least once, and maybe more. She’s almost used to it at this point. Maybe everyone goes through their lives on a wave of uncertainty and false memories.
“I know,” says Roger, and he sounds so tired, and she hears something in the background, unmasked by his silence—something that sounds like gunfire.
Dodger’s skin prickles. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he says. “I screwed up, Dodge. I ran away after the earthquake, and when I needed you, you weren’t there, because you didn’t . . . I don’t know. Maybe you didn’t love me anymore, or maybe you just got tired of dealing with my bullshit insistence that I knew best. It doesn’t matter, because I ran and you didn’t think I wanted you to follow, and so we’re both in a bad place when I am. I need you not to give up on me, okay? That’s all. When I come crawling back, I need you to remember this call, and be willing to give me one more chance. Please.”
“I could never give up on you,” she says, and she sounds so wounded, and so young, that it makes his chest ache. “Is there anything I can do for you? The future you who’s on my phone, I mean, not the now-you. I’ll give the now-you his space, and I’ll be ready when he comes back to me, if you’re sure he’s going to come.”
Roger laughs, thin and pained. “I can be a dumb-ass sometimes, and I can be an asshole sometimes, but I’ve never been stupid enough to run away from you forever. He’ll come. I’ll come. And then you can make it so this version of me never exists, because I won’t have to. You can change the math.”
Dodger is quiet for a moment, taking that in, along with the distant sound of gunfire. Finally, she asks, “Am I with you, in the future?”
“You are.”
“What am I like?”
“Lonely.”
It’s just one word, but it encompasses so much, like an equal sign finishing the equation. Dodger closes her eyes, wishing she could treat the gesture the way she so often has: as an excuse to reach out and not be alone anymore. She knows she can’t. Future-Roger is outside of her range, and present-Roger needs her to leave him alone if he’s ever going to let her back in. That doesn’t make the emptiness of her own skull any easier to bear.
“That makes sense,” she says. “Tell her I’m going to make it better for us. I’m going to wait for you. I’m not going to give up.”
“That’s all I needed to hear.”
There’s a finality in his voice. Cold terror grips her, and she knows, without question, that he’s about to hang up: that their brief connection, whatever it is or was or will someday be, is coming to an end. She also knows that when he hangs up, he’ll cease to exist—either because he’s going to die, or because he changed the equation so profoundly that he can never become. Either way, she can’t let him go without telling him something.
“Roger?” she says quickly.
“Yes?”
“I love you.” They don’t say that as often as they should, because it’s an odd love, philia and agape and distance and time. It doesn’t fit the modern definitions. Neither do they.
She hears him smile. “Thanks, Dodge.”
“She loves you too. Future-me. There’s no way she doesn’t.”
“I knew that. But . . . thank you for making sure.” Then the line goes dead, and she’s truly alone, not talking to the future, not able to reach out to the present.
Dodger Cheswich sinks to the floor, looking at the phone in her hand, and is silent.
ORBITS
Timeline: 14:31 PDT, June 16, 2016 (the present returns).
The younger Dodger stops talking. Silence falls. Finally, awkwardly, she asks, “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” confirms the older Dodger, the one who exists in 2016, the one who just hit a man in the head with her toaster. She remembers the call now. Remembers the sound of gunshots behind Roger’s voice, and the calm fear that swept through her like ink through cotton, coloring her from end to end with dread.
(She also remembers going back to the house, filling her suitcase, and leaving without speaking to another soul. She remembers thinking that if he was going to turn his back on her, she was going to turn her back on him. This version of events is already going fuzzy, smearing like those earthquake equations. Soon, it will be nothing but a faded “what if?” and not her