He rolled over, still not opening his eyes, but was jolted awake when he fell off of the bed and onto the cold wood floor.

A wood floor? The hotel room had been carpeted, like all of their hotel rooms were. JC stood and looked around. Then he almost fell over again, from shock.

The reason he fell out of bed was because it was tiny, just a twin size. The rumpled comforter was a faded blue color, not the ultra-clean white of the hotel bed. His bed, when JC had crawled under it last night in the hotel, had been a king size. The hotel room had been huge too, a suite, like they always had when they stayed overnight on tour. Now… the room was about a fifth of the size of JC’s hotel room, if that. On the walls was not elegant wallpaper but peeling white paint covered in posters, pictures, and Hard Rock Café menus.

His suitcase and duffel bag were no longer tossed in one corner. An old dresser sat there instead, with clothes sticking out of the drawers. The closet on the other side of the room was a mess of rumpled clothes and hangers.

JC sat down on the little twin bed. Hard.

This was impossible. JC rubbed his eyes, thinking he must be dreaming. It had to be a dream. He could wake up anytime now. When JC opened his eyes again though, there was no hotel room surrounding him, just the same room.

A room JC was quite familiar with, actually.

The room was his bedroom, except he stopped living in it about six years ago.

* * *

Someone was pounding frantically on JC’s door.

JC, still in a numb kind of shock, opened the door and let Lance inside.

“What happened?” Lance demanded, turning around and looking at JC’s room. His hair was spiky but disarrayed, as if he had been running his hands through it. He looked as bewildered as JC felt, which was alarming because Lance never lost his cool. Never.

Not quite sure how to respond, JC sat back down on his twin-sized bed and looked up at his friend. “We’re back at Chris’ house,” JC said.

“I know, but how?”

“What makes you think I know?”

Lance groaned, running a hand through his already messy hair. “Sorry, sorry C. Just… stressed.”

JC knew he should have been freaking out too, especially since Lance kind of was. Seeing Lance was reassuring though, because the wrinkle lines around Lance’s eyes and the older slope of his stubbled chin told JC that Lance was still twenty-three years old and they hadn’t gone back in time somehow. JC touched his own hair and was almost relieved to find the long locks still there. Maybe he was still dreaming. A very valid possibility.

“Let’s go find the others,” said Lance, nodding out JC’s door.

While Lance went to wake up Joey and Chris, JC went to get Justin. Feeling like he had oddly come back home, which in a way he had, JC went down other end of the hallway, almost automatically. He didn’t need to try to remember where Justin’s room was because his legs were walking JC there like they had for years. It was strange to see the same hallway after so long. The place was just like JC remembered: the same dirty carpeting, the same beige colored walls, even the same old sign hung up on Justin’s bedroom door, saying “Justin’s Room. Come in at your own risk.”

JC opened Justin’s door, knowing it wouldn’t be locked because they never had locks on their doors at Chris’ house. “Justin?”

“Ugh… too early, C…” A muffled voice came from the pile of blankets on Justin’s bed.

Stepping inside, JC held back a laugh at what he saw before him. This was definitely Justin’s room, with the basketball and music posters on the walls, not to mention the old plaid comforter rumpled on Justin’s twin bed. What was funny was to see this older, bigger and taller Justin tangled in his bed like he was fifteen again. Justin’s short-cropped hair peeked out from under a pillow and his long muscled limbs were contorted oddly, trying to fit onto the small mattress that he slept in perfectly all those years ago. It was oddly comic and saddening at the same time.

“Just, I think you need to wake up, man,” said JC. He sat down in the blue beanbag chair tossed in one corner of the room, like he used to do back then. He found his own longer legs had trouble adjusting to the low height of the chair. JC would’ve tried to sit on the edge of Justin’s bed but there was barely enough room on it for Justin as it was.

The curly-haired singer rolled over and promptly fell out of his bed. JC’s laugh came out like a snort, from trying to hold it in.

“Ow. What the fuck…” Justin sat up on the floor and rubbed his head. Then he opened his eyes. And stared. Then he said again, in a voice closer to a yell, “What the fuck!”

“Yeah,” said JC. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, hoping again that maybe he could wake up. Still didn’t work.

Justin whipped his head around this way and that, unbelieving. “What happened? Is this some kind of trick?”

“I don’t know,” said JC. “I just woke up and I was in my old room again.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Justin. He stood, going out of his room, followed by JC. They met Lance, Chris and Joey midway in the hallway. Joey’s expression was an odd mixture of tired and shocked; his eyes were bleary and red but wide-awake from surprise.

