At midnight, Jean could feel her possible self, her would-be alternate reality ratchet self as that girl lays down, the weight of a man upon her, in her hometown time zone of ten pm. It was one o’clock here, twelve minutes past—Jean had her eyes shut stubbornly tight, after checking three times in the last ten minutes. She lay under a king-sized comforter and over a twin-sized fitted sheet—neither of which had shed their thrift-store smell. The scent of aftershave wafted over from the next dimension to assault her entangled senses.

Jean hadn’t gotten laid in a good six months, but here was her Rachet-Jean going at it every other day with...who? The heavy weight, the heavy scent, both were nostalgic, familiar. Definitely an ex. Jamal? That mess? His gentler actions didn’t transfer over, but she could feel his thrusts, his arms faintly on her neck, her clone’s neck, how he groped or smothered her. Actions he enjoyed in bed, gestures she didn’t. Jean shook her head, eyelids still pressed shut. Ratchet-Jean changed positions, now doggy-style, and the difference was enough to break the connection. 

Now Jean could only feel her own body. Now she could sleep.

But no, here she was peeking at her smartphone again. 2:15. Her body was buzzing. Every cell seemed to know she had an interview tomorrow, and not one would rest. Hopefully, at least, Ratchet-Jean took a little of the worry to carry. No wait. They were fucking again. Jamal rarely slept over, but when he did, he wouldn’t let her escape.

Jean felt a certain fullness in the head, a certain dullness and slowness in her whenever Ratchet-Jean slept. No cold brew or cold shower could stop it. She had done all the prep she could yesterday: showered, wrote a to-do list, hung her pinstriped pantsuit over the full-length mirror. She had given herself twenty minutes from her 6am wake-time until her ten-minute jog to the bus. Now dressed and made-up, she had two minutes. Jean glanced around the 500 feet that efficiently contained her life. Nothing jumped out, so she left.

Once seated on the bus, Jean realized she had forgotten her resume and the printout of the job description. She could still cram and prep during the forty-five minute ride, although she was running low on data and the employer’s web site was slow to run with all its parallax scrolling and autoplay videos and gifs of farm-fresh ingredients. How much did they expect her to know about the company? She couldn’t remember the chain of command above her, and had to reread the emails to refresh her memory of the two interviewers and location. She repeated it to herself as the bus crouched to let on a scooter: Ben, Cathleen, Ben, Cathleen. The aisles filled up, now standing room only. A passenger took the seat next to Jean, pushing her closer to the window as she reviewed an infographic of interview questions: situation, task, action, result.

She reached the transfer stop late and could swear she saw the second bus (two minutes earlier than the app predicted) as it puttered away in front of them. She waited: third floor, room 310. I am the best fit for this job because of how I unite my various talents…  The next bus was five minutes later than the app predicted. My salary range is… She wanted to be fifteen minutes early, but now it was feeling more like ten. Ratchet-Jean remained a stone in her frontal lobe. She turned in her bed, Jean’s old bed, in Jean’s old room, in the two-bedroom apart Jean’s overworked mom and shitty step-dad rented. A home Jean would never return to. Ben, Cathleen, Ben, Cathleen. I’m the best for the job. Jean stretched slightly, flexing her Power Pose muscles for a confidence boost.

The bus arrived exactly at eight am; the elevator ride added another two minutes. She reached the office at six past, but that was fine, right? She asked for Ben and Cathleen, gave each a nice and strong handshake when they showed. Ben recognized her from the networking event. He was a chubby white man who smiled from familiarity, so excited to see her that he seemed red in the face. It was a good sign to be so liked by the owner and founder, right? 

Cathleen, she recognized from the website. The Director of Marketing and Events was a while woman with 90s-thin eyebrows angled down, cheekbones and nose accentuated with makeup. She wore an asymmetrical blonde bob and an asymmetrically tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes. They sat across from her in a meeting room, each with a list of questions, her resume, her cover letter, her marketing portfolio.

Half of the interview questions came from the founder, as he twisted his wedding ring and avoided eye contact. The other half came from the director, who stared straight at Jean and blinked so rarely that each time seemed deliberate. Both of them laughed when Jean explained how she worked her way up from dishwasher to logo designer for a mom-and-pop diner back in Inglewood. Both kinds of laughter upset her in different ways she couldn’t verbalize. She didn’t tell them the business had since folded, didn’t tell them it was a soul food joint—didn’t even include that project for visual examples, preferring to showcase the mockups from her graphic design classes and the speculative restaurant logo redesigns she’d created specifically to put on her resume. 

On the bus ride back, Jean rode in the seats furthest back to rest her head against the walls and recover. The city sailed by outside her, dimmed by the ads covering the bus windows. The laughter rang in her ears, and she checked her online portfolio again. Was it too bland? Too basic? Did it really matter if she was Black no matter what she did and the bitch-faced supervisor would likely reject her due to ‘cultural fit’? If only bachelor degrees had a “get hired or your money back” guarantee…

She felt Rachet-Jean stirring. That girl was fatter than this Jean. Her nails and hair were heavy with the money she poured into them: long gel claws and a heavy ombre weave.

The mental stone melted into something like jealousy, something like disgust hybridized with motivation. Jean had more energy now and she used it to send a couple emails: cold calls and follow-ups requesting advice and informational interviews. Ratchet-Jean and Jamal started going at it again, same as always with him. 

I can do better, Jean said to herself. The nearest rider, two bus seats down, eyed her warily as if she might be another noisy schizophrenic ranter, but who cared. She was dull to the world right now.

