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So, it all starts with Reggie being weird on a rainy Sunday afternoon, when Luke just wants to play Scooby Doo Monster Hunters.
Reggie being weird isn't really weird, really, because he’s been weird his whole entire life. Luke would know. He and Reggie have been best friends since forever, and best friends know everything about each other. Reggie knows that when his Luke’s mom isn’t looking, he dumps all the cereal in the box out to get to the prize at the bottom, and then pours it all back; and Luke knows that Reggie’s scared of squirrels, has a cool birthmark between his toes, and is really weird.
Weird doesn’t mean bad, which is what adults never get. Different, yeah. Cool, sometimes — especially when it comes to Reggie.
Just because Reggie doesn’t always listen when other people are talking, or wanders off if you don't keep an eye on him, or can talk and talk for hours about things only he really cares about… well, that’s all just Reggie, and it’s how he’s always been. Another thing about best friends: they don’t judge each other. They think their friends are the awesomest ever, no matter what.
And Reggie is totally the awesomest ever. He’s got amazing taste in cartoons and superhero shirts, he can hang upside down on the monkey bars, and he once ate a whole glue stick because Luke dared him to. He’s the best! He’s the coolest!
He’s also really, really weird.
This afternoon, he’s being weirder than usual… and, like Mommy would say, he’s starting to get on Luke’s last nerve.
“Reggie! Reggie, come on!” Luke leans as far over the side of the couch as he can without toppling over. When he bounces, the cushions shake, and the springs make a little boingy-boing sound. Reggie’s mommy wouldn’t be happy if she saw them — Luke’s mommy is very firm about her “don’t jump on the couch” rule, and Reggie’s mommy probably feels the same way — but Reggie’s mommy is upstairs because she’s tired. (Because she’s going to have a baby soon, and babies make you really tired when they’re growing. Luke’s mommy told him that when he was growing inside her, she took naps all the time — she fell asleep in the middle of gardening, and when Daddy saw her laying facedown in the petunias he got really freaked out! — and also ate chocolate covered pretzels all the time — which is why Luke loves chocolate covered pretzels so much. It all makes sense, but Luke still thinks a baby growing inside you is weird and gross, and he wants nothing to do with it.)
Anyways, Reggie’s mom is in bed, so she’s not around to catch them not watching cartoons. She doesn’t see the way Luke is bouncing on the couch with his bright green Scooby sunglasses on and his hair messed up like Shaggy; she doesn’t see Reggie sprawled out on the floor with all his markers dumped out around him, busy coloring a really cool picture.
Except he’s really, really busy, and he’s not paying attention to Luke, no matter how much Luke bounces.
“Reggie!” he says, a little louder. His best friend doesn’t even look up. Pouting, Luke belly flops on the couch, stretching his arms out until they almost touch the top of Reggie’s head. “You’re so boring,” he pouts into the cushion. “Why won’t you play with me?”
“I’m busy, Luke.” Reggie doesn’t even sound annoyed. He never sounds annoyed. He’s happy all the time, except when he falls off the money bars and gets hurt, or when his parents get all shoutey. Even if he’s not annoyed, he’s not paying attention to Luke. Which is rude, because Luke’s a guest in his house. If Luke’s mommy were here, she’d give him a lecture about “house-pitality”... and then probably give him a cookie, because she really likes Reggie.
What did Luke come all the way over here for if they’re not going to play?
“Reggie, come on! I said you can be Scooby, and you like being Scooby, and we can even get goldfish from the kitchen and pretend they’re Scooby Snacks, and you can show me how you catch them in your mouth, and we can chase monsters ‘round the backyard, and Reggie what are you drawing and how is it more fun than me Reggie hey —“
He leans too far, and falls face-first off the couch, on top of Reggie.
“Luke, owww!”
“Ouch! Oops, sorry!”
They scramble away from each other in a pile of tangled limbs and scattering markers. Luke’s elbow aches where he hit it, and Reggie’s laying on his back like a turtle, because Luke’s pretty sure he snapped his spine like a pretzel stick. They’re both moaning and groaning. It’s a minute before Luke can find his feet again; by then, Reggie’s pouting up at him, brows pulled tight together. This time, he really does look annoyed.
