Work Text:
"Happy New Year, Mandy."
"Happy New Year, Jenny."
The Haus was dead silent and had been for over a week. Mandy and Jenny were staring out the attic window, leaning together like they still had warmth to share. As midnight broke and 2016 began, the streetlights shone down on the thick blanket of New England snow. Even if there had been anyone in the Haus or on the streets, the noise would have been muffled to practically nothing. But most of Samwell's students had gone home for the holidays already, including the whole hockey team. Without the blonde kid baking up a storm, the gym socks and wet dog smell that always seemed to follow boys on college sports teams reasserted itself over the cinnamon sugar scents.
(Technically, Mandy could choose not to smell anything, but she liked to. She had managed to light one of Eric's douglas fir scented soy candles on Christmas morning so she and Jenny could sit by it and reminisce about the Christmases when they lived in the house attic themselves. It was super romantic. Mandy's a pretty stellar girlfriend, if she does say so herself.)
"Cold, isn't it?" asked Jenny.
"Totally," answered Mandy, shivering for effect and threading her fingers through Jenny's long, blonde hair. She moved to float behind Jenny and started in on a French braid. "Hey, what do you think would happen if we tried going outside?"
Jenny answered like she always did. "Dunno. Maybe we can't. Maybe we can." The pause. "Do you want to try?"
"Kinda. Maybe." Mandy reached the end of Jenny's hair and dropped the braid. She leaned forward, hanging her chin on Jenny's shoulder, and stared out the window. Funny how distant the dark and the snow made the ground seem.
Even after a couple decades of being dead, they still had no what it meant. Hell, they weren't even sure how they died. What could Mandy say? It was rush night. They were both blotto. Sometimes, it made Mandy feel ashamed of herself. Shouldn't she have known better, made different choices? She was - had been - a smart person.
Mostly, she didn't have regrets. Whatever happened to her, it could have happened to anyone. It's all just a roll of the dice - maybe you die of old age, or in a car crash driving home to your kids, or you die mysteriously in a freak accident at a rush event. For the first couple years of being dead, it mattered a lot. Then Mandy stopped caring about the past most of the time. She was the past.
After all, it could be worse than to be continuously shacked up with your best friend in a place bursting at the seams with your happy memories. It's just the holidays that get you low, especially something like New Year's.
"Hey," Jenny leaned her temple against Mandy's. "Stop brooding, babe."
"I'm not."
"Are too. Hey, wanna move Justin's stuff around?"
"Definitely. Do you remember which of his textbooks is most expensive? Let's put that in the crawl space and leave the door open just a crack."
"Yeah! I'm going to put all his salmon shorts in Adam's drawer," cackled Jenny. Her eyes were bright and lively, and Mandy felt herself perk up in response. All things said and done, there was no one she'd rather be dead with.
"I think Justin and Adam are my favorites yet. They're just, like, so mega cute together!"
"I know, right? I totally can't believe they haven't hooked up yet. I mean, they're gonna graduate this year, right?"
"Life is wasted on the living, hon," commented Jenny as she neatly folded Justin's shorts before placing them in the drawer.
"I'm gonna miss them." With Justin's book hidden, Mandy came to admire Jenny's handiwork. The shorts were impeccably folded and sitting on top of Adam’s rumpled up t-shirts and blue jeans. Mandy nodded in approval and wormed under Jenny’s arm, cuddling up to her side. “Those two always have been my faves, too.”
“They grow up so fast,” replied Jenny with the theatrical sniffle she’d used even in life when she wanted to pretend she didn’t have feelings.
“Sorta goes with the territory,” murmured Mandy as she raised her head to give Jenny a quick peck on the cheek.
----
January marched on and, a few days later, the boys came back to the house. Adam was one of the first to arrive, and Mandy was pretty de-lighted when he found the awful shorts among his stuff and promptly threw both pairs out the attic window ("what the fuck even, Rans").
She knew that Justin had arrived back at the house when his anguished cry of “WHAT THE FUCK EVEN, HOLSTER” came clear as day through the attic window.
She couldn’t imagine the house without them.
She didn’t want to.
----
“Seriously, where are my notes, Holster?”
“Dude, I dunno.”
“Are you sure they didn’t end up on your desk somehow?”
“Pretty sure, but you can look if you want.”
Above their heads, Mandy caught herself rubbing her hands together like a maniac. She forced herself to stop.
