even if she can’t actually smell or taste it. He can wait five minutes, until they’ve finished their morning call. This is normalcy. This is something that predates addiction, that will—he hopes—postdate it as well, remaining a normal part of life long after he’s decided that nicotine has become a crutch and kicked it to the curb.
“School, more school, homework, and then playing chess at the Y,” says Dodger. She leaves her room, heading down the short, familiar hall to the bathroom. Her parents are accustomed to hearing her mumble as she goes about her daily business; when they’ve asked, she’s smiled blithely and told them she’s trying to work out some snarly formulae. If pressed, she’ll start spewing numbers and mathematical concepts until they back off. It’s happened before. Roger has regretted his lack of popcorn every time. “I have a class of middle school kids who want to learn the game, and it looks good on my application forms.”
“I thought you were going to go to Stanford.”
She shrugs, face coming into view in the mirror above the sink as she reaches for her hairbrush. She still wears her hair in the bob she had when he saw her playing chess for the first time, short enough to be easily cared for, long enough to remind people that she’s a girl. Not that she needs the reminder anymore: he’d never invade her privacy by looking on purpose, but she’s an adult woman now, like he’s an adult male. She can wear all the shapeless shirts and ripped-up jeans she likes. The essential facts of puberty won’t change.
“If I go to Stanford, I’ll always be Professor Cheswich’s daughter,” she says, brushing her hair with sharp, almost violent strokes. Roger winces in distant sympathy, aware of her pain without feeling it. “Not only that, but I’ll always be the kid genius who didn’t want to skip the back half of high school. They don’t have much sympathy for that sort of thing around here, you know? No amount of ‘my social development needs me to be around my peers’ will make up for the fact that I could be more than halfway to my degree by now.”
“Sorry,” says Roger.
“Don’t be.” Dodger drops her hairbrush into the basket, picks up her toothbrush, covers it in minty paste. “Your parents wouldn’t let you leave high school early, and I can’t blame them. We both needed more time, and you would have missed Alison way too much if you’d broken up with her before you were finished being in love. Brushing my teeth now. Tell me your day.”
She sticks the toothbrush in her mouth before he can argue that he’s not done being in love with Alison, and even though it’s his turn to talk, he doesn’t start. Because she’s right. He’s not going to cry when he and Alison break up. A year ago, he would have. A year before that, it would have been the end of the world. Everything changes.
“Class,” he says. “I shouldn’t have much homework, and what I do have, I can finish by five. I’d better finish by five, since that’s when Dad’s coming to take me to the ballgame.”
Dodger makes a muffled, inquisitive noise around her toothbrush. Roger smiles.
“Red Sox versus Giants,” he says. “My hometown against yours. I guess we’ll finally know conclusively which is better, huh, California girl? I’ll be sure to send flowers to apologize when we stomp you into the dirt.”
She spits, rinses her mouth, and says primly, “You’d have to know where I live to do that. Find something else to threaten me with.”
Roger pauses. “Well, you could give me your address,” he says finally.
“Nope,” says Dodger. “Try again.”
Since the chess tournament, it’s been like their childhood positions have been reversed. Roger has offered his home address, his phone number, even a post office box rented with carefully hoarded lunch money, all to give her a means of contacting him that doesn’t involve her voice whispering through his mind, her eyes seeing through his own. She’s always refused. She’s always refused, and more, she’s declined to offer him any of the same things. He knows every inch of her house, from the latch that sticks on the back door to the loose baseboard in the computer room where she hides the things she doesn’t want her parents to see—the razor blades she buys at the local pharmacy, the dirty magazines, the caffeine pills, the carefully rolled bag of what could be, but