It was a nice private little jet that they’d chartered to take them to Maryland. It was nice and quiet - no other passengers, and a door shut them off from the flight deck and the pilots. They had wanted absolute privacy. This whole trip needed to be nothing but absolute quiet and private.

Renee, with only the vaguest of farewells to her mother and sister, had skipped out again. Justin was skipping out for the first time and was too afraid to even turn his cell phone on for fear of hearing what his mother would have to say to him. He’d had promotion to do but he considered this far more important; he fully intended on getting his real girlfriend back.

It astounded him how quickly he had come to accept the fantastical story as fact but the more he thought about it the more it made sense to him.

“Jason was bitching that you were like some kind of space cadet so something’s gotta be up. You never get like that in rehearsal.”

“Honestly, you’d think she’d never been shopping before.”

It was like her mind was elsewhere, even in her kiss. She forgot the silliest things, she spaced out at the weirdest times, and it was like half the time she didn’t even know where she was.

Whatever trip she was on, he didn’t like it. She kept crossing her arms over her stomach and hunching her shoulders over and not looking at him. Why? He was Justin, her Justin. They’d got past this long ago yet suddenly all the comfort had vanished and she was acting like they’d barely known each other five minutes. Where were his usual hugs and kisses and ‘I love you’ and the smile and the silly jokes? Why was she acting like they’d never done this before?

Maybe he was hallucinating but he even thought there was something a little different in the way she moved lately.

“It was a big turn around. Kind of overnight, almost.”

He might as well have mistaken Renee Anderson for Christina Aguilera; the differences were that pronounced. Emotions fought a perpetual battle inside his stomach - on the one hand he felt horribly guilty. He felt like he’d cheated on his girlfriend. Shouldn’t something somewhere inside of him have known that the person behind the face just was not the same?

Worse, had something somewhere inside of him known and he’d just turned a blind eye to it because he’d kind of liked that he was getting more attention out of it? Liked it because this Renee was focussed more on him than the work? That was horrible. It was just wrong. He’d at least known the difference in intimate touch, Justin had to give himself credit for that, but shouldn’t he have figured it out from the way she talked or walked or more to the point simply kissed? By all accounts it had been two weeks before he’d come to his senses.

That was the voice telling him that maybe he should be being nicer to her than he was right now, giving her the silent treatment. The voice telling him that at least to some extent he had participated in the making of the charade. And then the other voice in his head, the one that was really angry at this Renee, kept asking how the hell he was supposed to have come to the conclusion that because his girlfriend was acting oddly she must have switched bodies with an alternate reality version of herself.

That one said that physically speaking he hadn’t cheated at all - he had slept with Renee Anderson. He had honestly thought she was his girlfriend so why should it be a problem? Sex was only sex, even if it was good sex, right? His conscience told him quite clearly that of the two this was not the voice to be listening to but Justin was finding its message a lot more comforting as they sat in heavy silence on the flight.

The part he really hated was the part where she had been right about Renee - his Renee anyway. His Renee was the real Renee as far as he was concerned. He didn’t care about some far off place where she’d never been famous; he cared about the world he had to live in. But even in that world he’d been suspecting her of the worst kind of betrayal, a continuing betrayal at that. And the impostor was right about at least one thing: she had access to parts of his girlfriend’s life that he had no clue about.

Justin liked to kid himself that his woman told him everything but he knew it wasn't true. He never told her absolutely everything. The fake had told him that Renee didn’t put him where he belonged in her priorities, nowhere even close. As much as it killed him to face it, for all he knew that could be true. He wished to God he could quiz her on the whole thing and what she knew that he didn’t but he refused to show her that she’d put doubts in his mind.

She’d put a few other questions there too. Justin stole a glance over at her as she stared out of the window. He tried not to think that she looked cute in her grey turtleneck and faded jeans - he wasn't allowed to think the impersonator was cute, even if she was wearing his girlfriend’s face. She looked more miserable than he’d seen anybody in a long time. He hadn’t been that harsh, had he?

