One! Night! Only!
By Argentum_LS
Halloween had always been a day for reversals. Julie loved the silly costumes, the limitless candy, and the parent-approved curfew breaking permitted for parties and school dances. She loved how the combination of masks and sugar created an energy at the gatherings that let everyone be bolder and riskier. And she loved seeing what people's freed imaginations produced for both treats and tricks.
The decorating committee had gone out this year: black lights and disco balls, orange and black streamers and balloons, copious fake cobwebs, and a fog machine rolling a fine mist across the floor. The veil of normalcy lifted as she stepped into the gymnasium and let the dim light and dark ambiance sweep over her. Even the gym's normal scent of sweat and disinfectant was obscured under a layer of pumpkin spice and apple cider. Julie inhaled deeply, the scent turning to a thrill of anticipation. Classmates Julie hadn't socialized with in years offered greetings as she moved deeper into the space, and she smiled and lifted a hand back in greeting. She spotted ex-couples sharing cups of punch and bowls of pretzels, notorious wall-flowers accepting offers to dance-
And Carrie bee-lining across the room with a glint in her eye.
Carrie was, in fact, dressed as a bee, with black felt antennae bobbling over her face and translucent wings illuminated with fairy lights on her back. She had on chunky black boots, black stockings, and a fitted yellow and black striped bodysuit that made her look less like a bee and more like a wasp. Julie groaned, her eye automatically searching for Flynn in hopes of rescue. Julie had never liked wasps, and the only bees she liked were the slow, loud bumble bees that drifted through the flowers in the Molina garden, too intent on gathering pollen to let the people who sometimes came out to enjoy the flowers' beauty too disturb them. Most of the school had turned out for this dance, though, and, while Flynn and Julie had arrived together, they'd gone separate ways upon entering.
"So—" Carrie had to shout over the thumping music—some EDM track that had more bass than musicality— "Can you believe the school is paying someone for this music? Half the kids here could do better." She waved a lazy hand around at the mass of dancing students, somehow managing to miss including Julie.
Julie narrowed her eyes, searching for the catch. It was set-up. It had to be a set-up. Though Carrie's opening comment hadn't been a put down—about Julie, anyway—she never approached Julie anymore to talk unless she intended to sting. Tonight held too much promise for that, and Julie wasn't about to let her good mood get crushed.
"Hi, Carrie," Julie answered. "Bye, Carrie." She turned away. Escaping Carrie's attention for now wouldn't be enough, though. There had to be something she could do, a trick she could play that would get Carrie to leave her alone. She scrambled through ideas: spilled punch to ruin the costume, a trip-and-fall in front of everyone, convincing the DJ to credit Carrie for her help with his musical selection. With a slight shake of her head that sent the large hoops dangling from her ears swinging, she dismissed them all. A good trick, a clever trick that she could brag about later, shouldn't be mean.
"What happened?" Carrie continued, not taking the hint. "I figured your band would be angling for all the dances. Did the school turn you down after you stood them up last time?"
Difficult though it was, Julie kept her mouth shut. It wasn't a sincere question, anyway. All Carrie wanted to do was rub it in Julie's face about how, at their first scheduled public appearance, her band mates had failed to appear. As hurt as Julie had been at the time, she was over it now. Taking her mom's advice, they'd used the pain. From it, they'd grown into an even better ensemble. Looking back, Julie recognized that failing that first test as a musical group is what had truly brought them together as a band.
The ebb and flow of dancers on the gym floor meant that Julie had no obvious paths to escape, and Carrie was too wily. She stepped closer, forcing Julie to bump into the person behind her. She apologized and dodged toward an empty space that vanished almost as soon as Julie spotted it. "Oh! I know," Carrie continued, as she herded Julie step by step backward through the gym, without care for whom she pushed Julie into or how fast people moved out of the way. "The school's not the one who turned you down; it was the guys, right?"
Julie hesitated, eyebrows going up at this new hypothesis. "The guys?" she asked, despite herself.
"Sure. I mean, it's obvious: they think school dances are beneath them. That's why they stood you up then and why you're not playing tonight."
The insult to her bandmates brought a flush of heat to Julie's face. It was true that after having a shot at the Orpheum, Luke found it difficult to start from the bottom again: to play the back alleys, street corners, and open-mic nights they'd been so eager to play in the beginning. But pride wasn't what had kept them away from the school dance. Not that Carrie would know that, nor could Julie explain.
Her back hit the rack of bleachers and she slapped her hands out to blunt the force, causing the bangles on her wrist to bite into her skin and her hat to tumble from her head. She'd dressed as a pirate for tonight, assembling each piece of the costume via a careful search of thrift stores for the most authentic looking items: a tri-cornered hat, leather boots, lacy shirt, black billowy pants, and an assortment of chunky bracelets and necklaces to tie it all together. She'd felt so strong when she first put the costume on, showing off the culmination of weeks' of work, her ability to pull disparate discarded items together into a convincing whole.
