#sally sally
Sally could hear laughter through the door as she walked up to the cabin. Shifting her bag of groceries to her opposite arm, she knocked. “Sally Prime, checking in,” she said.
Inside, someone stood up and cracked the door open slightly. “What’s the password?” said the person on the other side.
She sighed. “Petra, it’s me. You know it’s me.”
“How do I know you’re not an evil clone of the real Dr. Grissom?” Petra said through the door, a teasing tone in her voice.
“Because the evil clone is inside, let me in!” She drove her shoulder into the door, realizing too late that Petra had prepared for that and unlatched it. Sally fell through and landed on a suspiciously conveniently placed pillow.
She groaned, picking herself up off the ground. After a few moments, it turned out to be more literal than expected when their other housemate arrived to help her.
Sally (or Virginia, or Dr. Grissom, or evil clone, or whatever other distinguishing nicknames the three of them had come up with over the years) pulled Sally to her feet and started to pick up the groceries. “You didn’t have any eggs in here, right?”
“Nope. I’ve got corn chips, Cheez-its, the stuff to make that bean dip we like, and-“ she rummaged through the bag for a moment, “I had gotten these to share, but now I think they’re mine.” She triumphantly held up a box of Pop Tarts.
Sally startled as she stared at her younger double. “Wait, have we finally reached the point where they’re making frosted Pop Tarts?” Sally nodded smugly as she held the box over her head and waved it. “No fair, I helped you!” Sally cried out, reaching for the pastries as Sally leaned back and extended her arms. “Petra was the one who wanted to mess with you!”
“And you were the one who was prepared enough for it to make a landing spot!”
As they grappled over the sweets, Petra slunk behind them with the grace of someone who had been trained in spycraft since early childhood and snatched the box. She took off towards the living room as the Sallys stopped to exchange a look. They didn’t say anything, but knew that they were thinking of the same plan. They split up, Sally following Petra’s trail and Sally going out the front door and towards the back porch.
The look on Petra’s face as she “So this is what those Soviet agents felt like when they fought me,” she said, reluctantly surrendering her prize. She was quickly pinned between the two other women and marched into the kitchen.
It had taken them time to find their peace. Even after almost twenty years, it still surprised Sally every time she turned around to see herself, clearly the same person but older, the weight of a million abandoned timelines weighing on her back. Sally and Petra had references that no one else understood, not even Sally. She knew by now that there were certain names to keep an ear open for, people that meant practically nothing to her but that made her future self choke up when they were mentioned. She still remembered when Sally had almost crashed the car after hearing a song by one Helen Partridge come on the radio.
They were all missing things, all had time stolen from them. But they had built something new in its place.
Sally took the second box of Pop Tarts she had bought and tucked it in the back of a cabinet while the other two were turned away. She looked back at them and smiled. They were shoving each other good-naturedly, competing for the pastries that had just come out of the toaster. It was a far cry from the tension they had after fishing her out from the cold waters of Philadelphia. She smiled. Maybe it wasn’t how she had planned her life to go, but she had something good here.
