Chapter 23
Marlowe
I wake before Priscilla. In sleep, she keeps herself contained, still in the same spot she was when I dozed off on top of her. It’s so different from how she lives her life, where she’s bold for the sport of it. Here, she is defenseless. Fragile.
I can’t bring myself to disturb her, so I plant a gentle kiss on her forehead, not worrying about the why, then creep upstairs to find the psychics are already awake with a breakfast spread of pancakes and eggs set out.
Psychic Marlowe’s also made the tea we like, squeezing a lemon and stirring honey into it before she hands it over.
“Do you ever talk to Alice Yeung?” I ask.
“From high school?” Psychic Marlowe questions. “I see her around occasionally. I’m pretty sure she teaches at WRHS now.”
“She does,” Psychic Priscilla confirms. “And she’s dating another teacher there.”
“Is it a woman?” I ask.
“Oh yeah,” Psychic Priscilla tells me. “I follow her and her girlfriend’s joint account on Instagram.”
“I knew she was gay,” Psychic Marlowe mutters, a self-satisfied smile on her face.
Psychic Priscilla takes out her phone. “I can’t believe I haven’t showed you this,” she says to her Marlowe. She turns the screen to reveal a picture of Alice kissing Jeannie Gratto’s cheek.
Of course, I think, my own self-satisfied smile forming.
“I always thought Alice was cute,” Psychic Marlowe admits.
“Shut up,” Psychic Priscilla says excitedly. “I didn’t know that! I would’ve been sharing this information a lot sooner!”
“Ever since yearbook, when she and I stood up to Mr. Pritcher together,” Psychic Marlowe says.
“About the grass theme?” I ask.
“Oh my god,” she says. “He did that to you, too?”
“Sure did. My Alice and I also got him to stop it.”
“Did I ever tell you what happened with Alice and me in gym class?” Psychic Priscilla asks.
“Are we talking about the one and only Alice Yeung?” My Priscilla appears for breakfast, yawning as she reaches for my cup of tea and takes a sip. “Oh, that’s good.”
“We are,” Psychic Priscilla tells her.
“Does she know the gym class story?” my Priscilla asks.
“No, tell me,” Psychic Marlowe says.
The Priscilla I started this journey with would’ve relished the chance to tell the psychics that Alice and I dated and very recently broke up.
This Priscilla just sits beside me at the kitchen table, buttering a pancake, nudging her elbow into mine in a way that’s not meant to be irritating but rather affectionate as her and the other Priscilla tag team the tale of their one-day suspension.
When they finish, Psychic Priscilla takes the opportunity to ask, “You guys sleep well?”
My cheeks burn. I don’t know if Priscilla’s blushing, too, because I’m looking at my pancakes like they contain the exact secret of the universe we need to escape our endless loop of alternate realities.
“Perfect,” my Priscilla tells her.
“We better eat quickly and be on our way, though,” I say. “We need to get back to finding Dallas.”
“Is that our intention again?” my Priscilla asks.
“This Dallas asked us not to give up on him,” I say. “And I couldn’t live with myself if we did. So yeah, we’re gonna keep looking, if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it is,” she says. “I think we have a much better idea of where to find him now.”
While we were at the drag bar last night, the psychics tried to wash the clothes we came here wearing, but the paint has ruined them beyond saving.
They let us pick out new outfits from their closet instead.
I comb my slightly damp hair off my face and choose a plain white muscle tank and dark jeans.
No sweater-vest. Only because Psychic Marlowe doesn’t have any.
“Are you going for a Danny Zuko look?” Priscilla asks me.
“I thought you said I was more of a Kenickie,” I remind her.
“Then I better be Rizzo.”
She’s picked a flowing floral dress from Psychic Priscilla’s collection, and she’s let her hair dry into long, loose waves.
“You’re giving me much more of a Stevie Nicks vibe than Betty Rizzo,” I say.
Priscilla does a spin. Her dress almost touches the floor, but it has just enough room to flow around her as she moves.
“Oh my god. You look like me!” Psychic Priscilla says upon finding us examining our outfits in her bedroom mirror.
All three of us laugh, even though we understand she means it in a deeper way. It’s more than just the clothing. There’s a lightness to my Priscilla now. A joy that seems to glow from within her instead of being something she performs. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because of me. Of us.
