Chapter 24
Priscilla
When we open the door, it’s such a disorienting sight that my brain aches.
Wide-open blue sky. A dusty road. Trees blowing in the breeze. A red farmhouse.
And a field of wheat.
This is not some immersive set created for the WRHS stage. If only. But no. This is a real-life, amber-waves-of-grain field of wheat, just like the kind they sing about in “America the Beautiful.”
In the distance, maybe a hundred feet away, a horse trots along the road with a buggy hitched to it. Inside the buggy are two women who appear to be dressed in bonnets.
“We fucked up,” Marlowe says through tight lips.
“Yeah, I’m getting that from the general Oregon Trail vibe around here,” I say.
“Every other time we’ve gotten in and out of the machine, we’ve been at Wilbur Reed.” Her eyes flit in every direction. “But we’re in the middle of a field. Where did we go wrong? We set the intention to go to the beginning of the drama program…”
She trails off, her sentence hanging in the air. I look into her eyes, willing her to use that big, beautiful brain of hers to solve this, because I don’t know a single thing about horses and buggies, much less what they have to do with WRHS drama.
Suddenly, she grabs my shoulders tight enough to bruise. She’s about to kiss me, which isn’t necessarily a good solution, but who am I to object? We can make out in a field of wheat. Why not?
My lips are puckered, waiting, as she says, “Wilbur Reed High School was built in 1895.”
I open one eye. “Okay…”
“If the machine always opens to the school, then we must be standing on the land it’s built on! This is sometime before the school was constructed! The beginning of the drama program!”
I open both eyes. There are no ridiculous statements anymore. Accepting her hypothesis is as easy as accepting an improvisation from a scene partner. Yes, this is a time before 1895. Yes, we’re standing on the land where our high school was built. Of course we are!
“Great!” I say, prepared to roll with it.
Though as I inventory her, a dozen red flags go up.
Her shaggy haircut. The small tattoos on her forearms. They’re tiny, fine-line pieces—so gay of her—but they’re not passable as something you’d have in…
whenever the hell we are. A time before 1895.
And that plain white tank given to her by Psychic Marlowe.
The breeze that blows now has the slightest chill to it, and her shirt is sheer enough to display how her nipples have poked up through her bra.
“Is there any particular reason you’re staring at my chest?” she asks.
“Quite a few,” I say, still staring. “But ultimately, it’s because nipples don’t give 1800s, in my humble opinion.”
She looks down, seeing what I’m seeing and folding her arms to cover herself. I’m remembering last night, how I held her as we fell asleep, my nose pressed into her hair, and it doesn’t matter where we are in space and time—that memory is going to be too strong to ignore.
I look down at my own flowy dress from Psychic Priscilla. “Not that I’m any better,” I offer.
Marlowe takes this as an invitation to regard my chest, where no nipples are visible. Wish they were. Would love to be in a visible-nipples situation with her right now. It would be much better than being in the 1800s.
“We might be our queer ancestors’ wildest dreams, but that doesn’t mean the people here won’t want to hang us as witches on sight,” I say.
“That’s more of a 1600s thing,” Marlowe says.
“And how do you know this isn’t the 1600s?”
“The women in the buggy were wearing Victorian-era dresses.”
“The women in the buggy were wearing Victorian-era dresses,” I repeat. “Sorry. I needed to experience that sentence for myself.”
She smirks.
“I may not be able to recognize a time period in thirty seconds by looking at someone’s outfit, but I’ve seen enough movies to know that wanting to kill a time-traveling weirdo is evergreen,” I say.
“Let’s get back inside the machine and keep moving.
Maybe find somewhere to, you know, inventory each other’s clothing more thoroughly?
And then come up with a better intention, of course. ”
“Hello there!” says a man in a top hat, who seems to have emerged from within the stalks of wheat like this is Field of Dreams.
“Think Hedda Gabler,” Marlowe whispers.
We did that play our senior year. She played Hedda, and I was Mrs. Thea Elvsted.
When the cast list went up, I felt truly envious of Marlowe.
That wasn’t new, but it was the first time we’d both wanted the same part.
Before that, Dallas always picked shows in which we knew exactly who we were supposed to play, and those parts didn’t overlap.
Even though deep down I knew Dallas had cast Hedda correctly, I couldn’t shake off my jealousy. I never committed to my own role half as much as I should have.
