All this and more, p.27
All This and More, page 27
The flaming hoops come out next, and despite the excitement, Marsh’s attention wanders to the dark recesses of the big tent, to see what other acts are up next. It’s dark and cramped, but she can make out a few silhouettes. There’s a ribbon dancer, a man on tall stilts, a fortune teller . . .
Zauberfee:
SharpTruth104:
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StrikeF0rce:
SharpTruth105:
SharpTruth105: <***MARSH!*** If you’re seeing this, look at the fortune teller! LOOK! You—>
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The comments continue to harangue the troll who’s now taken Notamackerel’s place as most-hated commentor, but SharpTruth’s panicked, direct request startles Marsh enough to seize her attention.
Has that ever happened before? she wonders.
Her viewers often shout all kinds of encouraging things at her, but it’s always with the understanding that she’ll almost certainly never notice any particular one, not with the millions of posts streaming by every second. But SharpTruth has not only also noticed that something’s off about her season—her Bubble—but is trying to tell her something about it directly now.
Marsh peers across the darkened, crowded tent.
Wait.
It’s hard to tell with so many people in such a small space, but is the fortune teller actually Talia’s lighting tech from season one?
Is that really Jillian?
Her eyes snap back to the comments, but SharpTruth is gone, locked out until they can figure out how to get around the Bubble’s security filters once more.
It doesn’t matter. She’s sure that it’s Jillian—and now, certain that something very strange is going on.
For some reason, part of the old crew is in the Bubble with Marsh.
How did SharpTruth know that?
Who is her mysterious viewer?
SharpTruth106:
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SharpTruth107:
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The applause draws her attention back to the main ring in time to see Ren bow and then dash out of the spotlight with the lion as Victor and Jo rush in to take their places.
“You all right tonight?” Ren asks her once he’s out of view of the audience. He tosses his golden locks. “You seem disappointed or something.”
The lion is not in a cage, as Marsh assumed would be legally required, but leaning against Ren like a terrifying pet. Harper squeezes past on her way out of the tent, and dribbles half of her water bottle into a steel bowl on the ground as she goes, which the lion eagerly laps up just like a dog.
Just like one very particular dog, actually, Marsh realizes with a start.
“A little,” she admits. Slowly, she touches lion-Pickle’s mane, and he licks her with a huge, rough tongue. “I enjoyed today, but I just thought it might be . . . more.”
The circus was indeed a fun diversion, but of course, it’s not the perfect life for her.
The music blasts as the clown segment draws to a close. The curtain rustles again, and a tall man with a reddish beard carrying enough bricks on one shoulder to build a house ducks in and lines up for his strongman act. His arms are tree trunks, like he’s used to twirling dumbbells over his head all day long.
Or holding up a bunch of heavy sound equipment next to Jillian’s lights, Marsh notes with an uneasy squint.
Hello, Charles.
She casts around, scouring the rest of the darkened big top as the next act begins. During Talia’s season, her crew were as close as family. So if Talia’s lighting and sound techs are in the Bubble, then surely their lead camera operator will turn up, too.
Elyse must be here somewhere.
“Well, that’s all right if today was a little disappointing,” Ren finally says to Marsh.
She’s not really listening, she’s still looking for Elyse, and it takes a second for what Ren says next to land.
“The next one will be better.”
The next one.
She turns to him, uneasy. The hairs are standing up on the back of her neck.
What an odd thing to say, she thinks.
Does Ren . . . know something?
“What do you mean, the next one?” Marsh repeats.
“You know.” Ren shrugs. He gestures to the tent around them. “The next show. We’re in Los Angeles tomorrow.”
Marsh watches him closely—but Ren’s gaze is steady, his expression innocent. He doesn’t know about the show, about the choices.
He’s just trying to cheer her up.
“Great,” she replies at last. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Ren grins. “I hear the audience is very lively!”
After the show is over—the crowds gone, the empty cups and popcorn cleared away, the animals fed and asleep in their transport carriages, Harper in bed, and the tent broken down and rolled up at last—Marsh, Ren, Victor, and Jo gather in the caravan’s main trailer to eat a late meal.
It’s not the circus itself, but this part, all of them relaxing after the hard day of work, that she values most about this path. It’s romantic. Not in an amorous way, but in the poetic sense of the word. It’s just what Marsh, as a kid, imagined running away and joining the circus might be like. Being part of a tight-knit crew, living on the road, staying up late playing cards together at every stop, dazzling crowds, seeing the world. She tweaks the regular lamps to become lanterns with a wink, to make it even more cozy.
“Wait, it’s already ten o’clock!” Jo shouts suddenly, lurching to her feet. “We’re late!”
“Late for what?” Ren asks her. “The show’s over.”
“The bar!” she cries, banging into the table and sending the cards fluttering. “We’re going to miss our reservation!”
The dread that Marsh feels this time isn’t sudden, but subtle, sinking.
Jo means the Chrysalis bar.
“We have to go!” Victor demands, and then parrots himself yet again. “What good is a private table on the balcony if you never use it?”
“What are they talking about?” Ren asks.
