"Oh my god! Stop talking to the y/n. There is no such thing as cute ghosts!" I heard my sister yell as she was backing away from the boys.
"Oh so you think we're cute?" Luke jokingly smirked at Julie but she just rolled her eyes.
Carlos walked into the garage and saw us talking to nothing. Of course only we could see them.
"I thought you two were afraid to come out here? You talking to your ghost friend? Is he hideous?" He asked.
"He can see you." Luke looked at Alex and laughed.
"No he can't" Me and Julie told them.
"What?"Carlos looked around expecting to see someone jump out at any time.
"Uh... what do you want?" Julie asked him. Trying to ignore the fact three ghost boys were standing right behind our little brother.
"Normal siblings for starters. Stop being weird and come eat." Carlos turned and walked out of the studio.
"He couldn't see you." I looked at the boys.
"Yeah, I mean that's usually how ghosts work." Alex looked at me finding me clueless how I could've missed that.
"Look. I'm sorry for what happened to you guys, but this isn't your studio anymore. You have to leave." Julie said heading for the door.
"Sorry." I told them as she kept her gaze out of the door.
"Wait." Luke said stopping us, "We never got your names."
"I'm Julie and thats y/n." Julie said, just wanting to get away from the band.
"Hi" I waved at the boys.
"Cool. I'm Luke-" Julie held her cross up again as he walked forward. "...by- by the way. And this is-"
"Reggie. I'm Reggie" He smiled at me.
"Alex. How's it goin?" Alex smiled.
"Ba-Da" Luke said doing jazz hands.
"Okay?" Julie put her cross down and swiftly walked out. I waved goodbye to the boys and followed my sister.
"They seem nice." Reggie said with a smile.
"Did you miss the part where they kicked us out or..?" Alex looked at him, confused.
Julie, Carlos and I helped dad set the table. "Okay, let's do this." Dad smiled. We all took each others hands "your turn Carlos."
"Thank you for the leftovers and the power of the mighty microwave!" Carlos grinned.
"Amen" We all laughed. We didn't waste another second and dug in.
"So..Carlos tells me he found you two in the studio." Dad mentioned
"Yup. They were out there talking to themselves." Carlos looked at us like we were crazy.
"We uh... were rehearsing for a play." I told them. Julie nodded in agreement.
"Helloo! Guyys!" Tia walked in.
"Uh ohhh, busted!" Carlos said as we quickly scrambled to hide the plate we had set in our mother's place.
"Yeah we're in here!" My dad yelled through to her, "Quick!" He turned to us as we rushed to hide everything. We sat back, trying to look like we hadn't just lost our breath covering up the fact we wish mom was still here.
"Spaghetti? Again? That's too bad, I brought you my pastilles and arroz con pollo" She smiled.
"Yum. Thanks tia." Julie smiled at her.
"It smells great!" I smiled back
"You can have it tomorrow. I can't let you have leftovers every night." She said as she opened the fridge and put away the food. "My sister would kill me. May she rest in peace. Oh... I see things are going better here." She patted mom's spot and put her hand on my shoulder.
"Actually the girls have been cleaning out mom's studio." He pointed over to us. "Hopefully we can get this house on the market and get some offers soon."
"Well I like the sound of that, moving from here will only help you move on. You've gotta rip off that bandaid and get the pain over with." Tia made a motion with her hands.
All of a sudden, Julie looked up and yelled. I turned towards where she was looking and yelled too. Julie looked around to see everyone with concerned looks on their faces. "Haha, thats me. Ripping off the bandaid." Julie explained awkwardly.
"There's my brave girls." Tia patted us on the back.
Reggie smiled at me, "I don't think we should be here right now"
"Your right! You shouldn't be here" Julie whisper yelled.
"Oh, I'm just here to help mija." Tia said, thinking Julie was talking to her.
"Yup, That's our cue to leave." Alex said.
"What Julie means is...you should be at pilates!" I said, quickly covering up what Julie just yelled and giving tia a hug. "Thank you for the food."
