Page 50 of In What World

We’ve gotten so comfortable roaming the school without consequence, I don’t expect to open the teacher’s lounge door and find it occupied. And not just occupied, but in need of a Do Not Disturb sign. Two people are making out. Heavy-petting style.

They break at the sound of our unexpected intrusion, and I make eye contact with the first perpetrator, so shocked it takes a moment for my brain to process who I’m seeing.

Alice.

And…

“Jeannie Gratto?” I say.

There are lipstick smudges across Alice’s face—a messy swipe of dark pink. Alice hates how Jeannie always wears this color. “She’s obsessed with pink. Everything is pink. Can we let go of pink?” she’s always saying.

I’m laughing like Cilla would. Loud, almost maniacal. Maybebecause she’s also laughing. Clapping, too. For a moment, there’s something so oddly normal about it all.

“Alice Yeung, I was unfamiliar with your game,” Cilla says.

Alice ignores her, all her attention focused on me. “Marlowe Jenkins?”

She says my full name with that kind of unpracticed tone that suggests it’s been a very long time since we’ve seen each other.

The reality of this life rushes back. I do not work here. Neither does Cilla. What is Alice going to think about two random alumni barging into the teacher’s lounge after school on a Thursday?

“Hey!” I say brightly. “We, um…we needed a copier.”

It’s the first thing that comes to mind, because it’s what my Alice fights with Jeannie about the most. The copier is every teacher’s shared bad habit. So many of us prefer physical media, and the copier is our holy grail.

“It’s just…I don’t know where else has them anymore, so we came in here, because the ones in the library weren’t working,” I continue. “The black ink kept turning pink, and then the green was coming out yellow?”

This isn’t my strongest lie. It’s rambling and weirdly detailed, but I commit as best I can, even going so far as to walk over to the teacher’s lounge copier and examine it.

“Yeah, this should work,” I say to Cilla.

“You couldn’t go to the FedEx store? Maybe a Kinkos?” Jeannie asks me.

“Kinkos?” Cilla asks, but it’s almost a shout. “Do those even exist anymore?”

I’ve heard—in great detail—about Jeannie Gratto’s ability to be judgy. Somehow, she and I haven’t had much of an issue on that front. This is my first experience being on the receivingend. I can see why it grinds Alice’s gears. Although current evidence suggests it’s been grinding Alice in a far different key than it’s grinding me.

A memory rears its head, contextualizing everything like a lens that’s snapped to focus. One of the games I tried to play with Alice early on in our relationship was Fuck, Marry, Kill with the WRHS staff. She hated the very idea, telling me this was my theater-kid horniness surfacing and I shouldn’t try to force personal dynamics onto the professional setting where we both worked.

I reminded her we were coworkers who were dating and had reconnected at said job. She insisted that it was different, and I let that contradiction slide, because for as much as she loves therapy, she has never been very interested in unpacking when her actions directly negate her own opinions.

The real problem, I know now, is that I offered her Jeannie Gratto in my list of three, assuming Jeannie would be an easy candidate for kill. But there’s a part of Alice thatwantsJeannie Gratto, in a biblical sense. Jeannie Gratto is her fuck. Is she her marry? And her kill? Can someone be all three?

“I thought you lived in St. Louis,” this Alice says.

It’s flattering she’s tried to keep tabs on this version of me. Feels like another small validation that we weren’t totally wrong to try a relationship. I hope that the Marlowe who lives in this reality has remembered her, too. Even if we aren’t meant to be together, we are meant to live in each other’s orbit somehow.

“That’s right,” I tell her.

“Marketing?” she asks.

“Yep. Came back because my parents are selling their house,” I say. Another almost truth. They’re discussing the possibility in my life, and that’s good enough. “They wanted me to makesome open house flyers. I have them on my phone. I was connecting to Bluetooth to print them.”

I pretend to check my phone, knowing full well it won’t work.

“God, something’s wrong with it now,” I say, showing Alice how nothing will load. My cover story, while off to a turbulent start, has come together nicely. “Anyway, I’m really sorry for interrupting. We can make the copies at one of the stores you suggested, Jeannie.”

I realize too late that there’s no way to explain how I know Jeannie’s name. Let it be another mystery for her. Life’s more interesting when you have a few to keep in your arsenal.