“What are we doing? You up for a game of Sliders?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “We have to follow them. That was us! That was me and Jason on our first date.”
“And you don’t think we should just leave them be?” Marcus asks as he holds open the bright blue door for me.
“Leave thembe?” I repeat, hoping he can hear how preposterous that sounds.
I scan the moderately busy arcade, a dimly lit room full of jittery strangers and chirpy machines in mid-game mode. I follow the music to where I remember playing Dance Dance Revolution with Jason. We are doing just that now—we, as in Jason and the other me. Laughing at Jason’s two left feet as I kick his butt in the first dance-off.
“Argh!” Jason says, his cheeks flushed from either the dancing or embarrassment. “That was just a warm-up. Best of three?”
“Best offive,” the other me says, and Jason and I shake hands. “May the best dancer win.” Conveniently, I hadn’t mentioned that I had an advantage over Jason: I danced most of my life, until ninth grade when I heard that track and field was looked upon more favorably on college apps.
I remember all this, being so nervous for this date that my palms were sweaty the whole time. By the time I got home and called Amber and Mo to tell them, much of the night had receded into fuzzy detail.
Beside me, Marcus shifts uncomfortably as we watch Jason and Zadie flirt, making excuses to touch each other and bump hips and hold hands. Marcus is leaning against an old pinball machine but somehow, incredibly, he’s not going through it. And yet when he reaches out to touch Other Me and Jason, his hand passes right through them. Because, well, dream logic. If this really is a dream.
“Wait, sohowdo you get your hips to do that shimmy thing?” Jason asks Zadie.
“It’s really happening,” Marcus grumbles. “I’m going to have to watch my cousin try to get laid all night. This must be what actual hell feels like.”
“Shhh,” I hiss, because he’s ruining it. The night is going so well, and they are totally vibing, Jason and the other Zadie. “Isn’t Jason just, like, electric?”
“Yeah, you know what? This isn’t going to work for me,” Marcus says. “It’s been really…really fucking weird. But all the best to you.”
“Where are you going?”
I watch him get all the way to the door of Dot’s Arcade, lift the handle…and then he appears next to me again, like magic.
“What thefuck,” he growls.
I’m incredulous. “Did you just…” I begin, but he’s already walking determinedly back to the door. He’s reaching for it. Nothing is going to stop him this time. Nothingcanstop him this time except…the same thing happens again.
Holy shit.
He’s beside me again.
“I don’t think you can leave me,” I say, not unsmugly, despite the plethora of questions I have myself. It’s almost as if Marcus and I are tethered by some invisible force.
Marcus curses repeatedly under his breath, clearly displeased about the latest turn of events, as we go back to watching Zadie and Jason.
“I feel like I’m watching a movie,” I say out loud.
Zadie and Jason are characters I vaguely recognize. This Zadie looks confident and sure of herself, not at all like how I feel on the inside. She doesn’t look worried about if her hair is out of place or if her breath will be okay by the time Jason kisses her good night.
All the other reasons Jason is the model boyfriend aside, he had a way of bringing outthisZadie, and I think it’s a little bit miraculous the way certain people and things make you a certain person in their presence. I miss the way I was with him, the way we were together. So sure of our place in the world, soright.
“Jay,” I say, reaching for his hand on his machine. “Can you hear me?” I say quietly. “It’s me. It’s Zadie.”
Jason just keeps playing, saying something to the Other Zadie and laughing with his head thrown back. He looks happy, lively. So, nothing like the Jason I saw earlier today.
“Jason, can you hear me?” I say, slightly more forceful. I try to grip his arm, but my fingers slip through him instead of wrapping around his bicep.“Jason!”
“He might be a one-Zadie type of guy,” Marcus says with a half-hearted smirk.
I sigh and go back to quietly watching, mentally running through solutions to this impossible problem: how to get someone to notice you when you’re not in the same reality or dimension.
Jason doesn’t seem to have felt a thing, not a chill or a shudder, nothing that alerts him to my presence.
