* N Sync. It's a Wonderful Live, or is it? Chapter 7
Title: It’s a Wonderful life, or is it? Chapter 7
Word Count:4,140
Summary: Justin starts asking questions, and facing some painful truths.
Author's Notes: O.k. so I took forever in writing this, but between RL and a lot of troubles that I’m not happy about that. But the inspiration came back (Thank you Chris and Lance for being awesome and doing stuff and thank you Joey for keeping our hopes up). Unbetaed right now, just to be able to post it on time for today, but soon I’ll post the cleaned up version.
7.- From a different point of view.
Touring with the group was completely different as a roadie than as part of the band, just like Justin expected. There were also very subtle differences between how his *N Sync used to tour, and how this *N Sync toured.
For instance, they had five buses, Backstreet Boys’ style. The logic behind it, as Chris explained it one day, was that the less time they spend together, the less likely they were to end up wanting to kill each other by the time the tour was over. And, if any of them felt incredibly lonely, they could also ride with the others. Each bus had three beds.
Lieghanne and Baylee rode with Brian, as Lieghanne didn’t want Brian to miss any of their kid’s infancy. Kelly and Brianna would join Joey from time to time, as Bri went to school in Orlando, so she didn’t had the luxury to stay with daddy all the time. This also left JC, Chris and Lance with the freedom to bring their own girlfriends along if they wanted.
Which was why everyone was surprised when Lance proposed that Justin could ride with him.
“I can ride with the crew, there’s no need to make space for me in your buses,” Justin had argued. He was still trying to distance himself from the life he remembered and he was sure that riding with Lance was not the way to go.
“It makes more sense if you are with one of us,” Lance countered. “So we can continue the investigation.”
“It would make more sense for him to go in my bus, since he’s my assistant,” Chris said, although he was smiling. Justin thought that it was because, until very recently, Lance had been the one who was vocal against Justin being with them. “But I can lend him to you.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Kirpatrick,” Justin had been ordering Chris’s fan mail during the exchange, but the truth was that he felt grateful now that Lance wasn’t acting as if Justin would try and kill them on their sleep. “That’s awfully nice from you.”
Justin didn’t remember the last time he had shared a bus only with Lance. When the group had managed to have enough money for two buses, Justin had almost always chosen to ride with Chris and JC. Two days in the road, he realized that while he would’ve hated to share the space with Lance back in the old days, it was quite pleasant now. Unlike Chris, who would chose the weirdest moment to start questioning his old memories; Lance was more interested in the last six months of Justin’s life and never pried unless Justin volunteered information. JC made him nervous, since every now and then; he would be watching Justin with a very strange expression in his face, almost as if he was studying him.
And Justin still didn’t know how to deal with Brian, or with the fact that apparently in this reality, the Backstreet Boys and *N Sync were best friends. Even if he tried to forget that little tidbit of information, one of the Boys would call. Usually it was Kevin, as he was Brian’s cousin, but Nick, Howie, AJ and Sam would do the same. And since none of the other guys had personal assistants, Justin had somehow been promoted from Chris’s assistant to *N Sync’s assistant. He now carried seven cellphones with him at all times, and knew every secretary at Jive by name, as well as everyone in the crew and in the guys’ houses.
However, as happy as he was now, there was still the nagging issue that they weren’t any closer to solve anything.
Which was probably why Brian had called for a special meeting on his bus on the day they were just on the road, without any interview or show to attend to. He had asked Justin to buy a white board in the last city they had been in, and now said board was hung proudly over the bus’s wall. On it, Brian had written “Justin” with big black bold letters.
“The way I see it,” Brian said, as he keep writing on the board. “We’ve got two possibilities… We can’t ignore the whole ‘alternate universe’ idea just because it sounds ridiculous.”
“I wish we could,” Justin looked at the first column Brian had created, with just A.R. written on top. “I’m starting to think that means I’m just crazy.”
“If we can prove its wrong, with more than just ‘alternative realities’ don’t exist’, it might help us to figure out why you created that complicated fantasy,” Chris shrugged. “The other possibility is that the dead body isn’t Justin Timberlake, right?”
“Right,” Brian nodded as he wrote ‘Mom’s innocent’ on the top of the second column. “I don’t think someone would kidnap a kid and then make his believe he’s another dead kid who had half the country looking for his killer. So that one is out unless we run out of ideas. So… any pros or cons to both theories?”
“What’s a ‘pro’ for the Alternative Reality theory?” Joey asked. “Anything he remembers that it’s different? Because that also works for the ‘Justin is insane’ theory.”
“Things he knows, that are true, but there was no way for him to know,” Lance answered, looking serious. “Like how he knows I’m gay.”
