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Chapter Text

LOS ANGELES, LAX 8:53 PM PDT

The first thing that Robert Shaw does when they stand up to deboard the plane, is lean back into Alex Mercer’s space and whisper, “You know, if we were richer, we wouldn’t have to do this.”

They’re caught in the line of elbows up eager travelers to fight for their spot in the aisle. Alex only levels him with an unimpressed frown, a furrow in his brow as he slips between Bobby and their other friend Reggie, who nearly falls back into an old woman that he accidently cuts off. She scowls at them and turns back to whisper something to her husband, and Reggie’s face grows pink.

Robert—Bobby—leans back again, turns his head and whispers, “Imagine. We get a Sunset Curve private jet. Or—oh! A helicopter.”

“Explain to me how we can reasonably take a helicopter from JFK to LAX, please, Robert,” Alex hisses under his breath. He shuffles in place and adjusts his backpack over his shoulders, trying to peel it away from his lower back.

A woman in front of them fights with her carry-on to yank it from the overhead compartment, and she and her bag nearly fly back and hit the stewardess, who barely ducks away in time. Bobby watches with a wry smile on his face and then nods in that direction while looking back at his friends, like this event was something that ruined all public air travel.

Reggie pops out from behind Alex. He’s chewing on something, and the smell of peanut butter wafts into the air and combines with the hot humidity of the world outside the plane. He gestures between them with the sandwich still clutched in his hand, plastic crinkling between his fingers.

“You know what Luke will say if you suggest that to him seriously.” He pauses. “I think the new roadie who packed my sandwich messed it up. I want to give the guy some slack, but you can’t mess with a guys sandwich.”

Bobby rolls his eyes and doesn’t bother to hide it, turning to look right at Reggie. He puts his phone down, the one he essentially hasn’t stopped checking since they’d landed, and frowns. He looks slightly haggard. “First of all, why is the roadie packing your sandwich, and second of all, Luke would make some comment about being a ‘man of the people’, which he has to know is ironic.”

Alex does a doubletake at Reggie. “Okay. Why is the roadie packing your sandwich? That’s not what—okay. No.”

Reggie shrugs. “He helps me out. I thought he was a fellow sandwich guy but… I don’t think he is.” He takes another few bites of his sandwich and shakes his head every time and the line shuffles closer to freedom. The closer they get to getting off this tin cylinder oven, the closer they are to Luke and to getting back to their homes for… a whole week.

Alex sighs wearily as they get closer and closer to getting off. The jaunty goodbye jingle plays over and over and by the time they finally step off the plane onto the hot bridge that leads them into the airport, he wants to claw at his ears.

Bobby slaps Alex’s shoulders in support. His smile looks more like an apologetic grimace. “One last show.”

Alex stops a moment and Bobby and Reggie carry on. He sighs again and groans. He knows how weary he sounds. “Don’t remind me.”

“You can make it!” Reggie calls back, twisting on his heels to walk backward next to Bobby. He holds up a thumbs up and nearly crashes into a family of four, before Bobby yanks him out of the way. It’s the old woman in the aisle all over again. The man shoots Reggie and Bobby, despite being their rescuer, a dirty look and pushes his family along away from them. Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to recognize their faces.

Alex jogs to catch up, waving apologetically at the family as he passes by. He slows to stop by his friends. “Wonder how Luke’s holding up. I don’t like us being separated like this. It makes me nervous. What if something happens?”

They all look at each other. Bobby’s face is blank, but there’s a twinge to his brow that shows he’s not unaffected by the same worry that’s clearly working its way up and down Alex. He glances down at his phone again, for the nth time, and Alex catches sight of a block of text. Reggie looks the most upset; they’re all older now, but there’s a vision of a younger Reggie when he worries.

By the time they’re walking down the corridors of the airport, they’re all quiet and more exhausted than they were before the flight. The whole past three months have been wild, but they’re finally going on a hiatus as soon as the summer hits. A much-needed break waits around the corner.

As they heave their tired bodies through the airport and toward baggage claim, there’s a nervousness none of them are willing to touch. Luke presumably hadn’t been happy to be separated from them, but then again, none of them had been thrilled with the prospect.

They spend longer getting to baggage claim than they want and the second they’re through the doors for domestic arrivals, they’re engulfed by three security guards.

