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Scratch is no stranger to insomnia.
Yeah, as it turns out, the whole “rest in peace” thing isn’t all that it’s chalked up to be. Aside from the fact that ghosts still have to work full time jobs, Scratch was incredibly disappointed to learn that sleep and health ailments aren’t exclusive to the living.
Sure, maybe they’re not affected in the same way as humans are, and nothing’s going to happen in the long run, cause it’s not like they can die a second time, but sleep? Resting is right there in the description! Whatever happened to sleep is for the dead?
Whatever. As annoying as all of that is, Scratch would be lying to himself if he tried to say there wasn’t a silver lining.
As much as Scratch loves his sleep and alone time, he’s always found an indescribable sort of comfort in the night sky. He’s far from new to the concept of feeling small and insignificant, so he’s never really put much thought into how vast and unending it all is. Space may be cold and unforgiving, but it’s nothing compared to the Ghost World and how the Council’s been treating him for years.
No, he’s never paid mind to any of that.
Call him strangely sentimental, but he’s always been fascinated by the stars.
They’re always the same, wherever you go. They’re the one thing that stays consistent when everything else in the world changes. Clouds clear, plants come and go with the seasons, people and ghosts who say they’re not like everyone else and promise not to leave always wind up changing their minds and act like they don’t even know you exist.
Stars, however, have been around since the dawn of time. And since the dawn of time people have been fascinated by them. Every night, without fail, there’s certain to be someone out there looking up at the stars and thinking about…whatever it is that people think about when they look at the stars.
Even Scratch finds he isn’t immune to that. He no longer remembers when he picked up on the habit, but on those insomnia-filled nights where he’s found that absolutely nothing is working in helping him fall asleep, and he’s just about given up on trying, he too has found himself looking up at the stars. They’re quiet, and stargazing doesn’t take a single drop of effort on his part, so Scratch hasn’t exactly tried to break the habit, either.
…Not to mention that old saying about how if you’re looking up at the stars, chances are that there’s someone out there looking up at the stars with you. Scratch would never be one to admit it out loud, but he’d be lying to himself if he tried claiming that…it didn’t help him to feel a little less alone, even if by the smallest margin. And when you suffer from insomnia as much as he does, then maybe…maybe some small part of him that he keeps hidden away from most others…likes to think there’s always someone else out there, maybe suffering from insomnia too, looking up at those stars with him, no matter how far away they may be.
Oh well. It’s not something he’s given mind to since the McGees moved in, since he no longer had to spend time sitting around and wondering when he’d finally find company who, well…enjoyed his company.
Well, okay, he hasn’t given much mind to it until tonight, but to be fair, he’s not even the one suffering from insomnia.
If there’s anything Scratch knows most about Molly, it’s that she suffers from even worse insomnia than even he does. Most of the time, it’s because she’s up late scheming, and she gets so fixated on whatever new plan she has to enhappify Brighton that she forgets to sleep altogether. In those cases, Scratch usually wakes up to their whole shared room being covered head to toe in sticky notes and red string, not to mention Molly herself aimlessly wandering back and forth and mumbling to herself. Other times, however, Scratch has witnessed Molly suffering from honest and true insomnia, where no matter what she tries, she can’t fall asleep for the life of her.
If Scratch had to guess, he’d assume her body got so used to having to wake up as early as possible from all the packing up and leaving she’s had to do since her early childhood. Now that she and her family are settled into her forever home and she no longer has to get up as early as possible, Molly must not be used to staying in place. Scratch does greatly sympathize with her on the insomnia front, but the thing that’s stopping him from full-on feeling terrible for her is that she usually tries to solve her own insomnia by talking his ear off all night.
The keyword here is usually.
Tonight, however, Molly hasn’t said a single word to him, but Scratch knows for a fact that she’s still awake, because he heard the trap door leading in and out of her room creak open, followed by the sound of her not-so-subtle footsteps as she sneaks down the ladder. Which, okay, fine, maybe she just wanted a drink of water, and couldn’t be as sneaky about it as most people reasonably could since her bedroom is in the attic. That’s fine.
