Disclaimer: All rights belong to the creators and writers of Julie and the Phantoms (2020). I take no credit, and I do not mean to break any copyright rules. This is simply a work of fiction made for enjoyment. No money is being made.

Rating: K+

Author's Note: Sorry for the long wait! I'm finally on top of schoolwork for once - didn't realize I'd get so bogged down. The last two chapters should come out this month, and I have another (shorter) JATP fic that I'll be posting as well. After that, I'm going to take a break from JATP at least until we get a Season 2 announcement. If we don't get one, well, I have a few other fic ideas I want to write, as well as a sequel to this fic, so keep following me or checking back at my profile!

Chapter 38

The world feels in balance again.

Alex and Reggie sit next to each other on the bus, Alex once again in possession of their shared phone. He and Reggie alternate using it - texting Willie and Kayla, Julie assumes. Luke sits next to Beth, and it sounds like they're discussing To Kill A Mockingbird. Julie still can't quite reconcile the Luke she knows with the Luke who enjoys analyzing literature. She sits by herself until Flynn gets on a couple stops later.

Flynn has a sly smile on her face even before she fully sits down. "So," she says. "You and Luke, huh."

"Yeah. Me and Luke." Julie watches him over the top of the bus seats. He's talking passionately, waving his arms around and nearly smacking Beth, who dodges expertly.

"So are you guys, like, official now?"

"We didn't really talk about it, but…" Julie lowers her voice. "We did kiss again, so I think so?"

Flynn squeals and hugs her. "I'm so happy for you, Julie!"

"It doesn't feel real yet. I'm still afraid I'm going to wake up and it will all have been some sort of crazy dream."

"How does your dad feel about it?"

Julie shrugs. "Obviously we haven't told him yet, but he suspected it a few weeks ago. I promised him no drama in the house."

Flynn's phone vibrates. She pulls it out and starts scrolling, her brow furrowing.

"What is it?" Julie asks.

Flynn hands her phone over. "News got out on Twitter that Luke and Alex are back, and Trevor Wilson's PR agent made a statement about his absence over the past few days. The conspiracy theorists are going nuts."

Julie doesn't bother to scroll more than a few times. She doesn't care about all this drama. "If anyone asks, Luke and Alex just went back to Sweden for a quick visit and they're back now."

"That's pretty flimsy. And boring. We could make up a super cool story."

"Why? If it's boring, people will forget about it. Besides, once the news gets out that we're playing the Orpheum on Friday, they'll be distracted."

"Speaking of." Flynn takes her phone back. A minute later, she tilts the screen towards Julie. "How about this for the announcement on the band socials?"

Flynn selected a picture she'd taken last night of Julie with the boys in the middle of their celebration. Her caption claims they're celebrating the news of their upcoming Orpheum performance. While it's not strictly the truth, it's a good excuse as any for the photo.

"I like it. But next time, get someone else to take the picture. You're a part of the band, too. We wouldn't have had half our gigs without you, and you're the one who got us playing together in the first place."

Flynn smiles. "Oh, I know. I'll just take an extra cut of the paycheck."

As they exit the bus, Luke catches up to Julie. He takes her hand as they walk toward the front doors together. Julie smiles up at him shyly.

Alex and Reggie walk on Luke's other side, and Flynn on Julie's. They get a lot of stares as they walk through the halls together. Last year, being the center of several conspiracy theories and the school rumor mill would have been an absolute nightmare; now Julie finds she doesn't care. She's got bigger things going on in her life than whatever bored high schoolers do to fill the void inside of them. She knows who she is and the only people whose opinions matter to her are the people by her side right now.

It takes three hours for the news about them playing the Orpheum to spread around the school. As Julie tries to change into clothes for her dance class, she's surrounded by about eight girls assaulting her with questions. She wishes they'd wait until she had pants on, but she patiently answers them, knowing that the answers will soon spread around and hopefully people will stop bugging her.