"Your welcome" She said, "oh and now your not in that music program, you can concentrate on classes that matter." She looked at me as to say sorry because I was still part of the music program. Then me and Julie looked at eachother painted with concern as we slowly turned our heads to face dad.
"You got the email from school right?" Tia looked at him.
"yeah we were just discussing it." He looked at Julie, trying to repress his anger.
"Bueno. Right, I'm off to pilates!" She blew air kisses to all of us and Carlos pretended to throw the kiss away, making us all laugh. Tia left. Dad was giving Julie a death stare as I racked my brain for ways to change the subject.
"So Julie." Carlos beat me to it, "wanna hear how I slid into home and was almost safe?" I gave him a smile.
"Nice try guys. That's not gonna work. Upstairs." Dad signalled to the stairs and I gave Carlos a quick fist bump before we made our way to our rooms. I stopped at the top of the stairs and listened in to what they were saying.
"Why didn't you tell me? You made me lie to your aunt." He sounded mad.
"Sorry..I was going to tell you after dinner." Julie tried to convince him. I could tell how sorry she was in her voice.
"Yeah mhm"
"I was."
"Honey. I know those classes can be difficult but you still love music don't you?"
"I don't know..Maybe?" I've never heard her doubt her music before. Something was wrong.
"Look, we talked about this, didn't we? How painful these memories of mom can be." Dad sighed. "You know everytime I see you and your siblings I see your mom. It's like she's right here with us. And I love that. I really do and maybe if you give yourself a chance you will too." I heard dad say. The moment was quickly interrupted with the loud sound of rock music. I ran downstairs and grabbed Julie's wrist, "We'll be right back." I dragged her out to the garage and we found the boys playing their instruments.
"Guys! Stop! Cut it out! Now!" Julie yelled at them. Alex played the last drum beat and they all looked up to us and smiled.
"The whole neighborhood can hear you! I thought we told you guys to leave." I continued.
"Wait- people can hear us play?" Luke looked at Julie, amazed.
"Yes! And so did our dad and brother!" Julie was yelling.
"Wait wait wait... so only you can see us but everyone can hear us?" Alex smiled.
"I mean yeah! What kind of ghosts are we?" Reggie chuckled.
"who cares man?! People can hear us play!" They all fist bumped.
"we might be dead but our music isn't!" Reggie smiled.
"Dad!" I yelled, seeing him walk through the garage doors.
"Just came in to check that everything was okay." he said.
"Yeah, we're all good, just forgot to turn of the CD player." Julie lied. Me and Julie sat down on the couch.
"Wait- is this all the junk that was up in the loft?" He asked
"Junk?" Luke looked at ?Ray like he was crazy. Ray played with the drums, dusting his finger over the cymbals. "some of this stuff is still in pretty good shape. Hey, maybe we could make a few bucks." Dad looked at us and raised his eyebrows.
"What? Yo stop touching my drums! Tell him to stop touching my drums!" Alex demanded.
"I liked that song you girls had on."
"Sweet! We're Sunset Curve" Luke slid over to Ray.
"Tell your friends!" Reggie added on.
"It was just an old CD I found nothing special." I said, seeing the boys looking over to me, clutching their chests dramatically as if I had wounded them.
"Well, special or not, I'm glad you girls are listening to your music again." Dad smiled. "Out here feel free to play whatever you want whenever you want. How about finally starting that band you, Julie and Flynn have been talking about since you were three?" He laughed.
"Maybe dad, don't get your hopes up." Me and Julie said.
"Nice!" Reggie said, "We should get our bands together" He laughed.
"Stay out of this." I said to him.
"I'm sorry honey.."
"No no not you.. er lets go!" I quickly tried to recover. Julie getting up from the couch and trying to drag me away.
Dad stopped us. "Don't worry we'll figure out a way to fix this whole music program thing." He Directed towards Julie. " Hey y/n, where did you find that necklace? I don't think I've seen it before."
"Oh.." I started " I found it in the boxes in the loft, I thought it must've been mom's."
