remaining members of his tour group and saying, “I didn’t think we’d lose one of you so soon. If anyone else is going to run out on me, could you do it now, so my ego takes all its blows at once? It would be a big favor. Anyone? No? In that case, let’s try this again: my name is Roger Middleton, and I’m going to be your gateway to the wonders of campus. How many of you have been here before? Show of hands.”
They show their hands. All of them have been here before, touring the place in the company of their fellow applicants while trying to settle on which campus they were going to grace with their brilliance.
Roger has been here for five years, combining undergrad and graduate work in one smooth sweep that doesn’t require winnowing his shit for the move back to Massachusetts a second before he absolutely has to. Even moving from dorm to dorm to off-campus apartment has been enough to make him give serious thought to staying in California. There aren’t real seasons here—California still doesn’t know how to do Februarys right—and people put avocado on everything, but staying would mean not needing to figure out how to part with or pack five years’ worth of carefully curated books. That might be worth it.
“All right, so that’s all of you,” he says. “How many of you want the facilities and library tour, and how many of you want me to take you down to Telegraph and introduce you to the food options that will be keeping body and soul together for however long you’re here?”
As expected, all of them choose burritos over blackboards. Roger keeps smiling as he leads them toward the edge of campus. That’s really all he can do right now. Just keep smiling.
Dodger is sharing an off-campus apartment with two other grad students: Candace, who’s studying child development and leaves wooden blocks scattered around the entryway, and Erin, who’s studying theology, keeps odd hours, and has only been seen twice since the three of them moved in. Both her roommates are out when she gets home. That’s good. That’s very, very good. She needs to think.
Propping her bike against the wall, Dodger walks down the bookshelf-lined hallway to her room: a small white box with a bed and a desk both situated well away from the glistening walls. The first thing she did upon moving in was get permission to paint the room with high-gloss paint, effectively turning the whole thing into one giant whiteboard. Her clothing is stored in the closet, and her books are on the communal shelves outside. This is the room where she lives. She can’t live where she can’t work.
Uncapping a marker, she turns to the nearest wall, and begins.
It’s a horror movie cliché: the unstable genius who spends all their time writing on the walls, chasing an equation that might as well be a dream. Dodger knows that. But the horror movie geniuses never take the time to buy special paint and never erase their work; she does both. The advent of cellphone cameras has made it easier to capture things in a more lasting medium. She works big, photographs small, transcribes into her computer, and continues virtual, moving the numbers and equations in a space where size doesn’t matter, where ink never smears and chalk never wears away. As long as this is just a ritual to calm herself down, she doesn’t see the harm.
She’s still writing when the front door opens and Candace calls, “Hello, the house!”
“Hi, Candy,” Dodger calls back, and keeps writing. She’s removed her sweatshirt. The scars running from her wrists to her elbows are visible, thin white lines that tell their terrible story to anyone who cares to look. What she finds interesting is the way the story is interpreted. Some people see the scars, see her face, and flash directly onto the newspaper articles identifying her as the victim of a vicious attack. Others see the scars and understand them, even if they saw the same articles. Those are usually the people with scars of their own, she’s found; people who have reason to know them for what they are. People who have no reason to judge.
Footsteps pad down the hall—Candace is one of those crunchy granola “shoes are for the outdoors, not the house” people—and Candace herself appears in the doorway, short and softly rounded, the kind of woman made for blue jeans and cable-knit sweaters.