EVERYWHERE || REGGIE PETERS [JATP]

SIX

Yet, there the cutest one was; just in her room like it was a normal day. Like there was nothing wrong with the situation at all.

"You're real," Lessa finally let out. "Like, really real. I didn't just make you up in my head."

"Um, no?" Reggie said uncertainly, eyebrow raised at her curiously. "Did you think you made us up? Man, Luke said you were being too chill for someone just talking to ghosts for the first time. I mean, even Julie freaked out. It was hilarious, actually. We landed in her garage and she started screaming and then we started screaming and she ran out of the garage but ran into her dad and brother and then hid upstairs for awhile and when she came back she had this cross and—"

"Reggie, if you're real, please stop talking," Lessa interrupted and he immediately quieted. Unfortunately, there was no time to find solace in it as Tony emerged from her bathroom, giving her a curious look of his own.

"Who are you talking to? Who's Reggie?"

"Uuuuh..." Lessa said nervously looking between the ghost still on her bed and her best friend just a few feet away. Reggie looked amused but said nothing. "I-uh- I was just thinking about this dream that I had and I was trying to remember this one part so I thought if I repeated what I remembered out loud then it would help with the rest, you know? Reggie was the name I used though I have no idea who it was—"

"Wasn't one of your uncle's bandmates named Reggie?" Tony asked.

"Oh, so, you've talked about me?" Reggie teased her. She wanted to be annoyed by the little dig in the moment but all she could focus on was the fact that Tony didn't so much as look in his direction.

"Yeah," Lessa answered hesitantly, focusing solely on Tony. "Um, just a quick question, do you see anything on my bed, or...?"

Tony looked over at it, eyes passing over the spot where Reggie lay without even so much as a flash of acknowledgment. He didn't hear Reggie before and apparently couldn't see him either. "No. Am I supposed to?"

"Nope," Lessa said quickly, putting her brush back down on her dresser and coming up with a lie on the spot. "I just thought maybe I left one of my hair ties there last night but I guess not— oh look at that, there's one right here." She laughed awkwardly as she grabbed it and placed it on her wrist, moving her fingers to thread between her hair and braid.

Using the moment as the perfect excuse to test her dream theory, she snapped the band on her skin 'accidentally,' wincing at the sting but otherwise experiencing no difference to her settings. Reggie was still on her bed looking amused while Tony stood there, looking confused.

She wasn't dreaming. Her meeting with Sunset Curve a few days ago wasn't just a dream or hallucination either. They were ghosts, real ghosts, and for some insane reason only she could see them.

Well, her and some girl named Julie, anyway.

"Are you done in the bathroom?" she asked, trying to draw attention away from her odd behavior.

"Yeah..."

"Cool, cool. Do me a favor, head downstairs and grab the chocolate chips before Kate does? You know how she is; she gets her hands on them and there won't be any left."

"Yeah, okay," Tony said slowly, still eying her oddly. "Are you okay, Lessa?"

"Completely," she answered with as natural a smile as she could muster. "My brain is just a little whacked after that wake-up call, that's all. Breakfast should help though, so I'll see you down there."

Tony said nothing else, glancing over his shoulder once but shaking his head as if to tell himself he was overreacting.

Lessa made her way around her bed and towards her bathroom, stopping to close her room door before turning back on Reggie. "Okay, seriously, how is this possible?"