Brian wrote ‘Lance’s secret’ on the first column. After Justin had told Lance that he knew, and that in his memories everyone had supported him, Lance had decided to come out at least to the group. He said he wasn’t ready for anyone else to know, which Justin could understand perfectly. Things were different here from the time when Lance had come out to People, two years in the future according to his memories, and even his Lance had always worried that his sexuality would be an issue for the group.
“Did you guys ever record a song named Pop?” Justin bit his lip. He still had not heard the whole *N Sync discography, making excuses over it all the time, but if they were trying to help him, and Lance could share his biggest secret, he could face his fears.
“No, why? Is it one of the songs you remember recording with us?” Chris frowned. Justin had vaguely told him that he and JC used to write songs together, but he had never gone very deeply into the subject.
“It’s a song Wade and I wrote,” Justin shrugged. “We recorded it for Celebrity.”
“Wade can’t write his own grocery list and make it rhyme, Justin,” Joey laughed. “He’s a great choreographer, but that’s about the extent of his talent.”
“What other songs you wrote?” Brian asked, as he wrote ‘Pop’ on the ‘A.R.’ column.
“JC and I co-wrote Celebrity… but that one was mostly JC’s work,” Justin said. Since *N Sync’s third album was still named Celebrity, he figured that song existed. “Gone… and then a couple extra for my own albums. But those were the ones I wrote for *N Sync.”
“I wrote Celebrity with Chris,” JC confirmed Justin’s suspicions. “But I’ve never heard a song named Gone.”´
“You’ve got to show us those songs one of this days, Slim,” Chris clapped him on the shoulder. “But I’m not sure we can count those as proof of an alternative reality, Brian. Since it’s something *he* did, not something we kept a secret from everyone.”
In the end, the Alternative Reality column ended up with only six items besides Lance’s secret. The second item, after a long discussion, was ‘Can write songs and knows our first four tours by heart’. Third was ‘knows how Chris *really* broke his hand’, and below that, written with Joey’s handwriting ‘the real reason why Jason left’. The last two items were prefaced by an asterisk, as they hadn’t happen yet but Justin was so sure that they would that Brian agreed to put them in. If they happened, they would be considered evidence, and if they didn’t, they could be erased. The first one was ‘Reichen’, the second was ‘Kim’.
The other column was shorter. ‘Body not identified by DNA’ was the first, as the dead body everyone said was little Justin had been identified by its clothes and dental records, but Brian insisted that those could be faked. ‘No Motive’ was put by Justin’s insistence that his mother would never kill him no matter what. But that was all they had at the moment, which made the list pitifully short.
“We really have to start looking in that case, right?” JC said, after a few moments of silence while the whole group looked at the list. “Or looking for any scientist with a theory about alternative realities…”
* * *
One thing that hadn’t changed from the world he remembered to this one was the charged atmosphere at the group’s concerts.
The first time Justin had seen one, he hadn’t believed his eyes. While they weren’t as choreography heavy as they had been back in 2001, probably in consideration to Chris’s knees, they still had enough to make Justin feel tired just by watching them. As the group didn’t use back up dancers –and in this reality they never had, yet another difference for the growing list Justin kept in his head- they still did some of the stomps and jumps and spins Justin remembered so well, he could do them in his sleep. They still sang some of their oldest hits, like Tearing Up My Heart, God Must Have Spent, Girlfriend, and of course, Bye, Bye, Bye, that now instead of closing the show, was the song right before the encore. Then there were JC’s songs, All Day Long, Some Girls, Until Yesterday, and even some Chris’s songs that were much better than Falling had been.
The group also sounded different, because even if Brian had taken Justin’s place, he hadn’t quite gotten all his parts. JC and Chris got those, and it was probably the most painful part because some of the songs sounded so much like the versions Justin remembered that if he closed his eyes, he could easily loose himself to his fantasy world again.
Not that he had told the others that he was almost convinced that the *other* world had been just a fantasy.
It had to be. Even if he remembered the Grammys, the fame and everything, it made more sense for him to have made up the whole thing than having been kidnapped to another reality by a foul tempered guardian angel.
Because if he believed that his fantasy life had been real, then he also had to admit that his mere existence had ruined his friend’s lives. Judging by the obvious changes, the fact that he was alive was the only reason why *N Sync wasn’t a successful group in 2005.
And that was a very depressing thought.
“Slim?” Dre called his attention as the guys started the second half of the concert. Usually, at that time Justin had nothing to do, unless someone needed Chris’s agenda. “Theresa’s looking for you.”
“I’m going down,” Justin sighed. Even back in his own world, he had never liked meeting with the PR agents, and Theresa was the one that made Justin fear them. She was good at her job, too good, and was one of the few people that made Justin feel as if he was 10 again, waiting for his mom to tell him what he had done wrong in the latest audition and how his career was going nowhere if he didn’t shape up.
Funny how even when now his career was basically babysitting Chris, he still was expecting someone to tell him he was doing it wrong.