When Psychic Marlowe appears, she gives me an appraising nod. “You look cool,” she says.
I press a hand to my heart. “Thank you. I needed to hear that. My students have made me doubt myself.”
“I mean, you are a theater kid,” she says.
“Theater kids can be cool,” I protest, unsure of who I think I’m convincing. “Fine. I will settle for giving the impression of coolness.”
By the time we make it downstairs, the mood has turned.
Of all the realities we’ve visited, this one has given us the most. Even though we didn’t find our Dallas, Priscilla and I found something just as valuable—our way to each other.
I still don’t understand how it fits with the psychic reading she got, but I’m chasing these feelings instead of worrying about what could go wrong.
It feels good to live this way. Necessary.
When Psychic Marlowe opens the door, Psychic Priscilla bursts into tears. “I can’t believe we’ll never see you again,” she says, pulling my Priscilla and me into a sentimental embrace.
Psychic Marlowe joins in, turning us into a hug huddle at their front door. “They’ll be with us in the mirror,” she says.
Only upon arriving at WRHS do I realize we’ve failed to consider one very serious problem—it was a breeze to leave WRHS, but one cannot simply walk into a high school during a school day.
“Break in?” Priscilla suggests, scanning the building for an alternate entry point.
“We can’t do that to the psychics,” I say. “And how would we explain our existence if we were caught? At least in the last life, our counterparts didn’t live in Garden Meadows.”
“Wait until night?” Priscilla suggests next.
“We could,” I say, but neither of us is particularly compelled by the prospect now that we’ve become fully aligned in our purpose. “There is one thing we can try first…”
Beth, the secretary who buzzes in school guests, is typing on her computer when Priscilla and I walk up to the visitors’ entrance.
“Hello! Happy Friday,” I say, as cheery as I can believably pull off. “We’re here to pick up our visitor passes.”
Priscilla leans an elbow on the counter. “Love that blouse.”
Beth looks at us with unflinching indifference, immune to my friendly wave and Priscilla’s candy-sweet smile. “We don’t have any approved visitors listed for today.”
“Really? That’s weird,” Priscilla says.
“We’re here to see Alice Yeung,” I tell her.
“We don’t have any approved visitors listed for today,” Beth repeats.
Beth has never been friendly. It makes her the perfect candidate for vetting who gets to enter the school. As a colleague, her no-nonsense approach is a comfort. She keeps all of us safe. As a person who desperately needs access to this school’s stage, it is a lot less impressive.
“She asked us to come do a presentation for her class on the metaphysical arts and how they connect to the supernatural elements in Macbeth. It’s for her sophomore group?
” I pretend to look at something on my phone.
“Yeah. Her third-period class of tenth graders. They just finished reading the play. She’s had a hard time getting them to engage with the text, so she thought bringing in some real-life psychics might catch their interest. She asked us to do this about three weeks ago, so maybe she forgot to put in the visitor request? ”
Beth stares. And stares. I feel my entire life unfolding before her eyes.
“I’ll call her,” she says.
Fuck.
Priscilla nudges her knee into the side of my leg. With one look, I know she’s asking if we should run. Giving the slightest shake of my head I can possibly muster, I turn her down.
She eyes the door anyway.
I reach for her, gently fisting part of her dress in my palm.
Beth calls Alice over the school’s phone system, dialing the direct line to Alice’s classroom. She puts the call on speaker, forcing Priscilla and me to endure this agony in real time.
When Alice answers, Beth skips a greeting, going straight to “There are two women here saying you asked them to come visit your third-period class today.” She locks eyes with me instead of Priscilla, some primal sense of hers knowing I’m the rule-follower of the two of us.
“Weird. I don’t have anyone set to visit,” Alice says.
Before this can go off the rails, I chime in. “Alice? It’s Marlowe Jenkins.”
“Marlowe?” There’s an immediate shift in Alice’s tone, all her poise replaced with shock.
