in the middle of the night. Since our security deposit says no smoking inside, this seemed like the best way to arrange things. And I didn’t want to deal with stairs every time I went to bed. But she’s never home.”

  “She was home today,” says Roger. “She told me you weren’t interested in making friends, and that if I left without knocking, I’d never need to see you again. Then, when I said I was going to knock anyway, she told me not to say she didn’t warn me. You have interesting taste in roommates, Dodge.”

  “Yeah, but she was right, so it’s not like I can be mad,” she says. “I’m not really interested in making friends.”

  Roger raises an eyebrow. “What do you call me?” he asks.

  “Roger,” she says. Her smile is radiant. “I call you Roger. Now come on. Let’s finish that chess game. I think you’ve gone too long without me whooping your ass.”

  He laughs, and she laughs, and he moves back to his side of the table, and while things are not entirely okay between them—won’t be for a while yet—things are getting better. The world is getting back to true.

  Experimentation

  TIMELINE: 17:09 PST, SEPTEMBER 3, 2008 (SIXTEEN DAYS LATER).

  Rebuilding old friendships is never easy. Doing it during the first month of grad school, when there are new things to learn and new duties lurking around every corner, is virtually impossible. Roger’s advisor keeps him occupied for two solid weeks with campus tours, reminding him over and over again that his volunteering unlocks certain privileges within the library system. A little wasted time is worth it, for the ability to take his reference materials home without worrying about whether they’re restricted. As for Dodger, she’s finding her way around campus, learning where she can safely chain her bike, and discovering the local food options—although she seems content with pizza, which is fast, cheap, and nutritionally complete, as long as they add extra artichokes.

  Still, they steal the time they can, meeting up at the Starbucks just off campus, or in front of the library, or on the quad. They avoid touching as much as they can. They get less anxious, less poised for something terrible to happen. They don’t talk about how much he smokes, how thin he is. They don’t talk about her scars, how fast she rides her bike. For the first time, it feels like they have secrets between them, and it aches a little, but it’s comforting, too. Secrets mean that all of this is really happening.

  Two weeks pass before Roger appears on the doorstep again, ringing the bell this time. It has a thin, buzzy quality to it, like a hive of wasps sounding a greeting from inside the wall.

  A woman he doesn’t recognize answers the door, short and plump and beautifully proportioned, with expertly feathered brown hair. She frowns. “Can I help you?”

  “Candace, I presume,” he says. “Is Dodger home?”

  The frown takes on a puzzled quality. He’s clearly not a mathematician: he doesn’t have any of the visible characteristics, the calculators, the geeky T-shirts with their math puns. Some of the underclassmen even carry antique slide rules, just to make sure they can be spotted by their own kind. It’s a fascinating form of collegiate tribalism. Kelly—the ex-girlfriend with the cat—has written papers about it, documenting student clique behavior at both high school and college levels.

  “Did someone sign her up for the new student social?” she asks. “Because if you’re here to serve as her escort, I want you to wait right here while I get my phone. I want pictures of the colors she turns while she’s yelling at you.”

  “Not a date,” he says. “Best friend.”

  “Dodger doesn’t have friends,” says Candace.

  “Brother,” says Dodger, coming up behind Candace. There shouldn’t be room for her to get around the other woman, but she manages. It’s a surprisingly elegant movement. Turning to face Candace, she puts a possessive hand on Roger’s shoulder, and says, “We’re going to see a lot of him, since this is the first time he and I have been at the same school. Be kind. Or at least, don’t be horrible.”

  “That’s Erin’s job,” says Candace. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “I am a font of mysteries,” says Dodger gravely.

  Candace shakes her head, says, “Nice to meet you,” and retreats down the hall.

  Roger shoots Dodger an amused look. “A font of mysteries?” he asks. “I thought words were supposed to be my thing.”

  “Can you make change for a dollar?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then I can occasionally come up with a witty one-liner. If I want something translated from the original Greek, I promise, I’ll come to you. What’s the plan?”

  “Hanging out on campus is great and all, but I was hoping we could sit and talk for a while? In semi-privacy?” Roger looks over his shoulder at the street before returning his attention to Dodger. “That means letting me inside.”

  “Ah, but you see, I have two roommates in residence, so … how much do you trust me?”

  It’s a simple question. After everything they’ve been through, it doesn’t have a simple answer. But there’s only one answer he can give. “Completely.”