“Mrs. Rourke? Dre told me you were looking for me.” Justin braced himself. He was fairly confident that his clothes, his hair, and his lack of love life were not Theresa’s business, so there was no reason for him to be afraid of her.
Unless someone had decided that he was dating Lance, since he slept in the same bus, in which case he still was innocent and she couldn’t yell at him. It was one advantage of not being famous, and he kept repeating that in his head as the petite woman turned to see him with an angry scowl on her face and a newspaper in her right hand.
“Mr. Timberlake, there’s a situation we must deal with immediately,” she said, and déjà vu hit Justin so hard that for a moment he feared he would faint again. It was the exact same tone that she had used when Justin had slipped in an interview and confessed that he and Britney were sexually active. It was even the same suit she had been wearing back then.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.” Justin breathed deeply as he kept chanting to himself that there was nothing he had done since he had woke up from his delusions that could interest Theresa.
“Start by explaining this,” Theresa handed him the newspaper, a supermarket tabloid like the ones Diana used to read in her breaks. He only needed to see the first page to see the problem, as it proclaimed that *N Sync had hired Britney Spears’ stalker. Which was, at least for the perspective of this reality, sort of true but Justin couldn’t tell that to Theresa. Even with half the story, Theresa would kill him and Chris.
“I wasn’t stalking her,” he answered, trying to keep his tone calm. “I was very confused that day; I had drunk a lot… I don’t even really remember how I got into her house. And it was months before I even met Chris. Whatever this rag says, it’s a lie.”
Theresa didn’t seem convinced, but even so she nodded. “Very well. It still isn’t an issue, so I’ll let it pass for now. But you better start thinking if you did anything else before being hired by Mr. Kirkpatrick that might end up in the tabloids, and warm me before hand.”
“Sure, Ms. Rourke,” Justin nodded, hoping to sound a lot surer than what he felt. “But I honestly can’t think of anything.”
“I’ll believe you,” Theresa said, turning away. “And read that article; tell me if they got anything right.”
* * *
The newspaper lay forgotten for a couple of days, as Justin suddenly saw exactly why everyone had warned him about being Chris’s assistant.
When they were in Florida, Chris’s schedule was pretty laid back. He had a few interviews, most of the studio time was fixed, and that was about it. Answering phone calls and reminding Chris of those very few appointments was pretty easy, and sorting the fan mail was the most complicated part of Justin’s evenings. But on the road, there were interviews, photo opportunities, meet and greets, more interviews, sound checks, phone calls, group meetings, and Chris tended to forget those.
That was a big difference from what Justin remembered. His Chris was usually more organized, at least, that was Justin had always thought after seeing him organize Fuman Skeeto at the same time as they toured. This Chris hadn’t done Fuman, hadn’t even dated Danielle, as far as Justin had managed to dig from magazines since he didn’t want to ask the guys much about their love lives, and that seemed to be a big difference.
Although sometimes Justin suspected that Chris was just doing that so his “assistant” would be busy and no one would ask him why he had hired one. It wasn’t like Lance, who had managed to keep Freelance working, and was producing two movies –although he had passed on On the Line, that in this reality had never been made- and still didn’t seem to need an assistant. Even if Justin now helped a bit, Lance seemed to be quite capable of handling things on his own.
The work meant that Justin had barely time to think about his problems, although it also offered him the chance to get to know the group a bit better, to learn everything that the magazines didn’t told him, and to try and figure out how the pieces fit with his memories.
It had been Brian’s idea.
“Way I see it, if you’re not from another word, there has to be a way to figure out how you know all that you know about us,” Brian had said once during lunch, when JC and Chris were busy writing, Lance was doing some projects for Freelance and Joey was on the phone with Brianna and Kelly.
“Things like how you were supposed to be with the Backstreet Boys?” Justin asked, determined to not let his old dislike for the other group to get in the way of his new life. He had to get to know Brian, accept his offering of friendship for what it was. “That’s in a lot of magazines and all the books about both groups.”
“True,” Brian shrugged. “But there are other things you know. So, tell me, what do you know about me?”
“Not much,” Justin answered, thoughtful. “I mean, you were in the rival band, so I really didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in your life. I knew about your wedding, and your cousin’s, because, well, everyone knew about those… and AJ going into rehab, Nick’s girlfriends… but not much about you as a person.”
“My cousin’s wedding?” Brian looked confused. “How do you know about that?”
“It was everywhere? It was a big event, since no one believed a boybander could get married without losing their fanbase, let alone two.” Now Justin was the one confused. While it was true that he hadn’t looked much into the Backstreet Boys’s history, he was pretty sure he had seen news about a Backstreet wedding when he was reading up on the past.
“What was his bride’s name?”
“Kristen,” Justin answered automatically. He even remembered Kristen from one of Zomba/Jive’s many parties. “Tall, blonde. She’s an actress. What’s wrong, Brian?”