“Luke! Why’d you do that for?”
“Because you weren’t paying attention to me,” Luke says, like it should be obvious. He didn’t mean to pancake Reggie… but it worked, didn’t it? Now, he’s not looking at his drawing; he’s focusing the full force of his super scary glare on Luke.
(Reggie’s super scary glare wouldn’t scare a puppy, but Luke’s mommy said he’s not allowed to tell him that, so Luke has to pretend to be scared.)
“I’m gonna have a weird bruise,” Reggie pouts, pushing himself up and shaking himself off. It takes him half a second before he remembers his drawing — and suddenly, he’s scrambling around on his hands and knees, and his eyes are wide, and he gasps really, really loud. “Oh man, Luke! Look what you did!”
He sounds so upset that it scares Luke — and when he holds up the drawing, Luke’s belly fills up with sad bad guilty feelings. There’s a big purple streak in the middle of the drawing, cutting right through one of the stick figures on the paper. Reggie holds it close, like a birdie who fell out of a tree, and turns a big-eyed, betrayed look into look.
“You ruined Willie!”
Luke’s nose scrunches up. “Who’s Willie?”
“This is Willie!” Reggie waves the drawing in his face, which, okay, explains everything. Then he flops back down in the mess of markers, pouting like Luke just took his last cookie. “I was gonna show it to him when it was finished, but now — now I can’t, ‘cause it’s all messed up!”
He breaks off with a sad little hiccup. That nasty, guilty feeling twists in Luke’s belly again. Reggie doesn’t cry at much — he’s not a crybaby, and neither is Luke, even if Luke cried for an hour when he stepped on a caterpillar in the backyard — but sometimes, Luke upsets him, and it’s the worst feeling in the world. Best friends aren’t supposed to hurt each others’ feelings. And if something hurts Reggie enough that he cries over it, well… that means Luke’s really done bad.
He almost looks like he’s going to cry now. His cheeks are getting all blotchy, and his eyebrows are scrunched up, and… oh no. Oh, no. Luke can’t let crying happen. He can’t, he can’t!
“Hey! It’s okay!” He hits the ground at his best friend’s side, sending markers skittering. “How about we make a new one? A whole new picture — yeah!” He nods enthusiastically at Reggie’s skeptical face. “And it’ll be even better than this one, ‘cause we’re working on it together!”
The freckles on Reggie’s nose dance as his face scrunches up. “Together? You mean… you wanna work on it with me?”
“Yeah!” Luke bounces on his knees, voice squeaking. “Def’tin’ley!”
“Okay.” It never takes much to get Reggie on board with Luke’s plans, or to put a smile back on his face. When Luke holds out a bright pink marker to him, he takes it, brightening. “That means you gotta meet Willie too, though!”
“Who’s Willie?” Luke’s already teaching for a clean piece of craft paper. Reggie’s next words stop him in his tracks.
“My friend.”
He freezes like a statue, then whips around to stare Reggie straight in the face. A friend — a friend Luke doesn’t know? What kind of friends does Reggie have? At school, they always hang out together; they play on the playground together, they eat lunch together, they even walk to the nurse together. Reggie doesn’t have any other friends at school, because the kids think he’s weird. Where’d he find an entire friend, without Luke knowing about it?
“Who is he? Where’d you get him? Is he cool? Does he go to our school?”
“No.” Reggie’s voice is airy; he doesn’t bother making it clear which question he’s answering. “He’s Willie. He’s big.”
“Big like a giant?”
“Big like a teacher.” Reggie’s brows scrunch up. “Or… like a fifth grader? I dunno. It’s hard to tell.”
“So he’s old?”
“Yeah. Really old!” Reggie grins brightly. “He said he’s eighteen!”
“Whoaaaa…” Luke drags out the word for a long time, brain spinning like a merry-go-round at the idea. Eighteen whole years old — that’s gotta be older than the fifth graders. It might even be older than the teachers!
