Cindy (also known as Allison) lives in New York with her roommate Linda, who has cancer. After meeting a strange old man, Cindy is sent to a different dimension and ends up back in time during Michael Jackson's life starting in 1988.
She is followed...
When I step out of the house, the world doesn't just feel different—it feels wrong in a way I can't immediately name. Snow. White flakes drift down through the Los Angeles sky like the laws of reality have quietly given up. In June. In heat that should not allow this kind of miracle—or this kind of mistake. They land on my skin and melt instantly, like they're ashamed of existing.
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I look down at my hands. And then it happens. Michael's laughter echoes in my head. Not faint. Not distant. Close, like he's standing right behind me. I never thought I would fail. A sharp guilt twists through my chest as if something inside me has been pulled too tight. This is all my fault. I failed him. I failed Liam. I failed everything. I couldn't save Michael Jackson.
"Come on! You helped me," I hear myself laugh in return, but it doesn't feel like me anymore. It feels like a memory playing without permission.
"I love you, you know that?" His voice is softer now. A kiss lands gently on my nose, warm against the cold that doesn't make sense anymore.
It's a memory. I remember this. Somewhere in the 90s. Neverland. We're sitting by the lake, the water turning gold under the sunset, the air so still it feels sacred. Michael looks at me like he's memorizing the moment instead of living it.
"Can you promise me something?" I ask.
"Anything," he says instantly, like he never needed to think about it.
I hold out my pinky. "I know you already did, but you promised with your mouth, so now we're doing it the right way."
He laughs, that bright, boyish laugh that always made the world feel lighter. "You're making me do the pinky promise?"
"Just do it."
He sighs dramatically, smiling anyway. "Okay. Also promise me you'll never leave like last time ever again."
We hook our pinkies together. A promise sealed in something small, something that felt like it could hold the universe together if we needed it to.
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Then the memory dissolves. But Michael doesn't leave. He stays. In fragments. In laughter. In singing. In overlapping echoes that stack inside my skull until I can't tell where one thought ends and another begins.