"I like it." He replied. "Good night guys." Ray smiled walking out and we followed, closing the door.
"Did you guys see that necklace?" Reggie said.
"No.. what about it?" Alex asked.
"Look." Reggie pulled out a necklace he was wearing. "I've been wearing this for years. I never found the lock. But I think the padlock is hanging around y/n 's neck.."
"That's weird.." Luke said walking up to Reggie to examine the key. "We'll figure it out later, on the other hand he liked our song!"
"He doesn't count, he's a dad." Alex shrugged.
Once we knew our dad was gone, we walked back into the garage. I saw Reggie rush to hide something and gave him a questioning look but he avoided my gaze.
"Why can't you guys just be normal ghosts?" Julie asked them, clearly irritated. " Hang out in an old mansion! I hear Pasadena is nice!" Julie started to walk out and I followed closely.
"I think she's warming up to us!" Alex said.
"Maybe y/n can convince her to let us stay. She seems more up to the idea than Julie." Reggie mentioned.
Luke teleported out to me and Julie and stopped us halfway to the house. Julie jumped.
"Stop that." Julie looked up at him.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"I know this is completely insane but do you realize how rad this is?! People can actually hear us play!" Luke smiled.
"Yeah, I get that. It's just I've had a really awful day." Julie replied. Trying to make her way past Luke.
"Well I'm sorry you had a bad day but but three guys just found out they had a bad 25 years. And then they found out that the one thing they lived for in the first place, they can still do.. That's pretty rad."
"He does have a point Jules." I mentioned.
"You're right. It's just-" Julie was cut off by luke.
"Your bad day, I know. Look, I'm sorry we came into your lives but what I just felt in there made me feel alive again. We all felt alive again. So you can kick us out but we're not giving up music. We can play again! That's a gift no musician would turn down. You gotta know that. Clearly you mom is into music."
"Was" Me and Julie said in unison.
"She passed away." Julie said, grabbing my hand.
"I'm sorry." Luke apologized.
"yeah- we didn't know." Alex added.
I looked over to see the two coming closer to where we were standing. As he looked over Reggie gave me a little wave, making me smile.
Julie sighed, "It's okay"
I chimed in, " You guys haven't seen her anywhere have you?"
"Uhm- no, no I mean you're kind of the only people we've seen." Alex said. Me and Julie nodded.
"Yeah but she isn't dead so it doesn't really answer her question." Reggie looked at him.
"yeah... I think she knows what we mean." Alex replied.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thanks." Julie nodded.
"I say it's okay for you guys to stay here as long as you need. I mean, as long as Julie is okay with it?" I said looking for Julie's approval.
"Yeah yeah, It's okay. I didn't mean to get mad. You guys are kinda good." Julie smiled at they boys.
"Kinda? You know that's like 20 years of dust wiped off-" Luke exclaimed. We just laughed.
"Do you play piano?" Reggie asked.
"Um... no that was our mom's stuff." Julie said but I Looked at the boys and mouthed "She's lying" and I made them laugh.
"No way. She's an amazing songwriter." Luke smiled.
"She was," Julie nodded, "thats where y/n got her talent of songwriting. But wait- how would you know?" Julie looked puzzled.
"There was a song on the piano. If- if it's hers, your mom was really talented."
"well there's a bathroom in the back and a couch that turns into a bed.. if you even use any of that stuff." I said and Julie nodded.
"Dibs on the shower!" Reggie flung his had up and exclaimed. "I just really like showers, and the occasional bath." He smiled and I laughed. Getting a small glare from Julie.
"This...this is too weird." Julie said as she dragged me back into the house.
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My god. This chapter is so long. I think I'm going to start making the chapters at least 2000 words so that the chapters can just last that bit longer. I know some of my friends are reading this which makes me a little nervous to actually bring in the lovey dovey stuff but they know if they judge me I will not be happy. So I hope you're enjoying the chapters so far. I literally spent all afternoon writing and editing this chapter so it was perfect :)