Where did Reggie find a cool, old friend, who —
“What are you drawing?” Luke demands, pointing to whatever Reggie’s sketching in blue marker on the paper.
Reggie looks up, eyes shining. “Willie’s skateboard! He’s got cool wheelies and a crunchy helmet with a big big crack… and he can do a buncha tricks!”
A cool old friend who can skateboard?
“Not fair,” Luke breathes — but he sounds way more excited than upset about it. “Not fair, not fair! You gotta introduce me, okay? I wanna learn to skateboard!”
“He’ll teach you if you ask nicely,” Reggie declares, and bites down on the cap of a green pen. “Do we have glitter paint?” he asks around it.
“I dunno. It’s your house.”
“But I dunno either.”
“Go look in the big art box.”
“You go look. ‘M drawing, Luke.”
“I’m helping.” Luke is really good at drawing stars — he just learned — so he's drawing stars all over the outside of the paper, while letting Reggie handle the stick figures in the middle. He’s drawing really cool stars. They’re almost sparkly. Come to think of it... “We should get glitter.”
“I just said that!”
“I know, but we should.”
“Go look for it.”
“You go look!”
“No.” Reggie’s voice is firm, like Mommy’s when she decides Luke isn’t allowed to go out in a rainstorm to jump in mud puddles. “Don’t wanna. Gotta work on this, okay? It’s gotta be great.”
“It will be.” Luke huffs his hair out of his face — it’s getting too long, Mommy’s going to try to give him a haircut again — and reaches for a blue pen. “Are blue stars weird, or cool?”
Reggie considers it. “Cool. ‘Specially if they’re big ones. I asked Willie what his favorite color is, and he just said ‘all the colors! ‘cept black’. Which is sad, ‘cause I like black.”
“Why d’you like black? It’s not even a color.”
“It is too!” Reggie pulls back, stung and pouting. “That’s why I like black. I feel bad for it!”
“Colors don’t have feelings, Reggie.”
“They do, though.” He speckles the paper with tiny dots from a bright green marker, so it looks like snow in the summertime. “Green makes me feel all bubbly, like… like drinking soda! And yellow makes me happy, and purple makes me sleepy, an’, an’ —“
“Red is loud.” Luke thinks he gets where this conversation is going. “Pink is soft and boring, blue is smooth… orange is sharp. Like, like a door squeaking. Or a police siren. Green sounds like wind chimes.”
Reggie’s brows furrow, and Luke thinks he lost him — it’s the same face his mommy made when he tried to explain colors just sound a certain way — but that’s okay, because the next second, Reggie goes looking for a brown marker and can’t find one, and that sets off a whole search of all the markers that have scrambled around the room.
They finally find it under the sofa, all the way in the back… but by that point, Luke is stuck, and Reggie has to pull him out by his feet. By the time they’re finished with the actual picture, they still haven’t found any glitter… but the living room is a mess, pillows thrown off the couch and markers everywhere.
Reggie looks around, and does his little nervous bouncy-bounce. “Mommy’s gonna be mad,” he says quietly. “She can’t pick up messes cause’a the baby.”
“It’s okay!” Luke declares. “We got it!”
They scramble to put all of Reggie’s markers back in the box; they stack his drawing papers up super neat, and put the pillows back on the couch in almost the same places they found them in. Somehow, they spilled apple juice on the table, but it’s only a little, so Luke just spongies it up with his shirt. No one’s ever gotta know… and now he tastes really good!
Once the room is clean, Reggie takes his drawing, and they run across the house.
“Is your mommy gonna take us out?”
“I dunno… she’s not feeling good today, so maybe not? But we can go out alone. I do it all the time!”
“You do?” Luke can’t imagine that. His Mommy never even lets him leave the house without holding his hand on the way out the door; Luke isn’t allowed to go anywhere alone, even to the top of the playground equipment (which is tough, because as Daddy says, “my old knees aren’t made for climbing after you, little monkey!”).
What would it be like to just go where you want to go, alone?
He guesses he’s about to find out.