A few people, at this point, have already stopped them. Alex admits quietly in a low whisper that if he has to take one more selfie, he’ll lay down on the runaway and let that be the end. But getting stopped off the plane a few times is nothing to the baggage claim. It’s lawless. Not only does the obvious presence of security make them stand out even more, and the sandwich roadie that Reggie enthusiastically greets.

“There’s a car waiting, we’ll grab your luggage,” one of the guys says, simultaneously casting a warning glance toward a woman lifting her phone up and walking directly toward Reggie. She nervously scuttles away, back to her girlfriend.

“No one usually ever wants a picture with the bass player,” he grumbles, sounding legitimately upset. “And the one time they do—!”

Bobby ignores him, shaking his head at the guard. He juts his chin toward the baggage claim, where their flight info is displayed up on the board. “They oversold the plane and there’s a guitar that got moved to below that I need to get my hands on. I don’t like taking my eyes off it. It’s expensive.”

People around them begin to look, mumbling amongst themselves. A teenager spares them a single glance, following people’s gazes, before she immediately goes back to obsessively checking her phone. She glances around the arrivals every few moments, looking for someone, but that thankfully doesn’t appear to be them.

Alex adjusts his baseball cap and Bobby lowers his head, careful to keep his sunglasses from sliding down the bridge of his nose. It’s easy to see; they’ve all seen it before. The long stare, the doubletake, the questioning gaze, peering closer, and then finally realization that they know them from somewhere. Sometimes, some people never get past that vague recognition. Most of the time…

A few snap pictures. Some are less obvious, but many more are very obvious. They don’t even bother hiding it. Some get close. And then some get closer still.

Alex’s shoulder rise up to his ears and he feels like he’s seventeen again. His stomach flips. “Oh god.”

“Price of fame,” Bobby sighs. He glances over his shoulder and then grimaces, ducking his head. He’s normally more center stage, especially with his position in the band. He scowls deeply here, staring down at the dirty floor of the baggage claim.

“This is ’02 all over again.”

“Let’s just get to Luke,” Bobby mutters back, voice so low Alex almost doesn’t catch it.

The security detail shuffles them toward baggage. And then a flash goes off.

“Fuck,” Reggie says around his peanut butter sandwich. He touches the roadie on the shoulder. “You forgot jelly.”

The roadie blinks at him. “Um—”

“—Sunset Curve! I knew it! It’s Sunset Curve—!”

Immediately, people swoop in. They’re crowded around by the security just as the luggage belt lurches forward and begins spitting out suitcases. Before they can even try to get to it, people’s faces and phones are shoved into their space, asking for a picture or a signature or a selfie.

“I thought rock and roll was dead, who are these people?” Alex asks himself.

“Car!” the security guard announces, turning around on his heel and literally sweeping the band up with his arms.

Reggie points toward the luggage belt. “But—!”

Bobby points frantically in the same direction. “It doesn’t have a tag on it, we don’t normally—! There’s blue star stickers—!”

“Car!” the man calls again, pushing them through the crowd of people that have surrounded them. Reggie’s eyes never leave the belt even as they round the corner through the throngs of people now accosting them and out the sliding glass doors, toward where two black cars are waiting in the taxi line.

“Kid’ll get your luggage,” the security guy says, casting a glance over his shoulder. A few people’s phones snap their faces just before the door closes and they’re thrust into silence.

Reggie sits across from them, nervously tugging on the hem of his shirt as he stares out the window. His brow is furrowed in deep concentration as he watches the double doors, waiting for the roadie to exit. Bobby and Alex cast a glance at each other. The air sits stiffly in the back of the car and even though the air conditioning is blasting, the outside heat presses in and squeezes them tight.

Reggie taps at the glass with his knuckles and finally relaxes. “There he is!”

The roadie is exiting the airport doors with one of the security guards. He triumphantly holds up the guitar case Bobby has been so anxious about. He’s barely balancing all the luggage and it’s making Alex extremely nervous he’ll drop the case. All of their elation immediately fades when the roadie goes to the second car, and they load the luggage up. People are still peering into their current hidey hole, but the cars windows are so dark most of them have given up.

“Oh,” Reggie says. He glances over his shoulder at the driver. The little window is shut. He lowers his voice. “Luke will be mad.”

“He can hold on a little while longer,” Alex says wryly, mouth twisting into a deep frown. “He’ll understand. We’re almost back, we’ll see him soon.” But his voice shakes, and he doesn’t sound like he believes himself either.

