“I—I’ve got to pee,” she says, then can’t believe she said “pee” in front of AIM’s general counsel.
“I’ll take a bagel out of the freezer for you,” Felix says, before stepping aside. “Take a bath, and if you get stuck again, use the voice commands to text me.”
She really, really wants to wake up now. But then comes a pressure in her bladder and a tingling between her legs, and she takes off for the door on the side of the room, grateful she found the en suite on the first try.
This is what her life has come to: nearly peeing herself in her dreams, a lack of control that’s a perfectly apt metaphor for everything. It’s all Mallory’s fault. Somehow, it just is.
She fights to yank off the emerald ring, a battle she loses with the platinum wedding band. She’s washing her hands at the sink when she looks in the mirror to see the round bump of a bun on top of her head. She carefully releases the elastic, and hair that should be in a pixie cut spills to her shoulders. She jerks back as her phone rings again. She finds it beside the bed.
It’s Aubrey. “Ilena, I’m sorry, I know what you said, but it’s just... something’s not right. I’m in my apartment, but it’s notmyapartment. There’s no low tide smell and there’s so much light, this might even be the top floor? But the Women Who Code print you got me is here and my grandmother’s afghan too, but the couch is white and everything in the fridge is labeled ‘vegan’ and there’s a naked kid in my bed that’s not really my bed.”
White couch, vegan fridge, naked kid.
Blackout shade, digital clock, Felix making dad jokes.
Ilena and Aubrey are in homes that are theirs but that aren’t theirs, with people they shouldn’t be with, people they simply work with. People who were at the summer outing, just like they were.
Ilena places a hand on her stomach that shouldn’t be her stomach. But is. “Aubrey, what’s the last thing you remember before waking up?”
“The outing, we were at the sandbox, but we hadn’t even had dinner yet or done the toast and Mallory would have never let us not do the toast—”
“Aubrey! Just slow down. Focus. The last thing.”
She inhales a breath. “The game. We were playing Kiss, Marry, Kill. Sorry, I meanFuck. Fuck, Marry, Kill.”
Ilena goes quiet.
With a tremble in her voice, Aubrey says, “Tell me you remember more. Because if you don’t, then... wait, Ilena, are you with Jonah?”
Ilena’s throat goes dry.
“Ilena? What is this?” Aubrey says.
Aubrey slept with Kai. Ilena’s married to Felix, and that means...
“Mallory,” Ilena chokes out.
“No,” Aubrey says, her voice tight, “you can’t think—”
“I’ll meet you there.” Ilena hangs up and stares at her phone, the past twenty-one years of Mallory rotating through her brain, black turtleneck and round glasses as Steve Jobs at Halloween, “time-sharing” the Burberry coat they jointly splurged on after depositing their first investor check, eating latkes on Hanukkah, oysters on July Fourth, cupcakes for every birthday... Mallory. Her Mallory.
Ilena shoves herself off the mattress, a wave of dizziness making her stumble. What if “there” isn’t where they think it is? What if Mallory’s not in the same apartment? This isn’t Ilena’s house in Newton, and it sounds like that’s not Aubrey’s basement apartment by the river she refuses to upgrade. Ilena grabs her phone and searches her contacts. Mallory’s address is the same, but she has no idea if the number is because who knows anyone’s cell number anymore? She’s lucky she remembers her own.
Ilena rushes to the other closed door in the bedroom that she correctly guesses is the closet and fumbles to find clothes to fit this strange, new body. She dials and redials the number marked as Mallory as she wrestles on a pair of jeans with a kangaroo pouch, getting no answer, only the incessant greeting of Mallory’s voicemail, taunting her. Because whatever this is, it’s one hundred percent Mallory’s fault.
3
Ilena
Harvard University
Twenty-One YearsBeforethe Outing
Ilena met Mallory when she handed her a roll of duct tape.
She followed it with an idea, knowing if things went badly, it would be one hundred percent her fault. As Mallory listened, her left eyebrow, dark and thick like a couture model’s, rose. They were her best feature, framing those doe eyes of hers, her second-best feature.
“You really think it’s strong enough?” Mallory asked.
