He felt excited when he was coming up with these thoughts for Sadie. He felt excited in a way he didn’t feel when he worked on “Alternative Approaches to the Banach-Tarski Paradox…” The words of Anders Larsson came back to him: “To be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.” After playing Solution, he knew what he would love （and what he thought he would be good at）： he would love to make a game with Sadie Green. And as soon as she wrote back, he would convince her that this was what they should do.
Another week passed, and she still hadn’t replied. Harvard’s reading period was over; Sam had finished all his exams, and the new term was about to begin. Normally, Sam would have taken the hint and forgotten that he had ever encountered Sadie Green in the subway station. But Solution wouldn’t let him. She had given him the game for a reason, he felt, and he had to talk to her, even if it was for the last time. The Readme file contained her email address, but also a physical address （no phone number）， which appeared to be an apartment on Columbia Street, equidistant between Kendall and Central Squares. This is to say, there was no easy way to get to Sadie’s apartment from the closest T stop. Sam would have to walk about a quarter of a mile from the station, and that was difficult for him, with his cobbled-together left foot, on the icy, irregular streets of Cambridge, in the middle of winter. He considered taking a cab, but he couldn’t afford one. The weather was cold but fine, and he had no obligations, so he decided to brave the walk. He rarely used his cane—even though it was medically necessary, he felt it made him look affected, like a twenty-one-year-old Mr. Monopoly—but on this occasion he used it. This, he felt, was business.
He arrived at Sadie’s apartment, and he rang the bell. At the last second, he worried that it was an old address on Sadie’s Readme, and that he would have come all this way for nothing.
After about five minutes, a roommate answered. Sam said he was looking for Sadie, and the roommate looked suspiciously at Sam for a beat, before deciding he was harmless. “Sadie!” the roommate called. “There’s a kid out here to see you.”
Sadie emerged from her bedroom. It was two in the afternoon, and Sam could tell that he had woken her.
“Sam,” she said drowsily. “Hey.”
She looked un-showered. Her MIT sweatshirt had reddish and whitish stains on it. And even though the sweatshirt was baggy, he could tell that she was unusually thin underneath it. Her hair was matted and dirty, like an animal who had been in the wild a long time. She had—it must be said—an odor. Sam surmised that this wasn’t the result of one day of sleeping in.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked. Six weeks ago, she had appeared fine.
“Sure,” Sadie said. “Why are you here?”
“I…” He was so momentarily disturbed by this Sadie, he forgot why he had come. “I tried to email you. I wanted to talk about Solution. Do you remember? You gave me the disk—”
Sadie interrupted him with a heavy sigh. “Listen, Sam, it’s not a good time.”
He was about to leave, but then he didn’t. “Could I—？ I walked all this way from Central Square, and it would be great if I could sit down a minute.”
She looked at his cane and at his foot. “Come in,” she said wearily.
Sam followed Sadie into her bedroom. The curtains were drawn, and there were clothes and other detritus everywhere. This wasn’t like the Sadie he had known. He asked if something had happened.
“Why would you care? We aren’t real friends, remember?” Sadie met Sam’s gaze. “And it’s rude to not call before you show up at someone’s apartment.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t have your number. And you weren’t emailing me back,” Sam said.
“I suppose I’ve fallen behind on my email correspondence, Samson.” Sadie got back into bed and put her head under the covers. “I need to get some sleep.” Her voice was muffled by the sheets. “Show yourself out.”
Sam moved some clothes off her desk chair, and he sat down on it.
Without emerging from the blankets, she said, “That coat is ridiculous.” A few seconds later, Sam could hear the regular sound of Sadie’s somnolent breathing.
Sam looked around Sadie’s room. There was a Duane Hanson “Tourists” poster above the bed, and a Hokusai wave over her dresser. Above the desk, he noticed a small, framed drawing. It was a maze, depicting the city of Los Angeles. The frame, a delicate carved bamboo, was listing to the left, so he straightened it. On the desk, he noticed a disk, with Sadie’s handwriting on it: EmilyBlaster. Sam put the disk in his coat pocket, and then he left.
* * *
—
The invitation had arrived in September, a month or so after Sam had found out about Sadie’s community service project and called her a cunt. Mr. Samson A. Masur, in calligraphy on the envelope. Sharyn Friedman-Green and Steven Green invite you to the Bat Mitzvah of their daughter, Sadie Miranda…Service at 10, followed by lunch…Your response requested…
The invitation was quite plain, which is to say, it was not obviously fancy. Heavy cream card stock, raised text, vellum-lined envelope. But Sam was old enough to have noticed that simple things were often the most expensive. He held the invitation to his nose and he took a certain pleasure in the scent of fine paper. Sam didn’t think it smelled like money, because money was dirty. It smelled rich and clean, like a hardcover from a bookstore, like Sadie herself.
Sam set the invitation on the back of his desk and considered the envelope separately. The paper proved an irresistible temptation. He loosened its seams with steam from the tap and turned the envelope into a flat sheet of paper. He took out his favorite Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencil and began to draw a maze on the rescued paper. Sam did not always know what he was drawing when he began a maze, but this time, he found himself drawing a series of circles and curves, and these circles somehow became Los Angeles. The maze started on the Eastside, in Echo Park, where Sam lived, and ended on the Westside, in the Beverly Hills flats, where Sadie lived. It wound through West Hollywood, up the Hollywood hills to Studio City, back down the hills to East Hollywood, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake, before finally circling around to Koreatown and Mid-City. He grew so absorbed in drawing the maze that he didn’t even notice when Dong Hyun came into the room. It was late, and Dong Hyun smelled of pizza, as he usually did.
“That’s a good one,” Dong Hyun said. His hand reached toward the invitation on Sam’s desk: “May I?” Unlike Sam’s grandmother, Bong Cha, Dong Hyun always asked permission before touching Sam’s possessions.
Sam sighed. “If you must.”
“It is nice to be invited places,” Dong Hyun pronounced upon reading the invitation. He and Sam’s grandmother were worried about Sam’s mood since he’d stopped seeing Sadie. Sam wouldn’t tell them what had happened, aside from saying that she hadn’t been the person he thought she was.
Sam set down his pencil and looked at Dong Hyun. “I honestly don’t want to go. I don’t know any of Sadie’s friends.”
“You’re Sadie’s friend,” Dong Hyun said.