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Julie stepped into the garage – the studio – and beamed when she saw her boys there.Luke was perched on the couch, his notebook already in hand, a guitar pick and a pencil balanced in his mouth. He was watching a lounging Reggie, already with his bass slung across his chest, plucking a tune without even having bothered to plug it into the amp. This was probably a good thing, given that it was the morning. Alex sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his legs, peering up at Luke. They all turned when she entered, grins stretching across their faces.They’d almost died last night. Or faded. Or… or whatever it was. Erased. Wiped from existence if she was being kind, destroyed if she wasn’t.But somehow, they’d been saved, and she’d been able to touch them. Julie had gone to sleep that night with the memory of Luke under her hands, caressing his cheek with her fingers and her thumb. Before, when he was air, it wasn’t difficult to remember that there was quite literally nothing to touch. But now…Luke scrambled up off the couch, throwing his notebook to the side at Alex.“Hey!”Luke was grinning, and he leapt forward with his arms wide. She mirrored him, beaming. “Julie–!”And he passed right through her as if he were nothing more than smoke. Luke crashed through her, stumbling forward and barely catching himself behind her. Julie froze, her arms still outstretched, her eyes wide with shock. Both Alex and Reggie sat up.“Oh,” she muttered. “Okay.” She dropped her arms and turned.“What!?” Luke exclaimed, turning around to face them. He looked down at his hands in disbelief, brows furrowed in something close to confusion and anger. Alex and Reggie both gaped and scrambled themselves to get up off the floor. Luke looked distraught as he stared at her, his eyes shining. A small gasp left his mouth, tugging on her heart.It was Reggie who reached Julie first. Tentatively, she held out her hand. He reached.It passed through.“I guess it was temporary,” she said, the high from the night before finally wearing off. She’d touched Luke – she’d hugged them all – just last night. Was that it? The universe gave her one touch. How was she supposed to go back to living without it now? She’d had her taste. Luke had been real, right under her fingertips. She’d felt him. She wasn’t sure she could ever go back to having him – having them all – be just air to her. Julie wasn’t sure how she was expected to live with that memory alone now? Bitterly, she thinks that maybe it’s a punishment. A brief glimpse into something she could have had.Julie turned her gaze back up to Reggie, whose face had fallen. “I’m sorry.”“It’s not your fault, Julie,” Alex muttered, swiping his hand through her arm uncharacteristically. They all normally avoided passing through each other. “But it is another freaking change.”“Bro, seriously? We got to hug Julie, and now we can’t even do that anymore,” Luke said, face and voice sour as he stalked past her and threw himself down on the couch, arms crossed. “How’s that fair?”“Well, given that we weren’t even supposed to be able to touch the Lifer,” Alex said, shoving his hands into his pockets and flaring out his jeans jacket, “I think I can question juuuuust a little how we suddenly could and now can’t touch her.” He winced. “Sorry, Julie.”“I know what you mean,” she said, looking between all of them. “Back to the status quo, I guess. Probably good I didn’t text Flynn an update last night. Now I’d have to explain that it’s not the case anymore.”“Luke’s right,” Reggie sighed, “this isn’t fair.”“It isn’t,” Julie agreed. “I’m sorry guys. I… I really liked hugging you last night.” She tried to not let her eyes linger on Luke, who was still pouting on the couch. His face under her hands… she knew what home felt like now. But it was, quite literally, out of her reach. Passing through the boys was strange. She knew they were there, but even then it was like… nothing was there at all. “I guess I’ll just have to get used to the idea that I’ll pass through you again instead.” She bit her lip. “Did you guys rest at all?”“Don’t need to sleep,” Luke mumbled, glaring at the drum kit.“I looked for Willie this morning but,” Alex shrugged, “I think it’ll take some time. Probably.”“We’ve got plenty of it, we are dead.”“Thanks, Reg.”“You’re welcome. Hey, Julie, what does it feel like?”Julie frowned, settling herself down on the couch next to Luke. He shuffled away, shrinking in and hugging his arms across his chest tighter. Julie tried not to feel hurt by it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted the reminder that they’d pass through each other either. “What do you mean?”“When you go through us?” Reggie asked, his voice transformed and his eyes wide eyed with wonder. “Is it like water? Or cold?”Both Luke and Alex turned to her, curious. She sat there for a moment, trying to articulate it. Biting her lip, Julie shook her head. She’d felt something before, with Luke, she was sure if it. But neither of the other boys. She couldn’t describe it, the sensation she’d felt with him, what it was like to pass through him. It was as if their souls were waving hello. The others…“It just feels like nothing.”Reggie’s smile dropped. “What do you mean?”