Bobby scowls deeply and turns to stare out the window, crossing his arms over his chest. He stares out the window and they begin to pull away, back out of the crowded airport and toward the crowded traffic of Los Angeles.

“Twenty-five years,” he says quietly, eyes flickering toward the driver. He’s not optimistic that that little window is soundproof. He glances between his friends and bandmates; people he’s known a lot longer than twenty-five years.

“Don’t remind me,” Alex murmurs.

He lays his head against the seat and the rest of the ride they spend in silence. By the time they get into the vicinity of their studio—a large house that was converted into a partial studio space—they’re all ready to be out of the car. Alex’s nervous fidgeting, something that had been counteracted years ago making a brief appearance at the reunion tour, has Bobby casting irritated, annoyed looks at his bouncing knees.

“Think Luke will mind if we crash at the studio?” Reggie asks casually, glancing between them.

Bobby is the one who picks himself up from the slouched position he’s slid into. He sits up, stretches, and then rolls his shoulders out. His shoulders creak and groan and his elbow pops once, twice, as he twists it. He winces. “You know he doesn’t.”

“I know.” Reggie frowns, then shrugs. “But maybe he’ll be mad at us.”

“He won’t be.”

“But—”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault but the airline for over-booking,” Bobby cuts in. “Not like we could discuss it ahead of time. It was that or wait another day for the next flight and, all of us, Luke included, were ready for us to be home.”

Reggie slouches, before he nods slowly, thinking. “Yeah. You’re right.”

The car turns, and they’re suddenly climbing steep hills to get to the studio. The closer and higher they get, the more awake the rest of them seem. They pull into a locked gate, where the security guard punches in the code and the gates open. Alex lets out a visible sight of relief as they pull through and finally seems to relax.

They’re out of the car the moment they stop. The roadie is already unpacking everything from the second car, pulling out suitcases, a backpack, the guitar case.

“Careful with that!” Bobby snaps, sauntering over. He pries it out of the roadie’s surprised hands. The boy’s face grows red, and he stutters an apology as he steps away, holding his hands in the air. Alex sends him a wry, apologetic look, and gives him a comforting slap on the shoulder as he passes by. Bobby traipses into the house without a single glance back toward the rest of their luggage.

“We’ve got it,” Alex says to the roadie and guard who’d stepped out. “Give us a chance to stretch our legs.”

“If you’re certain,” the guard says, and turns away without a thought.

The roadie lingers a moment. “The sandwich—and the guitar—I think… I think I—”

“Don’t stress it,” Alex says. He’s looking away, toward the front of the house, where Reggie is balancing a suitcase and two backpacks.

“Oh, well, no I—”

“Have a good evening, alright?” Alex says impatiently. He’s a little sorry for interrupting but he’s ready to be inside, reunited with Luke, and not living out of a suitcase.

He smiles once more at the roadie, who opens his mouth to say something again, and then the poor guy is dragged away by one of the security guards calling his name. Alex bids them goodbye, watching the big black cars file away, and turns away where the only thing left to do is reunite with Luke.

He drags the rest of the luggage in just as he hears Reggie from the living room. He doesn’t even bother to take it past the foyer, dropping it all and following quickly into the main living area.

“Buddy! We can finally talk!” Reggie hovers over the guitar case before settling down in front of it, his knees creaking in protest as he touches down on the cool tile.

“We’re really sorry,” Alex calls out, leaning over Reggie, “it was the airline and, I mean, you heard it, but if it makes you feel better, I was nervous about it the whole flight.”

“He was, he almost threw up,” Bobby says, laughing. He claps Alex on the back and Alex shoves him off, frowning.

“I did not!” Alex squeaks. “Well, I mean, I might’ve stressed myself out a little. But I did not almost throw up.”

Reggie unclasps the guitar case, fumbling with them briefly. He frowns and then tries again. He opens the case.

The guitar inside is a light brown color, a classic sort of look. The strings are old and look like they haven’t been replaced in a long time. The velvet inside the case is green, but it should be blue. The guitar should be a dark brown. The guitar inside should be their bandmate, Luke, cursed twenty-five years ago, but it isn’t. It’s the wrong case. It’s the wrong guitar.