Quickly shaking the thought off, his mind wandered to all the other things she’d said. His girlfriend was now in a world where she’d never been famous. What was that like? She was an English major in college? He couldn’t imagine that. What had the phoney meant when she said she knew how the change in worlds affected her family? What did she mean by that? Were Louise and Faith and the dreaded Mr Anderson different in that reality?

And who was Justin Timberlake if he’d never met Renee Anderson? He’d only met her at the Billboards so by his calculation they couldn’t be together in her world… and that was enough to make him talk.

“What happens to me?”

“Huh?” She blinked suddenly and turned her head to him, apparently amazed that he’d spoken to her. “What do you mean?”

“Where you come from,” he said impatiently, trying to keep his voice low. Maybe the door was shut but he had no idea how soundproof it was.

“Umm… well…” She had a think about it. “You’re still huge, still came out of *NSYNC to go solo… but your music is different, the songs are.”

“How?” Justin tilted his head, peering curiously at her.

“In my world, when you wrote your first solo album you just came out of this really bad break up with Britney Spears.”

“Britney Spears?” That name sounded familiar, and he had to wrack his brain for it. “Wait, Mouse Club Britney?”

“Yeah.” Renee nodded, and Justin was kind of knocked for six. He hadn’t spoken to the girl in years, had no idea what she was doing now. “Claire said it was a karma thing… for me… sorry, your Renee to be famous in this world, somebody else had to be just a regular person. Britney’s a superstar in my world. But you guys broke up and you wrote all this really sad, angry music. It was good stuff.” She added lamely, not sure what else to say. “And you’d just finished touring the album and were shooting some movie when I made the wish.”

“Do…” He hesitated, not wanting to seem so eager or dependent on her for information. “Do I still talk to the guys where you are? The *NSYNC guys?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “JC sat with your mom while you performed at the Grammys and everything. You all went on hiatus and you’re waiting to go back into the studio together.”

“I was at the Grammys?” Justin piped up, a little excitement betrayed in his voice. He’d always had trouble getting respect from those people, even after he went solo. They still saw him as some little Pop Prince with his Pop Princess girlfriend. They treated him like he was still nineteen and working the fro.

“Hell yeah. You won a couple.” Renee told him, not knowing that he hadn’t done so here too.

“I won?”

“Yeah.”

That was who he was without Renee? Justin Timberlake was a Grammy award winner? He still had his brothers - they weren’t estranged? A gnawing ache hit the pit of his stomach and spread upwards through his chest and throat, making oxygen an issue. He turned back away from her without another word, staring wide-eyed through the window at the endlessly blue sky and the few puffs of cloud that floated by.

Joey had always called Renee ‘Yoko.’ They had hated the way he’d suddenly drop everything because she sent him a message saying she wanted to see him. They hated how when she was on tour with them he practically disappeared until it was time to go on stage every night. She and Chris had always got on badly, JC had never liked her much either.

But he had got a Grammy… that was gold.

That was… that was respect. It was musical credibility in mantelpiece ornament form. So he’d given up four friends who were tantamount to brothers and the kind of recognition he’d been fighting for his whole career - fighting against the horribly restrictive and unfair title of ‘boy band pretty one’ - for the love of a girl who he wasn’t entirely sure had been true to him.

He tried very hard not to look like he wanted to be sick.

***

“Look…” Renee finally said after they had been sitting in the hotel room for well over an hour without even the slightest word being passed between the two of them. Apart from hating the idea that he hated her, the silence was driving her nuts. “Would you feel better if I got a separate room?”

“Yes but you can’t,” Justin replied, not even looking in her direction but continuing to place shirts and sweaters on the wooden hangers provided in the closet.

“Uhh… why?” She asked after a few moments’ silence where it appeared he was declining to elaborate.

“Because if people got wind of it they’d ask what was wrong, the media would pick up on it.” Justin told her through gritted teeth, severely irritated by what seemed to him like a stupid question. “When Renee gets back I don’t want her to think there’s something wrong and I don’t want her to have to deal with any shit you leave behind.”

