an imaginary friend, one with a name, one she liked well enough to have talked to for a long time, she’d gone looking, just like he had when he’d needed to apologize. And she’d found him. Just like he’d found her.
“Dodger?”
Dodger lifts her head. Through her eyes Roger sees the librarian approaching. The woman is old, maybe even older than his mom, but she looks nice; she has worry-lines around her eyes, and her mouth is painted a soft shade of pink, keeping it from looking too cruel, even when she has to shush people for being loud in the library.
“Are you all right?”
Dodger nods mutely.
“Are you supposed to be in the bathroom?” The question is gentle. Dodger has done this before, then, running away and hiding for a few minutes in a place where no one will expect her to be brash, to be bold, to be anything other than small and frightened and seven years old.
Dodger nods again.
“They’re going to think you’re sick if you don’t go back now, and when your teacher checks the bathroom, she won’t find you. I don’t want you to get in trouble.” Still so gentle, still so careful. Roger guesses people all over the world must use the same tone when they talk to the smart kids, like they were bombs on the edge of going off, instead of children with brains too big for the people they’re supposed to be.
“Okay.” Dodger gets up, unfolding easily from what had seemed like such a crumpled position. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just be all right. You’d tell me if you weren’t all right, wouldn’t you?”
Of course not. Roger has only known Dodger for a day—maybe longer, if her father is right, if they were friends before, only to lose hold of one another—but he already knows she doesn’t tell people things when she doesn’t feel she needs to. She keeps her secrets close to her chest. That’s how she survives in a world where she’s so much smarter than she should be, and so much more delicate than she seems.
“Yes, Ms. McNeil,” says Dodger obediently.
“Good. Now get back to class, and if anyone asks, I never saw you.” The librarian smiles. Dodger smiles back, and then she’s in motion, heading for her classroom at a brisk walk. Roger is pretty sure she never takes her time getting anywhere.
She pauses at the classroom door and says, in a loud whisper, “It’s ten. I get out of school at three. You can call in six hours.” Then she opens the door and walks, head high, into a classroom filled with bright, judging eyes.
This is her prison, not his. Roger lets go of his place in her head and falls back into his own, opening his eyes on the dim janitor’s closet. He picks himself up, pins and needles shooting through his legs, brushes his jeans off so no one will be able to see where he has been, and lets himself out.
Six hours has never seemed like such a long time. Roger watches the clock, counting the minutes. Ten for her was one for him, and dinner is served at seven thirty; that means he has half an hour in his room before he’ll have to go downstairs and tell his parents about his day. He’s finished all his homework except the new math worksheet, which is even more complicated than the last one. Worse, because he did so well on one sheet, they’re going to expect him to do well on the next one. Maybe not as well, but . . .
He knows the words. Cheating, plagiarism, lying, lying, liar. He’s not sure plagiarism applies when it’s math problems and not words, but he doesn’t want to find out; doesn’t want Miss Lewis looking at him with disappointment or—worse—revulsion. He needs to do better in math. He needs to keep that look at bay. That means he needs the far-away girl whose name rhymes with his, and he thinks she needs him too, to guide her through the strangeness of spelling and English. They can help each other. They can make each other better.
The clock ticks over to seven. Roger Middleton closes his eyes. “Dodger?” he says.
For a moment, there’s no response. Somehow, that isn’t a surprise: part of him has been waiting for this to end since the moment it started, and end badly, proving once and for all that there is something wrong with him, that his mother has been right to be