  Dodger grins. “Good. Follow me.” She turns and heads down the hall. Roger follows, closing the door behind himself. Dodger may not care if he leaves it open, but he’s willing to bet her roommates would, and he has no desire to inspire their wrath.

  Ca
ndace’s door is closed—at least, he presumes it’s Candace’s door; the other door they pass is open, showing a room with equations scrawled on the walls and a bed situated in the middle of the floor. If that’s not Dodger’s, he’ll be genuinely shocked. Dodger doesn’t stop to point out features of the apartment; she’s heading for the back door, where old Bill is once again perched on the fence, waiting for someone to come along and pay attention to him.

  “I don’t think there’s enough room out here for us to sit comfortably,” says Roger.

  “That’s because we’re not going to,” says Dodger. “Close the door so Bill can’t get in.” She drags a collapsible ladder from the fence to the wall. Roger does as he’s been told, and watches with growing trepidation as she unfolds the ladder and props it against the side of the building. It doesn’t reach the top. It does reach the bottom of a rusty old fire escape–style ladder that appears to have been bolted to the roof.

  “Come on,” she says, and starts climbing.

  Dodger has always been the risk-taker of the pair. Watching her bike accidents and tumbles told Roger what not to do when his own time for those stunts arrived. She’s also better at risk assessment. When she says a thing is safe, it generally is, because she’s already tested and rejected all the really dangerous options. With a sigh, he follows her up the ladder.

  It’s not the most stable thing he’s ever climbed. It’s far from the most stable thing he’s ever watched her climb, and he pauses a few rungs up to watch the way she makes the transfer to the bolted-on ladder, checking her grip and the angle of her transfer. She scrambles past the lip of the roof, disappearing. Then her head pops back over the edge, a bright smile on her face.

  “Well?” she asks. “You coming?”

  Roger hesitates. Roger takes a step back down the ladder. “Not yet,” he says.

  Dodger’s face falls, excitement becoming confusion. Sometimes he feels like they’re still children in one another’s presence. He’s a grown man, needs his coffee and longs for cigarettes during the brief periods—like this one—when he manages to put them down; he’s progressed from high school girlfriends and eager over-the-shirt petting to having lovers who appreciate his facility for active listening and his practiced linguist’s tongue. But put him near Dodger and it’s all board games and climbing ladders to the roof. Things children do.

  (They were supposed to grow up together: he knows that, on a deep, almost primal level, below the surface of conscious thought. They were supposed to grow up with their hands in each other’s pockets, compensating for one another’s weaknesses, encouraging one another’s strengths. That didn’t happen. For whatever reason, it didn’t happen, and now, when they’re together, it’s like they’re trying to accelerate through those lost years, using the cheat codes to get the experience without actually playing the game. He doesn’t like this sort of knowledge, which bubbles up from a source he can’t find; he doesn’t like not knowing his own mind. But more and more, he also knows this is the only thing that’s going to save them. He just wishes he could know from what.)

  “It’s time for us to try,” he says. “Can you go to the far side of the roof?”

  Her smile doesn’t return. Instead, her face goes blank, falling into the perfectly neutral expression he saw her direct at her opponent in that long-ago chess game. It gives nothing away; it might as well be the face of a porcelain doll.

  “Are you sure?” she asks. “We just found each other, and—”

  “We found each other two weeks ago. It’s time. If it’s over, it’s over, but we need to know,” he says. “Isn’t it better to find out under controlled circumstances than to have me roll my car and start screaming in your head during one of your classes?”

  “I guess,” she says. Her face remains blank. “If it doesn’t work, you come up, okay?”

  “Okay,” he says. She withdraws, head vanishing. He moves to the corner of the garden farthest from the ladder and sits on the brick retaining wall keeping the thin strip of potting soil and succulents contained. Bill hops down from the fence and strolls over to strop against Roger’s ankles, purring loudly, as if to make sure the human understands what he wants.

  “I like self-petting kitties,” says Roger, and takes a few seconds to pet the cat, giving Dodger time to get to the far corner of the roof. Then he closes his eyes.

  Skills can atrophy: he knows this, has observed this in himself. He can drive a car, but he’d be a disaster on a bike, and the last time he strapped on a pair of roller skates, he damn near broke his neck. If a thing isn’t used, it withers and turns inward, becoming difficult to coax out. So he’s not expecting the click to come instantly. He’s also not sure what this sort of proximity will mean. He’s closer to her—still—than he was on the day they physically met for the first time, and he’s touched her, which could have increased their quantum entanglement. The outlines of the experiment are outside of his control.

