“Moooooom,” Sage groans and grabs me by the elbow. “C’mon, Elle, let’s watch that last episode and get you fitted. We don’t exactly have time to waste.”

She’s right. The contest is tomorrow. In less than twelve hours we’ll be on a bus bound for Atlanta, costume in tow.

But I still drag my heels. It’s because we’re about to watch the episode I can’t stand. It’s because I’m about to relive my nightmare: Princess Amara falling into the Black Nebula again and again, in an endless time paradox. That’s why episode 54 doesn’t exist to me. Because it’s the sticks of bad luck. It’s the worst send-off to a character. The worst goodbye. Because Carmindor never gets to say it. And I know better than anyone how that feels.

“You know,” I say, as we descend to the basement, “I can just explain it to you. We don’t have to actually watch it.”

“No, I want to see it! I slogged through all the rest!”

“Slogged?”

“Slogged enthusiastically,” she corrects.

I hesitate. “But this one’s…”

“The last one, so yeah yeah it’s sentimental, blah blah blah.” Sage holds out my jacket and trousers. “Whatever. Come stand here. We can watch it while I make the final adjustments.”

Hesitantly, I press PLAY. The episode cues up as I wiggle into the trousers, no longer embarrassed for Sage seeing me in my three-year-old underwear with cartoon rabbits on it—we’re way past that. Pants on, I climb up onto the step stool as she hands me the jacket, and gingerly, I slip it on.

The opening credits light up the TV—for the last time, the last episode, the last new experience—but it differs from the other intros. Instead of showing random scenes, it shows the best scenes. The climactic ones. Dad said that when it first aired, he knew it would be the last episode because of the opening credits.

“It looked final,” he told me. “You could tell—it was a send-off.”

Dad’s send-off was quieter. Only a handful of people gathered around a small hole in the cemetery. Black umbrellas. Rain. Catherine sobbing into her father’s shoulder. The twins crying into each other.

I stood alone. Like an extra in one of those bad nineties punk music videos.

Sage thinks I hate Princess Amara on the principle that she’s a lying double-crosser, but I hate her because I can relate to her. I’m the one tossed into the Black Nebula. I’m the one lost, in a life, a world, a universe that is no longer mine.

The phone rings upstairs, and for a terrible moment I think it’s Catherine, having sniffed out my lies, ready to ground me for good. But then Sage’s mom calls down, “Sagey, it’s your father!”

Sage makes a face and goes to the bottom of the stairwell. “Tell him I’ll call him later!”

“He’ll be working with a client!”

“Tell him I’m busy!”

“Sagey, pleeeease!”

She rolls her eyes and glances back at me. “Sorry, it’s my dad-person. He calls, like, once every thirty years and…oh Jesus, you can’t even talk to your father anymore and here I am complaining—”

I put on a tight-lipped smile. “I’ll wait. Not like I’m going anywhere.”

“Okay. Don’t move!” She climbs the stairs two at a time, her clunky boots thundering against the wooden steps. When she’s gone, I step off the podium and pat my clothes for my phone in a back pocket.

7:38 PM

—I have this theory, ah’blen

Ah’blen—the masculine version of “my heart.” Car responds as soon as I send it, so quick it surprises me. Like he was waiting, or about to text me, or…just on his phone. Probably just on his phone.

Carmindor 7:38 PM

—Theory?

7:39 PM

—Don’t laugh. I’ve had it for a while.

—I have a theory that there’s another universe beside ours.

Carmindor 7:39 PM

—Like those fan-theories on where the Black Nebula goes?

Above me, Sage shakes the dust off the rafters as she stomps from one side of the room to the other. It must be the living room. She’s arguing with her dad, the kind of argument padded with years and years of well-worn “I love you”s squeezed between the syllables.

Her voice carries down, muffled, through the air vents as I type out a text.

7:40 PM

—Yeah, where everything we thought was impossible happens and then there’s a world where everything impossible doesn’t.

Carmindor 7:40 PM

—So which universe are we in?

7:40 PM

—The first.

