The Mandela Effect

Chapter Two: I Think.

Charlie didn't seem to notice. Then again, he's six. I don't think he's old enough to try and wonder about the things I'm thinking now.

Mom surely doesn't realize what's happened. She must be completely oblivious, right? The way she spelled out her boss' name made me question if she has thought about anything being just a little bit off.

On the car ride to the church, I was completely silent while Charlie sang along to the radio and Mom talked to Chloe.

Was I wrong? Maybe everything was normal, and I was just a bad speller.

I decided to test out my suspicion a couple more times.

"Charlie, what's your favorite color?"

"Green!"

"Spell it?"

"G-R-E-E-N."

Ok, good. Nothing wrong there.

"What's the color of my dress?"

"Rose. Oh, and also shar-treuse. We leaned that in school."

I smiled at him. Not only was he right, he was also adorable.

"Her dress isn't chartreuse, honey," my mom stated detatchedly.

"Chartreuse isn't pink. Ari's dress is rose."

"But-" I stuttered. Yeah, something was wrong. Probably nothing to freak out over, but something had... shifted.

Before I had a chance to finish my sentence, we pulled up to the church. Charlie and I hopped out of the van and waved to my mom. She was on the phone again, and didn't care.

I took a break from my scientific brain for a moment to remember when my mom did care about her family. It seemed like forever ago, but it was only four years.

I raced around the backyard, while a chubby toddler-sized Charlie followed on his fat legs. My dad was chasing us around with a huge smile on his face.

"Come on Charlie, the Daddy Monster is gonna get us!"

My mom sat on the porch, sipping her coffee and watching in a contented silence.

"I got you, ya little monkey!" My dad rejoiced, snatching up Charlie and tickling his stomach. He raced after me with Charlie clinging to his back. When I was finally defeated, we tried to escape from my dad's tickle fight.

Once we got free, we ran to the treehouse and hid until the Daddy Monster had gone to sit on the porch.

My mom sighed in playful exasperation.

"I don't know how you keep up with them, Nick."

He smiled softly and kissed her cheek.

"I just love those kids."

Three months later, he was diagnosed with cancer. Two months after that, he died. I was eleven, so I remember him well. Charlie was only two.

I spent my twelfth birthday crying in my room, missing my dad.

I shook my head to clear the memory before I started crying. My mom had handled the death in a way I never thought she would. She threw herself into work, picking up so many extra shifts she was almost never home.

I was the one who mostly took care of Charlie during those months. I was the one that had to explain to him why Daddy wouldn't come back, and why Mommy was never around.

When he answered the door for salesmen and girl scouts and they asked to see his mother, he brought me to the door. Some salesmen gave me funny looks and pitying smiles before they politely excused themselves. Others made assumptions and tried to sell me baby products and child-raising books.

The former made me feel embarrassed in their presence, the latter made me angry and disgusted.

What kind of person did they think I was?

Luckily, after a few months, my mom started appearing more in our daily lives. She was still working many more shifts than necessary, but she drove us to school and began to talk to us again.

She has stayed that way ever since, avoiding us unless absolutely necessary. She has become more of a teacher than a mom to us, reprimanding and criticizing when we did something wrong.

We sat down in our favorite pew, one that contained our church friends. Charlie selected a donation envelope and began to draw on it with his best friend Parker. I just made small talk with Amelia, my mother's friend's daughter. The service went as planned, which is good considering the morning I'd just had.

Church let out, and Amelia and I wondered over to the graveyard. She left me soon after, knowing that I needed to be alone (and she saw her boyfriend).

I sat on a gravestone, tracing my hand over the inscription:

"In loving memory of Nick Lee"

A small tear slipped from my eye and weaved a path down my cheek. I was suddenly startled when I heard someone move nearby. Wiping the tear off my cheek, I checked my makeup in the small mirror I kept in my purse. I saw something in the reflection.

A girl stood a few feet away from me, wearing a haunted look and a yellow-green dress. She dashed away before I could say anything, but it didn't matter.

She looked exactly like me.

She was me.