Page 13 of Middlegame

He got a perfect score because Dodger helped him.

He got a perfect score because Dodger helped him, and she’s gone. Or, not gone. She’s where she always was, somewhere in California, so far away that she might as well be on the stupid moon. He doesn’t know her address or her phone number or what school she goes to or anything. He can’t call her and say he’s sorry for laughing. He can’t tell her how much he wants to be her friend, or how much he needs her help with math. All he can do is stare at the perfect score on the top of his paper and feel like a cheater and a bad friend.

A drop of water hits the paper. He wipes his cheeks, only distantly aware that he’s been crying, and puts his hand up.

Miss Lewis pauses and looks at him. “Yes, Roger?”

“Miss Lewis, may I, um.” He pauses, cheeks burning. Asking never gets easier, especially not with the rest of the class turning to look at him and giggle, like they never have to use the restroom, like their bodies are above such things. He’s watched the same boys trying to piss a fly out of the air above the urinals during recess, or arguing over who can fart the loudest. He supposes girls probably don’t do that sort of thing. But maybe they do. They giggle the same as the boys. “May I go to the bathroom?”

“You may,” says Miss Lewis, taking pity. Normally, she’d look at the clock, with its hands standing at fifteen past the hour, and remind him that some things were meant to be done during lunch, when they wouldn’t disrupt class time. But Roger has always been a quiet boy, withdrawn from his peers, and he’s never done well at math. If he needs time to absorb the reality of his score, she’s going to give it to him. There isn’t much she can do for the sensitive ones, and so she’s happy to do what she can.

Roger slides out of his seat and half-walks, half-staggers to the door, trying to look like he isn’t mortified by the eyes on him. He could wait, he knows; he could let the school day end and try this from the safety of his room, probably with a plate of fresh cookies to celebrate his unexpected mathematical victory. His mom bakes the best cookies, and for a second, the thought of them—sugary, chocolatey, warm from the oven—is enough to make him feel a little better.

But waiting would be wrong. He knows that too, even if he doesn’t have all the words for it yet. “Procrastination” is one of them. So is “malingering.” (He got that one from his father last summer, when his parents started using the biggest words they could in an effort to keep him from knowing what they were talking about. It didn’t work the way they planned. Roger thinks that’s the trouble with grownups. The more effort they put into deciding what kids are going to do or think or be, the more things go wrong for them.) He got a smiley face because Dodger helped with his math. Not helped—because Dodger did his math. And he laughed at her.

He needs to say sorry. He needs her to know he didn’t mean to upset her. So he hurries down the hall, past the classrooms (some with open doors, where students turn to watch him pass and smirk at him for being too stupid to go during lunch, when no one would have said anything about it), past the restrooms, until he reaches the janitor’s closet, with its inviting, unlocked door.

Kids aren’t supposed to be in here. He knows that. But Mr. Paul (“Mis-ter Paul who mops the hall!” as he introduces himself to younger kids, with a quick, jazzy dance step to make them feel better about this hulking, tattooed mountain of a man sharing their space) doesn’t mind, as long as Roger doesn’t touch anything he shouldn’t. Like Miss Lewis, Mr. Paul is aware of the places where Roger is delicate—more aware than Roger himself will be for many years. Mr. Paul knows what can happen to delicate children when adults don’t step in to offer a little protection. Turning a blind eye to unauthorized use of the janitor’s closet as a hidey-hole may not prevent bullying or bloody noses on the playground, but if there’s a chance it’ll make things easier, he’s fine with it, as long as Roger doesn’t start drinking bleach or something.

Roger slips inside, into the cool, citrus-scented air. It’s time for Mr. Paul to mop the cafeteria; he won’t be back for at least fifteen minutes, which is longer than Roger can stretch a bathroom break, even if he’s willing to go back to the classroom and tell Miss Lewis he had to number-two. (The thought is horror incarnate, and the fact that he’s willing to entertain it for even a moment makes him giddy with disgust. But he has to apologize, he has to.)

“Dodger?” Roger closes his eyes, dimly aware that this is what people do on his cartoons when they’re trying to talk to someone who isn’t there. That, or they fold their hands and pray, but that would be sacrilegious—one of his favorite words—and he doesn’t want to get in trouble with Jesus while he’s trying to apologize for being a bad friend. “Can you hear me?”

What happens next is a surprise and a relief. The world goes soft around the edges, and he finds himself looking at a spelling worksheet. There’s a hand in his frame of view, clutching a yellow pencil. The fingers are slender, the nails bitten to the quick. The nails are unpolished, and there’s no jewelry or adornment. Just freckles, scattered across pale skin like beads across the floor.

“Don’t circle that one, it’s wrong,” he says, as the pencil starts to move. “You want number two. S - U - B - T - L - E.”

The hand pauses. Moves down. Circles the correct answer. Dodger doesn’t say anything—probably because she’s still in her classroom—but her hand keeps moving as he rattles off the answers, circling and circling. Two of the words she circles are wrong. In both cases, it’s a simple transposition of letters, and Roger realizes she must do even worse in spelling than he does in math: a perfect paper would get her in trouble for cheating. This way, it just looks like she studied extra hard.

“Gosh, you’re smart,” he says admiringly. “I never thought of that.”

Dodger’s hand goes up in the air, ramrod straight, even as she lowers her other shoulder to make her hand look even higher. The teacher, who is not as pretty as Miss Lewis, and doesn’t look half so nice, sighs.

“Yes, Miss Cheswich?”

“I’m done with my worksheet may I be excused I have to go.” Dodger rattles off the words without hesitation or any sign of embarrassment, even as some of the kids around her put their hands over their mouths to smother their laughter. Roger gapes, his own eyes still closed as he uses hers to watch the classroom. He can’t imagine being so brave.

Dodger’s teacher looks dubious. She crosses to Dodger’s desk and picks up the worksheet. Her eyes go wide as she skims it. Finally, lowering the sheet, she looks at Dodger. “Very good, Miss Cheswich. I’m surprised.”

“I studied really hard please can I go to the bathroom?” Dodger squirms to illustrate her point.

“You may,” says the teacher. “Straight there and straight back. Do not dilly, do not dally, do not stop at the water fountain. I don’t want to go through this again in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you Mrs. Butler,” says Dodger, still speaking rapid-fire, like she has a personal vendetta against commas. She’s out of her seat and out of the room before her teacher can change her mind, moving at a fast walk that doesn’t quite break the rules by turning into a run.

Like Roger, she walks past the bathrooms. Unlike Roger, she doesn’t stop at the janitor’s closet, but keeps going until she comes to the library and lets herself inside. The librarian looks up, sees Dodger, and grimaces sympathetically. She doesn’t say anything as the girl heads for the back of the room, where the air is cool and the smell of old books perfumes everything.

Dodger drops to the floor, hugs her knees to her chest, and tucks her head against them, creating a small, private space with the frame of her body. “What are you doing?” she demands. “I’m at school.”

“I know that,” he says, even though he hadn’t been sure when he’d asked to be excused. “What time is it where you are?”

“Ten,” she says. “I have almost the whole day ahead of me, and now I won’t be able to go to the bathroom even once. Mrs. Butler is really, really strict about potty breaks.” She sounds personally offended by this, like anyone else telling her when she can or can’t pee is a crime against nature.

Roger is getting the feeling Dodger doesn’t like being told what to do. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know what time it was, and I wanted to say sorry.”

There is a pause before Dodger asks carefully, “Sorry for what?”

“For laughing. I could tell it upset you, and I didn’t want to upset you. So I’m sorry.”