  “Dodger, can you hear me?” he asks. “Are you there?”

  There’s no response. It feels like he’s doing exactly what he’s doing: sitting with his eyes closed in someone else’s yard, stroking a cat and feeling increasingly ridiculous.

  Maybe that’s the problem. This never felt ridiculous before. Even when it felt impossible, it didn’t feel silly: it felt like the world was working the way it had always been intended to work, running smoothly on all cylinders for the very first time. He reaches for the memory of that feeling, settling deeper into his stillness, letting go of everything, even the darkness behind his closed eyelids.

  “Hey, Dodge,” he says.

  There’s a snap. It feels almost like that second seizure back in high school, the one that knocked the world out of true for a single, painless second. It’s like getting struck by lightning and it’s like blacking out and it’s not like either of those things; it’s like his mind is a broken bone that’s been forcefully shoved back into position.

  His eyes are still closed, but he can see light, and blurry blotches of color. Dodger blinks several times, and with each blink the world comes more into focus, until he’s seeing Derby Street from above, from a perspective he hasn’t shared in years. The world is recast in sudden, vivid color, and the edges of things are a little softer; Dodger doesn’t quite need glasses, at least not yet, but she doesn’t have the clarity of distance vision that would come with corrective lenses.

  She lifts her hand, holding it up so she—and by extension, he—can see it. “Hi, Roger,” she says, and he hears her voice the way she hears it, distorted by bone conduction, and it’s exactly right; it’s like coming home.

  He’s winded. He shouldn’t be, but he is. “Hi,” he says. He’s also grinning like a fool. He hadn’t been sure they could still do this. “I can see your hand.”

  “I know.” She raises it, flexes the fingers, and then starts moving them, flashing a quick series of signs. “How many fingers?”

  “Three, five, two, four, three, one—that’s not very nice, you know. If anyone sees you doing that, they’re going to throw something at you.”

  “If people throw things for that in Massachusetts, I’m never going back there.”

  “We’re polite on the East Coast.”

  “You’re a liar, and I just wanted to check,” she says, and closes her own eyes.

  Roger knows what’s coming: he takes a breath, opens his eyes, and says, “See, this is what the cat looks like when you’re color-blind.” Bill obligingly butts his head into Roger’s knee.

  “Huh,” says Dodger, and she might as well be leaning over his shoulder, not speaking in the space behind his ears. “Look at that. You going to come up to the roof now? I don’t want one of my roommates deciding there’s something wrong with you and calling the police.”

  “Is that really a risk?”

  “Search me. I’ve never done this before.”

  Roger shakes his head. “I don’t think anyone has.”

  Dodger doesn’t say anything. Dodger has, throug
h whatever odd mental mechanism they both understand and can’t explain, shut the door; the conversation is over, at least until he comes up to the roof. Roger smiles a little at that. She always did like to have the last word.

  Bill follows him to the ladder, meowing plaintively when Roger begins to climb. Roger pauses to look back at the cat.

  “If you honestly expect me to believe you can’t get up to the roof whenever you feel like it, you must think I’m one stupid human,” he says.

  The cat meows again.

  “Okay, you think all humans are stupid,” says Roger. “Come up if you feel like it.” He resumes his climb.

  The folding ladder is stable; the bolted-on portion dangling from the roof is less so. It shifts when he moves his weight to it, just enough to remind him that gravity exists. It would hurt to fall from this height, even if it’s not high enough to kill him. He grits his teeth and keeps them ground together until he pulls himself over the edge of the roof, back onto a reassuringly solid surface. Then he stops, still half-crouched, and blinks at the scene in front of him.

  Dodger and her roommates have been busy. She kept her eyes on the street while he was looking through them, presumably so his first look at the rooftop proper would be from his own perspective, allowing her to watch. She’s smirking at him from a folding chair perched on the roof’s edge. It’s the most temporary-looking of the furniture, which includes a full patio set with a vast canvas umbrella, and a dozen potted plants. There’s a chessboard on the table, paused mid-game.

  “How…?”

  “Candace has friends in the engineering department,” says Dodger. “They spend a lot of time here, so they were happy to figure out how to get some furniture onto the roof. It was a fun challenge. I did a few calculations for them, helped them figure out the angles and everything. One of them tried to pick me up—in the metaphorical sense, not the physical sense. Candace kept that from getting ugly.”

  “So you’re not, uh, seeing someone right now?”

  Dodger’s look of alarm is comical. Roger bursts out laughing, and only laughs harder when her alarm morphs into irritation.