Page 55 of In What World

“Correct,” I say. “It’s close, it’s different, and, I don’t know, maybe my parents are there to help us. My dad used to be an electrician.”

“Do electricians have a knack for multiverses?”

“Only one way to find out.”

The house is at the end of the block—a split-level made of brick and beige siding that’s seen better days. It’s the place that raised Lana and me, where we figured ourselves out. It’s always been my tether, the image I see when I close my eyes and think of home.

There’s a sign in the front yard. It looks permanent, bricked into the ground with shrubbery designed to surround it. It almost looks like a sign for a business.

Itisa sign for a business.

Psychic Readings Here

I back up, startled. My parents have been talking for a while now about the possibility of selling the place and moving somewhere warmer, but in all of my imagined versions of who would get my parents’ house after that, I never pictured apsychic.

Cilla grabs my arm before I can scramble back to the high school and offer up my own searing rendition of “Sandy” to escape this madness.

“Hold on! Let’s just knock.” She doesn’t give me an opportunity to protest, because she jogs up the pathway and rings the bell. “Hello! We’re here for a psychic reading!”

It takes barely ten seconds for the front door to open.

And we haven’t seen it all. We haven’t even come close.

“Would you look at that?” Cilla says to me. “I bought your parents’ house!”

Standing in the doorway of my home is, in fact, another Priscilla, dressed in a layered ensemble that could best be described as something Ms. Darbus would’ve worn in one of theHigh School Musicalmovies.

Psychic Priscilla handles the sight of us better than any of the other alternate versions we’ve met. She doesn’t even look surprised. Not about the paint splatters all over us, or the fact that she and Cilla share, you know, the exact same DNA sequence. She certainly seems far better off than me, who cannot believe I’m living in a world where a Priscilla Covington-French variant bought my childhood home.

“Who is it, honey?” someone calls from inside the house.

It’s a woman, which should not excite me half as much as it does. Hearing her voice, my first thought is,Oh wow. Cilla Cove has a partner in this life. Who is it?

My own Cilla hasn’t mentioned seeing anyone in all the time I’ve spent with her. How have I let that slide when she keeps pressing me about Alice?

Who does Cilla Cove love?

“Oh, hello! You’re here!” says the voice.

It’s me.

I’mthe partner.

18

Priscilla

We’ve seen alot of shit in all the traveling through different realities we’ve done. It’s been an entire Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade worth of mind-bending situations, each attempting to outdo the last in spectacle. But none of it comes close to the madness that is finding the two of us living together in Marlowe’s parents’ house, running a psychic business together.

“We’re married,” Psychic Marlowe announces. Then she kisses Psychic Priscilla. Hard.

I look away, rereading the sign in the front. The fine print states they specialize in love readings.

Do they ever.

“We’remarried?” My Marlowe chokes on the last word so hard she starts to cough.

“Ten years in July,” Psychic Priscilla tells her. “Eight years running our business together.”