imagination || julie and the phantoms

five

❉ ╧╧╧╧ ✿ ╧╧╧╧ ❉

LUKE FOUND CHARLOTTE.

She had traveled away from the Molina household, on the west side of Hollywood. Except he didn't spot her walking along the road. Her legs dangled off a tree branch as her back leaned against the trunk. Luke followed the way her head tilted to see her staring at a light blue house across the street.

"You know," his voice made her jump out of her trance, "the last time you climbed a tree, you broke your arm."

She looked down to the sidewalk and saw Luke standing underneath her. He offered a small smile and an innocent wave.

"I was seven," she said and then playfully narrowed her gaze. "And someone pushed me."

"That was once," he lifted a finger and she rolled her eyes, biting back a smile. "That was one time and I said I was sorry."

Charlotte shook her head in amusement but chose to stay silent. Luke could tell she had been sitting in the tree awhile, thinking, by the way she twisted the sun ring on her finger. It was a birthday gift from him and Alex when she turned sixteen. They had gotten Reggie a brand new personalized strap for his bass and surprised the twins together. Since then, she never took it off and created a habit of twisting it when she overthought or got anxious.

He sat down on the sidewalk with the trunk against his back and his arms on his knees. Yet not a word slipped out of his mouth. After being friends with Charlotte for a decade, he knew that she would open up eventually. She just always liked to think things through first. His job was to offer his time and be there when she was ready to talk.

Five minutes later, she finally spoke. "Do you know what I thought when Reggie and I found out our house was gone?"

Luke looked up to her, brows furrowed together.

However, her focus remained on the blue house. In an instant, she appeared on the ground beside him and let out a deep sigh. "Part of me was devasted," she admitted. "I mean, that's where Reggie and I grew up. But when we first got there...the very first thought that crossed my mind was...good."

Luke's face softened when her glistening dark eyes met his, and he leaned over to intertwine their fingers to offer comfort without interrupting.

"I was relieved," she emphasized. "Because otherwise, I would have to relive everything. The screaming and sounds of things being broken. Reggie and I holding onto each other in the corner of my room, literally praying for morning to come so we could escape and go to school."

Luke remembered the first time he discovered just how bad his friends' home lives had gotten. Their father, Mike, worked all of the time but when he magically appeared, the tension between him and his wife, Christie, was thick. They would argue about anything and everything - money and bills, dinner choices, what channel the TV landed on.

One night, they started fighting about Reggie and Charlotte. As teenagers their dad thought they needed to get their heads out of the clouds; meaning he wanted them to quit the band and start thinking of 'real careers.' Christie tried to defend them by claiming Sunset Curve was a hobby and that they had plenty of time to think of their futures.

Reggie got involved in explaining how pursuing music was what they wanted to do together; it was their dream. Things escalated, mostly from the whiskey Mike drowned at dinner, and Reggie ended up on the ground.