midnight memories | luke patterson (on hold)

6

"KELSEYYY!" A way too hyper Reggie shouted. I jumped up from the couch. How did I end up here? Last thing I remember is talking with Luke on the roof.

"Ugh. What time is it?" I sighed, rubbing my tired eyes. "It doesn't matter, we're late!" Reggie shouted again. I would say he's on one of his sugar rushes, but ghosts can't exactly eat candy. I looked around the studio and noticed it was just the two of us.

"Late for what? And where's everyone else?" I asked still trying to adjust to being woken up. "Julie is gonna sing at the pep rally at her school! Luke and Alex are already there, but I knew you'd wanna watch so I stayed back and waited for you." Reggie spoke with a large smile on his face.

My eyes widen. I couldn't miss this, I really wanted Julie to get back into her music program. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!" I hoped off the couch and matched Reggie's excited energy.

—

Reggie and I had just poofed into the gym in the middle of a performance from a group of girls in way too brightly colored wigs. It's like Tetris threw up on them or something.

Luke had noticed us and waved over to where him and Alex were standing. I watched as my brother was completely hypnotized by the dancing girls, knowing how badly he wanted to go out there and join them.

"What are you guys doing here?" Julie had realized we were right behind her and her friend and quickly turned around. "We wanna see you stick it to the man. Isn't that right boys and Kelsey." He turned and smiled at us. Luke and I made brief eye contact before he quickly diverted his eyes from me and turned back to Julie.

I was slightly confused by the action, but I didn't have much time to overthink it because we all turned back to watching the girl group dance. It seemed as if the pink one was the lead singer, or well, the only singer while the rest were backup dancers. "Man, I miss high school." Reggie whines to me. "I don't." I laughed.

"Yeah, we make them say, "Wow!" The girls finished their performance and received tons of cheers from the students sitting in the bleachers. "We love you, Carrie!" One student shouted, which made me scrunch my nose up in a sort of disgust. "Oh, I love you too!" The pink wig, who's name I assume to be Carrie, responded.

As "Dirty Candy" made their exit, we all turned to Flynn as she began to speak to Julie. "Now's your chance. Go talk to her. See you in music class!" Flynn began to walk away, hopeful for her best friend. The principal then began to make some last minute announcements.

"Julie, it's now or never." I tried to give her a little push. Alex followed up by saying, "Yeah. I mean, you look really nervous. Like yack in a bowl nervous." I nudged him with my elbow. Julie then turned to face Luke. "I just don't think I had enough time to work on the song." She looks like a deer caught in headlights. "I wouldn't have given you the song
if I didn't think you were gonna rock it." Luke starts, causing me to look down at the ground and frown slightly, but quickly shake it off. "Now, there's a piano on that stage with your name on it." Luke finishes, pointing to the piano.

Julie runs off and at this point we can only hope she's running backstage and not out the back door. I let out a small sigh of relief once I see Julie step up to the piano. "You got this." I whispered when I suddenly felt someone grab my hand. I looked up to meet the eyes of Luke. "Sorry, I'm nervous." He let out an anxious laugh. I just returned a smile.

We turned away from each other once we heard the piano. Students were still exiting the gym, when the spotlight was quickly shined on Julie. "Sometimes I think I'm falling down, I wanna cry, I'm callin' out for one more try..." Julie starts to sing, making everyone stop in their tracks and focus on her.