One minute, Anthony was standing in the back of an antique shop, studying a vintage photograph of a teenage girl sitting on the edge of her bed.
The next, everything changed.
A strange sensation swept through him—a sudden rush of dizziness, followed by the overwhelming feeling that the world had tilted beneath his feet. When his vision cleared, Anthony was no longer standing in the antique shop.
He was sitting on the very same bed he had just seen in the photograph.
And someone was taking his picture.
Anthony froze.
He looked down at himself and felt his stomach drop. The hands resting in his lap were not his hands. The clothes were not his. His Body was smaller, younger, and unmistakably female.
He had somehow been thrown backwards through time, all the way to 1953, and into the Body of the teenage girl from the photograph.
For several long seconds, he could do nothing but stare at the unfamiliar room around him.
He had no idea what had happened to the girl whose Body he now occupied. He didn't know whether her consciousness had somehow been transported into his Body, whether she was trapped somewhere else, or whether he was completely alone in this impossible situation.
But Anthony understood one thing immediately.
He could not tell anyone the truth.
If he walked into a police station and claimed that he was a man from decades in the future who had somehow been placed inside the Body of a teenage girl, nobody would believe him. They would almost certainly assume he was confused, mentally ill, or suffering from some kind of breakdown.
He could already imagine where that would lead.
An institution.
So Anthony forced himself to remain silent as the camera flashed again.
For now, he had no choice but to pretend.
He had to learn who this girl was, where she lived, who her family were—and, most importantly, how he had ended up trapped in her life.