Chapter Text
“That was feckin amazing!”
James rolled his eyes at his cousin’s antics, though he had a smile of his own on his face. He let out a small oof as Michelle’s arm came down on his shoulder.
“I couldn’t feckin believe I got that close! Looks like yer beanpole-ness finally became useful, eh? Instead of just makin’ ye look easy to snap!”
“Honestly, Michelle…” James sighed. At the concert, he had allowed Michelle to hoist herself on his shoulders, gaining better leverage to high-five the lead guitarist, who was flying above the crowd, suspended on wiring. Beside him, Orla was nodding along at Michelle’s recount of the evening, which he had to admit, was the most fun they had had in a long time.
They’d all managed to reach the bus stop in time, as the Ulster bus pulled up right at the second. They all got on, going towards the back and squishing together like sardines. As she sat down, Michelle stretched widely, making sure to push her arm directly in front of James’ face, who moved his head away in annoyance.
“I am feckin exhausted, so I am!” Michelle marked her statement with a yawn, settling into the bus seats, which normally hard and uncomfortable, suddenly felt like Sleeping Beauty’s own bed.
James yawned in response, suddenly feeling bone-weary himself, “Same here, can’t recall being this tired earlier though?” When he got no response, he looked over and saw Michelle sound asleep, face tucked into her arm. He looked on his other side, seeing the rest of the girls either already asleep, or falling asleep, blinking their eyes blearily.
James couldn’t help but let his own eyelids droop. Somewhere, deep within him, was telling him to stay awake. But the exhaustion set into his bones, and he surrendered himself to the inviting darkness.
The five of them awoke hours later, at least that’s what it felt like to them. They all blinked slowly, trying to come back to full consciousness. Clare looked out at the windows, squinting her eyes at the broad daylight. She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, the bus jolted forward, nearly sending them tumbling through the aisle, as it came to a stop.
“This is the last stop, Derry! Are ye gettin’ off or not!” The bus driver barked, as the teens hurriedly got off the bus, stumbling over themselves in their various stages of drowsiness. They all stood at the bus stop, and stood silently for a minute, watching the bus disappear into the distance.
“Are we back in Derry?” Clare broke the silence,
“Of course we are, didn’t ye hear the bus driver?” Erin scoffed.
“I don’t understand,” Claire said, “Shouldn’t it be dark by now? We didn’t leave that early for the concert…”
“...And we were asleep for hours,” James said, confusion and what might’ve been a tinge of dread settled into him.
“Maybe we weren’t asleep for that long?”
Clare shook her head, “We’d gotten out from the concert in the early evening, and in case ye haven’t noticed, it’s feckin early evening!”
“Right! Calm yerself Clare I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Michelle said.
“Aye? Like what exactly?” Erin replied, beginning to delve into a cack attack of her own, “What if we didn’t hear the bus driver right and we’re stranded in the middle of feckin nowhere!”
“We’re not stranded in the middle of feckin’ nowhere, just relax yer damn cacks!”
“Girls…”
“What is it, James?” Michelle yelled. James shrunk back for a bit before he turned his attention back to what he was looking at. The girls followed his gaze, and all of them let out a sigh as they saw the familiar Free Derry sign.
“I told ye, let’s feckin go already, we can break into me Ma’s cupboard for the night,” Michelle said with a wink, walking off and ignoring Clare’s indignant spluttering behind her.
“Michelle,” James began slowly, “Remember Auntie Deidre got rid of all the alcohol in the house?” His cousin stopped dead in her tracks.
“For fecks sake!”
“So much for breaking into the wee cupboard…”
“It’s grand! We’ll just go buy some!”
“We’re underage, Michelle,” James sighed, losing his patience with her.
“Worry not, Jamesie!” Michelle said, before pulling out a card from her purse and flashing it in front of them.
“Should’ve known you’d have a fake ID…” His words fell on deaf ears as his cousin shot out into the night, her conviction having returned in full fledge.
James looked through the rows of sweets, his sweet tooth having decided to make an appearance for the night. Michelle was in some other aisle, picking out which drinks she wanted. Clare had joined him in the sweets aisle, having had enough of Michelle’s boisterous nature for one night.
“I can’t believe they’re out of those chocolates…” James sighed, as Clare patted him on the back in sympathy. He was about to dip his hands into another box, before a voice rang out beside him.
“James! There ye are, what’s been takin ye so long? What, are ye picking up a few drinks? Where’s the food?” Michelle said with a grin, before looking over at the blonde next to him, “Clare what are ye doing here? Didn’t ye say ye had some project to be workin’ on?” James and Clare stared at her, downright confused. Had she already pickpocketed a bottle and broken into it?
