Alex later poofed back into the garage, between Luke and Reggie on the piano. "Oh, hey man! Where you been?" Reggie asked.
"Kinda everywhere," Alex said. "I met some new ghost friends!"
"For real?"
"Yeah, they answered a ton of questions."
"Like whether Julie's gonna join the band or not?" Luke snarked, pulling his notebook from underneath Alex.
Alex looked between Luke and the paper nervously. "Well, um... We didn't get to that, but!" He turned back to Reggie happily. "Willie, Jo, and Lina said that all ghosts have unfinished business so we just have to do that so we can cross over."
Reggie waved his hands. "Wait, wait, back up. Are these girls cute?"
"More importantly, why would we do that?" Luke said, drawing Alex and Reggie's attention. "I'm just saying, this is like our second chance. All we need to do is get Julie to play with us."
"Yeah. Not only can that girl sing, she can write too... But these girls, though?"
Alex nodded. "I don't know how much I can help you, but... yeah, they're pretty."
Reggie smiled brightly. "Well, hey, Luke and I made a killer melody to one of Julie's lyrics."
Alex took Luke's journal as he handed it over. "Oh... without your drummer. Cool."
"Drumming is so '90s, okay? We're just gonna stomp our feet now," Luke said, mimicking the movement.
"Well, you know what else is so '90s? Being rude. Alright?" Alex sassed. "Get woke. These are sensitive times." The blonde shoved Luke's journal back into his chest and turned back to Reggie, whispering, "I learned that from my ghost friend."
He chuckled lightly. "Woke. That's... That's a cool word. What does it mean?"
"No clue," Alex said, shaking his head. "Then Jo said something else about being a cute, young ghost."
"No seriously, though. Can you introduce me to these pretty ghost girls?"
Jo was laser focused on the positioning of her feet as she picked up speed across the smooth cement of the Venice skatepark. So much so that she didn't notice the two boys come up beside Willie where he and Lina were watching from.
Coming up the side of the bowl, Jo snapped her board in a backside 180 over the coping, then pushed down on the nose of her board to accomplish her first perfect backside disaster. "Hell yeah, dude!" Willie called.
"Ah! That was so clean," Lina gushed.
"Thank you! Thank you," Jo laughed, finally looking up and seeing four ghosts applauding her lightly. She rode up the side of the bowl and climbed onto the edge of the skatepark, her eyes roaming up and down the new addition to their little group. "Brought a friend, Alex?"
"This is Reggie," he said, gesturing to the boy as he waved nervously. Jo looked the boy up and down suspiciously. Dark hair and pretty brown eyes that cut over to her every few seconds. "That's Willie, Lina, and Jo."
Reggie fidgeted as he looked around at the three, though his attention was caught up in the pretty skater girl with the purple hair. "Nice to meet you guys."
"You must be one of Alex's bandmates," Lina guessed.
"Sorry about your luck with the hotdogs," Wilie laughed.
Reggie turned on his friend incredulously. "You told them?!"
"It came up," Alex shrugged.
Jo scoffed and skated around the group to where Willie and Lina's boards sat unattended. "Gotta make the most of a story like that."
As Alex turned into a conversation with Willie and Lina, Reggie followed after Jo like a moth to a lamp. "That was a really cool trick before. How long did it take you to learn?"
"Uh, I don't know... I think it's been a week now. Time kinda blends together in this stage of our not-quite-lives, don't you think?"
"Yeah..." Reggie trailed off. "Alex said he's been asking you guys all kinds of questions."
"He also said you guys can play to actual crowds and be seen. That true?"
"Yeah. It's super weird, but... I mean, of course, we feel super lucky to have found Julie. Feels like-"
"Fate?" Jo guessed. "That's what Alex said, too. It's tragically optimistic, though, don't you think?"
Reggie's shrug was accompanied by a smile Jo had to admit was adorable. "I like tragically optimistic. Keeps things from looking bleak. I mean, we died, but there's still a bright side. Feels meant to be, sometimes."
Jo laughed slightly. "Yeah, you're quite the optimist. Don't think we'll get along very well."
"You're a pessimist?"
"I'd like to consider myself a realist, but I think that's typical of a pessimist."
"Well, they say opposites attract, don't they?" he said with another cheeky smile.
Jo rolled her eyes, but the upturn of her lips gave her away as they rejoined their friends. "How many more bandmates are tucked up your sleeves, Alex?" Jo asked.
"Just one. Luke," he replied.
