of her hair, her most recognizable feature, with his own eyes, but her voice had been echoing through his head for such long stretches of their childhood. They grew up in one another’s pockets, hand and glove switching positions whenever the need arose, and he knows what she sounds like better than anyone else in the world—better than her, even, because he’d heard what she sounded like to her own ears as well as to his own. There’s no way she can hide from him. She never could. And she shouldn’t have to, because he’s not real, he’s not real, he’s not real.
He’s just a dream that almost killed her, and she can’t fall asleep again. Not when she’s come so far. She doesn’t give him time to speak. Just waves, and kicks off, and she’s away, she’s away, she’s pedaling as fast as she can, and it’s never, never going to be fast enough.
Roger stands frozen in front of the library, entire body numb, staring at Dodger’s swift-receding back. Of course she’s here, he thinks, half-nonsensically. He’s been waiting for her to fall back into his life since the day he woke, drenched and bleeding, on the sidewalk in Harvard Square. He’d seized, over and over, his body fighting to live while Dodger’s fought to die. In the end, he was able to hold on, and they both survived. He knew that, because the “mysterious attack” on a “California math prodigy” by an unidentified teenage boy had made the papers all the way to Massachusetts. The local angle didn’t hurt, since that was all the authorities had to go on: the boy, whoever he was, had a New England accent.
It took a shamefully long time for Roger to realize they were looking for him, that Dodger had convinced them he was the one who’d attacked her. In his defense, he had problems of his own to worry about. Ms. Brown called the office to find out how he was, only to learn he’d never shown up. When they discovered he was no longer on campus, they contacted his parents, and a brief manhunt had ensued before they found him sitting next to the payphone, back to the wall, holding a wadded-up handkerchief—Alison’s, stuffed carelessly into his pocket at some point, forgotten until it proved useful—against his still-bleeding nose.
There was screaming. There were lectures. There were a series of X-rays and MRIs, and the discovery that somehow, he’d been bleeding into his brain; a small bleed, but enough to cause the complications he’d experienced. He didn’t know the applicable words back then. He knows them now: aneurism, hematoma, ecchymosis. At the time, all he was worried about was brain damage, losing the thin, indefinable edge that made him who he was. Then, once it was clear that no such thing had happened, he started worrying about Dodger, calling out to her, waiting for a response.
He’d always known she wasn’t dead. But she never answered, until he began to wonder if that was what had been lost: not natural ability, but preternatural. Their quantum entanglement had been severed by whatever she’d done to herself, and while he’d managed to save her, he hadn’t been able to keep them together.
He’d been in the hospital for a week before Alison came to see him, carrying a box that contained everything he’d left at her house over the duration of their relationship. She didn’t need to break up with him after that; he looked at the box, and he knew exactly what it was. To her credit, she didn’t yell. To his credit, he didn’t try to explain. She just placed the box gently beside his bed, turned, and walked away.
Now it’s five years later and he’s surrounded by shiny new grad students, coming in from schools around the country if not the world, all watching him watch Dodger riding away. He could try to call her back, close his eyes and say her name and hope she hears him, but that would be a great way to cement himself as a stalker or obsessed ex-boyfriend in the eyes of his peers. Plus she’s on her bike. Even if they can still make contact the way they used to, the shock of hearing him in her head might cause her to lose her balance and crash. Not a good way to renew an acquaintance that has been . . . troubled, at best.
Roger takes a long drink of his coffee before turning to the