Ghost ⇔ Cake ✓

Four: Apparition or Reality

Luke and Calum were never really "boyfriends." Well, they were, but they never called it that. They did the regular things-- they kissed, they made out, Luke knew each crevice of Calum's body. They were just-- close. They knew each other like the back of their own hands, they knew their expressions, their movements, their feelings even behind masks or disguise. They knew each other. Their elbows touched and maybe they would touch each other's hands for support if they needed it. They didn't need physical affection. They were emotionally affectionate already.

Luke didn't really know how it happened. They were best friends first, like Michael, and like Ashton, but nothing was a mystery. Luke sometimes didn't know how to read Michael. He was a grenade ready to explode. He knew how to calm him down, but whatever happened in his head was a mystery. And Ashton was way too quiet to know much about. He liked his secrets. He liked living in his thoughts. Calum, to him, was an open book. His expressions were easy and his smiles were genuine. Luke liked that about him. He never hid behind a disguise.

The three of them felt incomplete now without Calum there. He was always the light of them all. Not necessarily the joker or the optimistic one, but for whatever the reason, his presence tended to lighten the mood. Michael wasn't always so stormy when he was around. Ashton tended to talk more. Luke just felt a little happier. It was effortless, how Calum managed to do it. Luke wasn't sure if Calum even noticed he did.

They waited until morning before they met at Luke's house to go over the photographs. They all crowded around Michael on the couch to look at the photos of the files. Luke printed them out while Michael talked.

"Basic biography stuff for the first couple of pages," Michael said. He thumbed through some more. His red hair fell into his eyes. "Witness accounts. Just teachers talking about how he was a good student and all."

Luke took the last page from the printer and carried them all back to the couch. He spread it over the coffee table and furrowed his eyebrows to stare at them. Michael put down his phone and looked at the pages instead. The three of them look over different papers for a while, trying to find anything useful, occasionally pointing something vaguely interesting out.

Ashton said quietly, "Suspects."

He was right. Luke took the piece of paper Ashton held and looked it over, his eyebrows knitting together. Ashton pulled on his hoodie and leaned in to look.

"Wesley Davis?" Michael asked, his eyebrows raised. "Why Wesley Davis?"

Wesley was a guy in their grade, one who didn't particularly stay out of bad decisions. He had been suspended from school nearly ten times and squeezed his way out of expulsion about three. He smoked in the bathroom at school and nobody ratted him out, and Luke thought he remembered someone saying he dealt drugs.

"Did Wesley even know Calum?" Luke asked. Michael shrugged.

"Probably not, I didn't think. Wesley and I used to hang out. Calum didn't seem like the type of guy that Wes would like," Michael said. Ashton looked at Michael.

"Why did you hang out with Wesley?"

"He used to buy me cigarettes," Michael said. He continued looking over the suspects list. He pointed a black fingernail at another name.

"We were surprised at Wes. What about this one?" said Michael. Luke glanced at it, and his mouth formed an "oh" shape but no sound came out.

"Mr. Elsberry?" Ashton asked. "He's just the math teacher. Why would he be a suspect?"

Michael flipped through some more pages hurriedly. He seemed to find one and he looked at it carefully. "Uh. Oh, it says that he was absent that day of Calum's murder. And apparently grass from the hiking area Calum was in was found on his shoe." Michael was silent for a moment, just staring at the paper. Luke tried to think about Mr. Elsberry's face, so familiar and definitely not one he would have pegged as a suspect.