“Yeah, I’m not following,” Alex said, gesturing with his jacket. “Is it like, you feel empty space or a vacuum where we are–.”“No,” she said, cutting him off and shaking her head. Her curls bounced around her shoulders. “No, there’s just nothing. Like there’s nothing there at all. Just like–.” She waved her hand around her head. “Like that.”Luke shoved himself up off the couch in an instant. “I’m heading out.” And before the rest of them could speak, he’d poofed away.Julie looked at the others helplessly. “Sorry,” she muttered again.“It’s not your fault, Julie,” Alex repeated. His eyes lingered where Luke had disappeared. “Don’t… don’t worry about it.”“Yeah! It’ll be okay! We’re ghosts, nothing we can’t get used to!” Reggie exclaimed, smile brightening. But then his shoulders slumped. “Although I was really hoping to touch your dad.”“Okay!” Alex said loudly, shaking his head. “Do not ever phrase it like that when you’re talking about Julie’s dad.”“Please don’t,” she agreed with a nod.Reggie flashed her a thumbs up and then leaned away from her, toward the garage door. He jerked his thumb toward the house. “Speaking of your dad, I’m gonna go watch him make lunch. Wanna come?”Julie hesitated. “Thanks, Reggie, but I don’t usually do that with my dad so… I’ll let you have your time.”“Thanks!” And then he poofed out. Julie sat in her bed all day. She wrapped herself in her blankets around two in the afternoon and watched Reels and TikTok and wished she were on a boat in Italy or hiking up the Appalachian Trail or being literally anywhere that wasn’t Los Angeles and Los Feliz. Fine, that was fine. Everything was fine.She hated that she’d been able to touch them and – oh, who was she kidding – she hated that she’d gotten a taste of Luke being tangible and that it’d been ripped away from her by him quite literally falling through her. And she’d gotten it. That feeling again. The waving hello. A wholly wrapped up feeling of… it wasn’t warmth but something else. She couldn’t articulate it.By the evening, and she’d already turned her dad down for dinner, she’d wasted away her Saturday. Her texts to Flynn went unenthusiastically answered, and a bit uninspired. Julie had been running off a high until that very morning and now the post-Orpheum buzz was lying dead in a ditch.Or dead next to the very reason of her suffering, in a grave she hadn’t dared to think of.Next to a body she thought too often of.A silent poof outside and a knock on her door.“Come in,” she croaked.She didn’t turn in bed. It had become dark out and the only lighting in her room were the fairy lights over her bed. She wouldn’t have been able to see much of the faintly ghostly outline either way. But she suspected that her visitor was the very person on her mind.“Hey,” Luke whispered. “How are you?”Julie rolled over in bed, sitting up and blinking blearily at Luke standing by her door. He was in the same clothes as earlier, though he’d changed his shirt. His dark jeans kept him a blurred smudge in the shadows – that might also be the tears in her eyes – and the chains and pieces hanging off his belt glinted in the fairy lights.“Hey,” she whispered back. “I’m… fine. You? Where’d you go?”He hadn’t made a move toward her. He shuffled in his spot. He held something in his hand, blocked from her view, and he shoved his hands back behind him. His brows were furrowed up in concern, his eyes sparkling. “Just around. I…” Luke reached up and rubbed his neck nervously. “I just wanted to check in on you and see how you. were. holding up?”“Fine,” she muttered. “Just watched reels all day.”“I won’t pretend to know what that it,” he said.She let out a breathy laugh and then, in a moment of being bold in a way she normally wasn’t, she reached over and patted her bed. Like him holding his hand out to her weeks ago, only for them to both realize how futile an act that was.He edged himself forward until his knees bumped her bedspread. Slowly, in her own futile act, she reached her hand up and held it out. He looked at it as if it were physically paining him.“Jules,” he whispered, hanging his head. “It won’t–.”“Just try it,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to be able to hug you. But I did that too.”“I remember,” he muttered. He reached forward, and his hand passed through hers.Both of them let out shaky breaths filled with millions of emotions. Sorrow. Regret. Disappointment. Still, she held her hand out, and he lifted his back through hers and she guided him to sit on the bed. He kicked off his shoes and then scooted so that his back sat flush against her headboard. He brought his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. His hand still clutched the dark thing.For a moment, they sat in silence. She’d shoved her phone away an hour ago to cry and the tears that her pricked her eyes had returned at the sight of him. They were quiet. She wasn’t sure he’d even noticed.