“Mommy!” Reggie shouts very loudly down the hall, towards his mommy’s bedroom. “We’re gonna go chase seagulls down on the beach! Don’t worry, Luke and I are going together, we won’t let either of us take a kid nap!”
Reggie’s mommy is quiet for a minute — long enough that Luke wonders if she’s not kid napping herself — before she calls back, “Do you remember the rules?”
“Always stay where we can see the house!” Reggie counts them off on his fingers. “Don’t pet strange doggies! ‘Better not bring the seagulls home, mister!’ An’, umm… umm…”
“The bad words one,” Luke whispers eagerly.
“An’ if someone tries to take us, we kick ‘im really hard, and we scream all the bad words we know ‘til he goes away!” Reggie breaks off with a big smile, bouncing on his heels. “Can we bite ‘im, Mommy?”
“Yes, you can bite him, baby. Good job.” Reggie’s mom sounds very tired, but also like she’s trying not to laugh. “Have fun!”
Grinning wide, Reggie grabs Luke by the hand, and pulls him out the front door, across his yard, and onto the sidewalk; together, they wait very patiently for the light to turn red before running across the street.
It’s awesome being outside without any adults following them! There’s no one telling them not to run too fast, or not to race each other on the sidewalk; when Luke trips over his own feet and goes rolling, Mommy isn’t right by his side to scoop him up and fuss over him. He bounces right back up, and starts chasing Reggie again, like nothing happened. They don’t have any money, but when they pass a guy in a hot dog cart, he waves to them, and they wave back.
This is what it’s gotta feel like to be full grown adults. Luke feels… a million feet tall. The entire world belongs to him, and he can go anywhere; he doesn’t know where he wants to go yet, but he’s gonna get there, and it’ll be awesome.
For now, though, they run all the way down to the beach. When they turn around, they can still see Reggie’s house, looking tinier than a dollhouse. Even when they kick off their sneakers and splash their feet in the water, they’re not breaking any rules, because there’s no rule that says they can’t do beach stuff on the beach.
Reggie shrieks when Luke splashes him. Luke laughs really loud… but soon the water feels cold, and his jeans get all wet, and he’s looking around because he’s pretty sure they were looking for something, right?
“You almost got the picture wet!” Reggie whines, and oh yeah, Luke remembers.
“But I didn’t, though.” He looks around on the beach, brows scrunching up. “So where is he? Where’s the guy?”
“Who?”
“The guy, Reggie.”
“Mr Seagull doesn’t like when you talk about him that way. He’s not a guy, Luke, he’s king of the seagulls, and he can fly!”
Luke rolls his eyes so hard, he almost falls over. “Your Willie guy! The one we made the picture for? You said —“ He squeals as more water splashes his legs, and jumps back out of the splashing zone. “You said,” he emphasizes, rounding on Reggie, “he’d teach me how to skateboard!”
Reggie’s brows furrow. “Well, you gotta ask him nice, Luke.”
“I would, if we knew where he was!”
“What do you mean?” Reggie sighs, like Luke is being super stubborn about not wanting to play Star Wars again, and then turns to wave up at the sidewalk. “He’s right there!”
Luke blinks. There are lots of people on the sidewalk, sure… but no cool old guys with skateboards and long hair, like in Reggie’s picture. The place where Reggie’s waving doesn’t have any people at all.
His belly sinks down to his toes, and that tight ‘on my last nerve, young man’ feeling comes back. “Reggie,” he says, in his Mommy’s best “I’m being patient now, Luke” voice. “Can no one else see Willie?”
Reggie shrugs. “I dunno.”
Oh man. “Is he like the Waffle King who used to rule the playground?”
Only Reggie could see that guy, but he insisted he was real for days and days, until Luke shouted that if he wasn’t going to give them free waffles, he didn’t care, and immediately jumped off the top of the monkey bars and got in trouble.
Sometimes, Reggie sees people no one else can see. He calls them his friends, and he really, really believes in them. Luke isn’t going to say they’re not real — because some of the kids at school already say that when they’re trying to be mean to Reggie, and he’ll never, ever be like them ‘cause they’re the worst — but it’s no fun sometimes when your best friend has a bunch of other friends only they can see.
