Maybe In Another (After)Life

1.04 I Got the Music

Julie sits back with a sigh. She's been working with the boys all weekend to write some new songs and they've gotten a good amount of work done but, unlike the ghosts, she does have school to deal with. Meaning, of course, she has homework to do.

She claps her hands together, the loud sound catching all the boys' attention along with Levy's whose head pops up. "Right. As much as I'd love to keep writing, I do have other stuff to do."

Luke scoffs. "Other stuff?" he repeats. "What do you mean 'other stuff'? What could be more important than this?" He gestures grandly at the song notebook in front of him.

"Homework," she says flatly, amused when frowns and grimaces immediately make appearances on all of them.

"Yeah," Alex says slowly. "I, uh, I definitely don't miss that part of being alive."

Reggie shrugs as he strums a few random notes on his bass. "I guess that's one good thing about dying, right?"

Julie rolls her eyes. "Oh, come on. You guys were, what? Seventeen? You were almost done with high school anyway," she points out.

"Well, me and Reggie were," Alex tells her. He points at Max. "Max was only sixteen."

"He was also on the edge of repeating a year," Reggie adds. "Or, you know, getting kicked out."

Max frowns at him. "Hey," he says, slightly offended but not for the reason most would think. "I'll remind you that I died in the summer. I'd already made it through the school year. Besides, Luke's the dropout."

Luke gasps in betrayal. "Max," he whines before he pauses in realization. "Wait. How do you even know that? I dropped out after-" He swallows hard. "Uh, you know. After."

"I told you," Max says as (without even thinking) he reaches out to rub a soothing hand over Luke's bare arm, "I was in and out of the dark room. I checked in on you guys a few times that first year."

Luke relaxes under Max's touch as he thinks about what exactly he could mean. After all, there were several times over that year where he swore he could see Max hanging around...

"Wow," Julie says quietly. She's the one who brought it up but now- "You guys really were just teenagers, huh?"

Silence fills the garage as the entire atmosphere seems to darken. Even with the ability to walk through things and the fact they can't be seen, it's easy to forget sometimes they are actually dead.

They're ghosts.

"Sixteen," Max sighs. "So much for being the first Lincoln to graduate high school." Still, he smiles a little, happy to know that particular achievement went to Barbara instead.

"Yeah," Reggie agrees, "and it's not even because you got expelled like we all figured it would be."

Alex reaches over and smacks him on the arm. "Dude!" he hisses.

"Like you all..." Max trails off as he looks at the three of them in a mix of disbelief and offense. "Seriously? All of you?" He turns to Luke when nobody answers.

"Sorry, man," Luke says with a sheepish smile. "It's just, well, you have to actually show up to classes to graduate. You do know that, right?"

"So, my attendance record was... iffy," Max settles on. "My grades were great!"

"Yeah," Alex agrees with an exaggerated nod. "For the classes you turned work in."

"Eh," Max says with a shrug, obviously unconcerned. He reaches down to scratch Levy's ears when the dog leans against his legs. "Oh well. No use worrying about all that now anyway."