All three of them sit there and stare. Bobby’s chin trembles and for a moment, it almost looks as if he might cry. But whatever emotion it is that he’s feeling immediately turns to anger. He spins on his heels and leans over the kitchen counter behind them, sucking in deep, heavy breaths.

“Luke?” Reggie says, although he knows his friend isn’t there.

But that’s the question. He’s somewhere. In LA, or somewhere completely different, possibly put on a completely different flight. He won’t be able to tell anyone, either, they’re the only ones that can hear their cursed friend, the only ones who can speak to him at all.

Alex breaths heavy, his chest shuddering at he stares down at someone else’s instrument. Every worst fear he’d imagined on the flight, all come true. He looks at Reggie. Reggie looks at him. Alex swallows.

“Shit.”

Chapter Text

NEW YORK CITY, MANHATTEN 1:54 AM EST

Julie Molina sits cross-legged on her bed, holding her phone in front of her, erasing every single text message she’s managed to construct for the last several hours.

Every message feels too contrived. Too fake. Too lengthy. If not lengthy, wordy and if not wordy, sparse. She goes between sitting on her bed or pacing her room. She has long swaths of texts she should be responding to, that she would like to respond to, that she just cannot seem to form the right replies for.

Wordy. Sparse. Fake. Disingenuous. Too real. Honest to a fault.

None of them are right, even if some of them are fitting, and Julie mostly wants to take her phone, open her window the full three inches it’s permitted to open, and chuck it out through the hole. She doesn’t. But she’s very, very close.

Sniffling, she instead chucks it to the side of her bed where it hits her wall of pillows and then falls pitifully to her covers. It vibrates as a message comes through.

Rising from her bedspread, Julie pads back and forth across her room.

She is supposed to be back home in LA.

Julie glances guiltily at her luggage. One carry-on, her backpack, and a guitar she hadn’t opened in… too long. Long enough that it’s becoming a problem. Not that everything else about her situation isn’t a problem.

“Mom,” she mutters, “give me a sign that I made… the right choice?” She groans. “Who am I kidding.”

She’s in New York now. But she might not have to worry about being here much longer. She needs to give herself one more week, but Julie feels in her heart that it’s over. The thought fills her with dread. Dread and shame. Fills her up, scoops her insides out, and settles in there in replacement. If she moves, it’s all she feels, and if she opens her mouth, it’s all that comes out.

Before she can do much of anything, there’s a knock at her door. She blinks, startled, and glances at the clock for the time. It’s just past two am. Never mind the time, the dorm should be empty, because everyone should have gone back home for spring break. Or Florida.

She startles again as another knock sounds out, and she scrambles forward. She’s just wiping away the tears from her eyes as she opens the door.

Nick stands in the crack, smiling wryly at her from the dimly lit hallway. He gives her a sharp wave and seems to blush when he sees her face.

“Hey, Julie.”

“Nick!” she exclaims and quickly turns her face to swipe under her eyes again. “Uh. Hi. What are you doing here?”

He smiles, tilting his head to the side. “I go to school here?”

Julie blinks at him and then realizes he’s making a joke. He knows she knows he goes to school here. “Oh! I mean. Yes. What I mean is, why are you here while… I mean, I thought you were going home for spring break?”

He shrugs, a smile still playing at his face, and then seems to realize that response won’t do. He flushes and reaches up to lean on the doorway, before thinking otherwise. His hand falls to his side awkwardly. “Uh. Yeah. I just decided I’d hang around.”

Nick is one of the few kids Julie’s got to know this year being away from home. They share a good number of classes. He’s talented at guitar. They’ve gotten a coffee once or twice. He has a sweet smile. She thinks he’s absolutely perfect. She likes the idea of running her fingers through his blonde hair and has to clench her fists so that she appears normal.

He’s just too cute. She can imagine bringing him home to LA with her, a perfectly uncomplicated feature to her rather complicated and tragic life, the one perfect specimen amongst the grave dirt, a bastion of normal.

Nick’s presence in front of her seems to shock something out of her system. Maybe it’s his smile, or maybe it’s the fact that he interrupted what was going to be a continued tragic sobbing session, but she feels pulled out of that headspace. This is appearing to be a very normal, friendly conversation. Julie is good at being normal, and friendly.

