Chapter 33
Marlowe
Outside the Memory Machine, my first steps feel like I’m getting off a moving escalator and I can’t remember how to walk on normal ground anymore. We’re here. We have to be. Everything seems sturdy again, fixed in place in the way my body understands.
The feeling is right, but the circumstances don’t seem to be.
For one, my coffee isn’t sitting on the prop table.
All the regular stage lights are on, something we almost never do, because they’re harsh and unforgiving and Dallas and I both agree no productive creativity can occur under such accusatory illumination.
The Spring Awakening set is here, but some pieces of it have been moved.
“Is this…not home?” I ask, my stomach already twisting into knots.
“It has to be,” Priscilla replies. “I specifically asked for the life we left behind.”
“We didn’t say an exact date,” I realize.
It was hard enough to leave our Dallas, knowing he chose his pain over his life. But if we can’t find our life either, then I don’t know where we go from here. I don’t want to inhabit another Marlowe’s world. I want to live in my own.
At once, my phone begins to vibrate nonstop. Dozens of texts and calls pour in, the same way they do when I take my phone off airplane mode after a flight or a movie.
When Priscilla’s phone joins the chorus, the vibrations become our defibrillators, shocking us back to reality. We exchange a long glance, both of us waiting for the catch. But none comes.
Priscilla jumps, wrapping her legs around me as I squeeze her as tightly as I can manage.
“We did it,” I say, breathing in the sweet smell of her skin.
“Of course we did,” she replies. “It’s us.”
Our joy is cut short by the memory of Dallas. I see it in Priscilla’s eyes just as I feel it in my own heart. “I wish he were here with us,” I say as I set her down.
“Me too,” she replies. “So much.”
Ignoring every other notification pouring in, I call Lana.
“Marlowe?” She answers on the first ring, my name coming out like a gasp.
“Lana!” I say brightly, knowing full well I have never once greeted my sister this way.
But how can I be anything other than ecstatic at the sound of her voice, knowing she’s the actual sister I grew up with and not some uncanny valley alternate?
“This will sound like a completely out-of-pocket thing to ask, and I know I could just look at my phone, but could you tell me what day it is?”
Queen of rolling with the punches, Lana answers without hesitation. “It’s Friday, May 8. My clock has 1:53 p.m.”
When Priscilla and I left, it was Thursday, May 7.
“We’ve only been gone a day,” I tell her, giving a look that says Is that okay? Should we try for something closer to when we left?
“We can work with that,” she assures me.
My sense of time already feels slippery, folding in on itself.
We went so many places, and they were all different days—sometimes different versions of the same day, but different all the same—which makes it almost impossible to know how long we were really gone.
I finally understand what they mean when they say time isn’t linear.
It loops in circles, makes figure eights, and bends like wire into whatever shape it pleases.
“Is everyone freaked out?” I ask Lana.
“Oh yes,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “Is this some kind of performance art?”
“You could say that. Listen, I will call you back and explain everything soon. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“I’m glad you’re back,” she says. “Weirdo.”
“I’m glad I’m back, too,” I tell her. She has no idea how much I mean it. “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
“Hold on,” I say before she hangs up. “One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“When I was in high school, and I got you all those dresses. Do you remember that?”
“Uh-huh.” She’s still using her measured voice, the one she’s careful to extract her real opinion from. I know because it’s the same voice I use, and in her manicured answer, I can already sense what lives in the gaps.
“You hated them, didn’t you?” I ask.
“Uh-huh,” she says in the same exact way.
The laugh kicks up between us like a whirlwind, until suddenly, we’re both wheezing.
“I don’t know who ever got in your head that I wanted to wear gingham and frills as a sixteen-year-old trans girl, but your heart was in a very pure place,” she says.
“I guess that’s what happens when my baby masc lesbian sister decides to be my first-ever ally.
It was cute. I liked putting the dresses on for you, because you were so proud of getting them for me. ”
It’s a sweet memory I’ve thought of often—the two of us in my room, Lana popping in and out to change into every dress I’d procured for her. Now it’s just funny.
“Okay, so, I stole those,” I admit.
This gets Lana to fully obliterate her pretense of politeness. “What? I thought you got them from the thrift store!”
I’m telling this to Lana, but it’s also for Priscilla’s amusement, since she is openly listening to us and loving every second.
“I took them from the costume room at school,” I say. “How was I getting to the thrift store at fourteen?”
“I don’t know! You were such a Goody Two-Shoes, you had me fooled! I didn’t think twice about it!”