“They’re not talking about anything,” Marsh insists. “There’s no reservation.”
“What am I even wearing?” Jo asks, looking down at her sweatpants and tank top. “I can’t go out like this.”
“There’s no bar,” Marsh says, but Jo and Victor don’t hear her. The two of them seem so confused, so unmoored, as they pace the trailer uselessly, trying to figure out why they want to go to a place that doesn’t exist in this path, to celebrate something that never happened anymore.
Marsh can’t deny it any longer. The farther into the season she gets, the more unstable things grow. Breaks in continuity, fragments of memories left over in her cast members, old pathways encroaching on new ones.
She can even run away to join the circus, and Chrysalis will still find her.
“You look great, Jo,” Marsh finally says, her voice softer this time, sadder.
Jo looks up at her friend, her throat tight, as she clutches her baggy shirt in her hands like she’s never seen it before.
“Marsh,” she whimpers. “I just, I don’t . . .”
“All right, I think someone’s had a little too much,” Ren comes to the rescue, seizing her beer from her good-naturedly. “Let’s call it a night. We’ve got a long drive to LA tomorrow.”
“Come on, Jo,” Victor says, seemingly back to his usual self. “I’ll walk you to your trailer.”
Marsh waves them all out and says she’ll clean up before bed. But after she’s alone, she doesn’t collect the cards or gather up the dirty plates.
Instead, she slips out of the main trailer and heads for one of the smaller ones, in the opposite direction of her and Ren’s cabin. She hesitates, then pulls her hoodie tighter around her and knocks.
“Yes?” the fortune teller says as she slowly opens the door.
“Jillian, right?” Marsh asks. “Can we talk?”
Inside Jillian’s trailer, the room is set up just like her stage act. The lighting is low and moody, crystal balls adorn every surface, and there’s a velvet blanket draped over a low table. A tarot deck waits at its center. On the back wall, there’s a cheesy poster from a past show with bright colors and a cursive font that reads: JILLAXTRICA, THE ALL-SEEING ONE!
“Do you want a reading?” Jillian asks.
“No,” Marsh says. “I mean, maybe. I just have one question.”
“Ah.” Jillian nods. “Love. The cards will tell us.”
Marsh shakes her head. “Not love.”
Jillian arches a brow, and her giant teal turban shifts slightly. “Money?”
Marsh takes a breath.
Here we go, she thinks.
“Chrysalis,” she says.
She waits for a reaction. Jillian doesn’t move at first—but then the word seems to do something to her, like magic, the way it did for Alexis. Jillian blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, she seems different.
“You can keep running,” she finally says, lucid for the first time. “But you won’t find Chrysalis that way.”
Marsh takes Jillian by the shoulders. “What?” she asks. “What did you say?”
Jillian glances around the trailer like prey in a snare. “What is this place?” she whispers, awestruck, horrified.
“What is Chrysalis?” Marsh asks, ignoring her question. In this episode, it’s the memory of a bar again, but Marsh knows that’s just theater now. Chrysalis has worn a hundred disguises since the season started.
Jillian shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know.”
She drops her voice.
“But it’s not part of your season.”
Marsh falters.
Not part of her season?
She doesn’t know what to make of that. How could something happening in her own Bubble not be part of her season?
How else did it get inside, then?
But Talia’s lighting tech is fading. Her gaze is growing vaguer by the moment, her focus loosening, the distance growing.
“Jillian,” Marsh says, trying to draw her back.
“It’s Jillaxtrica, the All-Seeing One, my dear child,” Jillian says suddenly in her stage voice, and pulls her sequined sleeve dramatically across her face like a cape. Whatever clarity she had, it’s gone now. Marsh has lost her again, back into her role, a puppet whose strings are pulled taut once more. “Are you ready to see your fate in the cards?”
“No,” Marsh says. “I . . . already have.”
Ren is asleep when Marsh finally comes inside. She keeps the lights off and crawls into bed quietly, and in his slumber, he throws an arm over her with a satisfied snore.
She tries to relax into his embrace. But hours later, her eyes are still open, still fixed on the same spot of their low ceiling.
Finally, after midnight, she sits up.
Her heart is racing so fast, she’s afraid it’ll wake Ren.
Of course.
In the dark, her hands find a T-shirt, then jeans.
She can’t believe it took her this long to realize it, but she’s so glad she did.
She knows what to do.
SharpTruth217:
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Her gaze leaps to the little table bolted to the wall. A set of car keys is now waiting there.
SharpTruth218:
[Automatic security filters have deleted this account]
Her hands shaking, Marsh grabs them before they can disappear. There’s no time to think. As quietly as she can, she slips out of the trailer and creeps out to the parking lot, where she climbs into the sedan whose lights flash against the dark when she presses the UNLOCK button on the little fob. The engine rumbles as it starts, and Marsh winces, her breath held—but nothing moves, no one has followed. After a moment, she edges out of the parking lot and onto the street. A few turns later, she’s at the freeway.
But she’s not heading deeper into the gaudy Las Vegas Strip. Those sparkling lights are in her rearview, not in front of her.
