and she’ll do it with a smile on her face, because Roger’s back. Roger’s real, and he’s back, and she’s not alone anymore.
Her bedroom door opens. She sits up, turning, and there’s her mother, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. She brandishes it. “You know what this is?”
Dodger stiffens. “That’s mine,” she says. “It was in my bag.”
“You left it on the stairs again,” says her mother. “I picked it up and this fell out. A ninety? Really?”
“I studied.” The lie comes quick and easy. The necessary lies always do. (She’ll try for years to explain her dislike of metaphor to Roger, even as they both learn how to pronounce the word correctly: to make him see why lies should be reserved for life-or-death situations, because anything else would make them weaker, and weak things can’t save you. She’ll always be a better liar than he is. He’ll always have a better grasp of metaphor. Some things run too close to the bone to change, no matter how much you want to.)
“You studied? Are you sure?” Her mother’s eyes scan her face. Dodger looks guilelessly back, confident her deceptions will go unseen. Sometimes she thinks being adopted is the best thing in the world, because it’s made her a better liar where her parents are concerned. All the kids she knows think it’s hard to lie to their parents, because their parents can say things like “you have your mother’s eyes, and she always squints when she’s lying,” or “see, that blush means you’re not telling me the truth.” Dodger doesn’t have anyone’s eyes but her own, and maybe Roger’s . . .
That’s just wishful thinking. She doesn’t have anyone’s eyes but her own, and those eyes are wide and innocent, devoid of anything but childish delight at her own accomplishment.
Finally, her mother yields. Heather Cheswich’s retail job is only part-time, starting after she puts Dodger on the school bus and ending early enough to let her beat her daughter home by almost half an hour, but it’s still exhausting, and she doesn’t have the energy to pursue this any further. “I told you that you could do it if you applied yourself. Didn’t I tell you?”
“You told me,” agrees Dodger solemnly. “You told me until I listened.” She’s not being sarcastic. Sarcasm will come later, after the world has kicked her more.
“Your father will be pleased.”
Dodger perks up at that. “Is he coming home for dinner?”
Her mother looks at the hopeful expression on her little girl’s face and feels herself wither a bit more inside, way down deep, where the light never reaches.
“I don’t think he’ll be home for dinner tonight, sweetheart; he has a class,” Heather says, and Dodger’s face falls. Heather forces a smile. “Now why don’t you show me that spelling worksheet?”
Dodger does, and time marches on.
PURPLE STARS
Timeline: 17:02 PST, February 9, 1995 (two years later).
“Are you sure California has February?” asks Roger. Dodger is sliding down the embankment on the sides of her feet, plunging into the bushes behind her house. She’s shredding her shoes; she goes through them five times as fast as he goes through his, even though their parents buy the same brands. Up until a few months ago, they even wore the same size. She’s hitting her growth spurts early and hard, and her mother is beginning to look thoughtfully at the shoes in the athletic section, which might stand half a chance of lasting for more than a month.
“The calendar says it does, and calendars don’t lie,” says Dodger. She grabs at branches as she descends, scraping the skin off her palms. Roger winces in sympathy, feeling the idea of her pain without feeling the pain itself. The brief moments of physical synchronicity they used to have, where he could feel her tap his shoulder, where she would know if he had a headache, have been fading. He’s sort of grateful for that. Some things shouldn’t be shared.
Dodger is paler than he is—neither of them goes out in the sun much, but she’s turned avoiding it into a game, while he just sighs whenever it comes out from behind the clouds—and her bruises stand out brighter than his ever do. Sometimes she looks like a flower of a girl, drawn in white and purple and healing yellow, all the more striking because those colors only seem to exist in California. She laughs when he tells her to take better care of herself. No one else cares if she