Chris ran a nervous hand through his short spikes, much like Lance had been doing to his own hair before. “So we’re all here? The question is how the hell did we get here,” he said. For all he joked and kidded and annoyed the hell out of everyone, Chris was a very clear thinker.

“Maybe we’re dreaming,” said JC. The hope was getting less each time he wished for that to be true. When JC blinked and opened his eyes again, he was still standing in the hallway. So much for that theory.

Lance asked, “All of us or one of us?”

“Whoever is dreaming, wake up right now,” said Chris.

They stared at each other for a moment and nothing happened. Normally, that would have been pretty funny but none of them felt like laughing at the moment.

Joey sighed. “Well, that didn’t work,” he said.

“Call Johnny or Melinda or something,” said Justin. He leaned against the wall of the hallway, still dressed in the t-shirt and boxers he went to bed wearing last night. JC noted that all of them were wearing the clothes they went to sleep in and he somehow found that fact increased the oddness even more. As if they had been magically transported from one place to another in the middle of the night.

“I…” Lance patted the pockets of his sweatpants for a moment and JC realized that his friend was searching for his cell phone. “I don’t have my cell,” Lance said. He sounded more defeated than if he suddenly realized his puppy had died or something. In a way, losing his cell phone really was worse for Lance, who operated most of his life, both personal and business, on that little gadget.

Joey clapped a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Hollywood. We can make calls on a regular phone as easily as the next guy.”

“Right,” said Chris. He cocked his head toward the stairs. “C’mon, dorks. Lance can go call people while I see if my house still has food in the fridge. Man, I hope it hasn’t molded after all these years.”

“When did you ever have food in the fridge?” Justin said, following Chris down the stairs. As they left, Justin’s voice got farther away and more muffled. “All we ever ate was take-out.”

Joey and Lance followed down as well, both trying to remember Johnny or Melinda’s numbers since they normally had them programmed onto their cell phones.

For a moment, JC stood there alone on the second floor of Chris’ Orlando home. He soaked in the sensations that he seemed to have forgotten. The house was small, tiny even, and it seemed frighteningly normal after all this time. After living in mansions with marble columns and Jacuzzis and pool tables… this house was so normal that the reality of it was like being hit with a brick wall. JC wondered when he had gotten used to that life, the life of a pop star, and when he had lost all this.

Then JC heard a crash in the kitchen. That always meant Chris was trying to cook, JC remembered all too well. He sighed, not unhappily, and went downstairs to see what was going on.

* * *

“Macaroni and cheese!” Chris said. He brandished a box triumphantly as JC entered the kitchen. The room was not particularly big but it was comfortable enough. They spent a lot of time in the kitchen back then, eating or talking or making food. Everything in the room was just as JC remembered it, right down to the magnets on the fridge.

“For breakfast?” JC said, after reabsorbing all he was seeing.

Chris shrugged while Justin held up a box of cereal, along with a bowl and spoon, to JC. Justin was sitting on the kitchen counter, already eating his cereal and milk from his own bowl. The scene was frighteningly familiar, except now Justin’s toned muscles gleamed in the morning sunlight and his long legs touched the floor now even though he sat on the high counter. He couldn’t do that before.

Before taking his cereal, JC risked a peek inside the refrigerator and was surprised to see that it held milk, eggs, cheese, bread, and other various things that were normally found in Chris’ fridge, despite what Justin said. The eeriest thing about all of this was that everything was exactly where it should have been, as if they had never left. Even the milk in the fridge was brand new.

JC sat down at the kitchen table with his cereal, eating mechanically and thinking.

“Hey, guys,” said Lance.

The three band mates turned at the sound of their friend’s voice. Lance’s “hey, guys” was not a greeting. It sounded more like the “hey, guys” that Lance used whenever he had to get their attention to tell them particularly bad news. JC dreaded hearing that tone. Lance stood in the doorway. His hands were shaking a little, JC noticed. Joey was nowhere to be seen.

“What is it?” Chris asked, immediately alarmed.

With a hard swallow, Lance sat down opposite JC. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to avoid what he was about to say. “I called Johnny. He said he’d never heard of me and if I bothered him again on his personal number he’d arrest me.”

“What?” Justin leaped off of the counter, spilling milk and cereal everywhere.

“Yeah,” said Lance. He sighed. “I thought he was kidding at first but then he told me if I didn’t hang up right that second I’d be in jail.”

Chris went to put a reassuring hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Jesus Christ, if this is a joke I’m gonna fucking kill him,” he said.

“Are… are you sure he wasn’t kidding?” asked JC.