Brian looked at Justin, as if he was studying him. “My cousin was going to marry, back in 2000. But then he and his girlfriend had a fight, and everything was cancelled. Her name was never mentioned to the press and the wedding plans were only known by our family and a few people at Transcon. So how could you find out?”
* * *
After talking to Brian, Justin waited until he could clear his head before going to talk with the others. His conversation with Brian had left him more confused than ever, because he couldn’t figure out where his subconscious could’ve picked up the fact that Kevin and Kristen were going to marry long enough to make them a couple in his weird fantasy life.
Two days after that particular revelation, he decided to see if Lance had a couple of minutes to spare from his busy schedule.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” Seconds after saying that, Justin realized that it was exactly the wrong way to start a conversation with Lance. “I mean… you said that the Timberlake were making her life hell.”
Lance closed up his laptop, smiling sadly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, and Justin was relieved because he didn’t hear any sarcasm on his voice. “Unless you are alive just to spite her.”
“Not really, I liked her. I mean… you know,” Justin finished lamely, not sure of how to express himself. Trying to forget the last 27 years of his life was confusing.
“You have met her?” Lance raised an eyebrow, the way he usually did when he didn’t believe Justin’s stories.
“We went to visit your family more than once, back in Jackson,” Justin looked down, feeling more than a little ashamed. “Diane… I mean, Mrs. Bass, she helped us a lot back in Europe when she found out that my mom hadn’t accompanied us that first tour… if it wasn’t for her… who knows.”
“You remember my mother going to Europe after we already had started touring?” Lance turned on his laptop again, and Justin figured that he was opening the excel document where he had copied Brian’s board ‘just to be safe’. “How long had we been in Europe before she came on board?”
“I’m not sure… three weeks or so? We were in Munich. You called her I think, but later I heard her and my mom arguing about the arrangements.” Justin remembered that argument very well. It was the one time his mom had backed down about the group. After that, Lynn hadn’t left the group until they had left Transcon. “Please tell me that I just didn’t stumble into another of those dark secrets that no one was supposed to know.”
“Sorry, Slim, you did.” Lance started typing. “Obviously, she never met your mom but she had a huge fight with Lou’s secretary. We never mentioned that to the press, we always said that she came with us since the beginning instead of after that fight.”
Justin nodded, immersed in thought. He was sure there was a pattern right there, but he still didn’t have enough pieces to figure out what it was.
* * *
Talking to Joey proved to be more difficult, as he was always busy with his family and Justin was not going to make him take time away for that just to confirm that he probably knew something about Joey’s life that he wasn’t supposed to know. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure of how to deal with JC, because if he went with the idea that somehow he had fixated on *N Sync to create his fantasy life, JC was at the center of it.
After all, he remembered meeting JC when he was only thirteen, long before he met everyone else.
Chris was a little easier to talk to, because he let Justin talk at his own pace and never judged him, not when he was putting together his fantasy life, or when he was trying to forget it. But even so, there were things that Justin couldn’t quite tell him.
One thing Justin had learned to do ever since his world turned upside down was to stall for time. And when he had ran out of things to do and errands to run, he finally sat down and decided to read the tabloid that Theresa had gave him weeks ago.
The cover was pretty much what one expected of those things. One very grainy picture that looked like if it had been taken out of the Spears’ security cameras and that showed a vaguely human form being carried away by two other shadows that could be cops to the right, and the only thing that made Justin think that maybe the human form was him was the grayish color of the shirt. To the other side, there was a picture of him with his cell phone belt talking to Chris outside the *N Sync bus, probably taken a couple of weeks ago. Nothing to write home about, and Justin couldn’t figure out why Theresa was so worried about the article. Except that the picture looked photoshopped, as Justin could see his left arm very clearly and his cross tattoo was missing. Why would anyone delete an intern tattoo, it was anyone’s guess.
But the real shock came in the interior pages. The text was one of the usual drabble, where they didn’t really say anything of substance but managed to make it all sound really sleazy, accusing him of “probably” stalking Spears for months before getting caught and then faking his records to “integrate” himself in *N Sync just to get closer to help. Nothing even close to the truth, unless they knew something Justin didn’t about the months prior to his arrest. But there was another picture that made Justin pause. It was a mug shot, Justin’s mug shot according to the text, but he looked wrong. His face was too thin, his eyes looked haunted and there were deep bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days before the photo was taken, his beard was barely shaven, and his hair was long and dirty.
Although he didn’t want to believe that evidence, he understood why Britney had been scared of him especially if he looked like that.
Trembling, he cut the picture carefully and went out to look for Chris. On the way out of the bus he stopped and went back to the bathroom, wanting to check something. Trying to calm his breathing, he took off his shirt and looked at his body in the full length mirror that Lance had on the door of the bathroom of the bus.
