imagination || julie and the phantoms

twenty-one

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JULIE SAT ON HER BED.

Her brown weary eyes narrowed on the sketchbook in her lap, the grip on a colored marker tight as she scribbled across the page. Blankets were in a pile around her while tear-stained pillows supported her back. Her lips pressed in a thin line, jaw angrily locked. Not even the ambient fairy lights hung around her room helped her calm down.

The conversation she had with Luke and Charlotte on the porch played like a broken record.

We don't have a lot of time. Both of them hunched over. Eyes wide, clutching their chests as if they were having a heart attack. Charlotte's broken voice. We didn't know how to tell you.

Julie sniffled, pausing her drawing to wipe underneath her glasses.

She couldn't ignore how scared the two ghosts looked, leaning onto one another just to stand. And then she thought of Reggie and Alex. They were most likely in the same state. All of them petrified, with all roads leading them away from each other, the band, the garage, and most importantly, away from Julie.

A gentle knock on her door made her head lift. Flynn revealed herself with a soft, sympathetic smile before she walked further into the bedroom. "Hey, I got your text," she greeted.

"Don't come too close," Julie warned when Flynn stopped at the edge of her bed. She capped the marker. "Anyone I seem to care about disappears."

Flynn lip's turned up but she shook her head. "You can't get rid of me," she replied. "I'm like the crazy glue of best friends."

"I just," Julie released a heavy sigh. "I don't get it. Right when my life starts to get good. Great friends, great bands, a great guy...then bam!" She whipped her sketchbook around for Flynn to see her newest drawing.

A cloud of red and orange smoke exploded, breaking and splintering the name kept white: Julie.

"I seriously don't know why all of this is happening to you," Flynn observed the drawing and then pointed out. "But that's gonna be a great album cover one day."

Julie managed a small smile, but didn't reply. She decided to keep adding details on the outer edges. If she didn't, then she would spiral and end up crying in her pillow...again.

Flynn busied herself by kneeling down to the old chest Julie had filled with her mother's belongings. It looked a mess, clothes pouring over the sides, jewelry tangled together on a separate block. Flynn began folding the sweater Julie had worn to school that day.

"You don't have to do that."

"I know," Flynn shot her best friend a teasing smile. "But I get to check out all your mom's cool stuff."

Julie set her sketchbook and marker down, absentmindedly commenting, "Char thought it was pretty cool, too. She looked through it the other night to help me find an outfit."

"So was Char the one who snuck this in here?" Flynn chuckled, turning and holding up a white T-shirt in black lettering.

Julie widened her eyes at the band name: Sunset Curve. "What the heck?"

"I'll admit, she has the same flare as your mom," Flynn admired the fake diamond studs perfectly placed around the main design. "Almost the same bedazzling technique."

"Flynn, Charlotte did not put that in there," Julie slid off her bed to get a closer look at the shirt. "Trust me. And she's never bedazzled anything. She told me herself. I was gonna start showing her before our next show...if we even have one."