Now she only felt like a fraud. No matter what she wore, Carrie still knew how Julie had wept for weeks after Carlos was born because she didn't want to share her parents with anyone, and how Julie had been so nervous her first day of kindergarten that she'd thrown up on the teacher, and how she'd spent years lying about being allergic to Bussel sprouts because she didn't know what they were. "You've got them all wrong," she said, trying to defend the boys anyway. And to defend herself. The band was hers, and that meant anything that happened with it was her responsibility, even if it hadn't been her choice. "There was just some last minute things that came up—"
"Uh-huh. I'm sure that's what they told you." Carrie's smile wasn't nice, and despite herself, Julie felt a flash of doubt. "Because I can't help notice that no one has ever seen them around here. Not at a school dance, or a sporting event. Not even at school."
"Duh," Julie responded. This, she knew how to answer. It might be a technical lie, but it at least was one everyone involved had agreed to. "That's because they're holograms. Everyone knows that. Julie and the Phantoms."
Carrie's head tilted and her gaze sharpened as if she'd just been challenged to a contest she was destined to win. Her teeth and the glitter in her yellow eyeshadow glimmered under the scattered black light. "I've seen your projector," she countered. "That technology isn't close to good enough to do what you say it does. Those boys have to be real somewhere, so the question is: why hasn't anyone seen them around? Don't give me that crap about how they live in Sweden. You might've fooled everyone else with that, but I'm not like everyone else." She pushed her face into Julie's and dropped her volume to where Julie almost had to read her lips to understand her at all. "Could it be because they're ashamed to be seen with you."
Julie's anger rose, hot and sharp. The only reason Carrie would be asking these questions was because she thought she'd found a weakness in Julie to exploit. But Julie's relationship with the boys was not a weakness. She opened her mouth to say so—
"Why would we be ashamed to be seen with Julie?" Reggie asked. "Julie's the best!" He grinned at her, wide and sincere, pink high in his cheeks from the warmth of the gym. Fog swirled around his feet.
"What are you doing here?" Julie hissed. Luke and Alex, naturally, were also there. Luke stood with his arm propped on Reggie's shoulder, while Alex kept a few inches between him and them, like he was afraid of guilt by association. She hadn't seen them poof in, but they must have in order to have zeroed in on her so precisely. Reggie and Alex traded a familiar look: the one of each silently hoping the other could think fast.
"And what are you supposed to be?" Carrie snapped, before any of the boys had a chance to stumble over an excuse.
Julie's attention snapped back to Carrie, who had parked a hand on her hip and was now staring at Reggie expectantly.
She could see him. Carrie could see him! Julie gasped, and only refrained from commenting when she caught the slightest of head shakes from Alex. Somehow, the boys had known this would happen, and it had nothing to do with the drum machine thudding through the speakers mounted around the periphery of the gym. For the first time in twenty-five years, the boys existed outside of a performance.
Which hadn't stopped Reggie from engaging in a different one. He wore a familiar pink hoodie and black drawstring pants with the cuffs tucked into his socks, his hair hidden under a backwards black baseball cap, and a fanny pack slung across his body. He winked as he saw Julie come to the right conclusion about his fashion choice. "I'm Alex," he responded to Carrie. "I'm the drummer." As if to emphasize his role, he lofted a pair of drumsticks and twirled them. Or tried to. One stick dropped straight to the floor and rolled under the bleachers, while the other successfully went over one finger and under another before it caught a crack in the accordioned seats and flipped away.
"Hey!" Alex protested.
"Sorry." Reggie stooped to fish for the nearest stick, which destabilized Luke, who stumbled, then quickly caught himself again as Reggie regained full height. Neither Reggie nor Alex appeared to notice, which would have been weird by itself, and only made the fact that Carrie could see them exponentially weird. "Maybe I should try pacing instead. Should I try pacing?" Reggie asked Alex. "I think I should try pacing."
Alex closed his eyes briefly in a bid for patience, then stuck out a hand toward Carrie - a hand he'd only have offered if he believed she could accept it. "I'm Alex. He's actually Reggie, when he's not dressing up as me for Halloween." To Reggie he added, "Isn't it against the rules to appropriate identities for Halloween now?"
Reggie's grin widened. "Aw, you love it. I know you do. Besides, I don't think this counts."
Alex exhaled slowly, though the flush that brightened his face hinted that maybe Reggie was right, and turned his attention back to Carrie. "Julie mentioned there was a dance tonight, and we … were suddenly vis-available." Carrie still hadn't accepted his hand, so he pulled it back, and wiped it on his pants with a drawn out "O.K." that distracted from how close he'd come to saying the wrong word. He had on a different pair of black drawstring pants, Julie noted. And he wasn't wearing anything that was obviously Reggie's or Luke's, so whatever had compelled Reggie to dress up as Alex wasn't part of a group effort. "We didn't have a lot of time to put together costumes," he stated, half explanation, half apology. "Or money. We don't really have any money" With a shrug, he tugged open his jacket to reveal the simple white t-shirt underneath. Across the front, someone had used a Sharpie to write: This IS My Costume. The IS was underlined with a swirl that looked like it was lifted from their Sunset Curve logo.
