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"Dude! My heart is racing!" Alex managed to shriek after being tragically teleport-jumpscared by Luke who still had not stopped laughing.
Reggie noticed that they did that a lot. They referenced their hearts as if they could still feel them. Alex's heart wasn't literally racing; it wasn't doing anything at all. But out of an attempt at keeping normalcy, they pretended it did.
Alex most commonly referenced his heart pounding or racing. It was something he'd grown accustomed to when alive. That constant feeling that his heart was working too fast for his body to keep up. It was an easy metaphor to return to because for some reason ghosts could still feel anxious. An electric hammer to the heart.
Luke liked to talk about how he and Julie's heartbeats were in sync when they played together. It wasn't true; he didn't have a heartbeat but it was exactly the kind of hopeless romantic comment Luke used to make when alive. It made Reggie smile each time Luke used it when he gushed about Julie.
Reggie claimed he felt his heart in his throat a lot, which had honestly never been true. Hearts don't actually wind up in your throat and the feeling had nothing to do with the cardiovascular system at all. That didn't mean he didn't say it anytime he got choked up.
Sometimes when phasing through someone, accidental or not, they could feel that person's heartbeat. It wasn't as if it was their own and instead more like if you walked into and empty room with only a giant speaker playing a steady drum beat on full volume. The beating surronded them, they could feel vibrating through their very being, but it wasn't there's. It didn't radiate from within, it wasn't real.
Reggie thought it was rather odd not having a heartbeat. It was an interesting system. They could breathe (or pretend to, considering they didn't have working lungs anymore) without thinking about it, but they couldn't make up a heartbeat. They couldn't force energy into their organs for a moment of imaginary realness. They just couldn't do it. It was a hollow feeling. Or perhaps a nothing feeling. They couldn't feel their insides, not their lungs or stomachs, in the same was you can't see with your hands or smell with your knees. It wasn't an empty feeling because it wasn't a feeling. It was nothing.
Reggie hated it and so they pretended they still had heartbeats.
He wished they could feel the steady beating once more. Even if it wasn't their own. To feel a heartbeat that wasn't the jarring consuming of phasing through someone would be comforting. Grounding.
The closest thing they got to a heartbeat was when Caleb's stamp shone on their skin. The unpredictable jolts, as painful as they were, were the only thing remotely close to what Reggie remembered as a heartbeat. It was a feeling that struck from inside. It was the only thing they felt from inside.
Then, Julie had lifted the stamp and something was different.
They could touch a living person. They could feel her heart beating.
The three of them had always been clingy. The four of them before they died had been the touchiest most physical of friends. That didn't stop after death and now they could touch Julie. She learnt very quickly just how cuddly they were and she didn't seem to mind one bit.
Each hug lasted a little longer, every empty hand was a hand to hold, any opportunity to touch Julie - to feel her warmth, her life - was taken without a second thought.
Reggie's favourite thing to do was lay his head on her chest or her back while they watched movies together. Half the time he wasn't even paying attention to the film because all he could focus on was the soft but real thump thump thump of her heart.
The closer he was to her, the more it felt like his own. A steady beating that connected them. She was the closest they would get to that feeling again.
Each time they played for an audience, something changed. The first time they played since breaking the stamp, they'd disappeared with their instruments off stage as they usually did and poofed off to stand beside Flynn who was "working the projector" and Flynn had screamed.
Flynn could see them now. That was another person who's heartbeat they could share.
The next performance resulted in people being able to hear them all the time even without their instruments. That made for a very interesting morning of Reggie talking to Ray and Ray thinking he was going crazy as he searched fruitlessly for whatever talking device he'd left on accidentally.
The next time they played, they found out they could still be seen if they were touching Julie. They became tangible - solid - if they were simply holding her hand. They got to officially meet Ray that way.
There were a couple of smaller changes and a couple of times where nothing would change at all. Luke would get dramatically hopeful each time and Alex would get more anxious. Ghost rules made no sense at all.
Sometimes Reggie wondered if they even were ghosts. Maybe they'd just assumed that because, well, they had died and could walk through walls and stuff. But what if they weren't ghosts at all? What if they were something else entirely? Something stuck on the inbetween. Not the inbetween as in life and death but rather... between life and... ghost?
Reggie didn't share those theories with the others. He knew how silly it sounded but something wasn't adding up at all.
The next big change didn't occur until Julie summer break. Julie and the Phantoms were going on a local tour. Flynn had organised a round circut tour of LA (mostly clubs or parks but it was as official as they'd ever been) and it got them enough traction to be noticed by a local recording studio which Flynn had declared they'd be looking into intensely before any decisions were made. Regardless, this was their summer tour. Sure, it wasn't big or even really leaving the city but it was just the start. It was the summer tour they never got in '95.
After their first night of the "tour", they all collapsed together in the studio. Julie had fallen backwards onto the couch, Luke draped across her midsection. Reggie and Alex claimed either side of her legs. Always touching. It was late, early hours of the morning, and they were all slightly delusional.
But that didn't make what happened any less real.
"Ow." Luke mumbled absently before he sat up at an alarming rate. He looked down at Reggie and Alex with wide eyes. "Did you two feel that?"
Alex blinked up at him. "Feel what?"
Only a second passed before Alex startled too. "Oh my god, was that a jolt?"
That caught Julie's attention and despite the ghost in her way, she shot up too. "Jolts? But the stamp is gone!"
Reggie frowned at the two of them, unsure what they were talking about when he noticed something.
Something soft, deep inside. A slow, steady thump thump thump.
Reggie's eyes grew fuzzy with tears he should not have been able to produce. Dare he say, his heart got caught in his throat.
Julie noticed his red cheeks and watery eyes. She scrambled off the couch to him. "Reggie? Reg, are you okay? Jolts?"
Reggie didn't manage a response but he grabbed her hand. He raised it and guided her palm to rest on his chest.
Alex caught on quick and did the same with his own hand.
He and Julie gasped at the same time, Julie's eyes welling up as well.
Luke still hadn't caught up, his eyes shifted between Alex and Julie rapidly. For all he knew, they'd been jolted and then Reggie started crying. He looked like he was teetering on the edge of panic. Alex thankfully stood to move closer to him and he grabbed Luke's own hand to let him feel the nostalgic sensation of life.
Feeling his own heart in his own hands, Luke finally understood.
They were alive.
The comfort that surrounded them that night was immense. There were four heartbeats in a place where there used to only be one.
And, god, were they racing.