Page 62 of In What World

Dallas takes a long inhale, attempting to continue, but whatever memory he’s conjuring has tripped him up, and his long-suppressed tears start falling. “These damn contacts,” he says, scooping up tears with his mint-green fingers. “Excuse me for a second.” He hurries back through the curtains.

I look to Marlowe, who is crying right along with him. My own tears have been dripping steadily onto my half-eaten plate of mozzarella sticks.

“Did you know about Teddy?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“How did we not know?”

Don’t we all have things we can’t say, or pieces of ourselves that are too hard to talk about even to the people closest to us? Or maybe that’s what I understand best about Dallas. We’ve never told each other the hardest parts of our lives, because there was a kinship that made it unnecessary. Though my pain is not the same as his, the burrowed root of hurt we’ve shaped ourselves around is what makes us so alike.

It’s why he picked me out of his freshman English class,even though I was rough around the edges then, too brash for my own good. He recognized a fellow performer in his midst, someone who needed an outlet to express the feeling she couldn’t show in real life. He created for me what had never existed before—a place to put those characters I’d made for myself to get through my life. I could be Priscilla the spitfire, or Priscilla the silly, or Priscilla the serious. He took my complexity as it was, never once making me dull it.

“I think we did know,” I tell Marlowe. “We just didn’t know what to say.”

By the time this Dallas comes back to our table, his face is dry. “You know what I love so much about doing that number? I get to take all my big feelings and channel them into my lip sync. And every night, I feel Teddy here with me.” He looks up to the ceiling the same way he did at the end of his performance. “If I didn’t do this, I’d probably still be at that school, trying my damnedest to get that Memory Machine to work.”

Yes, you would,I think. We’ve seen it over and over.

“Does it make you happy to know our Dallas has done it?” Marlowe asks him.

“No. It makes me very sad.” He says it matter-of-factly, delivered without any of his usual flourish. It’s not the same way our Dallas puts a stop to a conversation, but it is an ending all the same. Because there isn’t more to say. Itissad.

“So tell me about you two,” this Dallas says, making meaningful eye contact with each of us, a smile warming his mint-green face. “Wow me with the tales of your lives.”

I can’t stomach the idea of explaining who I’ve become. All I see now are the friends I no longer have and the love I’ve avoided in favor of my career. I can’t remember who I designed Cilla Cove to be or how I’ve been able to keep living in her image.

Marlowe, as if sensing this, takes up the charge for us both, regaling this Dallas with our history, using the same attention to detail she brings to everything else, treating our past as a sacred text worth poring over. When she calls us rivals, there is no venom behind it. It almost sounds to me like tenderness.

“Who was it that called you rivals back in the day?” this Dallas asks. “Was it the other me?”

Both Marlowe and I look at each other.

“I guess—” Marlowe pauses, reaching for an explanation. “It didn’t make sense to say we were enemies. What we had was more of a—”

“Performance,” I finish, unable to stop myself from rejoining the conversation. “We were putting on a show every day. For our classmates. For each other.”

“Yeah,” Marlowe says. “I guess we were. We both wanted to be seen as the best in the program, and we didn’t think it was a title to be shared, so we spent all our time inventing ways to come out the winner.”

“Interesting,” this Dallas says, clacking his teeth together the same way our Dallas used to when he liked the direction we were taking a scene.

Marlowe brings it to the present day, even going so far as to tell this Dallas we got a reading from the psychic versions of ourselves.

“Those two are quite the performers,” I tell him. “I can’t believe neither of them acts anymore.”

This Dallas frowns. “They still do theater. Not sure why you think they don’t.”

“They do?” Marlowe questions. “Are you sure?”

“I just saw the two of them in a Garden Meadows Community Theater production ofOnce Upon a Mattresslast summer, so yes, I’m quite sure. Jaz Sinclair does the shows, too, everynow and again. I think Marlowe’s directingThe Cruciblefor them in the fall. They’re both skipping the summer production, though, out of respect for me.”

“Is itGrease?” Marlowe asks.

“Unfortunately,” this Dallas replies.

“They’re doingGreaseat our community theater, too,” she tells him. “In the world we’re from.”

“I hope you won’t be participating,” Dallas says.