But…
She’s not coming back.
Not in the amount of time it takes a normal person to get a cup of water and come back, anyway. Scratch may be awful at telling time and how much of it has passed on his own, but when he squints through a window in his dollhouse to try and read Molly’s bedside alarm clock, his suspicions are confirmed; it’s been ten minutes since she left, and there’s still no sign of her coming back any time soon. He’d checked the time when she got up, just to assure himself that it wasn’t morning, and that Molly wasn’t about to come running back up the ladder to get him out of bed too, but he dismissed the time just as quickly when he noted it was still the middle of the night.
Now, though, he’s almost…worried, because if something awful happened to her, like if she fell and got hurt and nobody can hear her crying for help, and he wasn’t there to---
That train of thought leaves Scratch’s head just as quickly as it had formed, though, and now there’s an even worse one forming in his head, because if Scratch looks close enough he can see that it’s not just Molly that’s missing from her bed. Her blanket is missing too, and her pillow looks as if it’s been tossed to the floor.
“Molly?” he whisper-shouts as he flies out of his dollhouse, doing a terrible job at hiding the panic from his voice. He flies out of their room to look for her in the hallway below, but there’s no sign of her there, either, not even in the form of a light peeking out from under the closed bathroom door. Refusing to assume the worst, he dashes down the stairs to look for her in the kitchen in case she wanted a cup of warm milk, but no, there’s no sign of her there, either.
“Molly McGee!” he whisper-shouts, like using her last name will magically summon her to his side. It doesn’t work, of course, but he doesn’t hear the sound of her approaching footsteps, either. He’s about to resort to sneaking up to Pete and Sharon’s room to see if she’s in there with them for some reason, but just as he passes by the sliding door that leads to the backyard, he notices something outside that’s vaguely…Molly-shaped. It’s too dark out to tell for sure, but if he stops and really looks, he thinks he can see Molly sitting on the ground with her comforter wrapped around her shoulders.
Scratch practically sighs in relief. Well, that answers those questions, but the fact that Molly’s just sitting out in the backyard all by herself in the middle of the night really only raises more questions. He phases right through the glass doors, but clears his throat in an attempt to make his presence known.
“Molly?” he whispers, and she’s so deep in thought that she practically jumps out of her skin at the call of her name. She grips the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and turns around to look at him.
“Scratch?” Molly squints towards him. “What are you doing out here?”
He practically splutters in exasperation. “What am I doing out here? Moll, what are you doing out here? You got out of bed to get a drink of water fifteen minutes ago and never came back! You left the door open! I thought something terrible might’ve happened to you!”
“...Oh,” she replies, almost sounding as if she’s embarrassed. “You noticed that, huh? I thought you were asleep,” she says, and curls her blanket even tighter around her shoulders. “I’m usually so good at sneaking out, but I guess you can’t really fool a ghost like that, huh?” She asks, but doesn’t wait for a response before she continues speaking. “I’m sorry for making you worry. I’ll…” she pauses, and turns her glance towards the sky. “I’ll come back inside in a few minutes. I just…need some time out here, is all”
Scratch blinks. She’s not…upset, is she? She doesn’t seem all that upset, but why would someone like Molly want to spend time out in her backyard in the middle of the night all by herself if she wasn’t upset?
He places a hand on her shoulder and pats it gently in an awkward attempt to comfort her. “Moll, I don’t care if you want to stay out here all night. I just wanna know why you’re out here at god-knows-what o’clock”
“...Oh,” she replies, like she was genuinely expecting to be chastised for being outside so late. She pauses for a moment, as if debating whether or not she wants to give him an explanation, before mumbling “you’re gonna laugh at me”
Scratch gasps in fake offense. “Molly McGee!” he places a hand to his chest. “What kind of best friend do you take me for? Of course I’m going to laugh at you, but I can’t until you let me in on the joke!” he nudges her with his elbow, to which she replies with a roll of her eyes.