"These are the Phantoms?" Carrie sneered. "I knew they weren't from Sweden!" A certain amount of mystique came from staying at a distance, and the boys had just blown that, much to Carrie's obvious surprise.
But how had the boys blown that?
And why hadn't Luke said anything yet? Though he'd expressed plenty of opinions through a series of exaggerated faces, the most inexplicable part of the whole evening was his continued silence.
"What are you supposed to be?" Carrie turned at last to him. He'd given up trying to hang off Reggie and was now leaning like James Dean close to, but not quite touching, the bleacher, arms crossed and muscles flexed. "Some kind of mime?"
Reggie tipped his head in confusion, then looked at Alex, whose brow had furrowed into deep creases. But neither of them were able to keep their eyes from crinkling with suppressed humor. Julie knew those expressions. The boys were up to … something, and Julie had a sneaking suspicion she knew what it was. Her heart pounded in anticipation, because if what she thought had happened had happened, then this would be the best treat of all.
Meanwhile, Luke's mouth dropped open in mock shock. While he had a lot of talents, subtlety was not one of them and Julie had to bite back a laugh as she predicted what he was going to say. "You … you can see me?" he asked. His voice trembled and his eyes widened comically. Surprisingly, Luke was dressed like Luke: skinny jeans, a t-shirt for some group called Smashing Pumpkins with the sleeves torn out, his orange beanie. His face was paler, though, like he'd smeared Carrie's makeup on it, and his eyes were outlined in heavy black liner, making them look sunken.
"You're standing right in front of me," Carrie answered. She glanced at Julie for confirmation; Julie squinted in a silent question, like she didn't understand what Carrie wanted from her.
Because Julie knew her truths too. The touch of seaweed on Carrie's legs repulsed her, so she pretended to prefer sunbathing to swimming in the ocean, even though she had to wear the highest SPF lotion to keep from burning. She loved to read, and especially loved spy thrillers, but kept all her books hidden in a trunk under her bed. And she had worked her whole life to set her music apart from her father's, yet she lived every second of that afraid that no one would ever see her except through his accomplishments. Julie knew all this, so she also recognized the tinge of doubt in Carrie's voice, as if she couldn't be absolutely certain she could trust her own eyes.
"Who are you talking to?" Reggie cut a glance at Luke and mostly succeeded in looking past him. "I already told you, I'm Alex—"
"I'm not talking to you," Carrie snapped.
Chastised, Reggie retreated a step. For the first time, Luke stood without a convenient arm rest.
"Look, we just wanted to enjoy ourselves," Alex supplied. "And, you know, maybe meet some of Julie's friends too, since she talks about them so much. You're Carrie, right?"
For a second, Carrie looked caught between flattery that Alex knew her name and disgust that he deigned to speak to her when she had rejected him. Then she realized that he'd identified her as one of Julie's friends by implication. Her nose for opportunism twitched and she treated Alex to a broad smile. "Alex, did you say?"
Julie had managed to keep quiet while she sussed out what the boys were doing. Now that Carrie had given her an opening, she decided to step in. "So, this is my drummer and my bass guitarist," she said, pointing at Alex — the real Alex — and Reggie in turn. She couldn't keep her pride out of her voice, and she didn't try. She loved her boys, and Carrie needed to understand that. Then she scowled and peered around and past both of them. "Where's Luke? Didn't you invite him too?"
Luke bounced on the balls of his feet in excitement and started waving a hand in Julie's face. "Here, here! I'm here!" It took all her willpower to ignore him. In exasperation, he turned to Carrie. "Tell her I'm here."
"Oh, well." Julie let out an exaggerated sigh. "I guess you'll have to meet him some other time. Maybe next year, if they're able to manifest in Los Angeles again. They only get to be here in person, like, once in a blue moon." She bit her lip to keep from giggling at her own puns while Alex had to fake a cough to hide his reaction. "Alex, Reggie, would either of you like to dance?" The music was still bass-heavy and loud and kind of terrible, but the kind of dancing high schoolers did at school dances didn't require much else. At last, she'd discovered a way to keep Carrie's attention off her. With Luke continuing to distract Carrie with more frequent entreaties about whether and how she could see him, Julie slipped her arms into the crooks of her other two boys and let them lead her to the dance floor.
From behind her, she heard Luke shout, "Boo!" and Carrie let out a short scream.
This, Julie thought, was exactly why she loved Halloween. For all the reasons she'd had before, and now for the satisfaction of helping to play the best trick on Carrie, and for receiving the best treat of all from her boys.