Chapter 12
Priscilla
Famous Mars sucks.
She found me sneaking into this Dallas’s office to look for clues, and she took it as an invitation to join.
But she’s no fellow Detective Jane. She doesn’t even care that my Marlowe and I are lost. And why would she?
She’s got everything she’s ever wanted here.
She’s certainly not going to put herself in the Memory Machine for a little adventure.
She’s not even worried about losing the car insurance commercial!
Instead, she’s spent her time with me name-dropping other actors who don’t even exist in the universe I live in. I’ve been in a constant state of smiling and going, “Oh yeah, totally,” without even varying my delivery.
Is this what I’m like? This can’t be what I’m like. I have to believe that my exuberant spirit overrides any ego I might accidentally display.
There is something freeing about getting to look at a version of Marlowe who isn’t making a game of avoiding my eye.
This Mars is too in love with herself to care that I’m staring.
Or she loves that I’m staring. Either way, I get to look openly at the face of the woman who has spent sixteen years hiding from me.
Even if I hate every word out of Famous Mars’s mouth, I can enjoy the view, noting all the ways I prefer my Marlowe’s face.
The bushier eyebrows. The stark planes of her face accentuated by the shaggy hair.
I think again of Harriet Styles and my Marlowe performing a One Direction song in front of the entire school. The way she’d slid across the floor, knowing it would make me laugh. Taking pleasure in it even.
A ghost of a smile must linger on my lips for too long, because Famous Mars reads it as me being more interested in her conversation, saying, “Okay, I’ll tell you on the down-low that it’s a project with Sloane Ford, directed by their sibling, Tyler.
” She’s whispering, even though I don’t know who either of those people are.
I have never heard of them in my life, so they are certainly not famous enough to whisper in an otherwise empty office in a middle-of-nowhere Iowa high school.
I change up my “Oh yeah” to a scandalized “No way.”
“I know,” Famous Mars says. “It’s in early stages, so I’m still having to be pretty—” She mimes zipping her lips, as if the whispering didn’t communicate the secrecy enough. “But I’m super excited about it.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll admit it,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I’m working with them, too.”
I get a kick out of knowing I’ve succeeded in pissing her off, though I’d find more enjoyment in seeing it on my own Marlowe. Walking her into corners. Getting a rise out of her for the sport of it. Not that she’d believe me.
“Would you mind sharing more about what the project is?” Famous Mars asks.
I mime zipping my lips in return. “Nothing I can discuss just yet. I had to sign an NDA.”
There isn’t any way an NDA would be executable in another reality, but Famous Mars nods, accepting that this secret holds weight across worlds.
“How are you the one who ended up famous instead of me?” she asks.
“Guess I wanted to beat you at something,” I say with a wink.
“You beat me at everything,” she counters quickly.
It’s a curious answer. The first thing to actually interest me in this entire conversation. “Do I, now?”
“You were always the better actor,” she says with an obviously you know that eyebrow raise.
“You’re messing with me. You were always the better one. The thespian.”
“I don’t have the energy to mess with you,” Famous Mars says.
“I don’t know why every Priscilla thinks that.
I just don’t feel like bullshitting. This whole situation is so unreal, I figure maybe some honesty can inject something interesting into the experience.
You know we’ve always had a simmering sexual frustration between us fueled by our different but equally volatile competitive natures and our shared talent for acting. It’s our whole shtick.”
This private conversation with my Marlowe’s famous clone is like getting a chance to read from the universal diary of Marlowe. I’m learning things my Marlowe wouldn’t tell me if a meteor was feet away from crashing into us both.
Famous Mars reaches for the same short blond wig I’d put on in my home reality.
“Oh, by the way, Priscilla is insisting at least one of each of us wears a disguise so no one realizes there are multiples. I don’t have any interest in following her directions, but it’s always fun to put on a wig.
” She musses with the bangs, settling them across her forehead in a neat row.
I miss my Marlowe’s messy hair. The glasses sliding down her nose. Her perpetual frustration, carrying the weight of the world on her hunched shoulders.
“I told you something interesting, and you haven’t told me a fun truth about the other me in return,” Famous Mars says, impatient. “Spill. It will be good for character research for us both.”
Character research. She would think of this that way.
She wants something personal, but she hasn’t earned it, so I go for the obvious, saying, “My Marlowe can be frustrating. She always wants to be right, no matter what.”
“Because she is,” Famous Mars replies. Her back is to the mirror, and she’s got her head facing sideways so she can catch her profile in the reflection, openly admiring herself.
“No matter what I do, she refuses to trust a word out of my mouth. It’s like she still resents me for something,” I say.
“Probably because you never worked very hard at anything,” Famous Mars suggests. “If you’re anything like Priscilla, at least.”
“I am Priscilla,” I remind her.
“Right, yeah. But, like, the one here,” she says. “I don’t know why Dallas was so obsessed with her. She didn’t take it seriously at all. I’m not sure why he’d trust her with the entire program after he retires. She doesn’t seem organized enough to run it without him.”
“Have you ever considered that there are different ways of committing to things?” I ask. “And that just because she doesn’t do things like you doesn’t mean she’s bad at them?”
Famous Mars heaves a sigh. “When it comes to acting, I do think it’s a bare minimum requirement to know the lines.”
“Priscilla had a lot going on at home,” I say, defending her, and myself, and every version of us.
“So does everyone. It’s not a reason to be lazy.”
My neck gets hot. I already know I’m getting a stress rash, but I can’t stop it. “I was a lot of things in high school, but I was never lazy,” I say.
Famous Mars catches the neck splotches and lets out a cruel laugh. “Oh god, here we go,” she says.
“You don’t get it,” I say.
“Get what? That you’re jealous of me? It’s been clear from day one.”
It would feel so good to yell at her, but it would be pointless. We don’t know each other. Even if our lives look the same on paper, our experience in them is different, and our history is, too. She doesn’t have a right to my feelings. But I know who does.
“The show’s starting soon,” I say, excusing myself.
I find my Marlowe in Teacher Priscilla’s classroom. It’s such a relief to see her that I sigh the same way I do when I crawl under my covers after a long day. There you are, I think. Just the way you’re supposed to be.
She lets out a big laugh, throwing back her head in downright ecstasy, and I move enough to see Teacher Priscilla sitting at the desk, showing my Marlowe something on her laptop.
“God. Billy Larsen is the same in every reality,” my Marlowe says. They must be watching a WRHS show. Billy is the kid with the injured foot.
“I believe it,” Teacher Priscilla says.
Just as I move to join them, Marlowe asks, “What are you going to do when Dallas retires?”
“Put up a production of Grease,” Teacher Priscilla says.
Both of them laugh. And laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
Dallas hates Grease. It’s one of his quirks. He insists every true performer is allowed to have one show they irrationally hate for no reason other than an energetic incompatibility and one show they love above all critique. He hates Grease, and he loves The Wiz.
“I wish I were joking, but I’m not,” Teacher Priscilla says. “I can’t run this program the way he has. I don’t have the courage to take all those risks.”
“I totally understand,” my Marlowe replies.
A strangely prickled heat pools in my stomach.
Why does Teacher Priscilla get the privilege of making my Marlowe laugh?
If I were the one who said that, instead of this clone with my face, my Marlowe would tell me I was wrong.
She’d judge me for not upholding Dallas’s creative bar.
But here, she sits and smiles, soaking up every word Teacher Priscilla says.
That’s it.
This world is already backward, and so many pieces of it are wrong. I need to set it back on course. I will give this other version of me the backbone I can tell she doesn’t have, the one I’ve spent so long artfully crafting for myself.
I will fix this broken reality.