Julie feels a little awkward during dance class with Nick. She doesn't regret kissing Luke like she did, but she feels bad that he saw it. The way she handled the whole Nick and Luke thing wasn't her proudest moment.

"I heard the news about you playing the Orpheum on Friday night," Nick says as they catch a break while the dance instructor works with a smaller group in the back. "That's awesome."

"Yeah, we're pretty excited about it. It came out of nowhere, but we're not complaining. Oh, don't forget to remind me to send you a pass - it's a sold out show, since Panic! is headlining."

"Thanks. I'll be there."

Julie hesitates. "Nick, I want to say - I'm sorry."

He frowns. "For what?"

"For the way I kinda led you on during Homecoming weekend. That wasn't fair of me. I didn't do it on purpose - I did really like you. But then the boys came into my life and everything changed so suddenly."

Nick drops his eyes. "Yeah. It's okay, Julie. The way I was acting wasn't exactly great, either. I had just broken up with Carrie and I was making a move on you. That wasn't fair to either of you."

"So we're good?"

He smiles a little. "Yeah, we're good." He pauses and then adds, "Actually, Carrie and I have been talking more since her dad disappeared."

Julie raises an eyebrow. "Like talking, or talking?"

Nick shrugs. "We'll see. I think being friends is a good place for us right now. Our relationship wasn't the healthiest, so I think it's good for us both to take a step back before deciding if we want to go back down that road."

All the tension between them disappears. For the first time since Julie met him, she's able to see him as a friend and nothing more, and she finds she quite enjoys having him as a friend. He tells her stories about his little sister and how she dresses him up for tea parties and his dads and their recreational baseball team and Julie finds herself laughing until she has to hold her stomach.

"I have to meet your dads sometime," she says when she finally catches her breath.

"One of my dads does a lot of work with the music industry. He might be able to get into the Orpheum on Friday night, actually. I'll ask him. And my other dad comes to all my lacrosse games - you should come to one sometime."

"Do you really want me to come?" Julie teases. "I heard it's been a rough season."

"Next Thursday we're playing East High. It's a guaranteed win. I heard they have to bribe students to play lacrosse there. More of a basketball school. That's actually where my dads went to school."

"Alright. Sounds like a plan."

"That is, of course, if you can humble yourself to hang with us mortals after sharing the stage with Brendon Urie."

Julie rolls her eyes and smacks him. "Whatever. Says the person who dated Trevor Wilson's daughter."

Just as Julie predicted, the girls from her dance class spread her answers about the Orpheum performance around the school. She's almost late to music class because she gets stopped in the halls so much. The boys are actually late, rushing in a full minute after the bell rings.

Mrs. Harrison motions for them to have a seat and then stands in front of the class.

"I've decided to mix things up today," she says. "Instead of our usual class, I'm going to let you each choose a partner and you have to write a song together. I'll give you thirty minutes. It can be any kind of song - instrumental only, acappella, lyrics and music, whatever you want. And it can be in any genre." She goes up to the whiteboard and starts the magnetic timer. "Go."

Julie turns to find Flynn, but Flynn waves her away and walks off with another girl. Julie is disappointed until she turns back to find Luke waiting for her. Then she realizes that Flynn isn't abandoning her, she's just giving her time with Luke.

They claim a practice room with an old, slightly out of tune piano, a couple guitars, and a rusty saxophone laying on the ground. Luke digs in his backpack and pulls out his songbook.

"You bring that to school?" Julie asks, sliding on the piano bench.

"Why not?" he asks. "I like to work on stuff when I'm bored in class."

"What if you lose it? Or damage it?" She nods at the chaotic mess of loose papers and beat up textbooks that is the inside of his backpack. "You're not exactly the neatest person."

He shrugs. "I haven't yet."

He thumbs through it while Julie absently plays the piano. She closes her eyes and lets her fingers drift along the keys. She realizes it's oddly silent after a moment and opens her eyes to see Luke staring at her.

