lab space where they can get it: geologists in the basement, chemists on the third floor. Getting out of the building involves walking past a fossil pterodactyl, hanging from the ceiling with its hinged jaw gaping in an eternal, silent scream. Its fleshless wings are spread wide, like it’s about to swoop down on them, carry one of them away. Normally, Dodger likes to pause and acknowledge this piece of the deep past, which carries a thousand mathematical formulae in the petrified structure of its bones. Math takes something living, strips it down to its essentials, and then rolls forward into the future, not asking the thing what it wants. Math doesn’t care.
Today, neither does Dodger. She lets Roger lead her down the hall and out into the cool afternoon. It’s early enough that the sky is light, but there are dark spots around the edges: sunset is coming. California Decembers aren’t long on light. They aren’t long on dry, either; there’s a storm hovering at the horizon, clouds rolling in almost at a pace with nightfall.
There are people on the steps, students she doesn’t know, talking to each other like the world is the same now as it was an hour ago, as it will be in an hour. She could try to explain how wrong they are. Even if they were willing to listen, she doesn’t have the words. All she can find are numbers, and they don’t speak to most people the way they speak to her. So she keeps her mouth shut, and lets Roger lead her, down the stairs, across the quad, into the green of the trees that grow tall around the creek that flows through the middle of the campus.
Whatever long-gone architect was responsible for the design of the UC Berkeley campus, whoever was put in charge of the seemingly impossible task of creating a school that would embrace its students and honor the land it was built on, they understood that people were people, and people would sometimes need to run and hide from one another. They grasped privacy in a way that’s honestly impressive, given how broad and open and institutional the campus sometimes seems. Together, Roger and Dodger walk under the trees, out onto a wooden path, and around a curve to a half-hidden bench. It will be wet for days after tonight’s rain, deluged by water first falling through and later trapped by the leaves above. For now, however, it’s the perfect place to stop.
Dodger lets go of Roger’s hand first. It’s a small thing. It’s also the first time she’s been the one to move away without running. Normally, she’s the one who holds still while he goes, or the one heading for the horizon as fast as her legs can carry her. Here, now, she’s calm. Serene.
Roger knows the words—shock, surprise, epiphany—but he doesn’t know how to put them in an order his sister (his sister, he has a sister, not just a weird quantum entanglement with a girl on the other side of the country, but a sister, someone whose blood knows his almost as well as his heart does) will be able to hear and understand. He supposes she’s stunned. He knows he’s stunned. The impulse to close his eyes and retreat into the space that exists between them is strong. He forces it aside. This is a real thing; this needs to be a real thing. He didn’t realize until this moment how badly he needs it to be a real thing, something spoken in the open air, something honest and concrete that he can put down between them, look at from all angles, and know for the truth. Real things are too important to entrust to quantum entanglement.
The creek chuckles a few feet away, bound by the banks it will burst as soon as the rain arrives. A crow calls overhead and is answered by one of its cousins. The campus crows are all related. Just like we are, thinks Roger, and is stunned anew by how dizzying the idea is.
Dodger sits on the bench, resting much of her weight on her fingers, curled tight around the wood and keeping her rocked forward, again like someone much younger. Roger’s mind is racing, looking for words that can apply to the situation (and, once they are found, rejecting them and looking for something else, something better, something big enough). She, on the other hand, seems to be sliding back and forth along her own