Jean clicked from her email and work tasks and clicked open a dating app. It was mostly white boys, many who wore their conservatism in their faces. She swiped past the ones in camouflage and brandishing prize-caught trout, no, no, no until she came across a mustached and sweater-clad poet who definitely wouldn’t make the first move. Her inbox was largely messages from Black men: hey beautiful or simply hey or how r u from shirtless men whose bios declared they were “self-employed” at “entrepreneur”.

Jean tensed up in response to Rachet-Jean’s arousal, her body now awkwardly wet and alert despite the wino smell of the passenger nearest her. She closed her eyes and leaned against the bus window. She imagined someone other than the boys back home, the someone she would find once she was a real working adult. She couldn’t visualize the color of this body. That took too much effort.

Jean could hear children as she left the second bus. She walked past unaffordable apartments, a cafe, a business, and so much construction—no place that children would be at this hour. Still, she felt faint impressions of her nieces and nephews and cousins running barefoot across lawns, pre-K ghosts in the corner of her eyesight. They vanished entirely when she tried to focus on them. While she felt too young for children, too far from stable and comfortable to deserve them, Ratchet-Jean was meanwhile running after the feral little fatties her cousins popped out. She’d probably recognize them from social media announcements if she hadn’t unfriended all the folks back home.

Ratchet-Jean was the only person bringing her mind back there, the only stubborn tie. Her pull had been growing stronger lately. Back in college, the sensations would come over a few times a month. Now they were daily, and more immersive. Maybe their lives were merging, Jane thought as she turned the key to her apartment. Maybe it was because she was weak, she was losing. Her Rachet self would swallow her up because there could be only one. She felt ghostly baby legs sit piggyback around her neck and the faint whiff of diaper. Babysitting, of all things?

Jean stepped in her apartment and took a deep breath of the real air, Midwestern bachelorette air. It was a little stale with last night’s takeout still lingering, but it was hers. She was in her apartment and nowhere else. An ambulance siren rang out in the distance. The entire building trembled, softly, due to nearby construction. It was annoying, but it was hers. 

Her phone buzzed against her thigh and she dug it out of her pocket. Another job rejection, this one automated without even an interview. Goddamn, it never ended.

Halfway into a new job application, Jean felt her brain becoming a different kind of dull. Rachet-Jean had begun to smoke. Here she was with some stupid personality assessment to complete, while her jobless-ass alternate self was getting high in the afternoon. She felt Rachet-Jean laughing, felt the presences of old friends from junior high and high school in the room: Maria, Latoya, Tiny, DJ, Cat. She felt them hugging, smiling, laughter, playfighting. It was sunny in Inglewood, maybe twenty degrees warmer. She selected answers quickly: Most people can be trusted; I cannot remember the last time I lost my temper at work; I have never suffered physical symptoms due to stress at work…

Jean felt herself laughing—against her will? Because everyone else was laughing. Black joy, she said to herself and laughed even harder. Tears came from her eyes, although who knew if it was sadness or sleepiness or frustration. She crawled into a ball atop her mattress and under a blanket, mind too foggy to do anything but nap.

Jean jolted awake in the evening. Something had happened to Rachet-Jean, that was certain, but no other sensations came over for a good long minute. Jean blinked up at the popcorned ceiling and realized she was hungry. She rolled off the bed for more of the Indian-Mexican hipster fusion food she kept in the minifridge. She leaned on the kitchen counter as her food revolved in the microwave. Her walls were off-white and empty; her furniture only a mattress, desk, chair, and the built-in kitchen appliances. She thought, for a second, that it was a little lonely when she couldn’t feel her other self. Then she realized that she sounded like a psycho missing her multiple personalities. Loneliness was making her mentally weak, huh? How stupid.

Jean felt another sudden jolt, some sort of impact—she had been slapped. She remained standing, so faint was the impression to her, but Ratchet-Jean fell to the floor. She remained there, crumpled and holding her cheek. Which dumbass ex was this? Jamal was never the violent type, just a flaky player built like a teddy bear. This felt like… Jean squinted at the space before her in the apartment, but nothing was there.

No, it was someone new, some unloyal negro who wouldn’t forgive a woman for being unloyal. Jean knew this with the certainty that one knows dream logic. It was pure intuition, a truth inserted directly into her brain. 

Girl, that’s what happens when you settle, she told her Ratchet self. Her messy alternate remained sprawled as the boy stalked out of the room. The microwave dinged, and Jean tore open the first of four fusion sambusas. She looked down at the spot where her alternate self sat, a ghost in a fetal huddle. Ratchet-Jean was crying. They seemed to have split from each other, which dulled the sensations. Rachet-Jean kept her pain for herself while Bougie-Jean licked tandoori salsa off her lips.

Bougie-Jean took the second sambusa in hand, crouched to match the other girl, and then took a bite. Look at this, she told her other self, they have taco toppings in here! There are so many weird foods, hipster restaurants... The other day, I went to an art museum with these augmented reality holograms coming out of the walls—and it was free, for just anyone. I never would have thought to go in the past. It just got me thinking how there’s so many things in this world to experience, so many things I want to see. I’ll need money to see them, so yeah… Gotta work hard.

Ratchet-Jean nodded, synced in time and place with Bougie-Jean. Her nose and eyes were still red and running, but she was no longer sobbing. She was thinking about the last time she’d been to a museum. She was making plans to go soon.

And then she stood, knowing that she would soon have to make dinner with Ma and Pops. She would convince them to make her favorite, tuna casserole. You couldn’t get homecooking like that so far from home, and she planned to savor it, so hard, that her other self could feel it too.