Before she can reply, he points at her, tilting his head again. “I thought you were going home for spring break? At least, I heard you weren’t. And then you were. So…”

She can feel heat burning in her cheeks and knows she must’ve been red hot by now. She doesn’t know Nick well enough to tell him her plans out of nowhere and she doesn’t recall updating him either. Had he asked someone if she would be sticking around? The thought sends a flutter in her chest. The she remembers they share a seminar class, and the teacher had had everyone share their plans.

Still, he remembered. He noticed.

“I wasn’t going to! And then, uh, last minute I decided maybe I should and then… um. Well. Really last minute decided not to.”

She tries not to let the guilt shine through and hopes Nick doesn’t hear her phone rapidly vibrating as texts shoot across the atmosphere to pummel directly into her iMessage.

He narrows his eyes at her, smiling. “Yeah, I thought I saw you loading up a taxi earlier today? But you’re… back again.”

She flushes again, but this has nothing to do with her crush. “Like really last minute decided not to.”

He laughs. “Good. Would’ve been awkward if I was here all by myself. I saw the light on in your room and, you know, it’s not just you and me. Carrie is stuck here too it looks like.” He shrugs, nonchalant. “If you want to hang out with us, you could, I know Carrie won’t mind. I heard you were moving onto guitar and maybe I can show you some things.”

She grimaces. He’s not wrong. But ‘moving onto guitar’ is a bit generous. She’s yet to pick the thing up and even take it to class. And she knows for sure that Carrie wants very little to do with her. She does need a teacher though, that much is true, if she wants any hope of being a student at this school past spring break. She glances back at her luggage, and the guitar case she’d dumped unceremoniously on the floor. Is she certain she’ll be able to play by the end of the next week? Not really.

Does she know she has to try?

Does she know she should try?

“Look,” she says, and then bites her lip. “The truth is…”

Nick interrupts before she can continue, his words tripping over themselves, coming out almost too fast to process. “You can so totally say no, you know! That’s okay! I don’t mind! I just mean that I’d love to hang out, for school or just as, you know, as friends, that’d be okay too! And I don’t think there’s a lot of us spring breakers, so I thought, well, it’d be nice to have a friend. But I know I do better when my friends are around, and practice makes perfect!”

Unrelated again, Julie flushes dark. She feels embarrassed. Has he watched her then, and seen how often she is alone? Does he see how she struggles in classes she never should’ve been allowed to sit in?

“That sounds nice,” she says instead, shoulders slumping. She feels something strange in her stomach now; the butterflies are gone, and instead she feels hollowed out.

“Aw, great.” He beams. “Well. Uh. I’ll get you get back to it.”

‘To it’ being crying, but she appreciates the gesture. She smiles anyway. And it’s not like he knows that for sure. “Thanks, Nick.”

“See ya,” he says, and then turns quickly on his heel and walks stiffly back down the hallway toward his dorm room.

She lets the door fall silently shut and then stands there, arms limply hanging at her sides, before she shuffles further into her room. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. Her phone is still vibrating. Calls and texts. She’d bet she has a few from her Tia now. She knows she has many from her papi. That number is dwarfed by the messages from Flynn, her best friend.

Julie’s eyes catch on her luggage. Without thinking, she stomps over and yanks the suitcase to the ground, ripping open the zipper and tearing her clothes out. She doesn’t bother to organize them as she shoves them into the closet nearby. She’s in a frenzy. She tosses her toiletry bag to the base of her bathroom door. Before she knows it, her suitcase is empty.

She straightens where she’s standing in the center of the room. She doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Her backpack, filled with items she was going to occupy herself with on the five-hour flight, sits unemptied. Next to it, the stupid guitar that she hasn’t touched.

“I’m screwed,” she mutters. She shrugs, throwing her arms into the air. “I’m screwed!”

She takes the guitar case and chucks it onto her bed. It hits her phone with a thunk. She fumbles with the clasps and swears for a moment they didn’t use to be this difficult.

“What the hell,” she says, and then slaps her hand against the top before she gets the clasps open and throws open the case.

The guitar inside is not her guitar. She has never seen this guitar before. It looks familiar, but… it shouldn’t. She steps back, holding her hands in the air like they’ve been burned. It looks like a custom build, and a nice one, one that someone took a lot of care of.

“Oh they gave me the wrong guitar back,” she mutters. “They gave me the wrong luggage!”

Oh no.

She stills, blinks, glances from side to side. Her room is empty.

