That’s when my brain suddenly zeroed in on the right frequency, and more memories began to broadcast themselves into consciousness. It felt like a crack in a dam oozing rank river sludge through the breach, bringing on a surge of that strange headache. I brought my hands to my head as if it was the only way to hold the two halves of my skull together.

I closed my eyes, trying to process the memories forcing their way in. I knew who I was in this world now. And here’s the terrible, horrible truth.

I wasn’t all that different.

Aside from having no Black or Latinx friends here, I was the same as I was in the previous worlds. I thought this version of me—this product of segregation—would be some terrible fun house distortion. But I wasn’t any more clueless or insensitive than before . . . because I was already clueless and insensitive. The plague of ignorance, the stupid-ass sunscreen—all the ways Leo had tried to open my eyes—had never really worked. Because they only saw what they wanted to see. What was easy to see. What was convenient.

So how far was this world from mine? Not nearly as far as it should be.

“Headache again?” Hunter asked.

I nodded. “Worst of the worst.”

“Well maybe this will take your mind off it,” he said. “Because I think I found those twin skaters you were looking for. Only they’re not twins,” he said. “They’re triplets.”

I’ll get back to the skaters in a bit—but first let me try to give you a brief vision of this world. Stagnant is the best way to describe it. You know how a stagnant pond festers? It starts to reek, and fill with diseased mosquitoes? Not that my original world was a raging river of justice, but at least there was pressure on the floodgates. But there was none of that here. The rot was evident everywhere—from that brutal border policy that had kept out anyone seeking a better life, to a failed economy, because without migrant farmworkers, the entire American agricultural industry had collapsed.

It trickled down in weird, unexpected ways. Like music. Apparently, my favorite band, Konniption, didn’t exist in this world. A search for them revealed that they had released a self-produced single that no one bought. The band had fizzled and was never heard of again. Their music was “too hard on the ear,” reviews said. But where I come from, that’s a prerequisite for rock and roll stardom.