“Alright, alright, I’ll tell you,” Molly smirks, and gently flicks him on the nose. “But only because you promised.” There’s a mischievous smile on her face, but it falls to a more serious expression just as quickly as it had appeared. “Back when I was a little kid, and we were still moving around a lot, we’d have to do a lot of overnight drives to get to our new house. Dad would usually fly out on his own so he wouldn’t miss his first day at his new job, but Mom never wanted him to stay at a hotel longer than he had to, so we usually started the drive out with all our stuff towing in trucks behind us on the same day of his flights. Darryl slept like a baby during those car rides, ‘cause he practically was one, but I was always so nervous about the move that I couldn’t sleep. What would the new house look like? Would it be bigger than the old one? Smaller? What about the school? The teachers? The students? Were they gonna be the type to gang up on the new kid, or welcome her with open arms? There were so many questions in my little head that I felt like I couldn’t even sit still.”
“I had to do something, cause I couldn’t bother my mom while she was driving, and I couldn’t wake Darryl up cause then he’d start crying, so I had to find something to do to occupy myself, and if you’ve ever been in a cramped little car at two-thirty in the morning you’d know how impossible that is, especially for someone like me. A lot of times we’d end up driving through the middle of nowhere, and, well…” she gestures upward with a nod of her head. “I found the stars,” Molly whispers, her voice growing soft with nostalgia. “I never knew the names of any constellations, so I never really knew what to look for, but looking out at the stars as we drove along a dark road in the middle of the night…It felt more homey than some of the actual homes we lived in. I had more alone time with the stars than some of those houses combined, so I guess that’s got something to do with it, but…” Molly loosens her grip on her blanket, and there’s a soft smile forming on her face. “It always worked to cure my insomnia. I’d just look at the stars for a few minutes, and before I knew it I’d be out cold.” Molly shifts her gaze away from Scratch again. “And this is the part that you’ll probably just think is stupid, but…I think the reason it always worked so well is that I always told myself that…you know, the stars are the same everywhere, and maybe, just maybe, if I hoped enough, that somewhere out there, my forever friend would be looking up at those same stars, and even in some small way, that we’d be watching them together”
Molly buries her face in her blanket, as if to hide her blushing face. “Anyways…” she dismisses her own words with a wave of a hand in front of her face. “You were probably just wondering about tonight and not my whole life story, huh?” she laughs nervously. “Old habits die hard, I suppose. Nothing else I’ve tried tonight worked, so I figured there’d be no harm in trying the last trick up my sleeve” She yawns, and a smile forms on her face as she meets Scratch’s eyes again. “But that’s just silly, right?”
Scratch knows that Molly’s expecting him to laugh at her, to dismiss all of that as silly and drag her back to bed kicking and silently screaming, but honestly?
He’s…speechless.
All this time.
All this time when he was stuck in a dusty old attic in an empty home, staring up at the stars and telling himself fairy tales to stop himself from going crazy, all this time he spent laughing at himself for believing in something that people tell to their children, all this time he spent secretly hoping it wasn’t all for nothing, and maybe even reveling a little bit in the fact that looking up at those stars *did* make him feel a little less alone, all this time…Molly was looking up at the stars with him?
Scratch feels light-headed. There’s no way. He’s never believed in fate, or destinies, or star-crossed anything in his entire afterlife. He probably didn’t believe in any of that when he was alive, either, if he could remember any of that. It’s all l just a bunch of nonsense that people tell themselves so they don’t go crazy, there’s no logic behind it, it has to be some kind of huge coincidence, because there’s no way he and Molly were meant to be friends from the very beginning, there’s no way that Molly was always referring to him when she dreamt of her forever friend, even as a little kid, because that would mean there really was someone out there always looking out for him, there was someone out there who was looking forward to spending time with him, and Scratch just can’t wrap his head around that because it’s impossible, nobody’s ever wanted to spend time with him, they’d just take one look at him and turn away from disgust, though… he supposes Molly didn’t do that when they first met even though she should’ve, because he was just some creepy old ghost in her new bedroom, and-
“Scratch?” Molly’s voice pulls him from his freight train of thoughts. She waves a hand in front of his eyes. “Are you with me?”
