Jackie felt stupid (Oh, Jackie, did you ever think of just turning twenty?), and so she yelled: “Do you have to show up everywhere I am all the time?”

“This is the PTA room. I am on the PTA.”

“Whatever. I’m out of here,” Jackie said, and then pointed at Steve. “Steve, we’ll talk more about King City later. Tell Janice I said hi.”

“Okie doke. It sure was nice to chat.” And he meant it, which was the worst part about Steve Carlsberg.

Jackie stormed out of the door, not wanting to leave this way and hating herself for doing it.

Diane stared at Steve with new curiosity, wondering if this was the first time she had ever actually wanted to know something that Steve could tell her.

“Steve. What do you know about King City?”

25

There was a Troy who swept up at the movie theater.

There was a Troy who never left his home.

There was a Troy who was a therapist.

There were so many Troys, and Jackie tracked them all. She had a notebook and a camera, and soon she had a record of every Troy in town. She kept a lot of notes, not because she was good at investigating, but because it gave her something to do, and helped keep her from drifting off into confusion and despair over the terrifying implications of Troy’s multiplicity.

If she stopped note-taking long enough to think, she would grow dizzy in a spiral of questions: Do they know each other? Are they the same age? Were they all born, or were they just there one day? When she found herself thinking for too long, she would make another note, maybe about how humid it was (“neck feels sticky, even in the shade”) or what color the clouds were (“green with purple stripes—looks like rain”).

Today Jackie was following the Troy who was a loan manager at the Last Bank of Night Vale (“We put our customers second, and our apocalyptic prophecies first!”). This Troy had very regular hours, not just at his work but in his life outside of work, and so he was especially easy to tail.

It was the third hour of work for him, and he would be going to lunch soon. Lunch was usually a salad or something light, except for the one day a week he went to Big Rico’s Pizza. She watched him through the window, humming and smiling at customers.

There was a Troy who drove a cherry red Vespa while wearing a light blue helmet.

There was a Troy who drove a 1997 Plymouth minivan.

There was a Troy who drove a taxi.

Do some of them live together? Are they working on a single plan? Were they artificially created by the government?

Too much thinking, she was feeling nauseous. She wrote a note about the lunchtime crowd in the street (“it’s lunchtime. there’s a crowd in the street.”).