I know she’s about to say we haven’t spoken in years, so I get ahead of it with a loud, clear “You sent me a DM three weeks ago saying you were doing Macbeth with your sophomores and that the internet was rotting their brains to the point that you almost started to cry during class because no one was listening to a single word you said. You mentioned in the DM that you were on your fourth or fifth glass of wine, still really worked up over it. And since you knew I ran a psychic business, you asked me to come play up the spooky side of the story with you today.”
There is a long stretch of quiet on the other end. I’ve gambled everything on faith again. Faith that even though this is the best version of reality for us, it’s not strong enough to have rewritten that series of events. The whole thing really did happen three weeks ago.
One of our shared hills, I realize, warmed by the knowledge that we found at least one in our adult lives.
“My wife is here, too,” I add, suddenly scared only I will be approved to enter.
Calling Priscilla my wife, claiming her in such definitive terms, hits me harder than I expect.
It’s a nice idea, even if it’s only for show.
What would it be like to belong to someone else in that way?
It’s the furthest possible direction from chasing these good feelings without worrying about the why, so I push down the warm thrill it gives.
“Oh, she follows me on Instagram!” Alice says.
Priscilla takes this as her cue. “Hey, Al! My beautiful wife forgot to mention that all these messages you two exchanged were actually on my account, since she likes to pretend to be off the grid, but she secretly lurks on my page all the time. Maybe that’s why you didn’t remember any of it?
Love that pic of you and Jeannie you shared yesterday.
So cute. Can’t wait to see what you guys grow in your new garden. ”
“Go ahead and send them in,” Alice says to Beth. “I was really upset that night. I totally forgot I did any of that.”
Beth heaves a long-winded sigh, hanging up on Alice without a goodbye. I already know this Alice is in for a terrible time when she next sees Beth in person. She’s got at least a twenty-minute lecture on following the proper visitor protocol waiting for her.
“IDs,” Beth says.
It’s a small miracle both of us still have them on us after all we’ve been through, but Priscilla’s is a California license. Beth eyes it for long enough that Priscilla jerks again.
“We own two homes,” I blurt, hoping to smooth over the logic gap before Priscilla breaks from my grasp to go on the lam.
“Thinking of getting a third in Utah,” Priscilla tells Beth.
“Beautiful mountains,” Beth replies as she hands us our visitor stickers and IDs.
“You get it,” Priscilla says, pointing at Beth in appreciation.
Once we’re finally inside, Priscilla wraps an arm around my shoulder and smothers my cheek with kisses. “I am officially changing my stance on Alice. She’s a real one.”
“She is,” I say, proud that Priscilla can finally see it. “Just not my number one.”
“Not your number one,” Priscilla echoes.
Now that we understand its purpose, the sight of the Memory Machine brings up another wave of emotion. It’s just a door. But it’s also his entire life.
“I get it,” I say, unfolding his cryptic message, the paper smoothing in my mind. “I fucking get it.”
Priscilla cocks her head.
“This is a door to his past,” I say. “A door to Teddy. If we want to find our Dallas, we have to go to a time when he could still be with Teddy. We have to go into his past.”
“This machine can go there?”
I muster up the academic certainty of some of the papers I read when we first researched everything.
“Theoretically, this machine can go anywhere. I think we’ve been going sideways because we’ve been getting into it more focused on ourselves than on Dallas.
We keep landing on different versions of the same day because it’s the day we reunited.
But it’s a memory machine. And we’re reliving alternate versions of our own memory right now. ”
“Ooooooh,” Priscilla says. “We need to visit versions of Dallas’s memories instead.”
“Exactly. He’s setting an intention to reach a specific memory, and he’s arriving in different versions of it.”
“Okay, yes, yes, yes!” Priscilla’s excitement grows with each exclamation. “So…which memory?”
My momentum stalls. I know we’re close, but we’re not exactly there.
Priscilla taps her finger on her chin. “I’m thinking about what you said about choosing our words carefully. Not something I’ve been good at, historically.”
I squeeze her free hand. It’s a new shorthand we’ve developed. A way to say You can do this. I am here with you.
She smiles, understanding. “Okay, what about this? We know Dallas basically founded the WRHS drama program when he moved here with Teddy. So let’s go to the beginning of the drama program? Maybe that’s where he’s trying to undo it all?”
“Let’s go for it,” I say gamely. “To the beginning of the drama program!”