says, “I was a different person then. Literally. People are like equations, doctor. They can always be revised.”
There’s a knock at the door. She turns her head, eyes brightening, before looking back to him and saying, “Last chance. Who sent you?”
“No one.”
“Suit yourself.” She stands. “I’ll be back.” Then she walks out of the dining room, out of his field of vision, leaving him alone and helpless to do anything but wait for her return.
Dodger thinks she should be nervous. The day has been an equation of inevitabilities, from her therapist’s inexplicable attack to the phone call from her past self to the knock at her door. The reasons for the call are already becoming fuzzy when she doesn’t focus on them: she remembers Roger calling from the future now, and with those memories intact, she’d have no reason to call herself from the past. Living in a paradox isn’t exactly comfortable. She’ll still take it over the alternative. Without the paradox, this would all play out very differently.
(She can’t stop the feeling that it has played out differently at least once: maybe dozens of times. Dozens of iterations with no careful cosine to connect the halves of the equation, no judicious cheating to make sure she’d be prepared to continue. She’ll take the discomfort of the paradox over the agony of that linear but imperfect world.)
The knock comes again, more urgent this time.
Dodger opens the door. Silence falls.
Roger has gotten another gawky inch or so taller, finishing his growth as second puberty had its way with him. He’s still a rail of a man, skinny bordering on scrawny. His hair is too long to be neat and too short to be elegant; it falls scraggily in his face, making the circles around his pale, haunted eyes seem even deeper. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt that look like they were pulled out of the laundry hamper, clutching a backpack to his chest.
Erin, on the other hand, is perfectly put together, strawberry hair pulled in a sleek ponytail and face scrubbed clean. She’s wearing gray spandex and a plain hoodie; she looks like trouble about to start or an accident about to happen. Her backpack is smaller than Roger’s, less tightly packed. It has the look of a bug-out bag, something that’s been ready for a long time. She’s not frowning, but there’s a darkness in her eyes that speaks of bad times coming.
Dodger barely notices. It’s all data to be filed away and dealt with later. Her attention is on Roger, the way he breathes (he’s still smoking; she can see it in the slope of his shoulders), the way he stands, the way he’s looking at her, like she’s an impossibility. A paradox. The thought would be enough to make her smile any other time. But not now. Not now. This is an inherently unstable moment, and she can’t help thinking that all this back-and-forth between past and present and future has been an effort to shore it up, to make it slightly less likely to collapse. A smile could be a step too far. So she just looks at him, grave and quiet and waiting.
Erin pushes past Roger, into the house. “Snap out of it and get your things,” she says, voice brusque as ever. She doesn’t seem to have changed since the earthquake: she’s still vital and angry, shivering under her own skin, ready to explode. “I’ll explain once we’re on the road, but there are some very bad people looking for you, and they’re going to be here any second.”
“They already are,” says Dodger, taking her eyes off her brother’s face and turning to face the other woman. Erin looks nonplussed. That’s a nice change. She was always dismayingly difficult to throw off her stride. Dodger continues, “My therapist broke into my house and tried to shoot me. I knocked him out with a toaster. He’s tied to a chair in my dining room. Want to help me make him answer some questions?”
Erin’s eyebrows raise. “Seriously?” she asks. “You didn’t call the cops?”
“Oh, I called them.”
Erin’s eyebrows drop again, into the beginning of a glower.
“I told them there were kids setting off cherry bombs in the gully, which is a fire risk, and also a valid explanation for the gunshots. No one’s coming for him.”
This time, Erin’s eyebrows rocket all the way to her hairline as she stares at Dodger in open-mouthed approval. “When did you get so vicious?” she asks.