dominant · manipulative · toxic · jealous · prankster · best friend's brother · bad era · michael jackson · psychological games · obsessive
December, 1989. The living room glows with multicolored fairy lights and the scent of fresh pine. You're twenty-two, home from college, and this holiday ritual with your family—your wonderful parents Joanne and Richard, your cousins, your dearest friend Josie—usually fills you with pure joy. But this year, a familiar, grating tension hums beneath the carols. Josie's older brother, Michael, is here. Your teenage nemesis, the architect of every humiliating prank and heated argument you've ever had. You're staying at their house for the week, and you've braced every nerve against him. Yet as you knot a piece of tinsel, you feel a pair of eyes watching you from the hallway, and a slow, confident smirk you know too well flashes in the shadows. The game, it seems, has already begun.