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The studio is empty when Flynn bursts dramatically through the doors. Because she can. Because she wants to. Because it’s the last day of her sophomore year and she goddamn deserves it.
Allow her to amend: the studio appears to be empty. But it’s been long enough since Julie summoned a ghost band of himbos for Flynn to ever again be fooled.
“Listen up, nerds!” they announce to the room at large. “I know at least one of you is in here touching stuff you’re not supposed to. Julie’s at a family thing, my parents are waiting for me to meet them at a College Fair, and I need to let out some steam before I spend all night pretending I want to go to Berklee, so show yourselves!”
A pause, just long enough for Flynn to approach the starting line for feeling stupid, and then a ghost boy appears with a whoosh.
“Hi, Flynn!” Reggie says from just below a suspiciously swinging ceiling chair. “Luke and Alex are up in the house, but I got kicked out of the Mario Kart competition for driving backwards, so I’ve just been waiting for Julie to get home. What can I do you for?”
Flynn grins. She would’ve accepted any of the ghost boys—if Willie had been around, they’d have invited him, too, and he probably would’ve had a fantastic time—but just Reggie will do. Reggie, at the very least, won’t ask too many questions.
“Come with me,” she says, hefting her end-of-year, filled-to-the-brim backpack over one shoulder. “And bring a lighter.”
They end up in the woods behind Julie’s house, where they can still see the ashy remnants of last-days-of-school past. Usually, Flynn and Julie would do this together (they used to do it with Carrie, Trevor Wilson keeping watch with a fire extinguisher a few feet away), but the tradition kind of fell away when Mrs. Molina got sick. After everything that happened this year, though, Flynn felt like they needed it again, and Julie gave them her blessing to do it without her.
But she wasn’t about to do it alone.
“So!” Reggie says, bouncing on his toes. Flynn can’t tell if he’s nervous or excited or maybe even just cold, but it seems like he always needs to be moving, even when he’s just standing still. She knows the feeling. “Whaaaaat are we doing here?”
Flynn drops their backpack in front of the metal trashcan that spends most of the year in her parents’ garage. “We,” she says as she starts pulling out piles of papers from her bag, “are taking every paper, every test, every stupid non-refundable $80 textbook from this whole dumpster fire of a school year—” They dump it all into the trashcan with a satisfying thud— “and burning it.”
She’s aware, because it’s been pointed out to them before, that she probably has a manic, dangerous glint in her eyes, but when they glance up, Reggie’s grin is just as terrifyingly bright.
“Oh, that is awesome!” he declares, and instantly starts helping her transfer all her school supplies into the pile. When they’re done, Reggie pulls out a Zippo lighter and drops it into the can.
“It really helps,” Flynn informs him as they watch the physical representation of her school year erupt into flames. “Not just to get rid of everything, but to really say fuck you to every bad day and shitty grade, you know? It’s like you’re literally setting the bad memories on fire, it fucking rocks.”
Reggie’s eyes go extra wide, the fire reflecting in their murky green. “Setting the bad memories on fire, huh? Gimme a sec.”
He poofs out—Flynn literally blinks and he’s gone—but returns only a moment or two later, holding a big pile of red fabric. Without any explanation or ceremony, he drops it onto the burning pile and lets out a giddy whoop.
“Jeez,” Flynn says, startled into a laugh. “What’d that thing ever do to you?”
“That’s the suit Caleb put me in,” Reggie explains. His grin doesn’t fade, but it does harden just a little. “I like watching it burn.”
Flynn feels something rudely complicated in their chest—something about how anyone who can dampen Reggie’s smile like that deserves to die twenty times over. She moves as if to nudge Reggie’s shoulder, even though her ability to touch Julie’s ghost boys is finicky at best. “Happy to help,” she says, and together, they watch their bad memories burn.