Chapter 19
Marlowe
After Cilla and I both have showered and changed, Psychic Marlowe lends us her car for our excursion.
She has most of my same mementos in it, like the tiny ceramic turtles Lana and I got on a family vacation as kids.
The small Polaroid picture of my parents I keep clipped to the sun visor.
She even has the star-shaped clear crystal in her center console—a gift from Dallas on my last day as a student at WRHS.
When I first saw her, I didn’t understand how she could be a version of me.
But I see the pieces of myself that Psychic Marlowe has used to build her life upon.
I, too, keep small trinkets that remind me of my loved ones, because I see them as protection charms. I talk to myself out loud when I’m asking the unknown for answers.
Maybe I’ve never considered myself an expert on the metaphysical, but I do obsess over astrology, and a lot of times, I let my gut tell me what decision to make.
Cilla has her head resting against the passenger-side window, watching Garden Meadows pass by.
Even after I started to kiss her, she was still the Cilla I know, charming and flirty and never taking anything very seriously.
This muted version appeared sometime during our reading.
She was the one who wanted to do it. She insisted it would be fun.
Somehow, I’m the only one who left the experience smiling.
“What’s it like for you, being back here?” I ask.
“Not sure we can consider this being back,” she says.
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
Even this challenge feels incorrect.
“You look nice,” I offer. She’s wearing a purple sundress with a matching sweater, and she’s got her hair wrapped up in a claw clip, still slightly damp, with a few stray pieces sticking to her neck.
“Thanks,” she says quietly. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her shift, pressing the dress’s fabric into the space between her thighs as she buries her hands there.
“You know, we could go anywhere right now,” I say, trying on my best Cilla Cove impression. “I know Dallas said we can’t break the universe, but maybe we should try? Personally, I’m setting my aim on destroying the evolution of generative AI. What about you?”
She smooths out the paper map the psychics printed for us since our phones don’t work in this reality. “Pretty sure we can only go right here.”
The map might as well show a dead end, and we’re currently careening toward it at full speed. “I’m sorry I tried to kiss you,” I force myself to say, embracing the fact that the brake line on this conversational vehicle has already been cut. “I didn’t mean to overcomplicate this for us.”
“It’s fine,” she replies.
Her indifference is worse than the crash I expect. I’ve known Cilla Cove to be many things, but I’ve never known her to lack spectacle.
“Is everything…okay?” I ask.
“It’s just strange to be back,” she offers. “It was easier to pretend I wasn’t in Garden Meadows when we were spending all our time in the school. But this is very much my hometown. There are things here I wanted to leave behind forever, and I can’t seem to escape them now.”
“Like what?”
When she doesn’t answer, my mind fills in the blank space.
Like me.
I’m the one from the tarot reading. I’m the person she has to let go of to heal, the one whose approval she’s convinced herself she can never get. The cycle she needs to break before she can make a meaningful partnership. Yet here I am, thinking of kissing her. Wanting more than I should.
“We’ll get out of here,” I assure her, grasping for a shred of dignity. I even use my teacher voice for this, the one I’ve designed to convey my confident authority. “This Dallas will tell us what we need to know. You’ll be able to go home to LA soon.”
“Good,” she says.
That’s it, then.
There will be no more wanting Cilla Cove.
No more pretending at something like friendship.
No matter what promise of more this life has shown us, it doesn’t change our actual reality.
Cilla and I might not be rivals anymore, but we are strangers playacting through worlds that don’t belong to us. And I’m no actor anymore.