Scratch lets out his heartiest fake laugh. “Moll, what kinda question is that? I’m right here, aren’t I?”
She snorts. “I mean, you looked like you were falling asleep in place, bud. I asked you a question and then you just sort of stared off into space for a minute there.”
“Oh!” he responds, a bit louder than he intends to. “That? Pssh, that was just because your story was putin’ me to sleep. You know, you should really look into reading audio books for a living, because, you know, Molly McGee, mayor of Snorseville, USA would do a great job at knocking people right out, and-”
“Scratch,” she cuts him off with a sad smile. “It’s okay, you don’t gotta act all cold and tough like that. It’s okay if you feel sad for me,” she says, and snuggles closer into her blanket. “Most people I end up telling that story end up feeling all sad and sorry for me, anyway. I’m used to it”
“Wait, no, Moll…” Scratch drops the facade the moment he realizes she may actually be upset, and places a hand on her shoulder. “It’s, uh…it’s not that. Truth be told…” he starts, and scrunches his eyes closed because he just knows he has to get it out before he can change his mind, “...it just…reminded me a lot of myself, you know…before I met you.”
“It did?” Molly perks up, and shifts her entire body to face him so quickly her blanket falls off of her shoulders altogether. “How so?” she asks, and then momentarily retracts within herself. “I mean, that is, if you want to tell me. I know you’re a little sensitive about the whole tragic backstory thing.”
Curse her for making him laugh when he’s trying to be all serious.
“Okay, okay…” Scratch raises his hands in mock defeat. “I’ll tell ya. But only if you promise to never tell anybody about this. Not even Geoff knows about this, so it’s like, uh, a super best friend secret”
“Ooh, fun!!” Molly claps excitedly, and raises her right hand. “I Molly McGee guarantee that I won’t tell anyone”
“Good.” Scratch nods, attempting to cross his arms over his chest to appear serious, but he deflates the moment he opens his mouth again. “This was a long time ago, y’see? I don’t even remember how long ago it was. All I knew was that I was all alone, and I couldn’t sleep. I was already a ghost, so it’s not like any of the regular sleep methods or breathing exercises would’ve done me any good.” He coughs, painfully aware that he’s still avoiding the subject even though he was the one who brought it up at all. “Anyways, uh, since I had the attic all to myself, and the window was right there anyway, I figured that it couldn’t kill me to…take a peek out the window, you know?” He laughs nervously, and does his best to ignore Molly staring intently as she listens to his story. “And…uh, it was a really starry night, y’see?” he rubs at the back of his neck, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore Molly sitting right there, especially when she gasps like she sees exactly where this is going.
“I’d tried just about everything else,” Scratch adds, just fast enough that she can’t cut in, “So I figured that there must be something about the stars that were calming, right? There’s so many songs and books and all these paintings about them that they have to make some people happy, right? So I figured alright, if it works on all those people, who’s to say it couldn’t also work on a ghost?” He smiles shyly. “And wouldn’t you know it? That’s what finally worked. I dunno if it’s just ‘cause I was already up so late, or if there really was something about the stars, but whatever it was, it knocked me out cold. I think I slept about sixteen hours that night” he says, and finds an embarrassed flush burning into his cheeks as he gets to the kicker. “And then some time afer I woke up, I remembered something else that people are always sayin’ about the stars”
He takes a moment to finally work up the courage to meet Molly’s eyes again. She’s so invested in the story that she has her chin resting in her hands, and her eyes are practically sparkling. Scratch clears his throat and looks away again before his nerves clam him up for good.
“I’d heard that…if you’re looking up at the stars, there was a good chance that there’d be someone out there looking up at those same stars with you. Something about how you’re never alone, even when you feel like you’ve got nobody. Now I’m no sap or anything, but…” his voice nearly drops to a whisper. “For…a lonely guy like me, Moll…there was something…almost comforting about that thought. Like…if nobody else, at least I’d have whoever was looking at those stars with me, because I knew…I knew they couldn’t turn me away. They couldn’t leave, because…they were only with me in spirit, you know?” He tries to joke to lighten the mood, but it’s incredibly hard to even crack a smile when Molly is staring at him like that.
