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Chapter 6: Dumpy Little Shitshack
What a shithole, Angie thought, reaching for the door to her new home. Her mom’s place was even more of a dump over here. Everything else had been backwards, so why didn’t her mom have a downtown penthouse apartment here, like her dad over there. She found the door locked as she tried the knob. Fucking great. The key was useless, of course. Her mom kept a spare in a coded lockbox around the back, so chances were… yes, there was the box. She punched in the combination, the only reason she actually remembered her mother’s birthday, and nothing happened.
Damn it!
She rekeyed the combination in reverse. Backwards? Nothing. She tried her own, forward, and then reverse. Click. She grinned. Mom actually liked her over here, she guessed. She lifted the key from the box and let herself inside. Yeah, it was a dump, as expected. Back home, her dad left her mom with basically nothing, since he could afford the kind of lawyers she could only dream of. Over here, it looked like things had turned out the same way. The place was a study in spartan decoration, practically empty but for the basic necessities. There were a lot of photos of her on the wall, though, which she found interesting.
For the first time, she really got a look at her pansy twin in her thick glasses and dyke-bun. Chess club? Book club? Debate team? Fucking 1st place science fair? She wasn’t just a nerd. She was the queen of the nerds. Thank god her graduation was basically a formality at this point. She’d just need to find a way to cheat her finals, and it would be all good. At least she was a super-brain over here, so no one would suspect her of cheating.
Moving past the wall of photos, she poked around the rest of the place, familiarizing herself with each room. It wasn’t much. The house itself she knew well enough, just like her own mom’s. She stopped and looked at the pile of mail, reading the name. Dale Eller. Aw, shit. This was her dad's place, and he was a broke fuck. That explained why she didn’t have a car, and rode the fucking twinkie to school. If dad was broke, though, did that mean that mom was a rich bitch? She’d always known how to work her sweet mother to get her way. Her dad, though, was kind of a cunt. If she was going to have to spend her life here like one of the poor kids, maybe this wasn’t such a sweet deal after all. But then, her dad was threatening to cut her off after high school anyway, so whichever world she was in, she was going to be broke. At least over here she had opportunities, thanks to her nerd-self’s hard work.
In her own room, she found more nerd shit, and when she checked the closet she actually felt like she might vomit.
She clenched the red stone in her fist in disgust and said, “What the fuck do you wear?”
There was a brief moment where she thought that she could actually feel the other her, like sharing the same space. She paused, and held the stone up to the light. It was dark, like someone had pulled a shade over it. It still caught the light, but not in the same way it had. Odd. She returned it to her neck and started to pull the clothes out of the closet and lay them on the bed. If she accomplished nothing else today, she was not going to wear this dumpy shit. She couldn’t seduce a fucking priest in these things.
Once her horrendous wardrobe was laid out in front of her, she noted a small stack of mail on the pillow. She picked up the mail and went through it. Two of the letters were scholarship offers from colleges. Not a bad start. The third was a package addressed from her mother. That provided a valuable clue. She now knew where her mom lived. The contents of the package were more valuable, still. Inside, she found a white box with the logo of an apple on it, and a picture of a phone. What the fuck is an Apple? She wondered, set it aside, and opened the accompanying card.
“Angela, Happy graduation. Call me some time, if you feel like it. -Mom.”
The envelope contained $1,000 in cash. That answered another question. Her mom had, at least, some means. This was great! Now, she had a tool to learn about this upside down world, as well as some cash to burn on some new clothes. While she wouldn’t be doing her shopping at K-Mart, where they sold the good designer stuff, anything would be better than the gnarly rags that were spread out on the bed.
She took one of the bills and examined it. The face of the president on it was familiar. Everyone knew Old Benjamin. The denomination was different, though. Shit, Ben would only land you a buck where she was from. Over here, he was the big man. She took the old bills from her wallet, now useless, and stuffed them into the bottom of her purse. Next, she unwrapped the phone and booted it up.
“iPhone.” she mused, as the little logo lit up the screen. It looked just like her WozPad, which was also useless over here, she’d quickly learned. After completing the