"Julie's got the weekend free, so of course they're using their time to work on some new songs," Reggie explained.
"And this is using your time badly?" Willie assumed playfully.
"Don't pester them," Lina scolded, swatting his arm. "Now let's do something fun!"
The group of five spent most of the day together, Willie, Lina, and Jo showing Alex and Reggie some of their favorite spots to cause trouble. Jo and Lina had to promise Willie that he could pick the next place for him to be dragged along to the library with them.
Jo was the one to first have the idea a few years prior to start borrowing books from the library when they were dying to get a book they heard some lifers discussing. If the books were really good, sometimes Jo would steal them from local big bookstores (refusing to take from the lovely public resource or any small business). Lina hated using their ghost abilities to do anything they couldn't do when they were alive, but Willie and Jo enjoyed the fact that they were slowly corrupting her, drawing her away from her father's influence.
Jo browsed the young adult section with her thumbnail between her teeth thoughtfully when she felt a presence beside her. She glanced up and caught Reggie looking at her as she scoffed and grabbed a book from the shelf. "What's up, creeper?"
"Just enjoying your presence, Jo," he grinned.
"Yeah, you do that," she mumbled as she read the inside cover of the book. "Lame," she commented before putting it back in its place.
"How do you move everything around so easily?"
She shrugged lightly as she scanned the shelves. "Been at it a while."
"How long?"
"I died ten years ago, if that's what you're asking. Came back about a years and a half ago now." Jo smiled when she spotted a familiar cover and held it out to Reggie. "If you're looking for the best book you've ever read, here it is. You're welcome."
Reggie strained his neck to read the title. "The Grace Year."
"Teen fiction Handmaid's Tale. And it's genius start to finish."
"Handmaid's Tale. What's that?"
Jo's eyes doubled in size. "You've never heard of Handmaid's Tale? It's, like, pique modern feminist literature. The book came out in the eighties and revolutionized the utopian genre. But Grace Year... I don't know. It just hits different."
Reggie held out his hand for the book, but when Jo dropped it into his hand, it fell right through to the floor. She snorted and turned away as she laughed at him. Reggie's cheeks heated up as he rubbed the back of his neck.
Jo squatted down to the floor and Reggie followed. "Okay, just focus all of your energy into your hand. Once you do it once, it gets way easier, I swear."
Reggie smiled up at her bashfully and reached down to the book. He hesitated and exhaled nervously before focusing on lifting the book. And he did. "Holy shit I did it," he laughed.
Jo smiled and pushed up from the floor. "See? Easy as pie."
Her smile grew when she saw how happy he was, reading the description of the book. "I guess I'll take this one with me."
"Good. You can get back to me with a full review."
"I'll take detailed notes." When seeing how genuinely Reggie said that, Jo couldn't help but laugh.
Soon after, Willie got bored enough to physically pull the others from the library and out to another skatepark. When they saw the sun begin to set, they knew their time had to come to an end. The trio needed to get back to hair and makeup before the show that night and knew Caleb would be angry if they were late. Alex and Reggie knew there was work waiting for them in Julie's garage, learning all of the new songs she and Luke had been working on and working out the bugs. Their goodbyes were reluctant and Reggie was unreasonably excited to start on the intriguing book from the pretty girl.
Caleb was still pissed when the three returned to the Hollywood Ghost Club not long after they parted with their new friends. "I can't have you holding up my show," he scolded. His tone would appear calm to an outsider, but Jo recognized the darkness in his voice. "I don't have to remind you how replaceable you are, Josie."
"Jo," she muttered softly, staring at her reflection as the woman behind her looped a strand of purple hair around the curling wand.
"I won't be going over this with you again," Caleb said. "And your rebelliousness will not be tolerated. Especially not while you're spending time with my daughter. Don't give me a reason to remove you from the house band."
Jo took a deep breath and finally met Caleb's eyes in the mirror. "I won't. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
The smile this garnered wasn't one of warmth. There was a sharpness to it, as if he could throw it straight into your chest in the blink of an eye. Which, she guessed, he could, in a way. Jo reached up and toyed with the choker around her neck and the pendant hanging from the middle. There was no clasp to remove the choker from her neck and it often felt as if it was slowly suffocating her. And emblazoned in the center was the logo of the Hollywood Ghost Club.
>author's note
i hope you all had a lovely week <3. i normally update on fridays but i'm also a forgetful idiot so that doesn't always happen. have a great weekend :)