respects that. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Dodger continues clearing the table, head down, hair shielding her face. He knows it’s red, even if he can’t see the color right now, red as sunset, red as a warning. It’s as if that, of everything about her, was designed to attract attention, and he knows she doesn’t like people staring at her.
“Did you ever think about dyeing your hair?” he blurts, and instantly regrets it. He’s supposed to be the one who’s good with words, and here he is saying things he should know will upset her. It’s like everything gets scrambled when they’re in the same room, like the fundamental laws of nature have been twisted twenty degrees to the left.
(He knows he can never tell anyone about this feeling, because he knows what they’d say: “you’re in love” and “bang the girl, get it out of your system.” But he’s not in love with Dodger. He loves her, has loved her since the moment he admitted she was a real person and not an imaginary friend, but that’s not being in love. It’s just that when they’re together, it feels like the world is finally complete, and if he can keep it in one piece for long enough, he’ll learn what the rules actually are.)
Dodger turns her head, enough that the hair falls away from her eyes and he can see her looking at him. “Do you think I should?” she asks, with honest curiosity. She’s looking at him like she sees him, now, like he actually exists.
He wishes he weren’t so grateful for that. “No,” he says. “I mean, I remember how pretty it is. I just know you don’t like it when people stare.”
She raises a hand to touch the side of her head, briefly confused. “What do you mean, you remember?” Her eyes widen. “Oh! The color-blindness thing!”
“Yeah,” he says, feeling a strange relief wash over him. If she knows he’s color-blind, it’s because she remembers looking through his eyes, seeing the ways the world differed from her expectations. She’s remembering that it wasn’t all some weird childhood hallucination. “I mean, I know it’s red, it’s just not . . . it doesn’t look red to me, you know?”
“I know.” She lowers her hand. “I’ve thought about it. Especially after . . . after. I didn’t like how easy it was for people to spot me. But I could never go through with it. I don’t know why. It just seemed . . . wrong.”
“You wouldn’t be able to draw fire like you’re supposed to,” says Roger without thinking, and stops dead, staring at her as she stares at him. His words are true: he knows that, without knowing how he knows it. (And hasn’t that always been the way? A lifetime studded with facts he knows beyond the shadow of the doubt, never with any proof to back them up. It’s not scientific. It’s not scholarly. It’s just the way things are.)
Dodger shakes her head, visibly unnerved. “I think you’re right,” she says, in a small voice. She sounds scared, and Roger hates himself a little for making her sound like that. Dodger isn’t supposed to be scared. She’s supposed to be the brave one. It’s the compensation for her also being the breakable one.
Silence spools out between them. If they let it go on for too long, they’re never going to break free. Roger does the first thing he can think of: he drops his chessboard onto the clear spot Dodger has formed on the table, and asks, “You want to go get some pieces?”
She laughs, and everything is going to be okay. At least for now, everything is going to be okay.
“No, but I’ll go get a chess set,” she says. “The whole thing. This is amateur hour. I mean, really, Roger.” She breezes past him, twisting her body at the last moment to keep their shoulders from touching. He wonders how long it will be before they feel comfortable with physical contact. He wonders whether they’ll be able to be in one another’s presence for that long. The last thing he wants to do is drive her away again, or drive her to do something she can’t take back. She’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt. He saw the scars on her arms.
It’s difficult not to think he had something to do with putting them there. He knows he didn’t. That doesn’t change anything. The mind is an