“Anyway, first I got the librarian to search for our names, just to make sure there weren’t parallel versions of us running around out there—thank God she didn’t find anything or I’d probably lose every last marble I had left.” Sloane had been so busy processing the other aspects of occupying a parallel universe that she hadn’t spared a thought for AlternaSloane. Or her parallel parents. Paralleloparents, she thought, and it was a joke she might have made to Albie, who was remarkably patient with wordplay. But Albie was dead.
