Chapter 3: Bright Smiles and Strong People

I'm sorry the chapter title is so bad

Reggie's POV

"Well what if I went with you?" I ask Luke.

"Really?" He asks. "You'd go with me?"

"Of course." I say. "Let's go, shall we?" I ask, standing up holding out my hand for him to take. He smiles ant takes my hand and I help him up. We poof to his old house to talk to his parents. Boy are they gonna be surprised to see us, we're supposed to be dead.

"You ready?" I ask. "Because we don't have to do this if you're not ready."  I didn't want to push Luke to do anything he wasn't comfortable with yet.

"No, I'm ready." Luke says. "Thanks again for doing this with me."

"Yeah, no problem." I say. I knew he'd do anything for me, so of course I'd do this for him.

Luke takes a deep breath and knocks on the front door. We hear shuffling on the other side of the door and Luke shakes his hands and bounces on his toes. I take his hand he calms down.

There's a click sound and the door swing opens. Mr. Patterson is at the door and he goes pale at the sight of us.

"Uh...I'm sorry it's just you look just like-"

"Dad." Luke cries, throwing his arms around him.

"Luke?" Mr. Patterson says. "But you're-"

"Dead?" Luke says. "Yeah, I know."

"Mitch, who's at the door?" Mrs. Patterson's voice calls from inside.

"Um, here you boys come in." Mr. Patterson says. "I can't believe you're really here."

He leads us inside and Mrs. Patterson gasps when she sees us, but probably more at Luke considering we've only met a few times.

"Baby?" She says in almost a whisper. "Is that really you."

"It's me mom." Luke says, face full of tears, but a smile on his face. I've only seen happy tears once before and it was when Alex laughed so hard at me for dropping me hotdog off the ferris wheel he started crying. I didn't think it was very funny, I lost a hotdog and went hungry that day. But I did think it was funny when Alex dropped his from laughing so hard. Karma my friends, what else can I say.

"Oh Luke, I always knew you'd come back to us." Mrs. Patterson cried.

"I'm so sorry I left."

"I know." Mrs. Patterson says. "A nice girl named Julie came by and gave us that song you wrote. I'm so sorry I didn't have faith in you're music career."

"I know, I was there when she gave it to you." Luke says. "It's kinda a long story. To sum it up, a while ago Julie played our CD and brought us back as ghosts. Only she could see us, but everyone could hear us play. Then, when we played with her we became visable to everyone. Now somehow we're visable to everyone."

"Well I'm glad because I missed my sweet boy."

Mrs. Patterson looked over at me just akwardly standing in the corner, trying not to ruin the nice moment.

"You're Reggie right?" She asks.

"Yeah." I nod.

"Thanks for bringing Luke back to us." She says.

"What? Oh me, no I'm just kinda here I-"

"You know, back when you guys were.... alive....Luke always talked about you."

I feel myself start to blush a little.

"Mom!" Luke says, face going pink himself.

"Oh but it's true." Mrs. Patterson says. "You'd go on and on about how funny and kind he was and how-"

"Mom!" Luke says again. "I was just trying to get you to meet him, like actually meet meet him."

"Well now here we are, it's nice to officially meet you Reggie." Mrs. Patterson says.

"Nice to meet you too Mrs. Patterson." I say, using my most respectful voice I could.

"Oh please, you're part of the family now. Call me Emily." She smiles.

She walks over and gives me a tight hug. "Thanks again."

"Yeah...yeah sure." I say. I've never been hugged so tight in my life. It felt so nice to be hugged like that. It almost in way filled the hole that was left by my parents' neglect. "I'll let you three be alone."

"Nonesense." Mitch says. "Stay, we'd love to properly get to know you."

Luke's parents never got to know me because I was never allowed to go to people's houses all to often. The first time we meet was when Mrs. Patterson- er, Emily, (that feels so weird calling an adult by first name, I feel like I should be getting slapped right now) was dropping Luke off at the studio, back when the band was just a hobby. We said hi and that was all.

So we all sat in their living room and Mrs. Patterson...(Emily? No, it feels too weird) offered us something to eat. We explained that ghosts couldn't really eat.

We talked for a while, and after a bit I started to warm up to his parents. (Not enough to call them by their first names though)

"Well we better get back to the studio, Julie and Alex are probably wondering where we are." Luke says. "But I'll come visit everyday." Luke promises his parents.

We say our last goodbyes and we poof outside the studio.

"Thanks for doing that with me." Luke says. "I don't think I would be able to do that by myself."

"Yeah, of course." I say. "Your parents are great."

We stand there in akward silence for a while and my brain quickly searches for something to say.

"So...you talked about me alot?" I ask.

"Yeah....yeah I guess I did." Luke says. "I mean how could I not...you're amazing."

"Oh...um thanks." I say. "You're pretty great too."

"Hey, are you two coming in for rehearsal or what?" Julie asks. I feel my cheeks go pink.

"Um yeah, sorry." I say. Luke follows me into the studio and we begin practicing our new song. For this song I was on keyboard, Luke was in his acustic, Alex was on a lighter drum set, and Julie was singing.

As we were reheresing, I couldn't help but steal glances at Luke as he sang and played. He was just so perfect, and so passionate about music. I loved watching him play. It was like watching a wizard cast a spell.

Luke looked over at me and smiles, and I feel myself smile back. I loved it when Luke smiled at me like that, it made me feel like nothing else mattered. Whenever I broke down he was there to pick me back up. I wish I was as strong as he was.

Luke's POV

As we were reheresing our new song, I couldn't help but look over at Reggie playing the keyboard. He was really amazing, and whenever I saw him get lost in the music, I couldn't help but smile at him.

I hadn't even realized he was looking at me until he smiles back, which made me smile more. His smile was the cutest, brightest smile I've seen, and with everything he's gone through it's amazing how he can just keep smiling. I wish I was as strong as he was.