Some of my most prevalent stress dreams are of me being asked to perform Hedda again with zero notice.
Sometimes the dream will be about something else entirely, and I’ll think I’m stepping into another room only to realize I’ve walked onto the WRHS stage, it’s my first scene as Thea, and I don’t remember any of my lines.
Sometimes I storm off, embarrassed. Sometimes, I make things up.
Sometimes, I get through it but the audience boos because I’m so stiff and terrible.
In every iteration, Marlowe is there with me, hitting every mark, no matter what version of events I throw at her.
The closer the man gets to us, the less generous his expression becomes.
“He’s reacting to our level of queer. It’s scaring him,” I whisper. Louder, I offer him a “How goes thee?”
Marlowe groans. “I said Hedda, not Shakespeare.”
“I know. I’m panicking,” I whisper.
“Just let me talk, then.”
She straightens her spine, narrowing her eyes at the man in the top hat. She’s in her sheer white tank, looking like either Danny Zuko or Kenickie, nipples protruding, lesbian tattoos up and down her lesbian arms, holding the gaze of a random man from the 1800s like she’s supposed to be here.
“Hello there,” she says to him. “Wonderful morning we’re having.”
“It’s half past noon,” he informs us.
“My apologies. We’ve been rather occupied,” she says. “Have you the date, perchance?”
“It’s the twenty-seventh of April,” he says.
My hands twist into knots.
“Forgive me, but what of the year?” Marlowe asks.
“1893,” the man tells us.
My adrenaline spikes.
“Ah, yes,” Marlowe nods. “It is indeed.”
“Why are the two of you dressed so strangely?” asks the man.
“A play,” Marlowe tells him without waver. “We are rehearsing.”
“Quite an odd production.” He has moved from reserved judgment to open skepticism, one of his impressively bushy eyebrows lifted into an aspirational arch.
“We’ve traveled here from Illinois,” she explains.
“Chicago. We are performers in the World’s Fair.
Or, excuse me, the Columbian Exposition.
If you know not of what I speak, someday soon you will, I assure you that.
” When he says nothing, she still maintains her cool, saying, “I’m Marlowe. And this is Priscilla.”
She didn’t call me Cilla.
She used my real name.
Holy shit.
She used my real name.
“Wilbur,” the man says.
“Hello!” I wave, all my reservations floating off into the 1893 Iowa wind. “This is Garden Meadows, yes? Lovely town.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Wilbur says.
“Have you a favorite feature? We’d love to see more of this place once we finish our rehearsal.”
Just as I’ve started to warm up to this, hitting my stride with my inner 1890s Priscilla, Marlowe grabs hold of my arm. “Wilbur, forgive me, but would you allow us a moment to converse alone? We will be back momentarily, I assure you.”
She tugs me farther into the field of wheat.
“That’s Wilbur Reed,” she whispers.
I chance a glance around. “Where? I don’t see anything other than the farmhouse.”
“The man,” she says. “That is Wilbur Reed. Of Wilbur Reed High School. That’s his house.”
“Shut up. The titular Wilbur.”
“What if this is what inspires him to build the school?” she asks. “Dallas always said he wondered why Wilbur bothered to create our auditorium. It’s an original feature of the building.”
“You think our presence here changes the course of history? I thought Dallas said we couldn’t break the universe? And this isn’t our reality anyway,” I remind her. “Or maybe it is. I guess there’s no way to know.”
“But remember the fixed points?” she implores. Her conviction is only increasing. “This could be a fixed point in reality.”
“How can it happen in every reality if we’re the only versions of us who are traveling here?”
The tension leaves her expression. “Good point. Okay, never mind. I’m getting worked up. Thanks for bringing me back down.”
It’s nice to get her praise. I like it as much as I suspected I would, like I might comb through thousands of mean comments on my social media to catch this one compliment from her, holding it like a lightning bug in a bottle.
“We should still stick around,” I say. “At least for a little bit. When will we ever have an opportunity like this again?”
The old Marlowe would’ve protested. She’d have a hundred reasons why this would be a bad idea. But this Marlowe’s eyes glitter with excitement.
“We’ll just stick close to the machine, so we can make our escape whenever it feels right. We’re basically invincible,” I say.
“We kind of are.”
She grabs my hand and squeezes. And yes, I would rearrange the stars for her. I would find her in any life.