Chapter 14
Priscilla
Marlowe throws open the door to a dark, empty stage. She scurries out like a caged animal set free, yanking her phone out of her pocket as she bounds across the open deck.
There isn’t a single thing on this stage to indicate a show has been performed recently. The whole place smells of musty attic, and it has the piles of dust to match.
“Hello?” I call out, hurrying to follow Marlowe as she splits the curtain and leaves. The mic pack from the last world is still in my hand. I grip it tight, enjoying the sturdiness in my palm. Proof that what we’re going through is real.
No response.
“Where are you going?” I ask, just to be positive she’s pretending I don’t exist as the two of us move through the auditorium like we’re competing against each other in a professional speedwalking competition.
Marlowe takes a left outside the theater. Since she isn’t responding to me, I decide to spy on her like there are no consequences—I’m apparently invisible anyway—angling myself so I can see her phone screen as she stalks through the hallways.
She has the screen open to a contact named Lana. She presses the call button and puts the phone to her ear. What she expects to happen, I don’t know, but she holds it there far longer than she should.
When she finally accepts that her phone still doesn’t work, she comes to an abrupt stop and my foot jams into her heel from the sudden halt in movement. I jostle into her back, and her phone goes sliding across the linoleum.
“Fuck!” she shouts. The sound echoes, bouncing off the lockers and back to me.
Oh no.
No, no, no.
Here come my tears. Being ignored and then yelled at punctures my defenses, way too close to what I remember from growing up with parents who didn’t want me around, no matter how charming I made myself to win their favor.
This pain happened to me so long ago, but it still lives far closer to the surface than it should.
No amount of ignoring it ever seems to make it lessen.
I slump against the lockers until I’m sitting on the floor, gripping the mic pack so tightly it starts to crack.
“You know, I don’t want to be here right now any more than you do.
This was fun at first. But it’s not fun when the only person I know in the entire multiverse is acting like I don’t exist.”
This gets Marlowe to look at me. When she sees I’m crying, the furrow in her brow releases.
“Why did you do that?” she asks. “Why did you get up on that stage and make a fool out of me?”
“I saw you and Teacher Priscilla laughing,” I tell her honestly. “And I wanted that to be me.”
Her sigh blows her bangs off her forehead.
“Cilla, you have been alone with me across two whole worlds. You listened to me share one truth about you in the hallway, in private, and said nothing in return. Instead, you chose a stage with lights, and an audience—pausing a real production, mind you—to respond. It was just another performance. That’s all it ever is with you. ”
I’d love to be the type of person who pays it all back, ignoring her just as long as she ignored me—maybe even saying some harsh things—but I can’t find the strength to do it.
And really, I don’t have anything harsh to say.
Everything she’s accused me of is true. That’s the worst part.
I’m like Tinker Bell, dying without an audience who will clap for me.
“I’m so tired of arguing,” I tell her, the exhaustion bone-deep.
“Me too,” she says quickly.
“Who were you trying to call?” I ask.
“My sister.”
“Did I forget you had a sister? The only sibling I remember you having is an older—”
“I still only have the one sibling,” she says, cutting me off. “Lana transitioned about six years ago now.”
“Oh. Very nice. Good for her.”
“Yeah.”
Two girls exit a classroom farther down the hall, and the prideful side of me forces my composure. I brush away my tears and paste on a smile as they pass. “Hello, girls!” I say, cheerily as I can manage. “Lovely day we’re having, isn’t it?”
They glare in response.
Once they’re far enough away, they glance back at me and start whispering.
I choke out a bitter laugh. “Great news for us,” I say to Marlowe. “Everyone in this reality is super friendly!”
“I don’t know a single teenage girl who responds positively to an adult stranger acting like you just did.”
“You know what’s impressive? I’m both too out of touch and somehow too new to the scene to make any further headway in my career,” I say.
“I wouldn’t call being an award nominee new to the scene,” she replies.
“Because to you, I’ve been working since the day I left Garden Meadows. But to most of the world, I appeared out of thin air.”
“If only they could see the way we show up to these alternate realities.” She slides down the lockers to sit beside me.
“I was trying to call Lana because I just want to tell someone else about what’s going on.
I knew it wouldn’t work, but I still had to try.
I think Lana would believe me with the least amount of explanation required.
And I just…I want some comfort.” She angles herself in my direction, and her right knee brushes mine.
Of all the places she could sit, she chooses right here.
Positioned against the lockers like we are, it feels almost salacious to have this point of contact between us.
It’s almost like this is not another reality, but a revision of our past. What if we were nice to each other in high school?
What if we greeted each other with curiosity instead of annoyance? Would that have changed anything?
“If I could tell anyone about this, I’d probably tell my assistant, Erik,” I say.
She laughs for a beat, then immediately thinks better of it. “Wait. Do you…not have friends?”
She pauses again, seeming to understand how harsh her question sounds. In the grand scheme of our offenses, it’s not even that bad. And I’m not about to deny that it’s valid.
“You always had a good number of friends in high school,” she continues. “Everyone liked you. Everyone in drama, at least.”
“You didn’t like me,” I say.
She squirms, her mouth hanging open, no words coming out.
“What?” I ask. “Isn’t that true? And you were definitely the one with more friends. Everyone respected you.”
“Respect and friendship are two very different things. I didn’t have any actual friends back then.”
“Well, I have no friends now and you still have everyone’s respect, so you got the better deal,” I say.
“You have everyone’s respect,” she says, oddly insistent.
“You got nominated for a Golden Globe. They don’t just hand those out.
I, on the other hand, disappointed everyone.
