like that, not ever. But she doesn’t have the words, and she’s never going to have the words. What she has is numbers, probabilities, a whole universe of potential in her head—and those probabilities tell her the odds are a million to one against her being right.
It’s not him. It’s not him. It’s someone who looks like him, or like she thinks he’d look if she saw him now, five long years after he decided to stop answering when she tried to call. She knows it’s not him, and still she doesn’t slow until she hits the edge of the arena hard enough to knock the wind out of herself, fingers locking around the low bar that’s supposed to keep kids from falling in and landing on the ice skaters, or circus acrobats, or whatever other show is on display this week. When it isn’t chess, which she figures has to be most of the time.
He stands. He takes a step toward her.
She opens her mouth. She wants to say his name. She wants to scream it, to pack it with five years of sleepless nights, five years of struggling to be the best at everything, since it was her fault he went quiet. She can’t make a sound. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t even squeak. All she can do is stare, hoping he’ll know her silence for the screaming it is.
“Dodger.” He sounds half-strangled, like speech hurts him as much as silence is hurting her. He stands, the blonde still grasping his elbow, and when he shrugs her off, she goes without fighting, a slow and petulant frown growing on her face. Dodger doesn’t know her, but she’s met her all the same, the one smart girl in the classroom full of smart boys—and it’s not that girls are less likely to be smart, no, it’s that girls are more likely to be encouraged to hide it—who’s as poorly socialized as the rest of them, and doesn’t know how to handle another girl showing up on her territory. Dodger has met her a hundred times, and only the fact that she’s never cared about who gets the boys has kept her from becoming that iconic girl. There’s never been time. Math takes up too much of the world for that.
She clings to the railing, staring at the boy who said her name. Of course he knows me, she thinks, scolding herself in silence. They announced me at the start of the match, they announce me at the start of every match, stupid, stupid—
“Dodger,” he says again, and steps into the aisle. His legs are shaking and his face is going white; he looks, in fact, like he’s on the verge of fainting.
The rail is too high for Dodger to climb, but she tries, stretching onto the tips of her toes and grabbing for the top like she’s going to haul herself into the bleachers. Her defeated opponent is still behind her, staring, and he’s not alone anymore; several other players have joined him, all gaping at the spectacle of Dodger Cheswich, the Unsmiling Girl, hurting herself trying to get to an unprepossessing teenage boy who looks like he’s seen a ghost.
She’s started to make a noise, a high, thin keening sound, like a coyote with its leg caught in a trap. It’s enough to set teeth on edge. She doesn’t seem to realize.
Roger realizes. “Dodger!” he finally shouts, and breaks into a run, his limbs moving in the sort of uncoordinated avalanche of bone that haunts boys between the ages of thirteen and thirty. Dodger is still trying to climb the arena’s edge when he reaches her, leans over the rail, and grabs her hands in a motion so abrupt that there’s no time for either of them to think better of it. He’s just there, holding her fast, and she’s staring up at him, eyes wide and stunned and filled with the sort of loneliness that should be criminal. Is criminal in the tribunals of the soul, where the innocent are punished alongside the guilty.
“It’s you,” she sighs, breaking the seal on her voice. Getting louder with each word, she continues, “It’s you, Roger, it’s you what are you doing here did you know it was me did you come to see me play I’m sorry whatever I did I’m sorry I didn’t mean to I won’t do it ever again if you’ll just—”
“Stop,” he says. His voice is sorrow and apology in equal measure,