Julie and the Phantoms

Wake Up

I'm sitting on the couch in the studio, playing with the locket that's usually around my neck. I stare at it, fiddling with the clasp, but never open it. Apparently it hasn't been opened for over twenty years. As tears form in my eyes and gloss over my vision, my brother sits down on the couch next to me. He doesn't say anything. He just looks at me replicating the same sad face as I have. Wiping a tear that began falling down my check, he softly smiles.

"Come on, Little L. Let's rock!" Alex shouts and Luke pulls me from off the couch.

"Why am I the 'Little' I'm literally the same age as Luke." I argue, but they just laugh and choose to avoid responding. I make my way to the set up of instruments, and rock out with the boys.. And then suddenly, Julie comes back in and yells at us to shut it off.

"The whole neighborhood can hear you. I thought I told you to leave." Julies shouts at us, not very happily.

"Wait. People can hear us play?" Luke asks in shock, setting down his guitar.

"Yes! And so did my dad and my brother!" She says states with a bit of annoyance in her voice

"W-W-Wait. Wait. So, only you can see us, but everyone can hear us?" Alex tried to understand. Why do I feel like I'm the only one who fully understands anything she says?

Suddenly, an older guy walks in. "Dad!" Julies says shocked. Ohhh, that's her dad.

"Hey! Just making sure you're okay."

"Yeah. I'm fine. I just had to turn off the cd player." She tells him

He turns and looks at the instrument set up in shock. "Wait is this the junk that was in the loft?"

"Junk?" Luke and I say very upset.

Playing with the drums, he talks about selling them and making good money off of them, but Alex is very protective of his drums. Don't believe me? When we were just starting to become more known as a band, we were doing a sound check and practice for one of our shows. During one of our breaks, Alex and I were messing around, and so I ran over to his drum set. I begged him to let me play them, but you would think after all this time, he would know I really don't know how to play drums. So however badly I played, he kicked me off and said I'm never allowed to touch the drum set again.

As her dad leaves, Julie gets annoyed with us again. Actually, I say the boys more than me. So far, they've dragged me into getting in trouble. "Why can't you guys just be normal ghosts?!" Hang out in an old mansion. I hear Pasadenas nice." Walking out the door and slamming it behind her.

"I have always wanted to check out Pasadena." Reggie cheerfully tells us.

"Wha...?" I question, but I just leave it alone. Somehow, I don't know how.. but somehow, Luke and I appear in front of her on a set of outside steps.

"Aah!" she grunts, stopping in her tracks. "Stop that! I'm serious."

"I'm sorry." Luke says, as we both walk towards her.

"What do you want?"

"I know that this is all completely insane, but do you know how rad this is? People.. Actual people can hear us play." Luke tells her

"Yea, it's just Ive just had a really, really awful day. I gotta go." Julie says walking passed us

"I'm sorry that you've had a bad day, but we all just found out that we'be had a bad 25 years. And then, we find out that the one and only thing they lived for, except for each other, in the first place they can still do." I fight with her

"You're right. It's just.." but i cut her off.

"Your bad day. Yeah. I think I know a couple of those. I think Luke, Reggie, Alex and I actually know a lot of those."