Page 70 of In What World

“Oh, she follows me on Instagram!” Alice says.

Priscilla takes this as her cue. “Hey, Al! Mybeautifulwife forgot to mention that all these messages you two exchanged were actually onmyaccount, since she likes to pretend to be off the grid, but she secretly lurks on my page all the time. Maybe that’s why you didn’t remember any of it? Love that pic of you and Jeannie you shared yesterday. So cute. Can’t wait to see what you guys grow in your new garden.”

“Go ahead and send them in,” Alice says to Beth. “I was really upset that night. I totally forgot I did any of that.”

Beth heaves a long-winded sigh, hanging up on Alice without a goodbye. I already know this Alice is in for a terrible time when she next sees Beth in person. She’s got at least a twenty-minute lecture on following the proper visitor protocol waiting for her.

“IDs,” Beth says.

It’s a small miracle both of us still have them on us after all we’ve been through, but Priscilla’s is a California license. Beth eyes it for long enough that Priscilla jerks again.

“We own two homes,” I blurt, hoping to smooth over the logic gap before Priscilla breaks from my grasp to go on the lam.

“Thinking of getting a third in Utah,” Priscilla tells Beth.

“Beautiful mountains,” Beth replies as she hands us our visitor stickers and IDs.

“You get it,” Priscilla says, pointing at Beth in appreciation.

Once we’re finally inside, Priscilla wraps an arm around my shoulder and smothers my cheek with kisses. “I am officially changing my stance on Alice. She’s a real one.”

“She is,” I say, proud that Priscilla can finally see it. “Just not my number one.”

“Not your number one,” Priscilla echoes.

Now that we understand its purpose, the sight of the Memory Machine brings up another wave of emotion.It’s just a door. But it’s also his entire life.

“I get it,” I say, unfolding his cryptic message, the paper smoothing in my mind. “I fucking get it.”

Priscilla cocks her head.

“This is a door to his past,” I say. “A door to Teddy. If we want to find our Dallas, we have to go to a time when he could still bewithTeddy. We have to go into his past.”

“This machine can go there?”

I muster up the academic certainty of some of the papers I read when we first researched everything. “Theoretically, this machine can go anywhere. I think we’ve been going sideways because we’ve been getting into it more focused on ourselves than on Dallas. We keep landing on different versions of the same day because it’s the day we reunited. But it’s amemorymachine. And we’re reliving alternate versions of our own memory right now.”

“Ooooooh,” Priscilla says. “We need to visit versions of Dallas’s memories instead.”

“Exactly. He’s setting an intention to reach a specific memory, and he’s arriving in different versions of it.”

“Okay, yes, yes,yes!” Priscilla’s excitement grows with each exclamation. “So…which memory?”

My momentum stalls. I know we’re close, but we’re not exactly there.

Priscilla taps her finger on her chin. “I’m thinking about what you said about choosing our words carefully. Not something I’ve been good at, historically.”

I squeeze her free hand. It’s a new shorthand we’ve developed. A way to sayYou can do this. I am here with you.

She smiles, understanding. “Okay, what aboutthis? We know Dallas basically founded the WRHS drama program when he moved here with Teddy. So let’s go to the beginning of the drama program? Maybe that’s where he’s trying to undo it all?”

“Let’s go for it,” I say gamely. “To the beginning of the drama program!”

24

Priscilla

When we openthe door, it’s such a disorienting sight that my brain aches.