her cigarette, grinds it under her heel, and goes inside.
Roger rings the bell.
Dodger’s class schedule has been designed to give her long blocks of uninterrupted free time, followed by long blocks of time spent teaching classes for professors with better things to do, grading papers, and trying not to be too mean to undergrads. It’s not their fault that they’re at a different point in their studies than she is, and maybe if she reminds herself of that often enough, she’ll stop feeling the need to throw things at them. It’s frustrating enough that when she’s teaching, she’s expected to dress like a grownup, or at least wear something other than pajamas. Dress codes are the bane of her existence.
(Several people have looked at her schedule and told her it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t work, she can’t possibly have that much time to herself. She doesn’t understand why they’re making such a fuss. All she had to do was rotate the numbers until they slotted together the way she wanted them to. It’s not like it was hard.)
The doorbell rings. She looks up from her computer. Neither of her roommates is home, and she’s pretty sure she’d remember if she’d ordered a pizza, since that would have meant noticing and accepting that she was hungry. Awareness of her own body’s needs is not and has never been her strong suit. Conclusion: it’s not pizza.
There aren’t that many other things it could, or should, be. They live off-campus for a reason. No one has their address, and with as little time as they’ve lived here, every knock on the front door is an adventure. She’s met three neighbors, a door-to-door pot brownie vendor, and a teenage girl with a box of kittens and a harried expression. Who knows what today will bring? Carefully, she saves her work and stands, ready for a new surprise.
Dodger is smiling when she opens the door. That’s the first thing Roger notices. Whoever she’s become in the last five years, it’s still someone who can smile. Her face freezes when she sees him, smile turning into something crystalline and sharp. He could cut himself on that expression.
“Please don’t close the door,” he says.
Her crystal smile vanishes completely. It’s almost a miracle he doesn’t hear it shatter on the floor. “You’re not real.”
Roger blinks. “That’s a new one.”
“You’re not real. You’re my imaginary friend and I dreamed you, and if I dreamed you you’re not real, and if you’re not real, you can’t be here. What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?” He hopes he doesn’t sound as nervous as he feels. Although maybe it would be better if he did: it would be harder for her to pretend this isn’t hurting him as much as it’s hurting her. He forces a smile of his own, trying to look harmless and hopeful at the same time. Trying to look like he’s not a threat. “I mean, we can do this with me on the porch if you want—this is Berkeley, we have people running around pretending to be vampires every Sunday night, no one’s going to care about a couple of Midwich cuckoos—but it might be easier if I come inside.”
“The Midwich cuckoos were blonde,” says Dodger. Her voice hasn’t changed much. It’s a little deeper, but puberty was basically finished with her long before they’d stopped speaking. “You have brown hair. I’m a redhead. We’re not the children of sexist bucolic aliens. Also you don’t exist.”
“And let’s be grateful for that, because they were trying for breeding pairs—the aliens part, not the ‘I don’t exist’ part,” he says. “How do you know that, anyway?”
“Even math geniuses have to do book reports. We don’t get to skip English because we think it’s silly.” Her voice almost breaks.
His heart feels like it cracks a little. “Please. Dodger. Can I come inside?”
She doesn’t want to let him in: that much is clear in the way she looks past him to the street, scanning for anyone who might give her an excuse to say no. It both hurts and offends him that she’d feel the need to do that. No matter what lies she may have told the police, he’s never laid a hand on her—was on the other side of the continent when she decided to lay a hand on herself. All he’s ever done is try to save her, except when he had to leave her behind to save himself.