Page 89 of In What World

The two of them laugh.

“Check your email,” he reminds her again. Then, quieter, he says, “I’m glad you’re back on the grid.”

“I’m glad I am, too. I missed you.”

“You’re being weird. It was only a day,” Erik says.

When Priscilla hangs up, she does not go to her inbox as instructed.

“Come on,” I say, watching her tap around. “He mentioned the email like three times. How is the suspense not killing you?”

“I want to do something else first. Before I lose my nerve.” She holds her phone so I can better read the screen. She scrolls through her texts, passing dozens of conversations before she lands on a single name—Mom.

Hey, she types.Let me know if you want to get breakfast in the next few days. I’m in Garden Meadows.

“Wow,” I say, genuinely surprised. She taps send without any hesitation. “That’s really big of you.”

“I know. It’s the kind of good-faith gesture that should be immediately rewarded. Like in the costume room…”

“Go to your inbox.Now.”

Her smile slips as she reads.

“It’s from my agent,” she says, tapping out before I can see. “He’s dropping me. No further explanation given.”

“What?” I say, unable to articulate anything else.

With her practiced good-natured attitude, she fakes a smile. “It’s fine,” she says. “It happens. I haven’t been going out for anything real. So he made a call. It’s no big deal. Probably better that he made the decision for me.”

“What? How can you say that after everything we talked about?”

She gives me a look. It’s not one of challenge. It’s one of pain. She knows exactly what I’m referring to—our conversation in the guest room.

Instead of pressing this harder, I decide to put my arm around her. “Your old agent fucking sucks,” I say.

She laughs her sweet, musical laugh as a surprised drip of snot comes out of her nose from suppressing her tears. “You’re even swearing in your home reality for me. That’s real support.”

I cup my hand over my mouth, because she’s right. I’ve gotten so used to feeling free. All of my old habits would be easy to pick back up again. Familiar. But if jumping through space and time taught me anything, it’s that I don’t have to be the person I was last week, last month, or even the last hour. That Marlowe will always live inside me. That doesn’t mean she gets to control my every action.

“Yes, I fucking am,” I say. “And I mean it. They suck, andyou deserve better. You are too talented to give up. So don’t you dare do it. You fucking hear me? We’ll find you another fucking agent, all right?”

“You sound like a character inThe Godfather,” she says.

“Good. So long as ya hear me, all right, kid? We ain’t givin’ up yet. Now come on,” I say, reaching for Priscilla’s hand. “Let’s go fucking see everybody.”

When we get to the English hallway, my class is being taught by a substitute teacher I don’t recognize. They hire them from an outside company now, so we don’t always know who it will be. I peek through the window enough to see her standing at the front of my room, being careful to stay hidden from the view of the students.

“That’s Jessica Downing,” Priscilla whispers. “The one who had your job in the strangers’ reality.”

I do a double take.

She’s right. We’d looked her up on the computer while we were researching, and here she is, in my room, in my world. It makes sense that she’d be around in some capacity, but it’s even stranger to see the proof of how different every single person’s life could be.

“We literally contain so much,” I whisper to Priscilla.

“I bet you said the same thing that time you got stoned at seventeen,” she whispers back.

“And I would have been right.”