Chapter 15
Marlowe
Since our phones still don’t work, in order to gain access to the internet, we’re forced to use the only standalone computers the school has—a handful of decrepit PCs hidden in the back of the library.
Because the students are issued iPads they’re required to bring to school every day, these desktop computers are mostly decorative, occasionally dusted off when a student needs to print something or wants to look up a book in the library system.
Cilla plops down in front of one, crossing her legs as she types in teacher names she remembers from her time at the school—most of whom are long retired—incorrectly guessing both their email addresses and their passwords.
“I can get us online,” I say, sliding into the seat beside her and plugging in Alice’s credentials, hoping her password is the same here as it is where I’m from.
When it works, Cilla lets out a whoop of excitement.
“Shh,” I remind her, pushing my finger to her mouth. I’m very aware that this is the second time I’ve done this, and I make a mental note to myself that it needs to be the last.
“Oh yes, of course,” she says in a performative whisper. “Must remain quiet for our fellow patrons, who are all ghosts.”
She keeps her focus on me as she reaches across my body to start typing on the keyboard in front of my screen.
Her lips remain pressed into the back of my knuckle like she’s kissing it.
My finger should not still be where it is.
Her lips should not be doing what they’re doing. But I don’t want any of it to stop.
She breaks eye contact to check out what she’s typed, and the tension between us collapses at the sound of her amusement.
She’s written Dqllas Wnthrio in the search bar.
“Dee-que-las Win-thrio,” I say.
Cilla laughs. I shove both of my hands under my thighs.
“We’ll probably have better luck finding whoever that is than we’re having finding Dallas,” I continue. “Though I thought we agreed we weren’t looking for him anymore.”
“Marlowe Jenkins, when have we ever agreed on a single thing in our lives?” she asks.
She still keeps her arms draped across my body, slowly moving my mouse to every typo in his name, taking her sweet time correcting each one.
“I’m not trying to find him right now anyway.
If we can figure out why he doesn’t seem to be running the drama department here, maybe that will tell us something about what made him leave in the first place. ”
She’s correct in assuming Dallas is not a current WRHS employee.
This reality’s Dallas lives in San Francisco, where he performs a drag act at various bars and lounges in the area.
With some further digging, we discover he did work at WRHS once upon a time, but only for a single school year—1994 to 1995.
From what we can find, this reality’s drama department has all but folded. The last musical here happened before COVID. They did a random fall play two years ago. Nothing since.
“The musicals draw the biggest crowds!” Cilla says. “No wonder the stage looks as bad as it does. They’re not putting anything into the program!”
“It’s terrible,” I agree. “The musicals are also our biggest ticket sales, and the parents organize raffles that crowdfund a lot of money for the department.”
“Fuck!” she says, even more upset. “It’s already hard enough to keep the drama department functional!”
Her outrage strikes me as what it is—passion.
Cilla Cove is probably the most passionate person I’ve ever known.
Even though we are now three universes out from the one we come from, she’s taking every piece of information we learn personally, as if she’s the one living this life, angry over the state of a theater program she hasn’t participated in since she was a teenager.
“Clearly Cilla Cove isn’t donating large sums every year,” I say.
“And Marlowe Jenkins isn’t preserving every tradition with the white-gloved precision of a historian.” She shakes her head. “This program is nothing without Dallas, you, and me.”
It’s odd how true that is. Between Dallas’s legacy, my commitment to continuing it, and Cilla’s wallet, the three of us have been keeping WRHS’s drama department afloat.
Especially in the post-COVID world, when our administration has been more than eager to let the arts hit the chopping block in the name of saving money.
“Let’s figure out what the hell you and I could possibly be doing instead,” I say.
We search my name first, landing on a LinkedIn page that tells us this Marlowe works in St. Louis.
She got her bachelor’s degree in marketing, not acting.
And at a totally different college than the one I attended.
Cilla squints at the profile picture, scrutinizing this other me, who wears a dark blue blazer and has her hair pulled into some kind of low bun.
“You look like a speech judge,” she says.
“Oh my god. I do. I bet that’s what I did in my time here if I didn’t do theater.”
