we're more than chemistry

c h a p t e r 3 ~ dinner

"When we touched I felt something like a spark or a flicker like I was alive again."

We finally made our way up and got sat down for supper. Carlos was setting a place for mom. He sat down and then our dad came over, "There we go." He said setting down the spaghetti, "Okay. Let's do this." Dad said sitting down.

"Let's do this." Carlos repeated. We all held hands to pray and Julie and Carlos left one laying on mom's place at the table. "Your turn Carlos." My dad told him, he started, "Thank you for our leftovers and the power of the mighty microwave. Amen." "Amen." We all said chuckling a bit.

"So Carlos told me he found you in the studio...." Dad started, Carlos interrupted, "Julie was out there talking to herself." Julie chuckled, "I was rehearsing for a play. Jess was helping me." I nodded, "Yeah I was."

"Hello, hello!" We heard our Tiá call. "Oh. Busted." Carlos said as we all moved mom's place at the table away to hide it. "Yeah we're in here. Quick." My dad said. We finally got it all taken care of right before she came in.

"Huh. Spaghetti. Again?" Tiá asked, "Yeah." My dad smiled, "That's too bad. I brought you my pasteles and arroz con pollo." My Tiá said, "Yum." My dad and I said at the same time, Julie looked at her, "Mmm! Thanks, Tiá, it smells great."

"You can have it tomorrow. I can't have you eat leftovers every night. My sister would kill me, may she rest in peace." She said now walking towards us. "Oh... I see things are going better?" She asked rubbing my mom's place at the table.

My dad looked at her, "Actually... Julie and Jess have been cleaning out mom's studio. Hopefully, we can get the house on the market and some offers soon." My Tiá nodded, "Well I like the sound of that. Moving from here is only gonna help you move on. You've got to rip that bandaid off and get the pain over with."

Julie screamed and I looked up and saw the boys, we all looked at Julie confused, "That's me. Ripping off the bandaid." She told us and let out another yell. I looked at the boys trying to subtly motion for them to leave but they didn't listen. "There's my brave girl." Tiá said to her.

"Hey Julie, Jess, we really like what you guys did with the place." Luke said from in between us, Julie looked at him, "You shouldn't be here." Tiá gasped, "Oh I'm just here to help Mija."

"I think that's our cue to leave." Alex said, Julie looked at our Tiá, "I mean, you should be at pilates. Thanks for bringing us food." We both glared at the boys, "We should've called first." Reggie said as they all left.

"It's nothing, and now that you're not in the music program, you can focus on classes that matter. You got the email from the school, right?" My Tiá asked my dad, "Yeah. we're still discussing it." He lied, she smiled, " Bueno, I'm off to pilates." She blew Carlos a kiss, and he hit it like a baseball, "Wa-chow, it's gone." She then kissed mine and Julie's head, and said something in spanish that I didn't hear.

When Tiá left Carlos started, "So Julie? Wanna hear how I slid into home and was almost safe?" "You're a good brother, that's not gonna work." My dad told him, "I tried." He said as we both got up to go scrape our plates.

After a minute we heard some rock music start playing, "What's that?" Carlos asked, "I must have left the stereo on in the garage." Julie told them, I looked at my dad, "Don't worry Julie and I got it." I said as we left and ran down to the studio.

Julie and I started yelling at the same time, "Guys! Guys! Guys! Stop! Enough! Stop! Cut it out!" We yelled, they finally stopped but the song was pretty good. "The whole neighborhood could hear you. I thought I told you to leave."

"Wait people can hear us play?" Luke asked, I nodded, "Yes! And so did our dad and our brother." I told him, Alex stood up from his drums, "W-w-wait, wait. So only you two can see us. But everyone can hear us? I mean, what kind of ghosts are we?" Alex asked.

"Who cares man? People can hear us play!" Luke exclaimed. "We might be dead but our music isn't." Reggie added this made me smile, there was something about these boys, I felt something, but Reggie made me feel something different like my stomach was tied in knots and I could barely talk around him. I've never felt this before and I didn't like it, it messed with my confidence.

Just then our dad walked in, "Dad!" We both exclaimed. "Hey! Just making sure your okay." He said, of course, he was only checking on Julie I thought, and a quick frown formed on my face, but it quickly disappeared but I saw that Reggie noticed it. "Yeah I'm fine. I just had to turn off the cd player."

"Wait, is this the junk that was in the loft?" Our dad asked, "Junk?" Luke asked, our dad walked over and started playing on the drums, "Some of this stuffs in pretty good shape. Hey, maybe we could make a couple bucks."

"What? Yo, stop touching my drums. Tell him to stop touching my drums." Alex said, "Could we maybe keep them? I mean a real drum set for me would be nice since I can only use the one at school, and a new guitar would be nice you know, and I've always wanted to learn the bass, mom was gonna teach me. But maybe I'll try and learn. It would be nice to have all my instruments out here, you know including the piano." I rambled on, my dad nodded, "Yeah, of course, Jess."

"I liked that song you had on." My dad told us, Luke went over to him, "Sweet! We're sunset curve." "Tell your friends."Reggie added. Julie and I looked at my dad, "It's just an old cd jess found." Julie told him.

"Well still it's nice your listening to music again. Out here you can play whatever you want whenever you want." Our dad told Julie, "Oh! That's nice!" Reggie said, "Stay out of this." Julie said to him, "I'm-I'm sorry honey. I didn't....." Our dad started, "Oh, no, no, no, no. Not you. I mean, uh... er... you know give me and Jess a minute." Julie said showing our dad out of the studio.

"Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. We'll figure out this music program thing." He told her, "Thanks, dad." Julie said then he left and Julie closed the doors behind him. She turned around, "He likes our song." Luke said and Alex looked at him, "Yeah. Well, he doesn't count, he's a dad."

I reached out to grab reggies hand because that's what I do when I'm stressed, I need physical contact. he reached his hand back and we touched, I held our hands up, "Umm... guys? Reggie and I can touch...." I said and Reggie looked at me, "When we touched I felt something like a spark or a flicker like I was alive again."

"How can you guys touch? Can you touch the other guys? " Julie asked, "Let me try." I went up to Alex he held out his hand, and my hand went through his.

I furrowed my eyebrows, "So I can only touch Reggie. Maybe it means something. Maybe, maybe..... god I don't know."

Reggie looked at me and came over and grabbed my hand again and squeezed it, "It's okay Jess we'll figure it out." He told me as Alex sent a smirk my way. I rolled my eyes at him.

Julie groaned, and then spoke, "Why can't you guys just be normal ghosts? Hang out at old mansions. I hear Pasadena's nice." She then stormed out, "Jules! Wait!" I called out chasing after her.