Page 27 of In What World

Cilla decides to laugh. “Two Marlowes. Is this my fantasy or my nightmare?”

Come on. Faint, faint, faint.

“P-P-Priscilla?” the other me stammers out. She’s making a great effort to ignore me, which I understand. It isn’t easy to confront myself in a mirror some days. It’s significantly harder to confront an actual three-dimensional version of myself walking around outside my body.

“Hello, Other Marlowe!” Cilla says with a wave. “Nice to see you. You look good.”

“W-w-what are you doing here?” Other Marlowe asks Cilla. She clears her throat, fighting to stop tripping over her words. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Utah?”

I decide to hold off on forcing the faint. Vomiting isn’t off the table, though. Or maybe screaming incoherently? Anything to release the gnawing dread crowding all the available breathing room in my chest.

Cilla places a hand over her heart. “The mountains there are so beautiful,” she says. “But I think you’re ignoring the bigger issue, which is that there are two of you.” She squints at Other Marlowe. “God, she even has your same empty stare,” she tells me.

“What’s going on?” Other Marlowe whispers.

“Dallas figured out how to use his Memory Machine, and it somehow transported us to an alternate universe,” Cilla tells her.

“We don’t know that,” I say, sharp. She can’t keep laying it out like it’s a foregone conclusion.

“Oh, we don’t?” Cilla asks. “You have a twin I’ve never met who wears the same sweater-vests as you and also goes by Marlowe? Surely your parents could’ve pulled from a different well for the name. Maybe Margaret? Marlena? Marston could’ve been cool.”

“I don’t have a vest that looks like that,” I say, at the exact time Other Marlowe says the same thing of mine. Our voices blend into one sound.

“When I mention Sinbad, what do you think of?” Cilla asks Other Marlowe.

“The movieShazam!” Other Marlowe responds.

“How do you spell Berenstain Bears?”

“B-E-R-E-N-S-T-E-I-N.”

“Did Nelson Mandela die in prison?”

“No?”

Cilla smiles. “Two out of three. Pretty solid proof that we’re in an alternate reality.”

“Or maybe she just knows all the same Mandela Effect theories we know,” I say. “They are very popular internet fodder.”

“Oh, your twin with the exact same name, face, and job as you believes she saw Sinbad’sShazam!?”

“I loved that movie as a kid,” Other Marlowe interjects. “I think I still have it on VHS at my parents’ house.”

Cilla shifts to serious for the first time. “Can you go and get it? You could change the world for me. For all of us.”

Other Marlowe ignores the request, throwing up her hands as she says, “Wait, wait. Hold on. We need to back up. Dallas let you know the passcode to the Memory Machine?”

There’s a jealous quirk to Other Marlowe’s mouth as she asks this. It’s unsettling how it leavesmefeeling exposed. Herenvy is not at all disguised by her face or her words or her body language. It reminds me of how often I used to get told by my college acting professors that my emotions were too obvious. It didn’t matter how well I interpreted the text or all the layers I attempted to imbue into it; they always wanted me to find somewheredeeperto go. It used to piss me off. I studied. I practiced. I gave and gave and gave. How could they say there was no nuance to my performances? But now I can see it—under unforgiving fluorescent lights, no less. I wear my feelings like billboard signs, visible from miles away.

Idolike Other Marlowe’s glasses, though. Maybe she can give me a link to where she bought them.

“I’m not a real doctor,” Cilla says, ignoring the passcode question. “I only play one on TV. Although, wait, who has my part onHeartbeats?”

“What’sHeartbeats?” Other Marlowe asks.

“No surprise. They couldn’t do that show without me,” Cilla says. “The supporting cast is what made the whole thing work.”

“You’d never know you were only a pretend doctor the way you were throwing out medical jargon while examining Billy Larsen’s broken foot,” I say.