My parents. My sister. Dallas. It was like I invited them to watch me run a marathon, and I got disqualified at the fifteenth mile for no specific reason.
They all believed in me with their whole hearts, and I still came up short. I failed them. And myself.”
“I don’t think you failed,” I say, meaning it.
“I sure didn’t succeed,” she says. “What about Jaz Sinclair? You two were so close in high school.”
“We were,” I confirm.
“Teacher Priscilla is still best friends with her. She told her Jaz what was going on. We sent that Jaz a picture of us. I didn’t get to stick around long enough to hear what that Jaz thought of it.”
I feel yet another twinge of jealousy for Teacher Priscilla. I thought she had nothing I could ever want. She’s shy and uncommanding and still lives in Garden Meadows. But she got my Marlowe to laugh. And she has Jaz.
What would Jaz think? It pains me that it’s been so long since I’ve really confided in her that I can’t even guess at how she’d respond to a situation as wild as this.
“Whatever Jaz told her, I’m sure it was hilarious and true” is all I can manage.
“Wait.” Marlowe stands, walking to the other side of the hallway to read the nameplate beside the door. “Sorry, I just realized the door didn’t say my name. It says Ms. Downing. That’s not someone I know.” She checks the door next to me. “Still Ms. Yeung.”
I look up, enjoying the strange view of the underside of her chin. Even here, the odd angle is somehow generous. Marlowe has no bad side.
“Is Alice in her classroom right now?” I ask.
“No, it’s dark in there.”
“That’s too bad. I would love to know more about the two of you getting a house.”
Her lips press together so tightly that the skin above them has paled.
“What’s going on there? Does your Alice not want to move in together?” I guess.
“Yes,” she says quickly.
“Yes, she wants to, or yes, she doesn’t?”
“It’s complicated. We actually broke up right before you arrived.”
This turns my mood around in record time. I rise up with such a renewed vigor that I feel compelled to wrap my leopard coat tighter around myself, as if the breeze of good gossip has chilled me to the bone.
“She’s not right for you anyway,” I say.
“Alice is amazing,” she replies. “She’s funny. And she’s diligent. And she’s kind. We’ll definitely get back together when I get back to my real life.”
“Sounds like how I describe my Lyft driver when the app asks me to provide feedback on the ride. You’re too boring to be with another boring person. It’s like the boring Olympics.”
“Thanks a lot,” she says.
“I’m just saying, you’re at your most interesting when you’re up against someone who challenges you. Alice is always going to play by the rules, and so are you. What happens when the two of you have different rules about something? Who wins that argument?”
She’s rolling her eyes, but there’s no gumption behind it. Maybe she can finally see that I’m not saying this to annoy her.
“You didn’t even know Alice in high school,” she tells me.
“Oh, Marlowe,” I say, twisting so that only my left shoulder’s on the lockers now, my head cocked sideways. “I knew Alice Yeung very well. We had gym class together my senior year. She almost got me expelled.”
“I think I’d have heard about that,” Marlowe counters.
“You’re hearing about it right now,” I say. “She found drugs in the gym locker room after class one day, and she told the teacher.”
“Whoa, whoa. What?”
“She found drugs in the gym locker—”
Marlowe puts a finger on my lips. The contact delights me in a way I can’t disguise. I want to slip her finger between my lips and taste it. I want to push all of Marlowe Jenkins’s buttons.
“I heard you the first time,” she says, but it comes out shaky and fast. She yanks her finger away. “Why would Alice have ratted you out?”
“She didn’t know they were going to accuse me,” I say. “She just brought them to the gym teacher, that mean old guy who hated everyone. The one who insisted he used to be an elite-level volleyball player in his youth.”
“Mr. Brigg,” she says.
“Yes, Mr. Brigg. That fuck. She brought them to him when she found them, and he immediately thought it was me, because he was convinced I was up to no good. Really, I just had no patience for his personality. I hate when people are mean for no reason. And he was mean for the sport of it. It was honestly the only sport he actually taught, come to think of it.”
“He was terrible,” Marlowe confirms. “He retired the year after I started at WRHS as a teacher. I skipped his farewell party.”
“Good,” I say. “Anyway, yeah, they searched my gym locker right away. When they didn’t find anything, they still put me on an immediate one-day suspension.
Literally pulled me out of school in my gym clothes so I couldn’t go get my personal belongings or mess around with anything anywhere else in the school.
Like I had a fucking brick of cocaine in the costume room or something.
The next day while I was absent, Jaz told me they brought drug dogs into the school and found a huge stash of stuff in Chelsea Franzini’s gym and personal lockers.
They let me come back to school after that. ”
Marlowe’s face has turned a curious shade of red. “What the fuck? That’s so fucked-up.”
“Look at you. You’re swearing at school.”
“Fucking yeah I am. What the hell?”
“To be fair to Alice, she felt terrible about it,” I say.
“She was snot-bubble sobbing to me, apologizing. And I forgave her, because it wasn’t her fault.
I know it’s kind of fucked-up to find a baggie of cocaine at school, and she did the right thing by turning it in.
I don’t think it was narc behavior or anything.
Genuinely. But it’s also the kind of situation she’s never going to forget, how I got wrongly blamed for it.
So yeah, she knows me. And I know her, too. ”
“Wow” is all Marlowe can say in response.
Her eyes flick to my lips. She tries to play it off, but I know. I saw. And I don’t want to pretend I didn’t. I keep my gaze on her mouth, unflinching. She has to be the one to take the bait.
So I wait. And wait. And wait.
“Let’s do some research,” she blurts, looking away.
Research.
“Of course,” I say with a smirk.
Whatever feeds her delusion.