Bruises - JATP Fanfic (Luke x OC)

Chapter 3

A few hours later, after Brielle has swept, dusted, and organized a lot of the loft, Julie walks in for the first time in a year. The first thing she does, much to Brielle's surprise, is pull the white sheet that has been draped over the piano for the past year. Brielle has never even so much as had the idea to pull it off, only using the keyboard that has been in the loft every once in a while and sometimes the guitars up there.

"Brielle, you up here?" Julie asks, finding her friend staring at the instruments with admiration. "Did you find anything?"

"I just found this old CD. Looks kind of cool." Brielle pulls out the black CD with the name Sunset Curve on it in white, handing it to Julie. Popping it in the CD player, they both listen to the song on there, before starting to hear screams. Both girls cover their ears, weirded out by the fact that there is screaming of any kind considering how the first few seconds of the track sounded.

"Whoa! Whoa! How did we get back here?" Luke asks, realizing where they are, while standing next to Reggie and Alex, who are both disoriented as well. Julie screams, racing all the way to her room while Brielle just sits on the pullout couch, frozen with fear. Usually, when new, older guys came into her life, it wasn't a good thing. The boys are all screaming since Julie was screaming at their presence, but they quickly stopped soon after they realized it was just two normal girls, not scary witches or anything.

"Are you okay?" Brielle just sits on the couch, still frozen in her spot, unable to react to what is going on. All that went through her head was "new men. you move you get hit" and her brain just stopped intaking new information. "We're talking to you."

"Is she some kind of big doll or something?" Reggie walks over to her, before attempting to shake her and realizing that his hand goes straight through her body, before leaning on the bed, trying anything to move her, and figuring out he could in fact touch her on her foot long enough to shake her.

"Hey, what... what are you doing?" She asks, finally snapping out of her daze, and is honest-to-god scared for her life.

"Are you okay?" Alex sits next to her and she just scooches away from the boys all sitting on her bed.

"Get away from her." Julie demands, holding a cross, and the three guys get off of the couch, easing Brielle's mind somewhat. "Who are you, and what are you doing in my mom's studio?"

"You're mom's studio? This is our studio. Trust me, my... the grand piano is new and... and... and... wait, that's my couch!" Luke exclaims, jumping next to Brielle, who is pretty close to tears from fear. "That is definitely not my six string. Can you give me just one second? Just... give me a second. Thank you." Luke pulls in his three friends, trying to figure out what's going on. They think only an hour or so has passed, since it's still dark out, but it's been twenty-five years. "Guys, what is going on? How did she get her stuff in here so fast?"

"Maybe... maybe she's a witch. I mean, I could touch the blonde girl's foot. And there are chairs. On the ceiling." Reggie rationalizes, although not very rationally.

"Okay, there's no such thing as witches." Alex just looks at him like he's an absolute idiot, because his comment was definitely dumb.

"You sure? I used to think there was no such thing as ghosts." Reggie counters with a very valid argument.

"That's fair." Alex realizes, but he and Luke still know there's no such thing.

"Okay, so we're going with witch?" Luke asks, very confused by the whole conversation.

"We're not witches." Brielle interjects. She is very good at eavesdropping, mostly because that's how she stays alive.

"They're just scared. Let someone with a softer touch handle this." Alex turns back towards the girls, asking them a very, very dumb question. "Why are you in our studio?" Julie tries to put her cross through Alex and it doesn't work at all.