Luke hates playing with Reggie’s ‘maginary friends, ‘cause he always feels left out.
“Reggie,” he groans, kicking his bare feet in the sand. “You didn’t tell me!”
“Tell you what?” Reggie sounds genuinely confused. “I told you he can skateboard, and he’s really really cool — look, he’s coming this way!” He bounces up and down, waving harder. “Look, Luke!”
Luke is looking — but no one’s coming towards them, and the place Reggie’s waving at is empty.
“Hey, Willie! Guess what, we were looking for you!” Reggie’s voice gets squeaky with excitement. He can’t stop dancing on his tippy-toes in the sand, too excited to hold still. A few seconds of quiet pass, and then he laughs loud. “The water’s really cold today, but that’s okay, we don’t mind. It’s fun to splash around."
He’s just talking to empty air. It’s not the first time Luke’s seen him do it, duh, but… he sinks into himself, arms crossing as he pouts. He didn’t know they were playing with ‘maginary friends today. He thought they were meeting a real guy, with a real skateboard.
“Huh? Oh, that’s Luke. He’s my bestest friend in the whole world!”
“Don’t talk about me,” Luke shoots back — before a grin lights up his face. “Aww. Thanks. You too!”
“We go everywhere together, an’ he gives me his fruit snacks at lunch, an’ we do lots of fun stuff… no way! Where’d you get socks with lobsters on ‘em? That’s the coolest, Willie!”
Luke thought he was the coolest.
The pout is back, stronger than ever. His mommy would tell him his face will get stuck that way, but Luke doesn’t care. Reggie’s his best friend, and he’s all excited over somebody else’s lobster socks? Lobster socks that Luke can’t even see.
“This is lame,” he mutters. “I wanna go home.”
“Luke!” Reggie spins back to him. “Why’re you being mean?”
“Because , Reggie!” He rolls his eyes hard, and throws his hands in the air. “You said there was a cool guy and he’d teach me to skateboard, not one of your ‘maginary friends!”
Reggie’s smile drops; his face falls. He looks hurt, really hurt, all over again. Luke’s belly twists, but he doesn’t back down.
“That’s not nice. Why — why are you saying that about Willie?”
“Because Willie’s not there! I can’t see him!”
Reggie looks between Luke and the empty air beside him, brows pulling tight together. He looks like he’s just shouted out an answer in class, and even though he knows it’s right, the teacher’s saying it’s wrong.
“But — but —” His voice goes very tiny. “Why can’t he see you, Willie?”
The empty air doesn’t answer him… but slowly, Reggie’s face goes scrunchy, then loosens up all at once. He looks almost relieved. “Oh… oh, okay. That makes sense.”
“What?” Luke huffs. He doesn’t like being left out of things. “Reggie, now you’re being mean. I don’t wanna play anymore.”
“I’m not being mean!” Reggie’s voice squeaks on the word. “Luke — Luke, where are you going?”
Luke doesn’t care where he’s going. Maybe back to Reggie’s house — maybe he’ll run all the way home, or swim out into the ocean and ride a shark to Hawaii. Any place that’s far away from Reggie and his dumb imaginary friend with a cool skateboard and cool socks is good enough for him.
“Luke! We have to stay together, otherwise we might take a kid nap!”
“I don’t wanna kid nap! I wanna skateboard, and play Scooby Doo, and I wanna go home!”
“Luke!”
Reggie sounds like he’s about to cry. That’s a bad thing. Never, ever make Reggie cry.
Even though he really doesn’t want to, Luke stops, and slowly turns around. He expects to find Reggie standing there, holding his drawing in his hands, with tears in his eyes.
He… finds something else, actually.
“Luke, look!” Reggie’s bouncing up and down in the sand, pointing to the spot next to him. “Do you see? Look, look!”
Luke blinks. His mouth drops open. He takes one step closer, then another… and Reggie’s drawing stays floating in the air, a little above Reggie’s head.
