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Prologue

June 19, 2014


The Night Before

The clock reads 10:45. The glass of iced tea in front of me has grown warm. The air conditioner is completely failing at cooling down my apartment and I'm tired, really tired, but I can't sleep. There's absolutely no way I can sleep knowing...correction: not knowing...what will happen.

I could potentially cease to exist by this time tomorrow.

The thought crosses my mind again and my heart twists, my stomach leaps, and for the millionth time I think I might throw up. I can't figure out if it's fear or excitement. I'm pretty sure it might be a combination of both. One of my professors told me once that the feeling of heart-twisting spewing was a natural reaction to the unknown, but that was when I was facing a potentially mis-mixture of chemicals that might have oozed out and over the counter at worse. The stakes were bigger this time. The unknown was astronomical.

The great unknown.

Of course, my plan isn't completely unknown. Josh and Kal know what's going to happen...or I guess I should say what we plan to have happen. There's always the chance that something could go wrong. Completely, utterly, hopelessly wrong.

My thoughts are going to kill me before the experiment actually can. I stand up, shaking my arms out at my sides like an exercise instructor warming up before an intense session. My tank top clings to my back by a thick layer of sweat. I look around and inhale.

If I never come back I don't really have a lot to lose. I'm the owner of a pathetically small 1-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Yolo, California, a town so small that the whole thing's an outskirt. I don't even have a pet. Me, the girl who grew up with a small herd of dogs and cats and fish and gerbils has no living, breathing thing to worry about leaving behind. It's almost enough to make me want to do a midnight run to the nearest Wal-mart to get a fish that I can pretend would miss me. Then again, Wal-mart fish don't exact have the longest lifespan either. The fish probably would only get 36 hours of really good mourning time in before heading to the giant fishbowl in the sky.

"Pathetic," I say out loud to no one. I'm tempted to put on music, but that would send me into a level of nervousness never charted before.

I toss the warm tea and head to my bedroom. My apartment consists of three rooms. The living room/kitchen, a tiny bathroom that has barely enough room for a toilet, sink, and shower (no tub), and a bedroom that I'm fortunate enough fits my King size bed. The King bed allowance is the only reason I bought the apartment. My bed is the best thing about life. I've spared no expense on the mattress or the sheets. It's like sleeping on a cloud. Except I know even the most comfortable bed in the world isn't going to make my brain shut off. I crawl in at the bottom, a habit from my little kid days, and grab my pillow, hugging it into my body. It's cool as silk, fighting against my fiery, sweaty skin. Another pillow greets my head, cradling it perfectly.

If tomorrow goes perfectly, it will be the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. It will be the pinnacle of my career. The thought of reaching my career pinnacle at 35 is mind-boggling. I could potentially receive a Nobel Prize. Okay, so the Nobel Prize would be the pinnacle of my career. Or maybe they'd invent a whole new award and name it after me. Then that would be the pinnacle of my career.

Or I could be dead. Y'know, it could so go either way.

While all the other little kids I grew up with did reports on how they were going to be a firefighter/teacher/doctor (insert other public servitude here), I was the one who stood there in my lab coat and announced that I was going to be a metaphysicist. Not just a scientist. No, smartass seven-year old me was going to be a met-a-phys-i-cist. My mom was sure I'd be a teacher. My dad wasn't around to have an opinion. My grandpa thought I'd be a metaphysicist.

My grandpa had been my favorite person in the whole wide world. God, I miss him.

It probably isn't a good idea to be thinking of my grandpa and my own potential death. Tears are a bitch to get out of the fabric on my pillowcase. I feel a renegade tear start going and wipe it quickly away.

The TV I have in my room is about three thousand years old and the cable service in good old Yolo is pretty pathetic unless you're willing to pay good money. I think it's pretty sad to live such an archaic life as a Californian. Even my cellphone bars go in and out like they've had one too many drinks. Even still, I try the TV thinking that maybe it will lull me into such a dead stupor that I will end up asleep.

Instead, it sends me into a highly uncomfortable panic.

The face isn't the one that I really wanted to see, but he wasn't even one degree separated from the face I love to look at more than any other face in the world. I watch in disbelief. Then I watch in horror. He isn't serious. Is he?

The 'he' in question is Nick Carter. It's not the most relevant name today, but rewind time and you wouldn't find a girl who didn't know it. Nick Carter, Backstreet Boy. I stare at him laying on a medical table in teeny tiny blue undies. It's like a train wreck; you just can't turn away.

It's my own fault that I left the TV on VH1. It wasn't like I didn't know he had a show coming out. I just didn't expect a preview for his reality show so soon.

Or tonight.

The experiment tomorrow has an additional element to it that I haven't told Josh or Kal. I'd never hear the end of it if they knew. Plus, I'd have to listen to Kal's warning again about the fact that this is just an extremely quick test. I'm not even supposed to look at anyone let alone talk to someone. It has a high probability of not working. Like, to put it in laymen's terms, I could probably win the lottery twenty times before what I wanted to have happen would happen. Truthfully, I've done as much research on the additional element of the experiment as I have on the actual experiment. I feel kind of like a creeper, but I'm pretty sure that in my vast knowledge of Backstreet Boy history that I have pegged the incident down to the ideal date. I even know exactly where they were on the date in question.

Okay, I am a creeper. I'm a pathetic 35 year old creeper who loves Brian Littrell.

And I'm going to try to find him.