“Michelle, are you feeling alright?” James asked. In response, Michelle’s eyes widened, her mouth opened agape in shock. She took a few tentative steps back, before her prickly demeanour returned, along with a finger pointed at her cousin.
“James! Why the absolute feck are ye talkin’ like yer English?” Michelle exclaimed.
“I’m sorry, what,” James exclaimed, “I’ve always been English?”
“No the feck ye haven’t!” Michelle yelled, “What kind of feckin’ joke is this?” She turned to Clare, her wild eyes fixated on her. “Is this something to do with yer history project, Clare?”
“Michelle, what is going on with you? I haven’t got a history project!” Clare could only squeal back.
“Michelle…”
“Enough of that! Speak normally ye eejit!”
“I am!”
“Like hell ye are!”
“What the feck’s goin’ on here!”
All three of them turned to see another Michelle at the end of the aisle, a bottle of Pernod in her hand. Orla and Erin were behind her, their own faces mirrored the shock of the others down the other end of the aisle.
“What the actual FUCK?” James exclaimed, slapping a hand over his mouth at the uncharacteristic outburst. The other, angrier Michelle, whipped her head around to look at him.
“I don’t know what the feck is going on but ye better feckin explain it James!”
“Who the feck are you, why do ye look like me?” Michelle at the end of aisle exclaimed, marching towards her doppleganger.
“I could say the same for ye!”
“Are ye some sort of stalker, eh? Is that what this is?” Michelle flared her nostrils.
“Michelle, please,” James said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“James, what the bloody hell!” Angrier Michelle exclaimed, “Who the feck is this?”
“Can we all just feckin calm down!” Erin exclaimed, “Before we come to blows, let’s just take a minute and talk about this”. Her rational words were betrayed by her own shaky voice.
“What I wanna know, is why there’s another me, and why the hell Jame’s is talkin’ in an English accent!”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” Erin whipped her head to look at this other Michelle.
“Because he’s not feckin’ English?”
“Yes, he is?” Erin yelled, “How could he not be?”
“He’s never even been to England, Erin!” Angrier Michelle yelled back, “Or does that fact completely go over yer head!”
“He was raised there, Michelle!” Erin continued, “Or, I don’t know if I should even call you Michelle,” She said, as her own Michelle looked at her with an eyebrow raised.
“Since when was James raised over in feckin England? He’s always lived here!” Angrier Michelle kept yelling louder. She suddenly stopped, turning to look at her (?) cousin. “Unless…unless ye aren’t James…ye could all be feckin stalkers!”
“I know what’s happened here…” Orla suddenly remarked, prompting everyone to turn and look at her.
“What?”
“Some sort of dimension hopping, we seemed to have travelled to a different dimension, a different reality, in where things are similar, but not the same,” Orla wisely said, popping her lolly back into her mouth. Everyone gaped at her, but couldn’t deny the plausibility. What other explanation could there be for this?
“Get the feck out! Yer all feckin noisy!” Dennis yelled at them, interrupting their discovery. Despite wanting to come to blows with each other, Dennis was much scarier and served as a common foe as the gaggle of teens stumbled out of the shop.
Outside, the Angrier Michelle seemed to have calmed down a bit, though her counterpart seemed to be only starting in her anger.
“Alright, so dimension-hopping, aye?” Michelle said, looking at Orla, who nodded.
“Wait…” Clare started, “The bus! We fell asleep on the bus and time didn’t go forward!”
Orla nodded again, “Instead we travelled to a different reality that is happening at the same time as ours”. She turned to the Not-so-Angry-now Michelle. “This here is our James, from our world, I suppose ye have a James of yer own?”
“Aye, I do, I’d sent him out to get food from the chippy,” Michelle said, “I came down here to get some sweets and when I saw this eejit,” she gestured to James, “I thought he was me own James, came down to get some drinks, like”.
“Right, okay,” Orla nodded, as her friends gaped behind her at her oddly rational demeanour, “So, about that outburst at his wee accent then…?”
“Is yer James English?” She interrupted.
“Aye, he is!” Orla confirmed.
“How? I don’t understand?” Michelle said.
“Ye see,” Erin continued for her cousin, “Our James’ Ma decided to have a wee abortion when she got ‘xpectin’ with him,” she gestured at her friend, “So she went to England, but changed her mind about it and instead had him and raised him there”. The other Michelle soaked in this information, but the shocked look never left her face.
“So Kathy actually wanted him this time?”
