Page 36 of Middlegame

“Well?” he asks.

“I think it’s time for me to drive both of you to the hospital,” he says. “You should be there.” He doesn’t say why. That isn’t his job. But he saw the Cheswich girl loaded into the ambulance, as pale as paper, with gauze dressings running from wrist to elbow on both arms. He hopes the father is right about the unknown boy attacking her and making a call, whether out of remorse or simply to gloat: he can’t imagine such a delicate thing doing that much damage to herself, even though that’s what all the evidence indicates. It would be better for her family if she’d been attacked. That way, there would be someone he could bring to justice, someone who could pay. If the girl did this to herself, well . . .

She’ll be paying for years, assuming she lives. Failed suicides always pay. From what he saw of the EMTs as they prepped her for transport, that’s far from guaranteed—and that, too, is not his job to explain. Let the folks at the hospital handle the grieving parents, the aftermath of this tragedy. He’ll just get them where they need to be.

“All right,” says Peter. He steps into the puddle of coffee and puts a comforting arm around his wife. At least, he intends it to comfort. She doesn’t react to his presence. Not at all.

“Let’s go,” he says.

Dodger opens her eyes on a white ceiling in a dimly lit room, and her first thought is that death feels an awful lot like waking up after a bout of the stomach flu. Everything is a little distant and detached, like it isn’t real, but some sort of clever movie set constructed by elves while she wasn’t looking.

Her second thought is that if this is death, there shouldn’t be so many things beeping at her. She tries to sit up, and finds she doesn’t have the strength; her muscles seem to have been replaced with props alongside the rest of the world. There’s a strange pressure in her right arm. She turns her head. Bandages cover almost all the skin from her shoulder to her wrist; an IV line disappears beneath them at the bend of her elbow. A moan escapes her lips, equal parts frustration and despair. She’s never been the sort of person who dealt well with failure, and this failure? This isn’t the sort of thing people bounce back from. She’s going to stop being the weird genius and become the suicidal girl. The suicidal failure. Couldn’t even do that right.

Dodger closes her eyes and wonders how much blood she lost. Maybe if I lost enough, I’ll have a heart attack from the shock of the transfusion, she thinks, almost hopefully. She doesn’t know if that’s a thing that can actually happen, but it sounds good, and so she’s going to go with it, at least for now. It’ll help with the disappointment of being the sort of person who can’t even die correctly.

“Dodger?” Her mother’s voice is a broken thing.

Dodger opens her eyes again, turning her face toward the sound. “Mom?” she croaks.

“You’re awake!” Her mother all but flies across the room, stopping just short of her bed, hands fluttering in front of her face like she doesn’t know what to do with them. She’s washed off her mascara, but her pallor remains; like mother, like daughter. Both of them seem to have been drained entirely of blood. “You’re awake,” she repeats.

“Yeah,” whispers Dodger, closing her eyes. “I guess I am.” She’s so tired. She’s not even sure this is happening, that this isn’t just some terrible dream on her way down to the grave. She braces herself all the same. This is where the shouting begins.

Only it doesn’t. “The police told us what happened. That boy from New England . . . they’ll find him. Just give us his name, and I promise we’ll find him.”

Dodger’s eyes snap open again. She stares at her mother. “What?”

“He called your father, you know. After he dragged you into that gully and hacked you open, he called your father at work and told him you were out there, bleeding to death. If I hadn’t been home, why . . .” Heather Cheswich shudders. She can see that future with surprising clarity. It’s a world gone gray. “You’re so lucky, Dodger. We’re so lucky. Just tell the police his name, and we’ll catch him, and he’ll never do anything like this again.”

“Oh,” whispers Dodger. This time, when she closes her eyes, she leaves them closed.

So this is how you pay for leaving me alone; you save me when I don’t want to be saved, she thinks, and that’s exactly right, that’s full circle. He left her falling for a long time, but when she really needed him, he was there to catch her. He caught her. He’s catching her right now.

“I don’t know his name,” she lies, and her mother believes her. So does her father, when he comes, because Dodger Cheswich is a very good liar; because her story is better than the truth, at least this time. At least right now. Maybe forever. The police don’t believe her completely, but they write down her statement, and they say they’ll keep an eye open. She’s going to live. Their job is done.

It takes a week for her to be released from the hospital. She goes home with stitches running up the inside of both arms like equations she’ll never solve, and when they come out, the scars they leave behind will be minimal, at least to the naked eye. She’ll always know that they’re there, but maybe that’s all right. Maybe that’s the reminder she needs that she can’t jump, because someone will always catch her, whether or not she wants them to.

She hears Roger’s voice, off and on, for almost a year. She never answers. The police are looking for the boy from New England, and she knows exactly where he is, and she never answers him. Eventually he stops calling. That, too, is exactly right; that, too, is full circle.

It will be five years before they meet again.

It won’t be nearly long enough.

Zib hugged her knees to her chest, watching Avery pace back and forth along the rainbow sheen of the improbable road, his hands in his pockets and a scowl on his face.

“Are you done being angry with me yet?” she called.

“No,” he replied, voice sullen. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“We needed to give something to the Bumble Bear if we wanted it to let us pass. It couldn’t be my slingshot, and it couldn’t be your ruler. The shine from your shoes was something we could lose. It didn’t hurt us.”

“It hurt me,” said Avery. He finally stopped pacing and turned to look at her.

Without their shine, his shoes were ordinary brown leather, like any kid might wear out on the playground. His shirt seemed just a little less starched without them reflecting it; his hair seemed just a little less combed. He looked like an ordinary boy.

Zib felt fear tickle her ribs. If they had to lose themselves to walk this road, would it ever really be able to lead them home?

—From Over the Woodward Wall, by A. Deborah Baker