"What?"

He leans forward on his chair. "Play that again."

Julie frowns. "I don't know what I was playing. I wasn't really paying attention."

"It kinda went like this." He hums a few measures, and Julie realizes that she does know what she was playing.

Her cheeks heat up. It's the song she imagined them singing in her head at the homecoming dance, when she was dancing with Nick but imagined Luke in his place. She lets her hair fall in front of her face and plays it again.

"That's good," Luke says. "What song is it? I haven't heard it before."

"It's, uh, a song that I made up." Julie has a lightbulb moment and she reaches for the songbook and the pen in Luke's hand. She digs deep into the dredges of her mind to recall the lyrics they'd sung. It isn't a full song - just two verses, a chorus, and a little ending bit. She shyly hands the notebook back to Luke.

His face betrays nothing as he reads over it. Julie feels her heart start to pound. Is it too much? They just kissed for the first time last night and now she's admitting that she had a love song about them in their mind. But their relationship has been nothing if not abnormal. They've been through so much together already.

When Luke finally looks up, he almost looks nervous. "Is this…"

"Yeah." Julie reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear, not quite looking him in the eyes. "It's about us."

He stares at her for a moment before grabbing the pen and scrawling across the page, filling in the empty lines. A minute later, he passes it back.

"I think we've got a full song now," he says as she reads over his additions. It takes her extra long to decipher his chicken scratch. He's written a third verse and a bridge.

You set me free

You and me together,

Is more than chemistry

Love me as I am

I'll hold your music, here inside my hands

I feel your rhythm in my heart

You are my brightest burning star

I never knew a love so real

We're heaven on earth

Melody and words

When we're together we're in

Perfect harmony

Julie heart constricts inside her chest. It takes her a moment before she's able to look over at him. He's perched on the edge of his seat, biting his lip and bouncing his knee up and down.

"This is…" She swallows. "This is perfect."

Luke reaches over and grabs the acoustic guitar from the corner of the room. He tunes it quickly. "I've never written a love song before," he admits, not looking her in the eye. "Of course, you did most of the work."

"We did it together," she insists. She hides her smile; she likes how nervous he is. Luke has always seemed so calm and confident and she likes that she can make him flustered.

"Uh, should we run through it a few times?" he asks. "Get the arrangement down perfectly?"

It had only taken them fifteen minutes to finish the song, so they have another fifteen to practice it. Luke leans over her shoulder, watching her hands on the piano and testing out chords. Even having the melody and most of the song written ahead of time, Julie knows there's no one else she could have finished this song with to make it sound so good.

There's a knock on their door and Mrs. Harrison peeks her head in. "Time's up," she says. Luke brings the guitar with him as they head back to the main room. All the other students are shuffling back in as well.

When everyone's seated, Mrs. Harrison checks her watch. "We still have twenty minutes left of class, so let's see how many songs we can get through. Who would like to go first?"

Julie glances around the room. Most of the duos don't surprise her, but she does notice Alex and Carrie sitting next to each other and whispering furiously. She hadn't noticed them partner up, and she had assumed Nick and Carrie would have gone together. When she looks for Nick, she notices him sitting by Reggie, another interesting combination.

Julie finally looks back over to Mrs. Harrison, and she catches her eyes at exactly the wrong time. The teacher smiles at her.

"Julie, why don't you start us off?"

She takes a deep breath and glances over at Luke, who nods. They stand up together, Julie going over to the piano and Luke dragging a mic stand over beside her. He strums through the chords quickly to warm up and then nods to her.

Julie starts playing the intro on piano and Luke plays a simple, dampened strumming pattern. The first verse is his, and although Julie keeps her gaze on the piano, she can feel his eyes on her. She doesn't look over until her verse, and then she can't seem to take her eyes off of him.