There aren’t many people out to begin with, and soon, Marsh is the only car on the road. The freeway turns from urban thoroughfare to bare highway, and then to a single-lane road, leading out into the desert.
Her eyes desperately scan the harsh landscape as it rolls past, flat and parched and shadowed in deep purple beneath the night sky. A rusted highway sign listing the next cities and how many hundreds of miles away they are whizzes by her window, and she grips the wheel harder, determined.
This latest life has placed Marsh closer to Phoenix than she’s been since the second half of the season started.
Closer to Dylan than she’s been since the second half of the season started, to be exact.
The Locked Door
Marsh speeds across the desert, her gas pedal permanently jammed to the floor. She keeps waiting for something to prevent her from leaving—for police cars to appear out of nowhere, for the road to veer in a wrong direction, for her car’s battery to spontaneously die—but nothing does. Mile by mile, she rushes ever closer to Phoenix.
After another hour, dawn peeks over the horizon, a peachy orange glow that turns the windshield into a mirror. The road widens, and the glint of Phoenix’s skyline begins to shimmer in the distance. By the time the sun is fully up, Marsh is entering city limits, and buildings replace the cacti.
She speeds down the freeway, dodging pickup trucks and semis as the glare bounces harshly off their polished hood medallions. The asphalt ripples with heat, and she almost starts to sweat before the Bubble upgrades her car’s air-conditioning so it blows arctic cool.
How strange it is to be back here, she can’t help but think as she drives. Already, this old life of hers seems as far away to Marsh as another planet.
Like it was all a dream, perhaps.
A new life is where she belongs.
But in order to make her new life everything it should be, she has to escape Chrysalis. And to do that, she has to find Dylan.
Because regardless of the form, Marsh knows that whatever’s happening to her season isn’t a narrative problem.
It’s a quantum physics one.
And that makes Dylan Marsh’s best chance at understanding how to fix it.
Her tires squeal as she pulls into the old apartment complex. It’s the same one that Dylan lives in now outside of the Bubble, and also in the first half of her season. It looks exactly the same as it did then, she notes, encouraged, as she flings herself out of the driver’s seat and sprints toward the stairs without bothering to close the door.
He has to be there.
But what will he say when Marsh tells him she finally believes that something really weird is going on inside her Bubble, and that it’s only gotten much, much more intrusive after he left at the midseason special? Will he let go of his ego for one second, instead of starting a fight over how he knew better all along? Will he, for once, not pretend their life is a college classroom, that everything is a teachable moment? Will she have to strangle him first?
“Dylan!” Marsh shouts as she reaches the concrete landing. She throws herself against his door. “Dylan, it’s Marsh!”
She waits, but nothing happens.
“Please, open the door. I know you don’t want to talk to me anymore, but this is an emergency!” Marsh slaps the wood with her palms, rattling the whole door in its frame. “Dylan!”
For an instant, she wonders if he’s not home, but it’s very early morning on a weekday. Where else would he be but here drinking his coffee and getting ready for work?
Marsh suddenly stops her assault, and then rips open her purse. When they divorced, because they shared custody of Harper, they traded house keys with each other. For use only in emergencies.
This might not be entirely about Harper, but Marsh would bet that Chrysalis tampering with her Bubble, the Bubble that their daughter is in, definitely qualifies as an emergency.
The keys jingle on Marsh’s key ring as she flips through them to find the one she’s never had to use before. It slides into the lock with a metallic scrape and turns.
“Dylan, I’m sorry, but I need to talk to—” Marsh says as the door swings open.
But the sentence dies on her lips. She stares into the apartment, surprised.
Because it’s not Dylan’s apartment inside.
It’s not anyone’s apartment.
“. . . Dylan?” Marsh calls in confusion.
The whole unit is completely empty. There’s not a single piece of furniture inside of it.
“Dylan?” Marsh calls again, her voice small.
She steps cautiously inside and lets the door swing shut behind her. She touches the light switch on the wall, and the room is suddenly pitched in a quiet, yellow glow.
When he quit All This and More, did he . . . move out?
But that’s not it.
As she studies the brightened room, she realizes that something is off. Even more than that Dylan isn’t here.
Silently, she inspects the floor where his couch used to be—but the ground is perfectly clean there. There isn’t dust on the counters in the kitchen or bathroom. There are no indentations where a bed frame would have rested on a carpeted bedroom floor, nor any other indication that objects have been recently moved out of any of the rooms.
At last, after she’s scoured the entire place top to bottom, Marsh finds herself back in the living room again. She’s trembling, and crosses her arms to be still.
If Dylan had merely moved, there would be signs here. Dings, nicks, spots, dust rings. But his apartment looks more like no one was ever here to begin with.
How is that possible?
He can’t just vanish from existence.
Right?
Regardless of what kind of a husband he was, Dylan has always been a devoted father to Harper. Maybe he and Marsh couldn’t make it work together, but she knows he would never give up on his daughter. No matter what, he would never let anything—even his anger over this show—stop him from being there for Harper.
