Chapter 3

Once she got over the initial shock, Catherine had to admit that things weren’t so bad. It wasn’t quite how she wanted it, but she had a boyfriend who thought she was gorgeous, and all the girls she used to be jealous of seemed to have settled to the bottom rungs of the social ladder. Maybe she could learn to live with this, at least for a little while.

She went through the rest of the day cataloging the many subtle and not-so-subtle differences in this new world. She had to look up her classes on the school website, since they were completely different from what she remembered. Her course load as a Communications major seemed fairly trivial to her, so that left her plenty of time for other things but she was disappointed that her boyfriend Chad was going to have another intense day of practice which meant she wouldn’t be able to hang out with him after her classes wrapped up. Today was Thursday, so she could barely wait for the weekend when they could spend some quality time together.

She went to sleep Thursday eager to see more of this new reality.

Catherine finally woke up Friday after about half an hour of hitting the snooze button. She sat down at the vanity, and realized she had left her makeup on overnight and now it looked terrible. That was odd, usually she remembered to take it off as part of her nightly routine.

Nightly routine? Catherine probed her memories and realized that she did have fuzzy memories of a nightly routine where she always removed her makeup. That couldn’t be right. She looked at the various products on her vanity, and realized with horror that she knew what every bottle and container was for. That was eyeliner, this was mascara, that was foundation...

Yesterday, if Sai hadn’t done her makeup for her, she would have been at a loss for what to do. Today, it seemed she had gained some of the knowledge her counterpart in this reality had had. Maybe that was nothing to worry about? She needed some sort of test to see if she was just gaining memories, or if she was loosing memories as well. Looking around her room, her eyes eventually fell on her wall of posters.

Okay, simple test. Who was Andrea Ablasser? She was ... a German supermodel. Catherine’s heart sunk. No, that wasn’t right. She strained to recall.

Finally, she remembered. She was a scientist of ... biology? No, immunology. Catherine was now sure it was immunology, but she was worried about how difficult it had been for her to arrive at that answer. She wasn’t just getting new memories, she was losing her old ones.

Catherine tried to remain calm in the face of this new information. She was most concerned about any deterioration in her knowledge of physics. She got out her phone and googled ‘Sample physics problems.’ After finding a set of problems that was supposed to be particularly difficult, she picked one at random and tried to work through it.

Even though she had been doing problems like this just last week to keep her skills sharp, it felt like she was really rusty. She had to look up a few equations that she used to have memorized, and strained to recall conceptual notions that she previously knew like the back of her hand. Overall, it was more difficult than she expected, but she did manage to work through the problem and get the correct answer.

Okay, she could work with this. Whatever was happening to her memories seemed to be happening slowly, and her course load was pretty light so she could just spend some time each day reviewing physics. As much as she had started to accept the other aspects of this new reality, she still valued her mind above most things. She made a mental note to review physics after her classes finished today, and to look into dropping one of her electives this semester in order to take a physics class.

Catherine met Sai and Jeremy for breakfast. Unfortunately, Chad had a morning class Monday-Wednesday-Friday, so he wasn’t able to meet them. Catherine was starting to get annoyed with her situation. The least the magic necklace could have done was give her a boyfriend she could actually spend time with. Saturday couldn’t come fast enough.

After finishing breakfast, Catherine walked into the class she was pretty sure she was going to drop in favor of physics. History of Western Fashion. When she arrived to the classroom, she was surprised to see one of her old professors at the front of the room. How had she not noticed? She checked the new schedule she had printed out yesterday, and saw that it said Prof. Andrea Baker, Dept. of Fashion and Apparel Studies. It should have been Dr. Andrea Calkins, Dept. of Physics.

Dr. Calkins had been one of Catherine’s favorite professors. Although she was one of the toughest professors in terms of workload and grading, she was passionate about what she taught and had helped Catherine fall in love with physics all over again. She did have a few idiosyncracies, like her tendency to go on feminist rants once or twice a semester (usually when her latest relationship ended in heartbreak), but overall Catherine appreciated the tough, no nonsense attitude she had and had always viewed her as a mentor and a role model.

“Oh no, what did that necklace do to you?” Catherine half whispered.

Physically Prof. Andrea Baker didn’t look too different from the homely Dr. Andrea Calkins, but her clothes were a different story. She was wearing a white floral-print dress under a black crepe vest, and she had on six-inch heels that made her strike a taller silhouette behind the lectern. Her black hair was several inches longer than Catherine had ever seen it, and it had brown balayage highlights. The old Andrea wouldn’t have known or cared what half of that fashion jargon meant, since she had long ago decided to take after Einstein and Steve Jobs and buy multiple copies of the same collared shirt and dress pants and wear the same outfit every day.

However this wasn’t the change Catherine found the most striking. She had been in this new world for more than a day, and had already started to get used to everyone having different wardrobes (though thinking on it, that might have been another side effect of her memories changing.) No, what stuck out to Catherine was the gaudy diamond ring the professor wore on her finger.

Catherine had long privately believed that Dr. Calkins was probably going to end up a spinster once she finally admitted that no man would ever be good enough for her exacting standards. She never thought she would see the day when Dr. Calkins had another man’s last name, and a wedding ring to go along with it.

Catherine sat down towards the front of the class and braced for the disappointment of seeing what her hero had become.

Prof. Baker gave a big, fake smile. “Hello, class. Welcome to the first day of History of Western Fashion. Now I’m sure many here took this class because it was three credits and the average grade the last four years running was an A-. This is a mistake.”

There were some mild utterances of disappointment.

The professor continued. “Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying this class is particularly difficult. If you show up and do your homework, you’ll probably do fine. What I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t consider this class some unimportant elective that you’ll take and never use in life. For example...” The professor looked around the room, and pointed at a redheaded girl sitting in the middle of the class. “You, please join me at the front of the room.”

The girl walked to the front of the room. She was the kind of girl that would be regarded as about average no matter what universe one found oneself in. As the expression went, she had “a body built for porn, and a face built for radio.” Vice versa for Catherine’s current reality. She was dressed in a simple t-shirt and shorts.

“What is your name?” The professor asked.

The redhead spoke up, “Emily.”

The professor nodded. “Alright, class. Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with Emily’s appearance?”

Catherine was horrified. The professor was just asking for trouble with that question. For her own part, Emily looked unsure of what to do about this situation.