“That makes sense. I’m sorry; I guess I’m not used to this media crap. You guys get a really raw deal.”

She replied so quietly that it almost made Justin feel a little sorry for her - soften a little towards her. If nothing else she at least got that it wasn't all sunshine and roses, and for a second that made him feel bad that she’d suddenly been dumped into the kind of frenzy that he’d spent years being trained for and still didn’t know how to cope with. Maybe in a weird way it had a positive - his own Renee had got a break, a real break, the kind they could never get when they were known in every household in the country.

As he pondered that, he shook off the tiny sympathy he’d had. She didn’t deserve it. But pausing in what he was doing, it did make a thought occur to him.

“Wait, does she come back here, now? Or does it all switch back to when you made the wish or whatever? Will we remember this?”

“It won’t switch back to when I made the wish, but I don’t know what she or you will remember.” Renee sat at the desk provided and doodled absently on the hotel stationery. “I’ll ask Claire next time she shows up.”

“Well call her then.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” He asked impatiently, pouting furiously and ready to let a few choice curses fly at her.

“That’s not how it works, for some lame reason. I wish I could just call for her but I can’t control when she shows up.”

“Oh.”

He turned back to what he was doing and Renee couldn’t take it any more. Standing up, she strode over to his suitcase and began pulling things out and folding them. He attempted to snatch back his favourite jeans from her grasp but she held on, looking exasperatedly at him.

“Look, Justin. I know you’re really hurt. I know I lied to you and that I’ve basically been acting like your girlfriend…” She trailed off, cheeks flushing at the memory of their brief intimacy. “But this isn’t my fault. I didn’t know that the damn necklace would do this, and it wasn't like I really had a choice in pretending to be her. Would you rather I skipped out on everything and wrecked her career and your relationship with her?”

“I’d rather…” He had been about to say that he’d have preferred her honesty but that was absurd. She was right; he’d have had her locked up if she had tried to tell him this stuff without the ghostly demonstration. “I’d rather I had my girlfriend back.”

“I was trying to keep everything together for her so that if I found a way to switch back, she’d still have her life intact. And I hope she’s doing the same for me.”

“Do you know how she is?” Justin asked quietly, hoping blindly that the answer would be something along the lines of ‘she’s homesick for the boyfriend she worships.’

“Just that she’s okay.” She replied equally softly, choosing to ‘forget’ what Claire had said about the other Renee turning her into the campus party animal. “Look, Justin… I’m sorry I lied to you. But you know now. And I don’t have to pretend now because now you don’t have to hold anything I did against her. So can we please… I know I have no right but I was starting to feel like you were my friend.”

“Friend?” He scoffed automatically before actually considering it, really thinking on it.

“I knew nothing about you,” she told him earnestly. “I’d seen *NSYNC twice in concert and that was as close as I’d ever got to you. But I think you’re a great guy and I felt like you were a friend. And I know that’s twisted when you were treating me like your girlfriend and I was pretending to be…”

“It’s more than twisted,” Justin said to her, before finally meeting her eyes. “But I guess in a weird way it’s kind of… least you weren’t secretly hating me behind my back while you were sleeping with me.”

Well it was a start. “I only slept with you once and honestly I didn’t mean to so can we please pretend that never happened?”

“Agreed.” He answered her far too quickly while a voice in the back of his head told him he didn’t want to forget because after three years of the same woman the change had been almost welcome - it was a nasty little voice but it kind of had a point.

“Can we just… start over? At least be civil? Please?” Renee begged.

Justin made the mistake of glancing up at her and she was pulling exactly the same face his Renee did when they’d had a fight and she wanted to make up. It was creepy, knowing that these two women had so much in common; it was confusing to look at her and see the same face and the same expression and yet know that it was a different person under there.

“Alright.” She breathed a sigh of relief and he had to confess that a little of the tension in his back went away. “I’m still mad but this’ll just be easier if we’re… talking, at least.”

“Okay.”

“Okay then.”