It’s a very nice guitar. The wood is polished and perfectly kept; the electronic panel is dust free. The pick guard barely has a scratch. Frankly, the thing looks unplayed. Barely touched. That’s in odds to the case it was in, nice but banged up. Used. Julie wonders why someone would take a guitar somewhere and then never play it. Does it sound bad?

Frowning, she reaches forward and plucks a single string on the guitar. The sound rings completely true, a full round note. Perfectly in tune. Completely unlike the piece of crap guitar that she’d picked up here in a bid to try something new. Even though her eyes definitely aren’t playing tricks on her, she knows this isn’t that guitar alone by the clear, round note it plays.

Oh.

Julie jerks back, looking wildly around her room. She’s so cried out and dehydrated that she’s hearing things. Shaking her head, she turns back to the guitar. She’d ripped the luggage tag off on her way back, but even so she’s not entirely sure it would’ve helped her at all. She closes the guitar case with a snap and turns it all over, but aside from a few sparkly blue star stickers at the base that she’d missed, there’s nothing.

No label, no name. The thing looks completely untouched. The case is nice, rough looking, but in good condition. She barely remembers coming back from the airport at all. It looks entirely like the one she’d turned in to the gate agent before she’d begged for them to hand it all over when she decided she couldn’t face her family.

She opens the case again, and—

—shit! Fuck! Damnit! This can’t be happening! Please! Please! Please, this can’t be it, please—

Julie shrieks.

She stumbles back and hits the edge of her desk, sliding across it. The voice cuts off sharply. She barely catches herself before she falls, sliding to the floor of her dorm room. Her hand covers her mouth, and she sucks in sharp, ragged breaths through her fingers before she completely stills.

“…hello?” she whispers, leaning toward her bed.

There’s no answer.

“Did I cry too much? Am I hearing things?”

Silence.

Slowly, tentatively, she gets to her hands and knees and leans forward, peering up onto her covers where the guitar case rests. She kneels against the bed frame.

…hello?

“Hello?” she replies back, voice shaking.

A pause. You… you can… you can hear me?

Julie’s whole body shakes from where she’s kneeling. She claws herself up to lean against her bed, catching just the barest sight of the guitar in the case. The question seems to shake her surprise, and she jerks her head back, shocked.

“Why are you asking me if I can hear you? Why are you talking!?” She shakes her head and presses her hands into her temples, squeezing her eyes shut. “I need to get some sleep, oh my god.”

But you can hear me! You can! Oh, wow! Oh my god! That’s… you must be… that’s crazy!

“I’m insane.” Julie shrugs, staring blankly at nothing. “I’m insane. Did I get on my flight? Did the plane crash? Did I die? Oh my god, I died.”

You’re not dead! I promise!

“Not convincing,” she snaps. She falls back to sit on her heels. “Oh my god. Don’t talk back to it.”

You’re not dead, the guitar says, though it’s voice wavers. It’s a boys voice, around her age. Maybe a little older. Oh this is amazing. This is—! You’re magic. You can hear me!

“And you’re…” she waves vaguely in its direction, “…talking,” she finishes lamely. She shakes her head again, trying her best to clear it. “How are you talking?”

Oh, it lets out a sort of sigh, well, that’s easy—

A heavy knock at the door cuts it off. Julie’s head snaps toward the front of the room. She shudders in her spot where she’s still kneeling and for a moment forgets what she’s supposed to do when someone knocks on a door. The world is a little turned on its head right now. Maybe pigs are flying outside; a guitar is talking, so why not?

Guests?! the guitar exclaims, sounding delighted at the prospect. Wait, where are we? What’s your name? What’s going on? Can you pick me up so I can look around?

The knock sounds again, and Julie rushes to her feet, tripping over herself. She’s expecting Nick again with another forceful jerk back to reality, but she swings the door open to find Carrie Wilson standing in the hallway, wide-eyed and furious. She’s done up for sleep, hair in an overnight curler, two undereye masks stick to her cheeks. One hangs on by a thread, threatening to fall off, but Julie finds that being in Carrie’s vicinity by default makes everything want to run for the hills. Undereye masks included.

“Why,” Carrie hisses, “are you screaming at three in the morning?”

“Carrie, hi-i-i-i-i.” Julie goes for a smile, but she knows she looks like a mess, and Carrie wouldn’t have fallen for it anyway. Clearing her throat, Julie tries to straighten herself up. She pats down at her hair and glances over her shoulder. “Sorry. I… thought I saw something.”

