Page 39 of In What World

I nod, relating so much I’m almost dizzy with understanding.

“They would tell me to trust myself, but I felt like I already was,” she continues. “That’s always been my strength. Using my intuition. Going with my gut. But then I thought maybe I’dnever really been doing that at all. Mars would always tell me I needed to put more effort into building a fully realized character instead of chasing whatever whim came into my head. I would commandeer every scene to make it into what I wanted to explore instead of taking actual direction. That’s what made me realize maybe I’m just too selfish to be good at the job.”

It hurts to know she’s not where she could be, and she considers this other me the reason why. I want to shake her and insist that we don’t have this kind of everlasting power over each other. But how often have I stewed in private, believing Cilla robbed me of my joy for acting?

I, too, arrived at college full of hope. And I know now it wasn’t Cilla who took that from me. She wasn’t even there. She was just an easy target. An old fallback I could rely on when everything else in my life looked unrecognizable.

“I’m sorry other me did that,” I say. “I know I can’t really speak for her, but I can say that with my Cilla, she loved to press my buttons. I was constantly raising my shield, protecting myself in whatever way I could from whatever her latest challenge was. She would rile me up for the fun of it, and she never seemed that bothered by me in return.”

“Oh, she was,” Teacher Priscilla says. “If she’s anything like me, she’d never let you go.”

My stomach twists into such knots an internal scan would show my intestines looking like balloon art. There’s nothing to say tothat, so I move down my list of internal curiosities and ask, “Why’d you take the job here?”

“Same reason you did, I imagine.” She does a tiny swirl with her hand. “You know what they say, those who can’t do, teach.”

It’s not true. Hearing it from her, I know it isn’t. Dallas Winthrop is one of the best actors I’ve ever known, and he’salso the best teacher I’ve ever had. But how many times have I muttered that same phrase?

When it came time to accept that there was no world where I could make a living as an actor, I repeated those words to every person I had to break the news to, shrugging my shoulders likeWell, it is what it is.

“You’rethe famous one in my reality.You’rethe one who made it,” I remind her.

“I don’t understand how that’s true. I could never live that kind of life,” Teacher Priscilla insists. “I’d be way too embarrassed to audition for anything these days. I don’t know how I did it as a teen. I have no idea how that other me does it now.”

“God, I know,” I say. “More than once, I’ve asked myself how I ever acted before, because now the idea of performing for an audience who might see through me sounds like the most horrific thing I could ever do rather than the job I spent my entire youth dreaming of having.”

She smiles. “I can’t believe I used to lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling, imagining myself as far from Garden Meadows as possible. Now I can’t picture ever leaving. This is the only place I know. It’s where I’m safe.”

“We didThe Cruciblea few years ago for the fall play,” I tell her. “Dallas and I had all the kids who auditioned pretend to be possessed, just to see how much they could commit. I watched them and thoughtWow, you’re all so much braver than I am. I would never roll my eyes into the back of my head and let out weird sounds, even in the comfort of my own home, and certainly not in front of all my peers. But that used to be what I loved about acting—the permission to tap into the strangest parts of myself and let them out on full display. To take up as much room as possible.”

“You make it sound so simple when you put it like that,” she says.

“It feels simple when I say it.”

“If we can be anyone, who is it you really want to be?” she asks me.

Right away, I know my answer. It comes to me so fast it doesn’t even feel like a thought but a truth, a reality that’s as dimensional as the one we’re in right now.

“I want to be myself again,” I tell her, and I know I don’t have to explain it any further, because looking at her in our classroom, knowing she’s the mirror of the life I live, I realize no one could understand more than her.

12

Priscilla

Famous Marssucks.

She found me sneaking into this Dallas’s office to look for clues, and she took it as an invitation to join. But she’s no fellow Detective Jane. She doesn’t even care that my Marlowe and I are lost. And why would she? She’s got everything she’s ever wanted here. She’s certainly not going to put herself in the Memory Machine for a little adventure. She’s not even worried about losing the car insurance commercial!

Instead, she’s spent her time with me name-dropping other actors who don’t even exist in the universe I live in. I’ve been in a constant state of smiling and going, “Oh yeah, totally,” without even varying my delivery.

Is this what I’m like? This can’t be what I’m like. I have to believe that my exuberant spirit overrides any ego I might accidentally display.

Thereissomething freeing about getting to look at a version of Marlowe who isn’t making a game of avoiding my eye. This Mars is too in love with herself to care that I’m staring. Orshe loves that I’m staring. Either way, I get to look openly at the face of the woman who has spent sixteen years hiding from me. Even if I hate every word out of Famous Mars’s mouth, I can enjoy the view, noting all the ways I prefer my Marlowe’s face. The bushier eyebrows. The stark planes of her face accentuated by the shaggy hair.

I think again of Harriet Styles and my Marlowe performing a One Direction song in front of the entire school. The way she’d slid across the floor, knowing it would make me laugh. Taking pleasure in it even.

A ghost of a smile must linger on my lips for too long, because Famous Mars reads it as me being more interested in her conversation, saying, “Okay, I’ll tell you on the down-low that it’s a project with Sloane Ford, directed by their sibling, Tyler.” She’s whispering, even though I don’t know who either of those people are. I have never heard of them in my life, so they are certainly not famous enough to whisper in an otherwise empty office in a middle-of-nowhere Iowa high school.

I change up my “Oh yeah” to a scandalized “No way.”