“How are you doing that?” he blurts out. It’s windy by the shore today, and Luke knows windy means things fly away if you don’t hold on to ‘em tight… but Reggie isn’t holding onto his picture at all, and it’s not even fluttering in the wind. It’s pulled tight and flat, to show off the marker drawing. There are all of Luke’s rainbow stars, surrounding three stick figures — a big one, wearing a green shirt, with long hair and a skateboard, standing next to two little ones — one with messy black hair, and one with Luke’s Spider-Man shirt.
“Willie likes the picture,” Reggie says in a tiny voice. The picture bobs up and down, like nodding.
Luke blinks big eyes up at the empty air. “Is he holding it right now?”
“Yup! And that’s not all he can do — watch, Luke, watch!”
As Luke watches, the drawing slowly folds itself up — in half, then in fours, and then in a tiny, nest square — before it disappears into thin air.
“He put it in his pocket,” Reggie reports cheerfully, as Luke gasps.
“No way!” He swipes a hand through the open air where the drawing used to be. “No way!”
“You just hit him in the stomach!” Reggie gasps, then giggles. “It’s okay, he doesn’t mind.”
“I didn’t feel anything,” Luke says, staring down at his hand.
“That’s cause you went right through him, silly. Look…”
Luke and Reggie watch, mouths wide open, as the wet sand on the ground starts to move itsf. First, handprints press deep into the sand — hands too big to belong to a kid — and then, a sand castle starts to build itself, right there on the shore.
“This is the coolest thing ever,” Luke breathes. “Reggie… where’d you get an invisible friend?” He bounces up and down. “Where do I get one?”
“Willie can be your friend too!” Reggie looks a bit too excited by the idea. A second later, his eyes widen, and he looks up at Invisible Willie. “Is that okay? Can you?”
It takes him a minute, before a giant grin bursts across his face. Luke grins too, so wide his cheeks hurt… but it’s all worth it, because he's just made the coolest friend ever.
They spend what feels like forever out there on the beach, playing with Invisible Willie. They wade in the surf, and Willie splashes water at them; they build sand castles, and Willie is the invisible monster who knocks them down. Willie tugs on Luke’s hair when he’s not looking, drops water down his shirt, and — according to Reggie, who can hardly explain through his giggles — keeps making goofy faces at him. Luke makes some goofy faces right back, and whenever he spots Willie splashing, throws the water right back at him.
(Maybe he wants to be the person to make Reggie laugh. Maybe he’s always the one who makes Reggie laugh, and it’s weird having it be any different now. Whatever. Who cares?)
The coolest part, no question about it, is when they move up to the sidewalk and Willie makes a skateboard appear out of thin air. One second, there’s nothing. Reggie and Luke are just standing around, staring down the empty alley between two houses. Then, all of a sudden, a skateboard starts rolling down the street — and before Luke even has a chance to point and shout “there it is, there it is!” it does a totally cool flip!
And, okay, Luke gets it now. He understands why Reggie said Willie’s the coolest friend ever, because he is.
They watch him do tricks for a couple minutes. Well, Reggie watches; Luke just keeps an eye on the skateboard. It feels kind of like watching a movie with your eyes closed. Reggie’s got to describe everything to him — “ooh, Luke, he just did a really cool flip! Luke, he just jumped over the bike rack!” — and Luke can only cheer every time the board does something cool. He still cheers loud, because if it were him doing the cool tricks, it would make him happy, and it’s not Willie’s fault he can’t see him anyways.
Then the ice cream truck comes, and all the people on the beach go running, and Luke and Reggie are left with sad hungry feelings in their bellies because they didn’t bring any money with them. How were they supposed to know there’d be ice cream? But seeing everyone else with yummy treats while they can’t have any is literally the worst feeling ever, and Luke is just starting to pout when Reggie gasps and grabs his arm tight.
“He’s gonna do it, he’s gonna do it!”
“Do what?”
A second later, the bike rack right next to the ice cream truck explodes — a whir of sound, of beeping horns and clanging bells, every possible noise a bunch of bikes can make. As the noise gets louder, the ice cream truck suddenly joins it — it’s happy little song distorts, gets way louder, and starts playing backwards.
Luke bounces up and down; Reggie claps his hands over his mouth to hide his big smile.