“Sort of?” Erin said, “She did raise him there until he was sixteen, then she came here to Derry and more or less…”
“Abandoned him,” Regular Michelle finished, “Left him here with us and went back to her fancy life in London”.
“So she’s always been a self-serving, narcissistic bitch no matter what reality, eh?” The other Michelle scoffed.
“What about yer James?”
“Our James,” The other Michelle began, “His Ma, that slapper bitch Kathy, left him here when he was a wain, Ma and Da adopted him and he’s always lived here”. The girls' mouths fell open at this. A reality where James had always lived in Derry? “We haven’t heard from her since, for all we know she could be dead in a feckin’ ditch, good riddance…” James scowled at the insult to his mother.
“Feck, I could really use a drink right now,” Michelle groaned.
The other Michelle shrugged, “Come back to my house, or I guess it’s our house?” She scrunched up her face, “I’m not just letting ye run wild here if ye aren’t supposed to be in this world, and I’ve got drinks back at my place”. Michelle whooped in response to this, as the others shrugged and tentatively followed, not sure what else they could do at that point.
The girls all sat around this other Michelle’s bedroom, a tense air of awkwardness filled the air. The silence was occasionally pierced by Michelle taking a swig from her bottle. James was huddled in a corner, arms around his knees. He couldn’t believe everything he’d heard tonight, and was having trouble soaking it all in.
“Right, so what do we exactly do about all this?” Dimension Michelle said, “Ye can’t exactly stay here now can ye?”
“Of course not,” Erin scoffed, “Our mammies would kill us, different reality or not”.
“How exactly do we get back, then?” Clare asked, “We don’t even know how we got here!”
“Ye said you’d fallen asleep on the bus?” They all nodded, “Why not just do that again?”
“But we run the risk of just hopping into another dimension, we need to figure out how to get back to ours,” Orla said, deep in thought.
They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening, and the sound of plastic bags rustling.
“James? Is that ye?” Dimension Michelle yelled out. The others held their breaths. It hadn’t seemed real before, but now…
“Aye! Ye wouldn’t believe the rush at Fionnula’s,” An Irish-accented James called back, “Nearly got feckin’ trampled!”
The girls and English James all looked at each other in disbelief at the voice. It was James’ voice surely, that much couldn’t be denied. But, the Irish accent that stood out so differently from the London inflinction they’d (Not that they’d say it out loud) become used to.
Sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs mirrored their own heartbeats as they got ready to meet this new stranger. A tall figure came into view, a bag of Fionnula’s food gripped in his hand. He met their eyes as soon as they saw him. He at first waved when he saw Orla, Erin and Clare, but as his eyes wandered over to James and Michelle, his mouth fell open in shock.
“Now, what in the feck?” He exclaimed, nearly dropping the bag of fish and chips. The girls tentatively waved at him, not knowing what else to do.
“Yer finally back, I’m feckin’ starving!” Dimension Michelle said, beckoning over for one of the chip boxes.
“Michelle, what is going on here? Who the hell are they?” Dimension James said, pointing at the group huddled on the floor. “Who is that, why does he look like me?”
“They’re from another dimension apparently, a reality that’s similar to ours but not the same,” Michelle explained, nonchalantly, “Somehow, they ended up here, and we’re trying to figure out how to get ‘em back.”
Dimension James looked back and forth between his cousin and the group, the furrow in his brows growing deeper each second, before he sighed, dropping his shoulders.
“Can I get a feckin’ drink first? I can’t do this shit sober,” He said. Dimension Michelle grabbed one of the bottles, tossing it to him. He tossed back the bag of fish and chips, which Dimension Michelle was more than happy to break into.
Through the entire exchange, the group all stared at this similar, yet wildly different James. By all accounts, he looked the same as their James did. The same unruly mop of curly hair, the same piercing green eyes, and the same towering lithe structure. Yet, the one thing that stood out so starkly to the girls, was the way this James seemed to ooze with confidence. At least, compared to theirs. Instead of the hunched over, nervous demeanor that’d become synonymous with James’ character, they saw a head held high, and a casual lean on the doorframe.
“Alright then?” The now Irish James spoke to his other self, opening the bottle with a small pshh.
“Uh y-yeah, I’d suppose so,” James spoke, his English accent seemed thicker than usual.
Other James quickly spit his drink back into the bottle, his Michelle grunted in disgust at the action. He stared into the distance for a few seconds, though it felt like an eternity.
“Michelle…” He started
“Aye?”
“Why the feck is he English?” He said, with a tone of animosity that only made the girls gape further. This was just fecking weird now.
“Long feckin’ story, Jamesie,” Michelle shrugged through a mouthful of chips.