It’s not so much the fact that Molly looks sad, or anything, it’s the fact that he can’t read the expression on her face at all. That terrifies him the most, because he usually prides himself on knowing practically everything about her. (He is her number one best friend, after all).
If anything, it just sort of looks like she’s buffering, like the gears in her head aren’t quite finished turning. But before he can even open his mouth to apologize for dumping all of that on her at once, she begins speaking.
“Scratch…” Molly whispers, covering her mouth with her hands. “Do you know what this means?” she asks, but before he can even hazard a guess, her entire face lights up in a huge, beaming smile. “It means that we’ve been looking for each other all this time!” she practically squeals, almost as if she forgot they were outside in the middle of the night. “All of this time when I was looking for my forever friend, I was looking for you!” she momentarily bounces up and down, and when she stops the beaming smile on her face has softened to something significantly more affectionate. “This means that…we really have been together forever!” She squeals, and before Scratch is even aware of what’s happening Molly tackles him over in a hug.
Her energy is contagious, even in the middle of the night, so Scratch really only has himself to blame for hugging her back.
It really is a comforting thought. All this time he was sure he was alone, and all this time, he really did have Molly close at his side.
Spiritually, of course.
They pull away from the hug in unison, and Molly picks her blanket up from the grass. She sits back down on the floor and winds it around her shoulders, like nothing had happened, but before Scratch has time to question what she’s doing she looks back at him and gestures in her direction with her head.
“C’mere,” she says. “I wanna try something”
Scratch wordlessly complies, because he knows at this point that it’s best not to question her, and when he reaches her side she drapes half of her blanket over his nonexistent shoulder. It practically phases right through him, but he’s incredibly touched by the gesture nonetheless. He solidifies his ectoplasm just enough that the blanket will stay in place, rather than continuously falling to the floor, and as if that wasn’t enough, Molly leans over and rests her head on him. She shifts until her body’s curled up in a position she’s comfortable with, and then she closes the blanket in on the both of them until only their heads are peeking through like some sort of make-shift blanket fort.
“Now look up,” Molly prompts him, which makes Scratch realize she’s probably doing the same thing.
It’s not the starriest night in the world, and all of Brighton’s light pollution is making it difficult to make out more than a few small clusters, and yet…Scratch finds himself filled with an overwhelming sense of comfort. It’s so simple, and something he’s looked at upwards of thousands of times, but…
Scratch knows it isn’t about the stars.
It never was.
It’s Molly’s warmth, both figuratively and literally. It’s her gentle slowing breathing as she’s fighting off sleep to stay close to him, it’s…her whole being. It’s Molly, and it always has been, even long before they ever met.
Molly deserves clearer skies. She deserves more stars. She deserves every constellation in the entire sky, right here in her little backyard. If it weren’t for the very real possibility of her parents getting very angry at him for taking her somewhere in the middle of the night, Scratch would have half a mind to bring her out to a big open field, just like the one she brought him and Libby to when she wanted to watch that comet. She deserves the stars. The stars brought him to her and she deserves to see them all.
Another night, maybe. Scratch makes a mental note to try and remember to ask her the next time she’s up late pacing the floor or her room. For now, though…
Molly’s head slips from his nonexistent shoulder as she finally nods off to sleep. He catches her just before her head can smack against the ground, and helps her back into a sitting position.
“Ready to give up and go back to bed?” Scratch teases, not even expecting a response from her, but even in her mostly-asleep state Molly reaches her arms out towards him in a c’mere sort of gesture.
“Jus’ a few more minutes” she slurs, already working to wrap her blanket around her shoulders again.
Scratch rolls his eyes, but he knows better than to try and pick a fight with a sleep deprived Molly. He squirms his way under the blanket, and does his best to stay still as she readjusts herself so she can rest her head on him again. “Okay,” he says, “but just a few minute, and then I’m carrying you up to bed”
Molly replies with something unintelligible, but when Scratch cranes his “neck” to look at her she has a tired smile plastered to her face.
Scratch decides it’s best to leave it be.