There weren’t any tattoos on his arms or back.
To be continued…
Word Count:4,140
Summary: Justin starts asking questions, and facing some painful truths.
Author's Notes: O.k. so I took forever in writing this, but between RL and a lot of troubles that I’m not happy about that. But the inspiration came back (Thank you Chris and Lance for being awesome and doing stuff and thank you Joey for keeping our hopes up). Unbetaed right now, just to be able to post it on time for today, but soon I’ll post the cleaned up version.
7.- From a different point of view.
Touring with the group was completely different as a roadie than as part of the band, just like Justin expected. There were also very subtle differences between how his *N Sync used to tour, and how this *N Sync toured.
For instance, they had five buses, Backstreet Boys’ style. The logic behind it, as Chris explained it one day, was that the less time they spend together, the less likely they were to end up wanting to kill each other by the time the tour was over. And, if any of them felt incredibly lonely, they could also ride with the others. Each bus had three beds.
Lieghanne and Baylee rode with Brian, as Lieghanne didn’t want Brian to miss any of their kid’s infancy. Kelly and Brianna would join Joey from time to time, as Bri went to school in Orlando, so she didn’t had the luxury to stay with daddy all the time. This also left JC, Chris and Lance with the freedom to bring their own girlfriends along if they wanted.
Which was why everyone was surprised when Lance proposed that Justin could ride with him.
“I can ride with the crew, there’s no need to make space for me in your buses,” Justin had argued. He was still trying to distance himself from the life he remembered and he was sure that riding with Lance was not the way to go.
“It makes more sense if you are with one of us,” Lance countered. “So we can continue the investigation.”
“It would make more sense for him to go in my bus, since he’s my assistant,” Chris said, although he was smiling. Justin thought that it was because, until very recently, Lance had been the one who was vocal against Justin being with them. “But I can lend him to you.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Kirpatrick,” Justin had been ordering Chris’s fan mail during the exchange, but the truth was that he felt grateful now that Lance wasn’t acting as if Justin would try and kill them on their sleep. “That’s awfully nice from you.”
Justin didn’t remember the last time he had shared a bus only with Lance. When the group had managed to have enough money for two buses, Justin had almost always chosen to ride with Chris and JC. Two days in the road, he realized that while he would’ve hated to share the space with Lance back in the old days, it was quite pleasant now. Unlike Chris, who would chose the weirdest moment to start questioning his old memories; Lance was more interested in the last six months of Justin’s life and never pried unless Justin volunteered information. JC made him nervous, since every now and then; he would be watching Justin with a very strange expression in his face, almost as if he was studying him.
And Justin still didn’t know how to deal with Brian, or with the fact that apparently in this reality, the Backstreet Boys and *N Sync were best friends. Even if he tried to forget that little tidbit of information, one of the Boys would call. Usually it was Kevin, as he was Brian’s cousin, but Nick, Howie, AJ and Sam would do the same. And since none of the other guys had personal assistants, Justin had somehow been promoted from Chris’s assistant to *N Sync’s assistant. He now carried seven cellphones with him at all times, and knew every secretary at Jive by name, as well as everyone in the crew and in the guys’ houses.
However, as happy as he was now, there was still the nagging issue that they weren’t any closer to solve anything.
Which was probably why Brian had called for a special meeting on his bus on the day they were just on the road, without any interview or show to attend to. He had asked Justin to buy a white board in the last city they had been in, and now said board was hung proudly over the bus’s wall. On it, Brian had written “Justin” with big black bold letters.
“The way I see it,” Brian said, as he keep writing on the board. “We’ve got two possibilities… We can’t ignore the whole ‘alternate universe’ idea just because it sounds ridiculous.”
“I wish we could,” Justin looked at the first column Brian had created, with just A.R. written on top. “I’m starting to think that means I’m just crazy.”
“If we can prove its wrong, with more than just ‘alternative realities’ don’t exist’, it might help us to figure out why you created that complicated fantasy,” Chris shrugged. “The other possibility is that the dead body isn’t Justin Timberlake, right?”
“Right,” Brian nodded as he wrote ‘Mom’s innocent’ on the top of the second column. “I don’t think someone would kidnap a kid and then make his believe he’s another dead kid who had half the country looking for his killer. So that one is out unless we run out of ideas. So… any pros or cons to both theories?”
“What’s a ‘pro’ for the Alternative Reality theory?” Joey asked. “Anything he remembers that it’s different? Because that also works for the ‘Justin is insane’ theory.”
“Things he knows, that are true, but there was no way for him to know,” Lance answered, looking serious. “Like how he knows I’m gay.”
Brian wrote ‘Lance’s secret’ on the first column. After Justin had told Lance that he knew, and that in his memories everyone had supported him, Lance had decided to come out at least to the group. He said he wasn’t ready for anyone else to know, which Justin could understand perfectly. Things were different here from the time when Lance had come out to People, two years in the future according to his memories, and even his Lance had always worried that his sexuality would be an issue for the group.
