Chapter Four - Not in Kansas Anymore

The next day was just as brutal. I was "popular". Seth kept flirting with me. Heather and Tenille and Monet were suddenly my friends. Marissa was shallow and snobby and materialistic and vain. And my birthday had gone terribly. I had gone to Heather's last night and endured the pain of having the exchange stupid gifts (Victoria's Secret makeup sets, Dolce & Gabbana surpasses, a gift card of $50 to Hollister, etc). I had to quickly grab some new jeans from my closet that still had the tag (from Abercrombie & Fitch) for Heather.

Anyway, yesterday was brutal and the next day was brutal too.

And so was the next day. And the next day. And the next and the next and next and next. It never ended. I was going crazy. After a whole week and a half of my new "life", I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to get my regular life back.

Obviously Marissa couldn't help. Neither could mom. Or Billy. And I went over to the senior highrise yesterday but apparently a Rita Keyes didn't even reside there. I asked Lana where Grams was and she said she had moved to a different senior high-rise where visitors weren't allowed. I wondered why. There had to be a reason.

Hudson! I hadn't visited Hudson yet! If there was anyone who would understand and help me, it would be Hudson.

I went over to his house on a Saturday evening. He was sitting there, on his porch, reading the news.

"Hudson!" I called gleefully. There he was! Hudson! With his yellow snakeskin boots and his bushy eyebrows and newspaper! And the porch!

He looked up. When he saw me he raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Why, hello there."

"Hudson, I am so glad you're here! I need your help!" I almost break down right there. I can stand this new life. I can't stand it.

"You are? Sorry, do I know you?" he seemed very, very amused.

I nodded. "Yeah, of course Hudson, I—" I stopped dead in the middle of my sentence. He didn't know.

He didn't know me.

In this new reality, he didn't know me.

"No..." I corrected myself. "But someone told me you were really, really smart and...wise. So can you help me? I'm Sammy. Sammy Keyes."

He smiled big. "Of course I can help you, Sammy. Who exactly told you I was wise?"

I blinked. Oh god. "They would rather I don't say." I said, because I knew Hudson respected people's privacy.

He nodded. I knew it. I knew him too well.

"Actually," I took a deep breath, "I do know you. You and I have been friends for a long time."

He slowly placed his newspaper on the table. "Oh?"

"Yeah. We have. And you even took my best friend's brother Mikey here last summer as a Boot Camp. And I—"

Suddenly he is serious. "Look. If you think I am an old man with Alzheimer's and this is your idea of a practical joke, I am sorry to inform you that I—"

"No!" I felt a pang in my heart. I started crying. "I'm not playing a joke on you. Really. I can explain everything. Just let me, okay? Please?"

So he let me explain. I told him everything. How we were friends, my living situation, how I wished my mom never moved to L.A, how my life suddenly changed and flipped up.

After about half an hour of explaining this, he was silent.

After a long pause of silence, he said, "Hmm."

"Yeah?"

"I believe you."

"You do?" this was a start!

He nodded. "You need to tell me if you were in any accidents or medication before this 'second reality' this happened to you."

I thought about it. "No, I was standing and I was really mad and yelling that my dad was also Danny Urbanski's dad and I didn't want to move in with him."

He nodded. "And you blacked out?"

I nodded. "I blacked out and woke up to this."

He nodded again. "And apparently your best friend Marissa is different?"

I nodded.

"And you're boyfriend Casey has a different girlfriend?"

I nodded.

He tapped his fingers on the table. "Have you ever considered that by wishing your mother had stayed here in Santa Martina and not moved to L.A, it actually happened?"

I nodded sullenly. "I'm afraid I won't be able to change it back."

"Oh, I think you will."

"I will?"

He nodded. "I have a feeling that you are in a state that is teaching you how different and wrong your life would be if your mother had never moved. That her moving is actually what shaped your life. Changing one small thing in history like where you mother lives can change a lot of things after it. It's called the butterfly effect."

"Butterfly effect?"

He nodded. "Have you ever seen the movie A Sound of Thunder? Or read the novel of it by Ray Bradbury?"

I shook my head.

"A man goes back in time to do only research and he is told not to touch anything that could change history. But he finds a butterfly and takes it back to the future with him because he thinks it won't cause any harm, and when he goes back to contemporary time he sees that by taking one little butterfly, the rest of the world can be very much affected. It caused lots of chaos."

"How? What happened?"

He gave me a secretive smile. "You'll have to watch the movie yourself to find out."

"How does that help me at all?"

He blinked. "I don't really know how you'll be able to go back to your real life with only the concept of the butterfly affect. And everything it too far deep then to just place the butterfly back."

"Place what butterfly?"

"Theoretically, Sammy. By 'placing the butterfly back' I mean sending your mother back to L.A, which is the initial thing that you have changed in history. It was the trigger to all the chaos that you tell me is going on in your life."

"Why can't I send my mother to L.A now? Why won't it give me back my life?"

"Because everyone is still different." he thought another minute then said, "I'm not sure about everything I'm telling you, because I have never heard of a case like this. But I'm guessing that since everyone is different because of one small thing your mother did, you will have to change them all back to get back to reality. If you just send your mother to L.A, it won't really make much of a difference since everything is already different and affected."

"Oh."

"Let's break your life apart." he said. "How everything has changed. Start with your best friend."

"Marissa?" I thought. "She and I became friends in the third grade, in reality. And she never really was obsessed with her money. In fact, she kind of hated being so rich. People used her. But in this world, she's shallow and materialistic and friends with all the people she'd regularly hate."

"Why do you think this is?"

I thought about it. "Because maybe since my mother never left, Heather met Marissa first somehow. Maybe Marissa was too young to realize Heather was using her for her money, and since I wasn't there to tell Marissa otherwise, Marissa was veered into believing that Heather was actually her legit friend."

He smiled another secret smile. "And now tell me about your boyfriend."

I felt my eyes get a little teary but pushed the tears back. "I... I guess since in this new reality, I'm friends with Heather and her groupie and so I never met Dot. And so I never went to Dot's house that day last year. And I never bumped into Casey and his friend Jake on the sidewalk and never saw my stolen board and since I never saw it, I never wanted it back. And so even if I went to that New Year's party or not, I never officially met Casey because he had no reason to talk to me. Doesn't he hate Heather? And I had no skateboard issue. That's what I'm assuming."

He smiled that smile again. "What I think you should do, Sammy, is try to make Marissa into realizing her materialistic ways isn't really like her. And you should also go to Casey and try to get him to like you for you again."

"Why should he like me?" I almost broke down. "In my real life, he told me he loved me. On the one year anniversary of the day we met."

"Oh, did he?"

I nodded with my head down because I was blushing. And because I felt guilty. Because when Casey had said "I love you" to me, I had been too shy/nervous to say it back to him. Even though now I wished I did, because I might never be with him again.

What if I couldn't accomplish my tasks?

What if I was stuck in this false reality forever?