Page 21 of Middlegame

Splitting them apart may do precisely that. It’s a risk Reed is prepared to take. “Only if you must. Start with the Middleton boy. His parents will make sure he toes the line, once they understand what’s at stake. If that doesn’t work, you can go to see the girl.”

“Your will be done,” says Leigh, bowing her head.

“When you get back, I want to discuss—Darren was his name?”

Her nod is a study in resentment.

“Excellent. He may be ready for retirement.” The girl who can measure the motion of the astrolabe without laying eyes on it—he wants her ready.

He’s going to have use for her.

There are ways to travel quickly, when one has power, and purpose, and the willingness to damage the world to achieve one’s goals. Ohio to Massachusetts should be a longer journey, and yet when Roger comes home from school not two hours later, he finds his parents in the living room, both his parents, sitting with sorrowful expressions on their faces and coffee mugs cupped in their hands. The smell of coffee is almost overwhelming. (Later in life, when his own molars are coffee-stained and his hands feel empty without a mug in them, part of him will remember that this is where it started; this is where coffee became a symbol for adulthood and authority to be conquered and claimed as his own. But that is very far away from the timid, trembling now.)

The third person in the room is a stranger, a woman too pretty to be real, her hair styled short and swept back, so that she looks less like a kindly librarian and more like a school counselor, someone whose job it is to explain why you can’t have what you think you want—that really, you didn’t want it in the first place. She’s wearing a sensible pantsuit and sensible pearls, and he has never been so afraid of someone he didn’t know before.

“Roger.” His mother half-rises, only to be pressed back down to the couch by his father’s hand. Her face is pinched and drawn; she looks like she’s been crying.

Roger’s heart seizes in his chest. He’s young: panic is a foreign thing to him. Fear, yes, but panic is supposed to be reserved for years from now, when he’s lost his elasticity of thought. “Is it Grandpa?” he asks, voice trembling. “Did he have another stroke?” Roger loves his grandparents. They live in faraway Florida (but not the part with Disney World, which sort of seems like a waste of grandparents in Florida to him), and he only sees them twice a year, but he loves them with the sort of bright, single-focus love that could consume the world, if he let it.

“No, son,” says his father, and gestures toward the one remaining chair in the room—not toward the remaining slice of couch, where Roger would be pressed against his mother’s hip, safe from anything that might hope to harm him. “Sit down.”

Roger’s heart seizes again, leaving him dizzy. Maybe this is what dying feels like. Maybe he’s the one having the stroke, and they’ll be sorry they scared him so bad when he collapses and stops breathing and his lips turn blue and they realize they had a son, they had one, but now he’s gone, and all because they scared him.

His legs are numb as he walks across the room and sits. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They’re suddenly awkward, taking up too much space at the ends of his arms. He finally folds them in his lap, looking from face to face, waiting for someone to tell him what’s going on.

“Roger, this is Dr. Barrow,” says his mother, glancing at the woman with the sensible hair. She grimaces, just a little. The doctor probably doesn’t see it; the doctor doesn’t know Melinda Middleton the way Roger does. He’s made a lifelong study of his mother’s face, and he can see that she’s disgusted, even as he can see that she’s afraid. “Dr. Barrow is here because she received a disturbing phone call from your school nurse. Our agreement with the adoption agency where we . . . where we got you means that any time there’s a question about your situation, she gets to come discuss it with us.”

“For your safety,” says Dr. Barrow, in a voice like butter and cyanide. (He knows that voice he knows it, somewhere deep down, deeper than memory, and he’s afraid.) She turns to Roger, smiling a small, concerned smile that doesn’t come anywhere near her eyes. “Hello, Roger. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hello,” he says automatically, manners overriding confusion. He watches her warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop. His parents are terrified, he’s sure of that now. His mother is brave. His father is the bravest man he knows. For them to be this scared something must be genuinely wrong.

“Roger, do you understand that you were adopted?”

“Yes.”

“Did your parents ever talk to you about the circumstances of your adoption?”

“No.”

“Please don’t be concerned that I’m here to take you back to your birth mother—that’s never going to happen. But when you were placed here, there were some conditions. One is that if we ever found evidence that your mental health was suffering, we’d have to remove you from the home and find you a new one.” Dr. Barrow continues to look at him with false compassion, her own hands occupied with cupping her mug. His parents are pressed together, virtually shaking. “Roger, we received a very worrisome phone call. Your school nurse says you’ve been talking to yourself. Not playing pretend—all children do that—but really talking to yourself, like you were carrying on a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. Do you want to tell me about it?”

Terror crashes down on him, hot and fast and utterly consuming. He doesn’t want to be taken away, has never known this was something that could happen. He’s happy here, with his family and his things and his familiar little world. If he lies, she’ll be able to prove it: someone at school must have seen him talking to Dodger. A lie paints this woman as in the right, and puts his family in danger. The less appealing option is the only one that remains.

“I wasn’t talking to myself,” he says, and sees his father relax, just a little—enough to make him sure he’s doing the right thing. He focuses on Dr. Barrow and says triumphantly, “I was talking to my friend Dodger. She lives in California, and we communicate via quantum entanglement. That’s why I can talk inside her head and she can talk inside mine.”

His mother gasps and buries her face against his father’s shoulder. Dr. Barrow’s expression becomes one of understanding and, more worryingly, pity.

“Oh, Roger, sweetie,” she says. “I wish you’d said something sooner. I wish you’d told someone about this delusion. The adults in your life have only ever wanted to take care of you.”

“Please,” moans his mother, raising her head. “Please, we didn’t know, he didn’t show any signs, please. We’ll get him the help he needs. We’ll make sure this stops. Just don’t take our little boy away from us, please.”

“Mom?” says Roger. His voice is a squeak.

“There will have to be tests,” says Dr. Barrow. “A brief hospitalization may be necessary. We’ll want to avoid medicating him long-term if we possibly can; a brilliant mind like his shouldn’t be subject to the sort of side effects that come with antipsychotic drugs.”

There is another moan. Roger realizes, with surprise and dismay, that it came from his father.

“But if Roger is willing to work with us to recant his delusions, I don’t believe removal from the home would be in the child’s best interests.” Dr. Barrow’s eyes are sharp and glittering as she turns her attention back to Roger. “Well, Roger? Which is more important to you? A little girl who doesn’t exist, or your family?”