----
“Uhm, Mandy?”
“Yeah, babe?” asked Mandy pressing herself closer.
“Why did you write ‘May is the end of the road’ in the mirror for Justin’s shower this morning?”
“Uhm.”
“D’you… like… wanna talk about it?”
“Mmmm, nope,” replied Mandy and she put an end to Jenny’s questioning by shutting her up with a kiss.
----
“Stay here, Justin. Just, like, stay at Samwell with us, okay? Staaaaaaaay,” Mandy was into her third straight hour of cooing into Justin’s ear while he slept. Periodically he’d toss and turn and make sort of a whimpering noise, so Mandy figured she was getting through.
----
“Okay, but for real, Mandy. We need to talk.”
Mandy said “whoooooooh” in her spookiest voice as she phased through the attic floor straight into Eric’s room.
----
“WHO PUT MY TEXTBOOK IN THE SHOWER. GUYS, I’M NOT FUCKING KIDDING. BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS ARE EXPENSIVE, YOU ASSHOLES.”
----
Practice made perfect, Mandy supposed. She’d been working hard whenever Jenny wasn’t looking, and now it seemed like some of the boys besides Justin were starting to notice her. Or at least, they were talking about ghosts when she found them and Larissa sitting at the kitchen table one day.
“Are you really sure, Holster? It could just be a coincidence.” Eric didn’t sound terribly sure of that.
“Of COURSE it’s a coincidence,” declared William. “They don’t exist.”
Mandy settled above Adam’s left shoulder. Eavesdropping was so easy now that she was dead.
“What doesn’t exist?” asked Derek.
“You know.”
“Oh my God, you can’t even say the word, can you?”
William flushed bright red and muttered, “Shut up, Nursey.”
“Boys,” Eric rounded on them with fire in his eyes. “This is about Ransom. We are worried about him.”
That shut Derek and William up. They both look shamefaced as they mumbled sorries. Mandy frowned.
“I don’t normally like to mess with him during exams, you know? But… all the weird shit he’s been going on about the last four years? His notes and textbooks and stuff are getting lost, and he says stuff keeps falling off his desk when he’s going to study. It’s starting to seem real.” Holster held up his hand and started counting on his fingers. “OK. Let’s just go through the weird crap we’ve seen. The time that Degrassi turned on at 1 AM, but it’s not on the channels we get and we don’t have the DVDs.”
“That day every crust I tried to make was too crumbly until Ransom left the kitchen, no matter how much liquid I added.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Derek. “That time that both of your underwear --”
‘WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT THAT TIME.” yelled Adam, fixing Derek with the kind of glare that could melt glass. (Okay, Mandy kind of had to smirk about that one.)
“Can’t we talk about that time, just a little?” Larissa asked with a mischievous grin. Adam turned his glare towards her and got a shit-eating grin in return. Eric cleared his throat loudly, and the whole group snapped back into business mode.
“The messages that Rans-” William rolled his eyes when Derek raised a brow at him and smirked. “The messages that the ghost keeps leaving all over the attic.”
A hand suddenly dug into Mandy’s shoulder (kind of), and she whirled around to find herself nose to nose with Jenny.
“E-NOUGH.” Jenny hissed. Her eyes were glowing neon blue. That happened on occasion, but only if Jenny was very, very mad.
Which she absolutely was.
“This has gone on more than long enough!” shrieked Jenny. Below them, Larissa and the boys all shivered. “You are being a - a - Mandy, you’re being a bitch. I just don’t know any other word for it!”
Mandy felt slapped. “I --”
“No. Don’t. Say. A word.” Jenny grabbed Mandy by the shoulder and dragged her straight up, through the roof of the kitchen, through Eric’s room, and up into the attic. There was Justin, hunched miserably over his desk, looking more deflated than they’d ever seen him. Jenny shoved Mandy right into the middle of desk. Justin’s head snapped up and he looked over one shoulder then the other. The bags under his eyes were gigantic.
It made Mandy feel even worse than when Jenny had yelled at her. An ectoplasm tear beaded up in her eye and she blinked it away.
“Oh, now you feel bad, do you? A bit late for that, Mandy!”
“I -- I didn’t mean to….”
“What DID you mean? No, you know what? Don’t tell me now. I don’t want to hear anything from you other than a promise to stop doing this.” She gestured sharply at Justin.