“Did you guys ever record a song named Pop?” Justin bit his lip. He still had not heard the whole *N Sync discography, making excuses over it all the time, but if they were trying to help him, and Lance could share his biggest secret, he could face his fears.
“No, why? Is it one of the songs you remember recording with us?” Chris frowned. Justin had vaguely told him that he and JC used to write songs together, but he had never gone very deeply into the subject.
“It’s a song Wade and I wrote,” Justin shrugged. “We recorded it for Celebrity.”
“Wade can’t write his own grocery list and make it rhyme, Justin,” Joey laughed. “He’s a great choreographer, but that’s about the extent of his talent.”
“What other songs you wrote?” Brian asked, as he wrote ‘Pop’ on the ‘A.R.’ column.
“JC and I co-wrote Celebrity… but that one was mostly JC’s work,” Justin said. Since *N Sync’s third album was still named Celebrity, he figured that song existed. “Gone… and then a couple extra for my own albums. But those were the ones I wrote for *N Sync.”
“I wrote Celebrity with Chris,” JC confirmed Justin’s suspicions. “But I’ve never heard a song named Gone.”´
“You’ve got to show us those songs one of this days, Slim,” Chris clapped him on the shoulder. “But I’m not sure we can count those as proof of an alternative reality, Brian. Since it’s something *he* did, not something we kept a secret from everyone.”
In the end, the Alternative Reality column ended up with only six items besides Lance’s secret. The second item, after a long discussion, was ‘Can write songs and knows our first four tours by heart’. Third was ‘knows how Chris *really* broke his hand’, and below that, written with Joey’s handwriting ‘the real reason why Jason left’. The last two items were prefaced by an asterisk, as they hadn’t happen yet but Justin was so sure that they would that Brian agreed to put them in. If they happened, they would be considered evidence, and if they didn’t, they could be erased. The first one was ‘Reichen’, the second was ‘Kim’.
The other column was shorter. ‘Body not identified by DNA’ was the first, as the dead body everyone said was little Justin had been identified by its clothes and dental records, but Brian insisted that those could be faked. ‘No Motive’ was put by Justin’s insistence that his mother would never kill him no matter what. But that was all they had at the moment, which made the list pitifully short.
“We really have to start looking in that case, right?” JC said, after a few moments of silence while the whole group looked at the list. “Or looking for any scientist with a theory about alternative realities…”
* * *
One thing that hadn’t changed from the world he remembered to this one was the charged atmosphere at the group’s concerts.
The first time Justin had seen one, he hadn’t believed his eyes. While they weren’t as choreography heavy as they had been back in 2001, probably in consideration to Chris’s knees, they still had enough to make Justin feel tired just by watching them. As the group didn’t use back up dancers –and in this reality they never had, yet another difference for the growing list Justin kept in his head- they still did some of the stomps and jumps and spins Justin remembered so well, he could do them in his sleep. They still sang some of their oldest hits, like Tearing Up My Heart, God Must Have Spent, Girlfriend, and of course, Bye, Bye, Bye, that now instead of closing the show, was the song right before the encore. Then there were JC’s songs, All Day Long, Some Girls, Until Yesterday, and even some Chris’s songs that were much better than Falling had been.
The group also sounded different, because even if Brian had taken Justin’s place, he hadn’t quite gotten all his parts. JC and Chris got those, and it was probably the most painful part because some of the songs sounded so much like the versions Justin remembered that if he closed his eyes, he could easily loose himself to his fantasy world again.
Not that he had told the others that he was almost convinced that the *other* world had been just a fantasy.
It had to be. Even if he remembered the Grammys, the fame and everything, it made more sense for him to have made up the whole thing than having been kidnapped to another reality by a foul tempered guardian angel.
Because if he believed that his fantasy life had been real, then he also had to admit that his mere existence had ruined his friend’s lives. Judging by the obvious changes, the fact that he was alive was the only reason why *N Sync wasn’t a successful group in 2005.
And that was a very depressing thought.
“Slim?” Dre called his attention as the guys started the second half of the concert. Usually, at that time Justin had nothing to do, unless someone needed Chris’s agenda. “Theresa’s looking for you.”
“I’m going down,” Justin sighed. Even back in his own world, he had never liked meeting with the PR agents, and Theresa was the one that made Justin fear them. She was good at her job, too good, and was one of the few people that made Justin feel as if he was 10 again, waiting for his mom to tell him what he had done wrong in the latest audition and how his career was going nowhere if he didn’t shape up.
Funny how even when now his career was basically babysitting Chris, he still was expecting someone to tell him he was doing it wrong.