“So cool!” Luke shouts, as people scatter like ants in the chaos.
He doesn’t realize Willie’s back by their side until Reggie’s looking up, at an empty space to their left; and he doesn’t realize Willie had a plan all along until two ice creams materialize out of thin air.
“No way!” gasps Luke, catching his rocket pop as it flies towards him. Reggie looks happy as a clam, unwrapping his cookie sandwich and shoving half of it in his mouth at once.
“Willie’shha supah-criminal too!” he says, around a mouthful of ice cream.
“Whoa,” breathes Luke. “Like the Joker?”
Reggie shakes his head. “He says more like Loki.”
Luke nods, like this all makes perfect sense. “That’s super cool,” he decides, and settles back with his ice pop, to watch Mr Softee try to wrestle his music machine back to behaving.
It’s once they’ve already finished their yummies, and are running around making faces at the seagulls, that their ‘cool people party’ is interrupted.
“What are you doing?” says a voice. Luke turns, ready for a nosy parent, or even a teacher. Instead, he’s met with… a kid. A kid about their age, with sunburn on his nose, narrowed eyes, and pretty blond hair that makes the sun dance, like Mommy’s gold jewelry which Luke isn’t allowed to touch. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest, and a splotch of sunscreen on his nose. He’s looking at them like they’re aliens.
Reggie grins wide at him. “What’s it look like we’re doin'?"
“Bullying the seagulls,” he says bluntly.
“Oh yeah, we are!” Reggie’s grin only widens. “But! We’re doing it with our cool invisible friend, which makes it way more fun!”
The kid looks around, all nervous, like he expects to see Willie pop out of a trash can or something. “People aren’t invisible.”
“You’re not invisible,” says Luke. “He is, though.”
“But he can’t be, though, because he’s not.”
Luke’s brows furrow, frustration bubbling on his tongue like fizzy soda — but Reggie just smiles, the way he does when any of the kids in their class make fun of him, and says, “No, he totally is. Maybe we are too, and only you can see us. Maybe you’re just the not- invisible one.”
Luke notices Reggie’s eyes moving, even while his face doesn’t change — not looking at the kid, but past him, just over his shoulder. His lips twitch.
“That’s not how that works,” the kid says.
“How do you know?” asked Luke. “Have you ever tried being invisible before? Maybe you gotta try before saying ‘no way, not true…’”
“How do you even —“
Reggie clamps a hand over his mouth to catch a giggle. Luke’s brows furrow. Whatever Willie’s doing, it’s probably really funny, and he can’t see it.
Bunny ears, Reggie mouths, and Luke pouts.
He doesn’t have to for long, though, because the kid’s hair suddenly starts moving — moving all on it’s own. Luke’s eyes widen as the pretty, floppy hair, already wet from swimming in the ocean, slowly shapes itself up… into two devil horns.
He doesn’t even bother hiding his grin. A laugh explodes out of him, right in the kid’s face. He looks more confused than ever.
“That’s not — you don’t —“ His shoulders slump. “Okay,” he says, and turns away. “Have a fun time!”
Luke and Reggie — and probably Willie too — make faces at his back until he goes away.
Once he’s gone, though, they explode into giggles, hugging to hold each other up.
“You’re the bestest, Willie,” Luke manages to gasp out. “The coolest invisible friend ever!”
“We’re gonna be bestest friends forever, right?”
Reggie waits for an answer — and waits, and waits — and slowly, his brows get all twisty, and his face scrunches up, the way it does when he doesn’t understand what the teacher said in class, but doesn’t wanna ask because he doesn’t wanna get yelled at.
Luke elbows him and raises his eyebrows. It takes a minute… but Reggie smiles wide again, and shakes it off.
“Come on, Luke,” he says, and gives Luke’s hand a tug. “We gotta go find our shoes!”