“I promise,” whispered Mandy. She felt like she might dissolve into the cool attic air.
And just like that, Jenny was gone.
----
Mandy didn’t see her for three days.
For ghosts, it’s pretty easy to hide. Even from other ghosts.
----
Mandy wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, but the boys bought a Ouija board. An honest to god Ouija board.
I - A - M - S - O - R - R - Y
“Stop it, Nursey.” William was pale as, well, a ghost.
I - L - L - S - T - O - P
“Please no one ever tell Jack about this,” Eric pleaded.
“My hand to God,” said Derek, sounding more subdued than mellow.
----
Mandy was painstakingly re-writing Justin’s notes from his honors class last semester because the ink on some of the pages was smudged and runny from shower steam. It seemed like another jerk move to not at least try to repair the damage she’d done.
“Hey.” came Jenny’s voice from just by her right ear.
“Hey.”
“Fixing things?”
“Tryin’.”
“Do you feel better now?” asked Jenny with a bit of frost in her voice.
“Yeah. I. I’m sorry,” replied Mandy. “Really. I got carried away.”
Jenny floated rest up next to Mandy. “You’re forgiven. So. What’s going on with you?”
Mandy stared down at her papers, tightening her hands into fists. The pencil slipped right through her fingers and onto the desk.
“Whoah, hon, your writing’s really nice there. Almost like it’s by a living person.”
“It’s just scribbles. Not like before.”
“That’s true,” Jenny conceded.
“Do you remember Heather’s birthday? When I did the calligraphy on the all the invitations?”
“Yeah, those were super pretty. I always liked the parties like that, with just a couple of the girls. I wonder what happened with Heather. You think she really married Rick like she thought?”
“Oh, ick.” Mandy stuck out her tongue. “I still can’t believe he thought he could rap.” She grabbed Jenny’s hands in hers and twirled them both around in a circle. “‘Girl, you so smooth, you lotion!’”
“Oh my gaaaawd, I know!” exclaimed Jenny before launching into a wavering, nasal approximation of smooth R & B vocals. “‘D-d-d-d-diamonds and peeeeeaaaaarls!’”
“‘Baby girl, that’s all I got!’” they cried before collapsing together in convulsive laughter. Down to the floor they sank, flat on their backs with their limbs splayed out and crisscrossing over each other.
“Hey, Jenny,” murmured Mandy after a moment. “What d’you think will happen with Justin? And Adam?”
“Well, they probably won’t marry each other,” commented Jenny wryly, and Mandy could hear her impish smile. “Totally too bad, huh?”
“Ch’yeah.”
All of the house’s living inhabitants were fast asleep. The only sounds were the electric hum of appliances and the occasional creak of the house shifting. The night dragged on.
“Jenny?” Mandy broke the silence, turning her head to look over at Jenny.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you want to just… leave the house along with them?” It wasn’t that Mandy’s throat was dry - that was impossible - so much as the memory of a dry throat overtook her. She didn’t have to wait long for Jenny’s answer.
“Hmm. No. I don’t really think so.”
“How come?” Biting her lip, Mandy raised herself up on her elbows so she could see Jenny’s face better. “Are you scared we might disappear if we try?”
“Well…” Jenny stretched her hands out in front of her face. “Maybe a little. But that’s not why, y’know? That I’ll disappear, I mean.” She stared up at Mandy with knitted brow.
“Doesn’t it seem unfair to you that they all get to keep going and we don’t?” asked Mandy, turning her gaze toward the ceiling. “Just think of everything we’ve lost.”
“Or else what we’ve gained,” Jenny replied.
Mandy couldn’t think of anything to say. So she didn’t.
After a brief, tense silence, Jenny disappeared again. Mandy kept staring at the ceiling of the attic.
----
When Jenny and Mandy were alive, they were best friends. During rush week, they wore loads of mascara and vogued like mad in the middle of the house’s living room, and Mandy knew she was gonna keep hanging out with Jenny for a really long time.
Once during their first semester living in the house, they couldn’t sleep, and so they went down into the kitchen and opened a bottle of wine Ashley had left unsupervised in the fridge. They finally fell asleep sprawled in a ridiculously undignified heap on the floor. Mandy was the first to wake up, and when she did, she found a Polaroid of the two of them asleep, the bottle still resting in Jenny’s outstretched hand. In the photo, Mandy’s head rested (drooling slightly) on Jenny’s shoulder. The words “a little bit too much, ladies” were scrawled on the bottom of the photo. Mandy pocketed the photo before waking Jenny up.