Lance swallowed again. “Well, Joey called Melinda after I called Johnny. To see what was going on.”

“What happened?” Sudden cold dread crept into JC’s blood. He didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Come and see,” Lance said.

* * *

“What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know who I am?” Joey was bellowing into the phone. JC was surprised they hadn’t heard him from the kitchen.

Joey was pacing around the living room, growling in his throat and occasionally yelling. He reminded JC of a lion. An absolutely furious lion.

“Melinda, don’t give me this shit,” he said now. “If this is a joke, okay, you got us good but you don’t fucking tell me that you don’t know me.”

A pause, as Joey stalked around the room in silence.

“Joey,” he said into the phone with a sigh. “Joey Fatone. Of ‘N Sync.”

After a moment, Joey swallowed. He slowly put the phone receiver back in its cradle, gently, as if it might explode. The gesture spoke of defeat in every single movement.

“What did she say?” Justin asked. All four of them had been standing in the doorway, afraid to go into the living room. Justin’s hand was clenching JC’s tight, but JC didn’t mind.

Joey forced a smile. It was a terrible kind of smile, the kind that was in between a grimace and a grin. He sat down on the couch, rubbing his eyes. “She said, ‘Who’s ‘N Sync?’”

* * *

Justin was on the phone, screaming at the people on the other end of the line. After calling Melinda, the guys decided that Justin might be the best bet to find someone who wasn’t in on this “joke.” As the hours passed, the fact that this whole thing was a joke seemed to no longer be a possibility. Justin tried calling their friends, their assistants, and their management team at WEG.

“I’m Justin! Justin Timberlake!” he yelled into the phone at the end of every single call before the person hung up on him. It had been hours. He was still going through calls, racking his brain for more contacts.

Meanwhile, Lance had been on the Internet.

“Oh my God,” he said.

“What?” JC looked up from where he was cooking dinner, spaghetti, on Chris’ old gas stove. He went over to where Lance sat, at the computer.

Lance pointed to the screen. He was on the Google Internet search engine. “Look,” he said. “I did a search for ‘N Sync. No results. No websites about us.”

JC just stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, unbelieving. He swallowed. “Zero,” JC confirmed.

“We never existed,” Justin whispered. JC hadn’t heard Justin come in from the living room, but now Justin was looking over Lance’s other shoulder at what was on the computer screen.

“Don’t say that,” said JC. “We exist. We’re here.”

Chris and Joey burst in the front door then.

Upon going into the living room, Joey knelt beside Lance, who was still sitting in front of the computer. He put his head on Lance’s lap, saying, “Nothing.”

“We went into the music store, right?” said Chris, coming to stand beside Justin. His expression was a mix of anger, bewilderment and shock.

“Nothing. None of our CDs were there,” said Joey. Lance stroked Joey’s hair absentmindedly.

“We even started singing in the fucking aisle,” said Chris. “Someone there had to recognize us, we thought. So we started performing ‘Bye, Bye, Bye.’ Dance moves and everything. Then the manager threatened to kick us out of the store.”

“I guess this is a bad time to tell you guys that nsync.com doesn’t exist either,” said Lance. His hand moved gently through Joey’s brown hair.

Justin shook his head. “God,” he said. His voice was soft.

“We… I mean, can… What do we do?” said Lance.

JC looked at all of them, huddled together and trying to find what little comfort they had in each other. Their world had crumbled apart overnight.

* * *

“When did you learn how to cook?” Joey said. “I’m supposed to be the Italian here.”

JC smiled. “Your mom.”

“What? You trying to insult me here, Chasez?”

Lance shrugged. “I think he is,” he said. Lance could always kid with a straight face.

“No! Your mom taught me how to make this,” said JC. He actually laughed a little.

“Oh,” said Joey.

They were seated around the kitchen table, eating JC’s spaghetti and feeling oddly at home despite everything that had happened. Somehow all of them avoided the topic, trying to find some normalcy for a moment before they had to go back to dealing with the real world. Or the unreal world, depending on how you looked at it.

The guys had finished eating a few minutes ago but none of them seemed willing to get up just yet. Justin rested his head on JC’s shoulder, doing so easily since the table was small and their chairs were spaced so close together. On the other side of his head, Justin held the phone receiver to his ear. He was trying to call his mom.

“Is she there?” said Chris.

Justin shook his head. “I keep getting the operator’s recorded message, saying the number I dialed is not in service,” he said.

“What number are you calling, Just?” asked Lance.

“My mom’s cell… oh,” Justin said. He nodded, disconnecting the call.

JC asked, “Do you remember her old number?” Justin’s hair tickled his chin.