“It has to be,” she agrees. “You’d never miss a chance to speak in front of a crowd.”
Her hands are now resting in my lap, right at the top of my thighs. The fabric of my pants does nothing to dull the sensation. If anything, it exacerbates the warmth. Sweat pools under my legs where my own hands are still pinned, forbidding me from moving.
I keep trying to erase the last reality, to make what she said on that stage into another one of her cruelties, but my heart, tender and always searching, wants to believe it was more than another performance.
It’s my mind, logical and unrelenting, that needs more proof. She can say she was in love with me all she wants, but I’m the one who lived through her actual actions, and they were not actions of love.
“And what are you up to?” I ask, knowing this will convince her to move her hands.
She searches her real name, finding next to nothing other than she once lived at her old address here in Garden Meadows. Not even those websites that mine people’s personal data have more information.
“What about searching for Cilla Cove?” I suggest.
She lets out a small grunt.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“I didn’t choose that name,” she says. “My first agent did. He thought my real name was too long and complicated. He said this was short and memorable. And since that’s the name I used to register with SAG, it’s the one I’m stuck with.”
For some reason, this leaves me gobsmacked. “Really? I thought for sure it was one of your creations.”
“Nope. But we can check anyway.”
The search for Cilla Cove returns nothing.
“So we just…never met?” she asks. “I have no idea who I am without you.”
Maybe it’s the casual delivery, said with a shrugging nonchalance as she continues plugging in search terms. Or it’s the fact that I’m thinking the exact same thing.
I can accept that versions of myself turn out differently based on circumstances of nature and of nurture.
But I can’t accept a version of me that didn’t spend four years duking it out with her on the WRHS stage.
We move on to searching about alternate universes in general. There’s a lot of information to comb through—elevated academic theses that are borderline unreadable, batshit conspiracy theories, and firsthand accounts of supposed multiverse hopping.
I log in Cilla on her computer, also using Alice’s credentials, aware that this means there will be no more hands in my lap. No more Cilla leaning a little too close to my shoulder as we read the screen together. It’s what has to be done if we ever want to get out of this place.
We don’t even have to discuss how we’ll split the workload. I read the academic articles while Cilla braves the strangest corners of Reddit and other random online forums.
There is a meditative quality to the process. It’s the closest to calm I’ve felt since Dallas went missing. I am doing something tangible. I am collecting information that will help me understand what’s happening. If I squint, it’s almost like I’m lesson-planning.
“Everything I’ve looked at so far seems to agree that time isn’t linear,” I offer after a long stretch of reading. “And to think of it that way is a disservice to the concept.”
“Hate to be a disservice to time.” Cilla presses her palms together in a prayer position. “Time, I very much want to be in your service and favor.” She drops to her knees on the floor. “Time, baby, whatever you need from me, I promise I’ll do it.”
“I don’t think you have to look up to the sky to address time,” I tell her.
“According to what I’m reading right now, time goes in all directions.
Which is probably how we are where we are.
We’re kinda, like, sideways. Same time of day and year as where we’re from, but a different version of that life.
Because everything is now. The past, the present, the future. It’s all happening at once.”
Cilla blows a kiss to the sky, a kiss to each corner of the library, and then a kiss down to her feet. “Time, you don’t look a day over infinite to me.”
We fall back into our rhythm of reading.
From where we’re positioned, we can see the double-door entrance to the library and the full-length windows framing either side.
Every so often, someone walks past, and occasionally, they pop their head in.
Each time, Cilla waves at them like they know her, and the person waves back, confused—probably embarrassed to not recognize her when she’s greeting them like they’re good friends—then exits the library before coming any closer to us.
“You’re good at that,” I say after her latest target makes the expected one-eighty.
“Didn’t you just tell me there’s nothing a teenage girl fears more than friendliness?
” she says. “I’m the ultimate weapon.” Even before I can judge her for it, she realizes we’re in a school, and that far worse things than Cilla Cove in her leopard coat can happen here.
“Okay, sorry. I wasn’t really thinking that one through.
I was actually thinking about our past.”
“What about our past?”