As sophomores, they went to Boston for a concert and took a redeye bus back to Samwell. They didn’t say anything on the ride home, just held hands and stared out the window at the quiet autumn night. Tired, but still a little giddy, they stumbled into their attic bedroom and shared their first kiss in between giggles.
Maybe it’s not so bad they died in the house, if they did have to die young.
----
Around midnight, Mandy found Jenny in the attic watching Justin sleep.
“Man, I’m gonna miss that bootie, aren’t you?” she asked, wrapping her arms around Jenny’s shoulders. Jenny leaned her head back against Mandy’s chin.
“There’ll be other booties. It’s a hockey frat.” she said absently.
They sat in silence for some time before Jenny broke the stillness.
“Mandy, do you still want to leave the house?”
“No. I’d rather be with you, babe.”
“The house is where the heart is,” smirked Jenny.
“I reserve the right to change my mind,” Mandy grouched and smacked Jenny on top of her head.
----
Mandy and Jenny made sure to watch Justin and Adam sleep one last time so they’d get to be there when they woke up on graduation day (and also because they couldn’t pass that chance up, duh). They’d spent a good amount of the night preparing. Mandy’s practice at writing while ghostly had come quite handy.
“Do NOT wear the red tie, Adam. The blue one is totally cute on you,” read the note they left on the dresser.
“CONGRATULATIONS!” was left on the middle of the dresser for both of them. It had been Jenny’s idea to draw in the hearts and peace signs all around the words.
Justin woke up first and just shook his head at the notes. “I am just never going to get used to this shit,” he muttered.
“Thanks?” he addressed the air a good three feet to their right. He continued, “Uhm… I’m going to go take a shower? Please don’t watch?”
Honestly, knowing that everyone knew about them rather had rather ruined the fun of that over the last month. (“Like, I just feel kinda gross and creepy?” Mandy had said. “Yeah, we, liiiiike… can’t do that any more.” Jenny had agreed.) They settled for watching Adam wake up and pull out the right tie. Jenny winked and gave Mandy a thumbs up.
They drifted to breakfast behind Justin to find that Eric had laid out an absolutely amazing spread, even by his standards. Instead of his usual pancakes, he made doughnuts, which sat stacked high next to a fruit salad. He stood at the stove, poking at bacon and chatting with Jack, who had flown in for the day and was looking down at Eric with so much fondness in his bright blue eyes that Mandy almost couldn’t stand it. Shitty had come back, too, and, as he took a seat at the table, he held a hand over Larissa’s head, threatening to ruffle her hair.
“Do your worst,” she challenged cooly before sipping her coffee.
“Nah, can’t mess with that kinda perfection,” he said with perfect sincerity. Larissa rolled her eyes and punched him in the shoulder.
“He’s right, Larissa looks sooooo pretty!” exclaimed Mandy.
“I would not have worn black though,” Jenny wrinkled her nose. “It’s sooo… well, funerial,” she finished with a wince.
By the time Adam came downstairs, Chris, William, and Derek had all joined them for the doughnuts. Mandy and Jenny settled into a pocket of air a few feet above the table and listened contentedly to the chatter.
They’d eavesdropped on a decade of graduation morning conversations before, and mostly, they were all about the same: silences punctuated by laughter; a million variations of “I can’t believe it”; groaning about parents and siblings and grandfathers.
This one felt a little different, mostly because it was Justin and Adam graduating, but it wasn’t just the two of them. It was the whole gang. They were a tighter clique than most had been. Plus, all the rest had gone on from Samwell without ever even knowing Jenny and Mandy existed.
Larissa checked her watch. “Well.” She clapped her hands as she stood up. “Time to go, boys.” Mandy and Jenny followed them to the door. Just before Justin crossed the threshold, they each got in one last goose.
“HEY!” he yelped as he clapped his hands over his butt, winning dubious looks from Adam and Larissa. Once they closed the door behind them, Mandy and Jenny hurried up to the attic so they could get a good view of the three of them walking down the street. They put their arms around each other’s waists and leaned their heads together.
“Happy Graduation, Jenny.”
“Happy Graduation, Mandy.”