“Duh, C,” said Justin. “It’s only been six years, not sixty.”

The guys watched in silence as Justin dialed again. “Hey, Mom,” Justin said after a moment, sounding relieved. “No, I’m fine. Can I ask you something? Yeah… sure… okay. Yeah, I wanted to ask… This might be a dumb question, but do you know what ‘N Sync is?”

Justin’s hand clenched tight around JC’s knee. “No… Mom, I know what in synch means. That’s not what I meant… Yeah, I know. Oh, alright… Yeah, that may be a good idea. Okay, love you too… Bye.”

“That didn’t sound good,” said Chris.

“She was asking me if I had found a job yet. Like I’ve been looking for one for a while or something. That was the first thing she said after hello,” said Justin. His voice was a flat monotone.

JC looped his arm around Justin’s waist.

“Jesus,” said Joey softly.

For a moment, Justin sat there, the phone still in his hand. Then he started laughing. He shook with laugher, body heaving with great guffaws, so that JC could feel the movement vibrating through his own body. Justin kept right on, laughing hysterically, almost on the verge of crying.

The guys exchanged glances, wondering if Justin had finally lost it.

“What is it, Just?” said Lance, cautiously.

Justin wiped a tear from his eye, saying the words brokenly through his laughter. “She… she told me… hey, ‘in synch’ sounds like… a good band name,” he said.

* * *

That night, a knock sounded on JC’s door.

JC had just finished taking a shower in the cramped bathroom. Oddly enough, he didn’t mind, humming a little as he washed his long hair with Chris’ Head and Shoulders.

When he rifled through the clothes in his dresser and closet, JC was amazed to find that all of them looked like they would fit him, despite the fact that he had gotten taller and broader in the shoulders over the past years. Although none of the clothes were flashy or expensive, they were all clothes JC would be willing to wear. He was a little relieved, actually, to find that for once his wardrobe had no leather pants or glittery tank tops in it. The strangeness of this convenience was another thing that JC didn’t feel like thinking about because if he did, his head would start to hurt.

“Yeah, Justin?” said JC, as he pulled on a t-shirt. They could all tell each other’s knocks apart. “It’s open.”

Justin stepped into JC’s room. “Can I stay here tonight?” he asked. Justin still asked to do that, even though he was twenty-one now and all mature. But then he sometimes would still knock on JC’s hotel door, looking young and vulnerable and fifteen all over again.

“Sure… there’s kinda no room…” said JC. He frowned at his old bed, which seemed small to him now. When they were at hotels, Justin would just lie down next to JC on the huge bed, curling up against him, and they breathed together until Justin fell asleep. There was no room for that here. “Wanna go downstairs?”

“Okay,” said Justin. He pulled the blankets off of JC’s bed, tucking the pillow under one arm. JC followed him to the living room, where they got settled in front of the couch, on the carpeted floor.

JC lay down and patted the space next to him. Justin curled up beside him, one arm thrown around JC’s waist. They lay on their sides so they could face each other.

“You know, I think my mom might be right,” said Justin. His eyes were serious, deep, dark. “I should go out and try to find a job tomorrow. I don’t know what happened today but it’s obviously real. We’re gonna have to start paying bills eventually.”

The words should have been surprising, especially coming from Justin. After growing up in the spotlight, with everyone at his beck and call, bowing to do his whim… JC should have been amazed that Justin was thinking so practically, so responsibly. He wasn’t all that surprised though, because Justin was a levelheaded and rational person when he wanted to be. Deep down, Justin was as practical as they came.

JC reached his arm out and rubbed a hand through Justin’s short curls. Justin had started growing them back after shaving his head, and now they were already curling at the ends, even though his hair was still pretty short. “You’re taking this well,” he said.

“So are you,” said Justin.

“It’s funny… I think I should be feeling like I’ve lost everything, because I kinda did,” said JC. His hand moved thoughtfully, stroking from Justin’s hair down his friend’s neck.

Justin understood. “It doesn’t feel like that though, does it?” he said.

“No,” JC said. He looked into Justin’s eyes, which mirrored his own. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Maybe I should get to sleep,” said Justin. His voice was so soft but his breath ghosted over JC’s lips in soft, warm puffs. “Gonna go job hunting tomorrow.”

JC let a little laugh escape him. “This should be good. Justin Timberlake, looking for a job.”

“Shut up, Chasez,” said Justin, but his words held no force. He leaned forward, closing the centimeter of space between them, and gave JC a peck on the mouth. Then he dipped his head lower, resting it against JC’s chest. “Good night.”