It's completely different than the version she imagined in her head. That version was more refined and had a staccato beat behind it. This version is more them, just acoustic guitar and piano chords and their voices. There's no fancy dance, nothing - just them, raw and real.

Julie forgets that their entire class is watching. Just like when Luke finally escaped the game and they held each other in Trevor's living room, the world around her fades until he's the only one. She thinks of the line Luke wrote - You're my brightest burning star - and she knows he feels the same way.

They have the biggest smiles on their faces when the last note fades away. Only the applause of their classmates breaks their concentration. Julie and Luke mock-bow and take their seats again.

Mrs. Harrison walks back to the middle of the room. "Are you sure you guys wrote that in thirty minutes?" she asks. "That was amazing. I guess that's why you've already scored a gig at the Orpheum - congratulations and good luck, by the way."

"Thank you."

Alex and Carrie volunteer to go next. They recorded the background music on Carrie's iPhone and play it through the speakers so they can do their dance to it. The song itself is pretty simple and unimpressive, and Julie can definitely tell that they spend most of their time on their dance choreography, but it looks great and they're having the time of their life performing. Julie jumps up and gives them a standing ovation. Carrie has a genuine smile on her face that Julie hasn't seen in years. She and Alex even have a little handshake they do as they head back to their seats.

Luke leans forward and squeezes Alex's shoulders. "That was awesome, dude."

Alex shrugs, playing it cool. "It's nice to get out from behind the drums sometimes."

Keeping the trend of their band volunteering to go, Reggie raises his hand and he and Nick grab stools and drag them to the middle of the room. Reggie has a bass and Nick has an acoustic guitar. To her surprise, Reggie takes the lead vocals as he sings what she quickly realizes is a country song.

Home, what is it really?

Sometimes it's a someone and not a place

It's that feeling of being safe

It's about who you're with at the end of the day

And for me…

Home is where my horse is

Riding through trees by the river

Feel the summer breeze, smile getting bigger

Home is where my horse is

Don't need a house or a roof

I just put on the saddle, lace up my boots

'Cause home is where my horse is

I don't need the streets,

Don't need the city lights

I don't need a fancy car,

I just hop on my horse and ride

Home is where my horse is

Riding through trees by the river

Feel the summer breeze, smile getting bigger

Home is where my horse is

I see the beautiful beast running up to me

And I know

I'm home

Reggie and Nick bow dramatically. Luke groans and covers his face in his hands. Julie claps slowly, not quite sure what she's just experienced but impressed by the country twang Reggie put into his voice.

There's only two minutes left of class, so Mrs. Harrison releases them for the day. Several people come up to Julie and Luke and ask if they have any openings in the band. Julie refers them over to Flynn, who turns them all down. Some people just come over to congratulate them. One girl, who usually sits quietly at the back of class and who Julie has never spoken to, says that she's inspired by them and has started writing her own music. Julie almost tears up at that.

History class is by far the worst. At least in music class, she knows that everyone appreciates their musical talent, but in history, the students just care about them being attractive rock stars - and by them, they mean the boys. Julie thought all the fanclubs for the boys were bad before, but now they're atrocious. She ducks her head and escapes the crowds pressing against the boys the moment they step into the hallway. She ends up walking with Nick to history.

Luke is late to class again, but he pulls out his puppy dog eyes and shy smile and their teacher waves him by with an, "It's alright." He slides into his seat behind Julie.

About halfway through the lecture, Luke starts playing with the ends of her hair. She finds it very difficult to concentrate from that point onward.

In the last few minutes of class, when they have some free time, a girl named Jennifer approaches Luke.

"I heard you're playing at the Orpheum tonight! That's sooo cool. When you guys played in front of the school, I knew you would be stars. Can I get a picture with you?"

"Sure," Luke replies. Julie bites the inside of her cheek and glares at her desk. She loves Luke, but she does not love the entourage of popular girls that demand his attention at all times. She wonders how many of their fans are actually fans and not just girls simping over the guys.