“Mrs. Rourke? Dre told me you were looking for me.” Justin braced himself. He was fairly confident that his clothes, his hair, and his lack of love life were not Theresa’s business, so there was no reason for him to be afraid of her.
Unless someone had decided that he was dating Lance, since he slept in the same bus, in which case he still was innocent and she couldn’t yell at him. It was one advantage of not being famous, and he kept repeating that in his head as the petite woman turned to see him with an angry scowl on her face and a newspaper in her right hand.
“Mr. Timberlake, there’s a situation we must deal with immediately,” she said, and déjà vu hit Justin so hard that for a moment he feared he would faint again. It was the exact same tone that she had used when Justin had slipped in an interview and confessed that he and Britney were sexually active. It was even the same suit she had been wearing back then.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help.” Justin breathed deeply as he kept chanting to himself that there was nothing he had done since he had woke up from his delusions that could interest Theresa.
“Start by explaining this,” Theresa handed him the newspaper, a supermarket tabloid like the ones Diana used to read in her breaks. He only needed to see the first page to see the problem, as it proclaimed that *N Sync had hired Britney Spears’ stalker. Which was, at least for the perspective of this reality, sort of true but Justin couldn’t tell that to Theresa. Even with half the story, Theresa would kill him and Chris.
“I wasn’t stalking her,” he answered, trying to keep his tone calm. “I was very confused that day; I had drunk a lot… I don’t even really remember how I got into her house. And it was months before I even met Chris. Whatever this rag says, it’s a lie.”
Theresa didn’t seem convinced, but even so she nodded. “Very well. It still isn’t an issue, so I’ll let it pass for now. But you better start thinking if you did anything else before being hired by Mr. Kirkpatrick that might end up in the tabloids, and warm me before hand.”
“Sure, Ms. Rourke,” Justin nodded, hoping to sound a lot surer than what he felt. “But I honestly can’t think of anything.”
“I’ll believe you,” Theresa said, turning away. “And read that article; tell me if they got anything right.”
* * *
The newspaper lay forgotten for a couple of days, as Justin suddenly saw exactly why everyone had warned him about being Chris’s assistant.
When they were in Florida, Chris’s schedule was pretty laid back. He had a few interviews, most of the studio time was fixed, and that was about it. Answering phone calls and reminding Chris of those very few appointments was pretty easy, and sorting the fan mail was the most complicated part of Justin’s evenings. But on the road, there were interviews, photo opportunities, meet and greets, more interviews, sound checks, phone calls, group meetings, and Chris tended to forget those.
That was a big difference from what Justin remembered. His Chris was usually more organized, at least, that was Justin had always thought after seeing him organize Fuman Skeeto at the same time as they toured. This Chris hadn’t done Fuman, hadn’t even dated Danielle, as far as Justin had managed to dig from magazines since he didn’t want to ask the guys much about their love lives, and that seemed to be a big difference.
Although sometimes Justin suspected that Chris was just doing that so his “assistant” would be busy and no one would ask him why he had hired one. It wasn’t like Lance, who had managed to keep Freelance working, and was producing two movies –although he had passed on On the Line, that in this reality had never been made- and still didn’t seem to need an assistant. Even if Justin now helped a bit, Lance seemed to be quite capable of handling things on his own.
The work meant that Justin had barely time to think about his problems, although it also offered him the chance to get to know the group a bit better, to learn everything that the magazines didn’t told him, and to try and figure out how the pieces fit with his memories.
It had been Brian’s idea.
“Way I see it, if you’re not from another word, there has to be a way to figure out how you know all that you know about us,” Brian had said once during lunch, when JC and Chris were busy writing, Lance was doing some projects for Freelance and Joey was on the phone with Brianna and Kelly.
“Things like how you were supposed to be with the Backstreet Boys?” Justin asked, determined to not let his old dislike for the other group to get in the way of his new life. He had to get to know Brian, accept his offering of friendship for what it was. “That’s in a lot of magazines and all the books about both groups.”
“True,” Brian shrugged. “But there are other things you know. So, tell me, what do you know about me?”
“Not much,” Justin answered, thoughtful. “I mean, you were in the rival band, so I really didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in your life. I knew about your wedding, and your cousin’s, because, well, everyone knew about those… and AJ going into rehab, Nick’s girlfriends… but not much about you as a person.”
“My cousin’s wedding?” Brian looked confused. “How do you know about that?”
“It was everywhere? It was a big event, since no one believed a boybander could get married without losing their fanbase, let alone two.” Now Justin was the one confused. While it was true that he hadn’t looked much into the Backstreet Boys’s history, he was pretty sure he had seen news about a Backstreet wedding when he was reading up on the past.
“What was his bride’s name?”
“Kristen,” Justin answered automatically. He even remembered Kristen from one of Zomba/Jive’s many parties. “Tall, blonde. She’s an actress. What’s wrong, Brian?”
