Page 53 of In What World

Still, it burns through me, twenty years of anger and desire and confusion working their way up to the surface so I can meet this moment with the intensity she deserves.

“What am I going to do about you?” she whispers against my lips.

A loud crack startles us apart.

The auditorium doors have been thrown open, and three police officers are storming into the space.

“Stop what you’re doing right now!” one of them commands, running toward us. “You’re under arrest for trespassing!”

Marlowe’s eyes go wild with panic. I grab her hand and pull us to the Memory Machine door, where we fumble in together, taking our respective sides.

“Remember,” she says frantically. “Best-case scenario.”

I’m already living it, I think.

We close the door before the police can grab us.

17

Marlowe

There’s nothing likea brand-new universe to place you back in your own body. Or maybe throw you so far out of it that everything you knew before arrival gets tossed into some kind of cosmic washing machine, and the only way to survive is to embrace the fact that you will always be spinning.

Paint-covered footprints mark every step I take across the stage. Opening the back exit triggers the alarm, kicking off an ear-piercingbeep, but I don’t have it in me to care. Outside, it’s a muggy May afternoon. The air smells like freshly mowed lawn, and crickets are chirping in the open field beside the school.

“Where are you going? Don’t you want to see what makes this the best-case scenario?” Cilla yells out over the droning alarm.

“It can’t possibly be the best world ever, because judging by the set, they were doing a production of—”

“Grease,” we say in unison.

“Dallas has always said he’d rather be buried alive thanstage a production of that show, so it’s a safe bet he’s not here,” I continue. “And we sure aren’t home either.”

Everything I’ve said is true, but I might as well be speaking gibberish. The only thing I’m actually thinking about is the fact that I started to kiss Cilla. Voluntarily. Of my own accord.

There’s no excusing it the way I’ve spent sixteen years excusing the sensations I experienced the last time our lips touched. My enjoyment then was nothing more than a product of teenage horniness, I’ve assured myself many times.Thisis something I did as a thirty-four-year-old woman who pays taxes and votes in elections and sometimes stays up late obsessing over the best air purifier for her apartment.

And I liked it.

No, I loved it.

I want more of it. And I need some space from her to remind myself why I shouldn’t, but we can’t take any space for fear of getting separated across the infinite expanse of the universe. Casual.

All I can do is leave this damn high school behind for once, hoping a change of environment brings me a miraculous change in perspective.

“I’m gonna call it out. It needs to be acknowledged,” Cilla says, trailing behind me as I run along the side of the building.

My chest clenches, but nevertheless, I do in fact persist.

“We would have torn up a production ofGrease,” she concludes.

Expectation subversion is one of her specialties. It’s like she’s edging me, knowing exactly which buttons of mine to push to keep my mind on our almost-kiss.

“It would have been electric,” I agree. “Me as Danny Zuko. You as Sandy.”

“You see Sandy for me? I was thinking Rizzo. And then maybe more of a Kenickie space for you, personally. Which, by the way, is there something we need to unpack in your love of casting yourself as one of the guys?”

I throw her a look over my shoulder. She’s not asking me unkindly. In fact, there’s earnest interest on her paint-smudged face.