Chapter 15 #2
“How you got so hostile with me in the parking lot our freshman year.”
I give her a long, loaded look.
This is the part of her my brain really can’t accept—her need to keep pressing on our oldest fight. We have proven over and over that we aren’t good at airing out any of this. To keep asking that of us makes me believe she has an ulterior motive.
In high school, that motive was obvious.
She wanted to be seen as the better actor of the two of us.
The one Dallas loved more. To do that, she had to keep me humble and searching, never confident enough to really assert dominance over her.
Since we’re adults who live in two different states with very different jobs, I don’t know what her motives are now.
She returns her attention to her computer screen. “I don’t believe a single other person who says they’ve experienced something like this. I want them to prove it somehow. But then I’m like, how can we even prove it ourselves?”
“We can’t,” I say. “Teacher Priscilla got a picture, but how would anyone even know I’m different from the famous Mars anyway?
Even if our phones somehow stored the photos we took here, and we got pictures with other versions of us, everyone would just assume they’re doctored.
We only have each other to corroborate.”
“Don’t you think the two of us corroborating something is proof enough for most people?”
She turns her chair toward me. Our knees brush once more.
Goose bumps prick up on my arms. “I did read something kind of interesting,” she says.
She nudges her knee into the sliver of space between my own.
“This person was saying they know how to jump timelines in their mind, and they do it every night while they sleep.”
“Already off to a rocky start.” I squeeze my knees together to hold her there.
“I know, I know. But listen. They said that every person’s life has fixed points. Events that can’t be changed, no matter the timeline. They claim they use those points to enter new timelines.”
“The classic predetermined destiny versus free will debate,” I say. “Most of what I’m reading suggests that we have the ability to change anything we want. Our free will prevents fixed outcomes. Nothing is assured.”
“Sure, sure.”
“But,” I say, “maybe Dallas has a fixed point in his life that he’s come back to change?”
Her eyes light up, flicking back and forth like she’s watching a scene unfold in her mind. “Maybe we’re both right. Maybe he’s exercising his free will to change a fixed event.”
“He did say that thing in the last life about intention,” I add, building on her idea. “That the machine requires it. So maybe he’s been getting in the Memory Machine intending to find a world where something fixed happened that he wants to change anyway.”
Her eyes do that sparkling thing. It’s unbelievable.
There isn’t even a direct light source on her.
But they’re twinkling at me like stars as she hits my arm.
“What you said about intention is good. I already forgot that. We haven’t had a clear one ourselves when we get in the machine.
Could be why this has all been kind of a mess. ”
“We knew why we got in the machine,” I argue. “We got in to find Dallas.”
“Technically, we got in to think like Dallas,” she says. “And then we both kind of wanted to do different things. I’m pretty sure when we got into the machine this last time, you said that you wished you never met me. And look, we’re in a world where we don’t seem to have met.”
I wince. I did say that. And I felt it, too, in the moment.
But the wrongness of this place has felt even more wrong than the last two, and I want nothing more than to travel backward and change it.
Which is exactly what we’re saying that Dallas might want.
To change something in his past he wishes never happened.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I’m sorry, too,” she replies. “I shouldn’t have given that speech. Famous Mars just pushed my buttons.”
“I believe it. She pushed mine, too.”
I rub my hands against my arms like I’m cold, hoping to erase the proof of the effect she’s having on me. Her eye twinkle should be illegal. So should her knee warming the space between mine. And the tugging at my heart, insistent on letting her in.
“You know how any story with some kind of wish fulfillment always comes with a lesson on precision of language?” I ask.
She cocks her head. “What do you mean?”
“Like…let’s say a character gets three wishes. We all know that construct. And for one of them, they wish to lose weight. They might end up with their arms cut off. They lost weight, didn’t they? But it’s not what they meant when they wished it. That’s precision of language.”
“Very hardcore and disturbing example, but I do understand,” she says. Then she smiles. “I like Teacher Marlowe. She’s scary and hot.”
“I’m just trying to say I understand your point about intention,” I tell her. “Next time we get in the machine, we have to really think of the best-case scenario for us.”
“To go home, or to find Dallas?” she asks. “I know he hurt you by leaving without saying why or where he was going. But if we get back to where we came from and we don’t have him, would you really be able to live like that?”
In the silence that follows, my stomach lets out an audible grumble.
Both of us laugh.
“I’m so glad your stomach said something, because I’m starving,” she says.
“You know,” I say, an idea forming, “the teacher’s lounge is close. There are always snacks in there. We can eat something before we go.”
She shoots up from her seat. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”
We’ve gotten so comfortable roaming the school without consequence, I don’t expect to open the teacher’s lounge door and find it occupied. And not just occupied, but in need of a Do Not Disturb sign. Two people are making out. Heavy-petting style.
They break at the sound of our unexpected intrusion, and I make eye contact with the first perpetrator, so shocked it takes a moment for my brain to process who I’m seeing.
Alice.
And…
“Jeannie Gratto?” I say.
There are lipstick smudges across Alice’s face—a messy swipe of dark pink. Alice hates how Jeannie always wears this color. “She’s obsessed with pink. Everything is pink. Can we let go of pink?” she’s always saying.