Brian looked at Justin, as if he was studying him. “My cousin was going to marry, back in 2000. But then he and his girlfriend had a fight, and everything was cancelled. Her name was never mentioned to the press and the wedding plans were only known by our family and a few people at Transcon. So how could you find out?”
* * *
After talking to Brian, Justin waited until he could clear his head before going to talk with the others. His conversation with Brian had left him more confused than ever, because he couldn’t figure out where his subconscious could’ve picked up the fact that Kevin and Kristen were going to marry long enough to make them a couple in his weird fantasy life.
Two days after that particular revelation, he decided to see if Lance had a couple of minutes to spare from his busy schedule.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” Seconds after saying that, Justin realized that it was exactly the wrong way to start a conversation with Lance. “I mean… you said that the Timberlake were making her life hell.”
Lance closed up his laptop, smiling sadly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, and Justin was relieved because he didn’t hear any sarcasm on his voice. “Unless you are alive just to spite her.”
“Not really, I liked her. I mean… you know,” Justin finished lamely, not sure of how to express himself. Trying to forget the last 27 years of his life was confusing.
“You have met her?” Lance raised an eyebrow, the way he usually did when he didn’t believe Justin’s stories.
“We went to visit your family more than once, back in Jackson,” Justin looked down, feeling more than a little ashamed. “Diane… I mean, Mrs. Bass, she helped us a lot back in Europe when she found out that my mom hadn’t accompanied us that first tour… if it wasn’t for her… who knows.”
“You remember my mother going to Europe after we already had started touring?” Lance turned on his laptop again, and Justin figured that he was opening the excel document where he had copied Brian’s board ‘just to be safe’. “How long had we been in Europe before she came on board?”
“I’m not sure… three weeks or so? We were in Munich. You called her I think, but later I heard her and my mom arguing about the arrangements.” Justin remembered that argument very well. It was the one time his mom had backed down about the group. After that, Lynn hadn’t left the group until they had left Transcon. “Please tell me that I just didn’t stumble into another of those dark secrets that no one was supposed to know.”
“Sorry, Slim, you did.” Lance started typing. “Obviously, she never met your mom but she had a huge fight with Lou’s secretary. We never mentioned that to the press, we always said that she came with us since the beginning instead of after that fight.”
Justin nodded, immersed in thought. He was sure there was a pattern right there, but he still didn’t have enough pieces to figure out what it was.
* * *
Talking to Joey proved to be more difficult, as he was always busy with his family and Justin was not going to make him take time away for that just to confirm that he probably knew something about Joey’s life that he wasn’t supposed to know. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure of how to deal with JC, because if he went with the idea that somehow he had fixated on *N Sync to create his fantasy life, JC was at the center of it.
After all, he remembered meeting JC when he was only thirteen, long before he met everyone else.
Chris was a little easier to talk to, because he let Justin talk at his own pace and never judged him, not when he was putting together his fantasy life, or when he was trying to forget it. But even so, there were things that Justin couldn’t quite tell him.
One thing Justin had learned to do ever since his world turned upside down was to stall for time. And when he had ran out of things to do and errands to run, he finally sat down and decided to read the tabloid that Theresa had gave him weeks ago.
The cover was pretty much what one expected of those things. One very grainy picture that looked like if it had been taken out of the Spears’ security cameras and that showed a vaguely human form being carried away by two other shadows that could be cops to the right, and the only thing that made Justin think that maybe the human form was him was the grayish color of the shirt. To the other side, there was a picture of him with his cell phone belt talking to Chris outside the *N Sync bus, probably taken a couple of weeks ago. Nothing to write home about, and Justin couldn’t figure out why Theresa was so worried about the article. Except that the picture looked photoshopped, as Justin could see his left arm very clearly and his cross tattoo was missing. Why would anyone delete an intern tattoo, it was anyone’s guess.
But the real shock came in the interior pages. The text was one of the usual drabble, where they didn’t really say anything of substance but managed to make it all sound really sleazy, accusing him of “probably” stalking Spears for months before getting caught and then faking his records to “integrate” himself in *N Sync just to get closer to help. Nothing even close to the truth, unless they knew something Justin didn’t about the months prior to his arrest. But there was another picture that made Justin pause. It was a mug shot, Justin’s mug shot according to the text, but he looked wrong. His face was too thin, his eyes looked haunted and there were deep bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days before the photo was taken, his beard was barely shaven, and his hair was long and dirty.
Although he didn’t want to believe that evidence, he understood why Britney had been scared of him especially if he looked like that.
Trembling, he cut the picture carefully and went out to look for Chris. On the way out of the bus he stopped and went back to the bathroom, wanting to check something. Trying to calm his breathing, he took off his shirt and looked at his body in the full length mirror that Lance had on the door of the bathroom of the bus.
There weren’t any tattoos on his arms or back.
To be continued…