“You thought you saw something,” Carrie repeated. She levels Julie with a blank stare. “Shadow on the wall? An image of you actually performing in class? Was that too scary?”

“Sorry,” Julie repeats through gritted teeth, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Okay, but you did. You did wake me up. At three in the morning. What could you have possibly seen!?”

Julie hesitates. “Just. Something. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.” She looks Julie up and down. Her assessment lasts all of a few seconds and also a million years. She scrunches her nose when she reaches Julie’s face again, like there’s something she’s seeing there that she dislikes immensely. Julie swipes at her eyes again, but she’s all cried out, and she’s hopefully completely removed any proof of her crying from her face ages ago.

Carrie sniffs. She goes to toss her hair over her shoulder, but her hair is all pinned up in the curlers, and the action looks silly. She immediately drops her hand to her hip, like the motion was on purpose and not an accident. If it wasn’t three am, Julie might’ve laughed, but before she can even consider a reaction, Carrie sighs loudly, burdened, annoyed.

“Well I guess we know where all your energy goes to when you’re not performing in class. Makes me wonder why you can’t perform in class when you can scream like that in your free time. Why even bother coming here if you’re not even going commit?”

Carrie scoffs and turns on her heels and for the second time that night Julie is left standing at her door.

Julie slowly shuts the door and turns back to the center of the room. Her eyes track slowly across the walls before falling to the open guitar case. She takes a few tentative steps toward it, cringing away like it might hop out of the case and attack her. She almost hopes Carrie interrupted some strange, lucid nightmare, induced by too much crying and only a little bit of mania, and that there is no talking guitar.

Still…

“…um… hello?” she asks the empty room and feels a little silly.

Hi.

Damnit, Carrie. She had one job.

“Are you possessed?” she asks, feeling like she’s falling into a weird fugue state, a hazy place where reality is shifted just slightly over to the left.

No! it exclaims, definitely not. I’m a boy! Well, okay, I used to be a boy. But technically I still am. I’m a guitar but I am a boy. I got cursed.

“A boy,” Julie says faintly. “Okay. Sure.” She pauses, and the guitar doesn’t say anything. No reason why a sentient guitar can’t have a gender if it wants. She stands there looking around for a moment before she huffs. “Okay. Do you have a name?”

It’s—. The guitar cuts off. Well, it’s— wait. No, I… I do have a name. I don’t know why I can’t… remember… I… I… why can’t I remember?  A pause. Ah… right. Damnit.

It says that last bit to itself, a sense of confusion and realization and almost fear in its voice.

I swear, it says quietly, I swear I… I can’t remember. But I swear I was, I used to be, a person.

Julie hesitates. It’s not like she’ll know any different if it’s telling the truth of not. It could be. It could also be lying. But it doesn’t have a reason to lie and it’s still muttering in distress. Magic and curses feels a step too far, especially at three in the morning.

“Okay, you have a name,” she says slowly, “but you can’t remember.”

L! It starts— it starts with an L! I just. Just give me a sec. I just need a moment to think. I didn’t think it would happen this… I mean. I don’t know. L. It starts with an L.

“Okay,” she repeats. “I’m Julie?”

Li… no… L— oh. Julie is a pretty name.

“Thanks?”

Ba-da, it sings softly.

She finds herself wracking her brain for a list of L-names. It takes her an embarrassingly long amount of time to even come up with one name, and even longer for it to be a boy’s name. The guitar is still sounding out ideas and getting nowhere. She doesn’t know why she’s bothering, why she’s indulging the talking thing on her bed. But she does.

“Lewis?” she throws out.

Huh?

“Is that your name?”

You think my name is Lewis?!

She spreads her arms wide. “It’s the only thing I’ve got! Lewis! Or… or Leo! Lawrence! Lincoln.”

No! Bro, these all sound like old people names!

Julie throws her arms up in the air. “Well you’ve come up with nothing! How about I just… we just call you L and call it a night. It’s…” She pats her pockets for her phone and then remembers it’s under the case on her bed. “Like almost three-thirty or something. I don’t know. I’m going to go to bed.”

Oh. A pause. Okay I mean I guess, but I have to get back— wait! Don’t close the—

She snaps the guitar case closed and it’s voice is cut off. Rolling it off her bed, she falls on top of her covers, closes her eyes, and cries.