"But don't you want Julie in the picture as well?" Luke adds a beat later. "She's the lead singer. It's Julie and the Phantoms."

Julie turns around slowly, shocked. Jennifer smacks her gum and shrugs. "Sure. You guys are both pretty awesome."

Julie is still stunned as she stands. Luke wraps his arms around her from behind as Jennifer holds out her camera for a selfie. After she leaves, Julie turns around to face him.

"I really appreciate that," she says.

"You deserve it. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't even have a band. Well, not a band in this world."

Julie wraps her arms around him and gives him a big hug, burying her face into his chest. There are no words to describe how she feels right now. Grateful seems to barely scratch the surface.

The bell rings to dismiss school. Julie and Luke head out, hand in hand. At least they aren't swarmed anymore; most students care more about getting home than getting a picture or autograph with them.

Reggie and Alex meet them by the door. They're about to head out when Carrie and Kayla walk over. Julie pauses, unsure of what's going to happen, but Carrie simply manages a pained-looking smile.

"Hey, Julie," she says.

"Uh, hi, Carrie." Julie fishes for something else to say. "I really liked your dance in music class today."

She waves the compliment away. "That was mostly Alex. I just wanted to say thank you. For, uh - " She glances over at Kayla. " - for helping my dad. With you know."

Kayla is too busy drifting over towards Reggie to notice Carrie's cryptic remarks.

"Of course. I'm glad it worked out for everyone."

Carrie glances at Luke, who is standing silently next to Julie. "I know there's still some unfinished business between you all. I was talking to Alex during class, and I just wanted you to know that you're welcome to stop by the house anytime. My dad decided to take a hiatus from touring, so he'll be around. And of course, Willie is staying with us, and I know you probably want to hang out with him."

So this is what Nick was talking about. Julie had noticed it last night, but she thought that was a one-time fluke. But maybe Carrie really is turning over a new leaf - or, rather, an old leaf.

"Thank you, Carrie. We'll definitely be by. And not just for Willie."

Carrie purses her lips and nods. She motions over to Kayla and the two of them walk off. Julie watches them go.

"And here I thought you guys emerging from a video game was the miracle." Julie shakes her head.

"Uh, guys?"

They all turn to see Reggie staring in shock at the group phone. He turns it to show them a news article. "What is this?"

Julie leans in and squints. "What about it? It's a chart of the planets."

"But where's Pluto?" Reggie demands.

Julie's eyes widen. She glances over at Alex and Luke, who have their mouths shut tightly.

"They must have forgotten it," Reggie mumbles.

"I'm gonna tell him," Julie whispers.

"Don't you dare," Alex shoots back.

Julie reaches out and touches Reggie's arm. "I don't know an easy way to say this, but Pluto isn't a planet anymore."

"What do you mean, it's not a planet? Did something happen to it? Did it get hit by a meteorite and get knocked out of orbit or destroyed?"

She shakes her head. "No, they just decided it was too small to be a planet."

Reggie's mouth drops open. "They can't just - revoke planethood! Who's responsible for this? Alex? Luke? Did you know?"

Luke grimaces. "We learned about it two weeks ago."

"If it makes you feel better," Alex says, "Willie doesn't know yet either."

"Well don't tell him! I wish I didn't know!" Reggie shoves the phone into his pocket angrily. "Whose brilliant idea was it to get rid of the planet named after the god of death! I mean, honestly! Did they think it was going to end well?"

He continues to rant about it. Julie decides in that moment to never tell him about the crack in the moon. She's not sure he can survive that critical hit.

She takes one of Reggie's arms and one of Luke's. "Let's get to the bus before we get stranded here," she advises, pulling them out of the school. "We need to rehearse for Friday, and then maybe we can go over to the Wilson's and you can have a long overdue chat with Trevor."

"And see Willie?" Alex asks hopefully.

"And see Willie," Julie confirms. "But not until you've made peace with Trevor."