Oozing Chemistry

16th Thing's 16th

"That's why you came to me earlier," I slowly come to realize, accidentally speaking aloud. Alex, Luke, and Reggie all look at me confused, and I nod my head. "Willie found me earlier and told me to watch out for you guys since he won't be able to talk to any of you anymore. I guess that's why."

"Wait," Reggie pauses, trying to get a grip on the topic. He crosses his arms which are covered in goosebumps-- ghostbumps?-- and I instantly feel bad for taking his jacket. I try and shimmy it off, but he stops me. "So if we don't join his club, then the weird power outage thing continues until there's no power left at all?"

"Yes."

"What exactly happens when the power goes out?"

"That's... That's it. You're done."

"Uh, huh. Yeah. And what exactly do you mean by 'we're done?'" He continues to ask, and I slap my forehead. There's no way he's asking that. Please tell me he did not ask that.

"You just... You don't exist anymore. Not anywhere," Willie confirms to Alex's dismay.

"So we have no choice?" Luke steps forward, clearly upset, and I don't blame them. "We have to say goodbye to Julie and Izzy, give up everything we've built together, and work for Caleb? That's some club you guys got going on."

I'm glad I didn't ditch Julie the night of the school dance, but I'd never wish this on anyone, especially my best friends. There's got to be a way around this. There's no way they have no choice, right? There's always another way.

"But there is another option! That's why I'm here." 

I'm hesitant to believe his next words. Willie's a nice guy with a heart, and I'm sure he would have been perfect for Alex, but actions speak louder than words. I told the boys that and I'm sticking to it now. How does Willie expect us to blindly trust him when he's given us every reason not to?

"If you guys could just figure out what your unfinished business is, you do it in time, you could cross over and be free from all of this."

My hand jets down and slides into Reggie's, and his tightens around mine. I don't know how, but my heart is both pounding to the speed of light and not at all. I can't lose the guys. Julie can't, either. This isn't the other way I was hoping for. 

Would I want to cross over with them? Do I even have the same unfinished business? I wasn't an active member of Sunset Curve. I wasn't playing the Orpheum that night. For all I know, my reason for being a ghost is completely different from theirs. Maybe lifer me really wanted to go to Egypt.

"OK. So what's our unfinished business?" Luke asks, but he sounds like he's on the fence about it. He doesn't sound completely sure about the idea.

"I don't know," Willie confesses, "but since you all died at the same time, it might be something you need to do together."

"Why should we listen to a word you say?" Alex interjects, and I nod and agree. I was just thinking that! Haha, great minds think alike...

"Because I care about you, Alex." Oh. 

I knock on my chest, hearing the hollow echo. Oh, yeah. I don't think it's beating anymore.

Tears begin to well in Willie's eyes. "And I hate that I brought you and your friends into this mess. I can't be away much longer. I'm so sorry. For everything."

Yep, definitely not beating.

Before the boys or I could respond, Willie poofs out and Alex takes his place, the four of us filing in a circle.

"This is all my fault." Alex shoves his hands in his pockets and refuses to meet our eyes. "I met Willie, Willie introduced us to Caleb, and now... Now we're screwed."

Luke shakes his head. "We all wanted to go see Caleb."

"We have to tell Julie," Reggie and I say at the same time. 

She'll be heartbroken by this. It'll be like losing her mom again. But she needs to know. It'll hurt more when they magically disappear one day and she never even has a chance to say goodbye.

"No!" Luke says. "We can't do that. This just means more loss in her life. But if we don't want Caleb to own our souls, then we have to figure out what our unfinished business is."

"Yeah, man. And how are we supposed to do that? Alright? There was so much we wanted to do."

The boys are losing faith in themselves and the future by the second, and it's heartbreaking to watch. I don't wish Alex never met Willie, and it was their stupid obsession with revenge on Bobby that got them into this, but how would they know that this is what would happen? They'd never heard of Caleb or his club. None of us had, and no one could have predicted what would happen that night and the ones that followed. Except Caleb, maybe.

My eyes drift up behind Alex's head, and Reggie and I share a look. "The night we died, there was one thing you guys all wanted to do together."

"Playing the Orpheum?" Reggie looks unbelieving and worried, almost as if he has already given up.

"Getting that gig was literally impossible. Even after people knew who we were, we had to hustle, call in every favor we had. It took us years."

Alex sighs, the four of us now gazing upon the same sight. Bright blue lights up the entire outside of the theater, and it hasn't changed a bit in twenty-five years.

Instantly, that same jolt returns, shocking them with that painful electric current. Reggie lets go of my hand, and the boys double over, each holding themselves together. 

Alex, Luke, and Reggie cough, groaning as they try to straighten again. "We don't have years."

Guilt runs through me, and I wish I could do something to help them. I feel so helpless, so useless. I don't have the stamp, and I hope I never have the luck to run into Caleb and get it. I don't get these jolts, but that doesn't mean I can't see the pain the boys have to go through every single time. It's like second-hand pain.

Willie said it had to do with their stamps. Their stamps are the cause for all of this, and only Caleb has the power to give them? Or maybe he's the only one who's mastered it. My guess is he's been dead since the twenties or thirties. A century is plenty of time to perfect anything.

Times like these I wish being a ghost came with a manual. I could easily flip to the page about freaky club tattoos that make souls disappear from existence. This is a warped game of Simon Says, and unfortunately, the boys are stuck in the middle of it.

My thinking goes like this: Find a way to remove the stamp, and the boys are fine. We can play again and never cross over, and I don't ever have to say goodbye to Reggie. We all live happily ever after. Yay, the end.

We've reached stage two in our investigation. We know who and we know where. We just need to find out why. 

Willie said Caleb is threatened by them. This is his way of controlling them. We know Caleb does not have the power to control them directly because he's using this stamp as a means to spread terror.

New objective: Find out how Caleb makes his stamps. 

Unfortunately, that'll require a lot of reading, maybe... There's no public library for this stuff is there? Unless I go directly to the source itself. Yeah, no. That's probably not a good idea. 

Let's reopen this case. Detective Izzy is on it again.

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Not very eventful and kind of short, but we needed this to happen! I originally planned for something else to happen in this chapter (hehe) but it'll fall into the next one because I didn't realize how long the scene with Willie actually was. 

Also, for some reason I still have zero reads on my last chapter when I definitely know there's more than that lol Does anyone know if Wattpad's having issues? I tried to do some research but came up empty. If anything, I may just delete the chapter entirely and repost it.

Thanks so much for reading! Tell me what you think, and vote and comment!

-Kait 🧡