He doesn’t say anything else about Willie while they run to put their shoes on, or when they start the walk back to Reggie’s house… but he keeps looking sideways, keeps staring at something Luke can’t see, so he knows Willie’s still there. They chatter back and forth, and Reggie slips over cracks in the pavement because he’s scared of breaking his mommy’s back, and Luke runs ahead to chase away a squirrel because he knows Reggie doesn’t like them…
And when he starts to go back, he sees Reggie with his arms crossed, looking like he’s gonna cry all over again.
“Why?” he's asking the empty air. “Why can’t you come back home with us and play?” He’s quiet for a minute, then shakes his head hard. “But we can be friends forever, Willie! You can come to school, an’ we can play together on the playground, an’— why not?”
He cuts off, all big-eyed and sad… but slowly, slowly, his shoulders go droopy.
“Is that… because’a your crunchy helmet? And then reason you don’t like cars? Is that why you can’t go?” Another few seconds of quiet, then Reggie nods. “That’s okay,” he says, and presses two fingers to his lips. “Shh, secret. I know. But… even if you can’t hang out with us, I promise, we’re gonna be friends forever and ever, okay?”
Whatever Willie says must make him happy, because his entire face goes bright, and he nods his head so hard his hair bounces. Reggie bounces right along with it.
“Okay!” he squeaks, and skips down the sidewalk. He’s running towards Luke, but he stops long enough to throw a wave over his shoulder. “Bye Willie! See ya later!”
“Bye-bye, Willie!” Luke hollers, in his very biggest outside voice (Reggie almost falls over, because he doesn’t like yelling, but it’s just Luke, so it’s okay). They wait a few seconds, until Reggie says that Willie’s skated away, and then run all the way back to Reggie’s house. Luke is super fast, but he trips over the curb, so Reggie beats him there by a few seconds.
Reggie’s mom is still sleeping when they get back, so they wake her up, and she makes samwiches, and they tell her all about the beach and the seagulls and the sand. Reggie doesn’t mention Willie, so somehow, Luke knows he’s not supposed to, either.
Reggie’s dad comes home late, and his big footsteps echo through the house, and he doesn’t even notice Luke sitting at the kitchen table, but that’s okay, because they run to go play in Reggie’s room, and Reggie’s got a bunch of new legos, so that keeps them busy for the rest of the night.
When they fall asleep, curled up like puppies in bed together, Luke isn’t thinking about Willie at all.
He doesn’t think about him when his mom picks him up the next morning, and they go to the diner to have chocolate chip waffles for breakfast.
He doesn’t think about Willie the next day, or the day after, because he’s really busy, okay, and there’s a lot of stuff to do when you’re in kindergarten.
He doesn’t actually think about Willie at all until a few weeks later, when they’re making glue projects in art class, and he sees the little rolly wheels on the teacher’s chair and it reminds him of a skateboard.
“Hey,” he says to Reggie, because he and Reggie are art partners, of course. “When are we gonna play with Willie again?”
“Who?” Reggie looks super confused for a few seconds, before his face clears up and he shrugs. “Oh. I dunno. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Oh.” Luke’s face falls… but he can’t tell if Reggie’s sad about it or not, so he doesn’t ask any more questions.
He doesn’t ask again forever and ever, actually, until, like, ten years later, when he thinks of something out of the blue.
“Hey,” he says, nudging Reggie in the shoulder on their walk home from school. “Do you remember, like… we were on the beach, man, and there were all those seagulls, and you were pretending, like… like, we were playing with an imaginary dude. We found an old skateboard and were just kind of watching it roll, remember?”
Reggie’s brows furrow; his face scrunches up, making his freckles dance. He looks at Luke like he’s just grown a third head.
“Dude, we played so many weird games as kids. You’re asking me to remember this one, out of a thousand?”
“No, like —” Luke claps his hands in front of him, bouncing as he tries to remember. “You were way into it, man. I forget the details, to be honest, but, like —”
“No way, dude.” Reggie shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
“You sure?”
Reggie shrugs. Luke frowns. A few steps behind them, Alex snorts, and tosses his hair out of his face.
“I’m so glad we never ran into each other when we were younger. You guys must’ve been the weirdest kids.”
Luke and Reggie exchange grins, with a healthy dose of pride.
“Yeah,” Luke chuckles. “We totally were.”