Maybe in that other universe, I’m having those same arguments with Dad. Maybe we’re arguing about where I’ll go to college or what to eat for dinner or why Darien Freeman is the worst Carmindor known to humankind. But we’ll never have those arguments.

We’ll never argue again.

Carmindor 7:41 PM

—Oh good, I was scared for a minute there, ah’blena.

—I’m glad we’re in the impossible world.

7:42 PM

—Why?

Carmindor 7:42 PM

—Because otherwise I never would’ve found you.

I hold the phone close to my chest, closing my eyes.

Oh but isn’t that the problem? Which would I choose, if I had to choose between my father and Car? Which universe could I be happy in?

The opening credits fade into the first scene. I know it too well. Amara and Carmindor stand across from each other on the bridge. His face is the picture of heartbreak as he stares at the phaser in his lover’s hand.

“You were warned about me, ah’blen,” Princess Amara will reply to his shocked face, but just as her mouth opens, Sage returns from her phone conversation, grabs the remote, and turns off the TV.

I blink, suddenly thrown out of the moment. “What was that for?”

“Lift your arms,” she says, so I do. She pinches and tugs at the fabric, seemingly satisfied. “Good, good. I think we’re good.”

“Good?” I ask, dumbfounded. I begin to turn toward the mirror. “Why’d you pause it? Are we done?”

“No no! Not yet! No looking!” She darts off to her workbench, which is covered with a white sheet. When she flips it, a gasp escapes my throat.

The crown. She found a crown for me.

Gingerly, like it’s made of real gold, she picks it up and brings it over.

“I couldn’t help myself,” she says. “It’s my flaw. I’m a completionist. The outfit wouldn’t have looked right without it.” When I don’t move, her smile begins to falter. “What, did I do something wrong? Is it the wrong crown?”

“No,” I whisper, taking the crown. “It’s perfect.”

She laughs awkwardly. “Seriously, no need to get all mushy. It was nothing.”

To her it might be nothing, but to me it means the world—the universe. I want to say that, I want to thank her over and over, but my mouth isn’t working the way it’s supposed to because I’m trying not to cry. And I’m trying not to laugh. And I’m trying to find the right words to describe the light slowly filling me up.

I can never repay her. Never in a hundred thousand light-years.

She squirms. “Okay, okay, now quit hanging on me and put it on! I didn’t slave over it just to have you look dopey-eyed at it!”

I pull away, laughing and crying and rubbing my eyes with the back of my hand as she places the crown on my head.

A perfect fit.

She grabs my hand and gently turns me to the mirror. “Your royal Federation Prince Carmindor, esteemed captain of the good ship Prospero. It is an honor!”

Then she flourishes a Federation bow, promise-sworn salute and all. Her smile is brighter than any star in the sky. She looks proud, and when I finally shift my gaze to me, someone else stares back. A girl with dyed-red hair, dark roots showing, and thick black glasses, the highest graduate at Starfield, the heir to the throne of stars, the general’s daughter. Carmindor. I am Carmindor, a crown of stars over my brow.

But something still feels off.

Sage puts her hands on her hips, appraising me in the mirror. “Damn, I’m good.”

“Damn,” I echo. What’s wrong with me? This is beautiful—this is exactly what I wanted. I am Carmindor.

But how come I don’t feel like I am? I brush the feeling away. It’s just shock, that’s all. The shock of seeing myself so different.

Sage walks around me, nodding. “Not bad for a wannabe fashion designer.”

“You are a fashion designer.”

We grin at each other, wide and unabashed, and for a moment I think she’s about to say something, but then she averts her gaze. “We even got done early. I think we can get you home by nine?”

My heart sinks. “Oh. Yeah.”

“What’s wrong? You just went from exuberant to depressed in the time it takes for Boromir to die in the first movie.”

“Spoiler!”

“Oh you’ve seen it. Aren’t you excited?”

“I am. It’s not that.” I take off the crown. So much detail went into it. All of the small ridges, the handmade stars.

“Well? I’m not a mind-reader,” Sage adds impatiently.