“There’s a real myth around me that I’m a Goody Two-Shoes. I’ll have you know that I smoked pot when I was seventeen.”
Priscilla starts making a siren sound with her mouth, then speaks into an imaginary walkie on her shoulder.
“Can I get some backup? I’ve got a dangerous suspect here with me.
She smoked pot as a minor. What do I do in the meantime?
I’m afraid cuffs won’t be strong enough for this one. Her name? Harriet Styles.”
“Is that Priscilla Covington-French?” Lana asks.
“Hi, Lana!” Priscilla says.
“I thought I recognized your voice,” Lana says. “Our whole family loves Heartbeats. We watched it together every Thursday for years. Wish it was still on! You should’ve won the Globe.”
Priscilla gives me eyes. “Would you believe that Marlowe here tried to tell me she didn’t watch at all?”
“She was lying to you like she lied to me about the dresses,” Lana says.
“I’m a little alarmed by how willing you are to rat me out,” I say to Lana. “I’ll have you know I already came clean to Priscilla myself.”
“Did you tell her you’re the one who put the show in our shared family calendar?” Lana asks.
“She didn’t, actually,” Priscilla replies. “Were there themed viewing parties? Any episodes she particularly liked? What would she say after each episode?”
“We really have to go,” I interrupt. “I promise I’ll explain everything soon. Love you.”
After I hang up, Priscilla’s got a hand on the collar of my tank. “Liar,” she teases.
“Like I said, I couldn’t let you know how much I’ve thought about you,” I say, feeling the heat all over.
She presses her lips to my ear. “Perhaps you can make it up to me? Maybe you can point to every part of my body you’ve thought about? I know the passcode to the costume room now…”
“Check your phone,” I say, grinning. “We need to let people know we’re back.”
Priscilla does a big scroll through her notifications. “If Erik saw all these unanswered messages, he’d rip this phone from my hands and fix it.”
She calls him.
“Not you cold-calling me,” he answers, loud enough for me to hear him on the other end. “Are you done being mysterious and off the grid? Your location services weren’t even working.”
“Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain,” she tells him.
“Is that our state motto?” I whisper.
Inside joke, she mouths.
“So you are in Iowa,” Erik says. “Okay. Hmm.”
“What?”
“Have you not seen the email?”
“Which one?”
“It’s in For Cilla’s Review,” Erik tells her. “Please tell me you’ve kept up with the tab.”
“I’ve kept up,” she lies. “Just haven’t checked it today.”
“Let me know what you want me to reply,” he says.
“An email you don’t know how to answer? That hasn’t happened since Marlowe.” She winks at me. “By the way, Erik. You’re a great assistant, as I know you know. But I wanted to tell you that you’re also my friend.”
“You probably need better work-life boundaries, then,” Erik says.
The two of them laugh.
“Check your email,” he reminds her again. Then, quieter, he says, “I’m glad you’re back on the grid.”
“I’m glad I am, too. I missed you.”
“You’re being weird. It was only a day,” Erik says.
When Priscilla hangs up, she does not go to her inbox as instructed.
“Come on,” I say, watching her tap around. “He mentioned the email like three times. How is the suspense not killing you?”
“I want to do something else first. Before I lose my nerve.” She holds her phone so I can better read the screen. She scrolls through her texts, passing dozens of conversations before she lands on a single name—Mom.
Hey, she types. Let me know if you want to get breakfast in the next few days. I’m in Garden Meadows.
“Wow,” I say, genuinely surprised. She taps send without any hesitation. “That’s really big of you.”
“I know. It’s the kind of good-faith gesture that should be immediately rewarded. Like in the costume room…”
“Go to your inbox. Now.”
Her smile slips as she reads.
“It’s from my agent,” she says, tapping out before I can see. “He’s dropping me. No further explanation given.”
“What?” I say, unable to articulate anything else.
With her practiced good-natured attitude, she fakes a smile. “It’s fine,” she says. “It happens. I haven’t been going out for anything real. So he made a call. It’s no big deal. Probably better that he made the decision for me.”
“What? How can you say that after everything we talked about?”
She gives me a look. It’s not one of challenge. It’s one of pain. She knows exactly what I’m referring to—our conversation in the guest room.
Instead of pressing this harder, I decide to put my arm around her. “Your old agent fucking sucks,” I say.
She laughs her sweet, musical laugh as a surprised drip of snot comes out of her nose from suppressing her tears. “You’re even swearing in your home reality for me. That’s real support.”