RIOT: Julie and the Phantoms

Track 2: Wake Up

"Julie! Come one, you've got to get up," Daisy says. She snatches a pillow from under Julie's head and starts hitting her with it. A groan sounds through the room as Julie yanks the pillow from Daisy's grip.

"But I don't want to," she moans. Daisy lets out a sigh. Today's supposed to be a big day, but if Julie misses school it'll all be a disaster.

"I know, but remember what Mrs. Harrison said," she says. "This is your last chance Jules, so get up!"
"I'll be here when you get home from school and you can tell me all about it," Daisy promises.

While Julie is at school, Daisy usually spends part of the day with her friend. He's a ghost too. She met him while walking along the strip, he just ran right into her. Total shock for both of them when he didn't just go right through the girl. His name's Willie, and he's the only other person she can talk to besides Julie.

They're walking down the beach, it's not crowded this time of day. Only a few families with young kids and the odd college kid or two.

"Any plans for the week William?" Daisy asks the skater. He hates that name, say's it's too 'formal,' but it's fun to annoy the kid.

"Don't call me that Daisy, and nothing besides Caleb's." Right, Caleb. The infamous ghost Willie refuses to take her to meet. Say's he's super dangerous or something. Willie even went as far as to ban Daisy from even looking for the guy. Not that she had much time between Julie and watching over her family.

"You should take me to see this infamous Caleb guy," Daisy says.
"No, Daisy. I already told you, man," Willie groans out.

The friends spend the next few hours skating through lifers and trying to shove each other into the water. Daisy's the only one that falls in, and she was not happy. She chased the skater down the shoreline until she got bored. As ghosts, you never really get tired.

Around lunch time, Daisy heads to the hospital. In the psych ward, her best friend still struggles without her even after three years. Rane was Daisy's only friend until highschool when they met Lara. And they used to almost spend every waking moment together. So, Daisy likes to sit with her friend while they talk to air. It may sound crazy, but Rane believes that Daisy is with her, and that they're talking to her. And Daisy likes to listen, to hear what's going on in Ranes life. Sometimes, Lara comes by. The two of them talk to Daisy together, even though Rane's doctors say it's only making their condition worse.

When school lets out for the day Daisy finds herself lounging around Julie's room waiting for her. Not even ten minutes after she arrived there Julie was storming into her room and throwing herself onto her bed face first. She lets out a scream that can only mean one thing.

"Julie? You okay?" Daisy asks cautiously. Julie lets out another scream. "No? Okay." She sits back down on the floor beside the bed. The teens sit in silence for a few minutes before Julie finally comes up for breath.

"I couldn't do it," Julie says.

"What happened Jules?" Daisy asks her. Standing up from her place on Julie's giant beanbag chair, she moves towards the right side of Julie's bed where she's staring at the wall. Daisy kneels in front of Julie, resting her chin on her arms. Green eyes meet brown and Julie starts to tear up.

"I tried, I did. But when I got up in front of the whole class, I just froze. It reminds me too much of my mom, and it just feels wrong playing without her." Julie's voice cracks. Her mom passed away just before the young ghost popped into Julie's life. And she hasn't been able to play music, let alone step into her mother's studio, since. It made Daisy so sad to watch Julie give up on her love for music. She had been so close to doing the same when her parents told me about her brother.

"Hey, it's okay. It must have been really hard for you to just get up in front of them. But you did, and that's progress. You're always going to miss your mom, and it's okay to grieve as long as you need. Don't let anyone, not even your Tia tell you otherwise," Daisy says.

The front door can be heard shutting downstairs. Which means Julie's dad is home.

"Go talk to your dad, I bet he'll know what to say. I'm going to head out for a bit but I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" Daisy says just before poofing out.

Daisy visits her parents often. They still live in the same house, and they've kept both hers and her brothers' rooms exactly as they were the last time the teens were in them. Today, Emily and Mitch can be found sitting around the kitchen table. There's a cheesecake with a candle sitting between them. It's Daisy's birthday. Daisy was born just a few weeks shy of what would have been her brother's twenty-second birthday. If he hadn't died five years prior. He was in a band too, that was Daisy's biggest motivator.

Her parents never kept him a secret but waited until she was fifteen to tell her the full truth. She still held a small grudge against her parents knowing how they had treated him. But they seemed to have learned from their mistakes and never fought Daisy on her love for performing. Daisy had free rain of anything her brother had left in the house, and when she found the one flannel with sleeves still attached, she was elated. She wore the flannel everywhere, with everything. The flannel became a staple of her wardrobe, and she adapted everything to match it. It was simple, only ever wearing black, white, or grey.

When she was thirteen, her parents finally sat her down and told her his story. All the fights, when he ran away, and eventually the night he was found dead. They told her how it was tainted hotdogs that killed him and two of his bandmates.

"You'd have liked his friends, Daisy. He was a lot like those friends of yours." That was Emily's way of subtly saying his friends were strange.

Unbeknownst to Daisy, over at the Molina's, Julie was just discovering an old CD. One containing the only songs Sunset Curve had ever gotten the chance to record. Had Daisy been open to Julie about her brother and his band, Julie would have known who the three boys that suddenly appeared in her mother's studio were. But still, she knew those green eyes looked familiar, but why did they?