has been priming them for since they were born, no matter how little they want to play.
Alison will play a defensive game, she decides, loath to sacrifice pieces even when it would serve the greater good. Checkmate in ten moves or less. Not worth the time it would take to humiliate her. The thought is cold, and Dodger is ashamed of it even as it finishes forming.
She smiles, and she thinks it’s as good a smile as any she’s ever worn. She doesn’t think too deeply about that; about why her false smiles and her real ones look the same. “Wow. I guess we just got lucky. It’s nice to meet you, Alison.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” says Alison grudgingly, taking advantage of the introduction to slide her arm through Roger’s, making her claim even more apparent. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody named ‘Dodger’ before.”
“My dad teaches American history,” says Dodger, with the shrug she’s perfected for moments like this, when people comment on her name and she has no idea what to say. That isn’t where her name comes from: it was a condition of her adoption, lain down by a birth mother she’s never known and rarely wonders about. The woman who gave her life also gave her up. As far as Dodger’s concerned, that’s something people are only allowed to do once.
And Roger’s already done it.
She straightens, still smiling her false, practiced smile. “It was good to see you, Roger. I hope you enjoyed the game, and you both get lots of extra credit for coming. We’re supposed to play again in an hour, so I’d better go get ready.”
Roger watches helplessly as she turns and walks away, head held high and stiff. He’s losing her again, he knows he is, and he doesn’t know how to make her stop. Not without saying things in front of Alison that would make him sound crazy at best, and like some sort of weirdo ex-boyfriend at worst. He doesn’t want either of those things.
He also doesn’t want Dodger to go.
So he closes his eyes and fumbles in the dark behind them until he finds a door he hasn’t looked for in years—a door he stopped looking for when his family was threatened. But he’s fourteen now, not nine; he knows more about how the world works, he’s read more books on adoption law and contracts, because it impacts his life, and he wanted to understand. No matter what contract his parents may have signed, there’s no judge in the world who’d take him away from them for the crime of speaking to someone, especially not when she’s standing right there. She’s real, she’s really and truly real, and that means he’s not crazy to talk to her, and if he’s not crazy, then there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging her existence.
He “knocks.” She doesn’t open the door. She doesn’t let him in. And so he shoves as hard as he can. He pushes his way through.
Maybe it’s quantum entanglement and maybe it’s not, but the door opens under the questing fingers of his mental hands, and the world appears in vivid color, showing him the arena from a floor-level view. The angle of Dodger’s eyesight is wrong enough to be jarring. That makes him feel even worse. He’d be accustomed to her perspective if he hadn’t broken contact, like he used to be accustomed to seeing the world from a higher point of view, when they were younger and their heights were reversed.
(He’s also profoundly, disturbingly color-blind, something he didn’t understand when he was younger and might never have noticed if not for the fact that she isn’t: when he looks through her eyes, the world has a thousand shades that aren’t normally there, and he resents her a little for getting colors when he doesn’t, even as he hungrily matches them to names that were previously academic, ideas that had no anchor on the world.)
“Please don’t go,” he whispers, as softly as he can, and his voice in her mind is as loud and clear as it ever was.
Dodger stumbles. She doesn’t fall: her shock is enough to short out her coordination, but not enough to kill it completely. She stops walking, back still to the audience, and asks, “Why not? You did. I think it’s my turn.”
“Because I’m sorry and I shouldn’t have done it, and please. Don’t go.”
“I have to. I need to play another game. We’re in the same time zone tonight; call me