“I was at my parents,” he confessed, “to… to get something. For you.”She sat back, her eyes flickering down to his hand, and then she turned her gaze up to his face. He looked distraught and upset, his brow furrowed so deeply that his eyes were dark and cast in shadow.“I wanted you to rem– to see– I–.” He huffed, rubbing the back of his neck with her free hand. “Here,” he mumbled. He shoved the thing at her, his arm outstretched, nearly hitting her in the chest.She reached up and grabbed the surprise. For a moment, they were both holding it. She felt the pressure from his hand on the dark square. He’d handed it to her face down. Neither of them moved, their eyes locked. He tugged, just slightly, and she knew he wasn’t trying to take it back. It was a reminder that he was real, physical. She tugged it back. She could feel it. Just enough. She could feel him.He let go.She flipped the image. A polaroid.“Oh,” she breathed. “Wow.”It was Luke. It was a picture of him taken a year before he’d died, his guitar in hand, and a pick in his mouth. He was grinning, looking incredibly pleased with himself, his chin pointed up at the camera. In big block letters on the white, someone had written: LUKE ‘94She giggled. “You’re wearing shorts.”“Yeah, well…” he grumbled, but a slow smile was spreading across his face.“I didn’t know you owned any,” she said, looking at the picture up and down. She’d seen the picture of two-year-old Luke in his parent’s house. That had been him in a way her own childhood baby pictures were pictures of herself. This was Luke as she recognized him, a teenager. But different; a boy in the mid-nineties, playing music with his friends, alive. Alive. Her hands grazed over his face, tears pricking at her eyes.“It’s California, Jules, of course I did,” he said, leaning toward her to bump their shoulders. He passed through her again and a sinking feeling dropped in her stomach. Luke sighed, leaning away. “I wanted you to see what I was like before. I just. Last night could’ve been the end, Jules, and we’re over Caleb’s stupid stamps but we could crossover at any moment. And I just wanted you to have a picture of me that wasn’t me performing, to remember me.”His voice had grown quiet. Softly he said, “Just one of me. Being here.”“You’re blushing,” she blurted out.His hand immediately reached for his face, and his voice was louder when he said, “What?”She nearly laughed, but the realization in her discovery made her also want to cry. “You’re blushing. In the picture. You… you guys don’t do that, you know. Blush. Or sweat, or–.”“Breath,” he said quietly. “I know. I’m dead, Julie.”And then she burst into tears.Luke rushed to her side, but he realized quickly he wouldn’t be able to offer her any support, and his hands hovered over her shoulders. They sat awkwardly, leaning into each other without really touching, Luke lifting his arms and holding them so that they wouldn’t pass through her.She tried to reign in her sobbing, sucking in deep heaving breaths to try and steady her own beating heart and racing chest. After a few moments, she shoved the tears away with the palms of her hands. “Sorry,” she hiccupped.“It’s fine,” he whispered.“It’s just… you lived,” she said, “you really lived and I–.”“Julie, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have–.”She shook her head, her curls passing through his forearm. He was staring at her intently, but Julie couldn’t look up from the spot she’d chosen to stare into on her duvet cover. “You guys were really people, just like me. You were alive. You’re–.” She touched his face in the picture again, her fingers dancing across the film. It was faded, yellowed with time. It was older than her. “You were alive. You had a whole life and parents and friends and things you wanted to do and– and–.” She cut herself off, squeezing her eyes shut. “And now you can’t even blush.”Luke didn’t say anything for a moment. “I wish I could. I wish I could do all those things, and all the other things.”She frowned. “Like what?”“Like hold your hand,” he whispered, “or take you out for dinner. Or go to the mall, although I know you said no one does that anymore–.”A bitter laugh left her mouth.“–or go to the beach together. I’d wanna go to the movies with you, Julie. And eat popcorn for however much it costs now, and then go for a long drive. And I’d wanna blush, when you do something so amazing you make me feel like I’m alive all over again.”“But we would never have met Luke. You were born in 1978 and I was born in 2005 and if you hadn’t died you would’ve been legends like you deserved and you would’ve lived your life and I would’ve grown up hearing the music you wrote.”Luke hung his head. “I know. I know, I think about that all the time. I try and think how we could’ve met–.”“I would’ve been a big fan and I would’ve looked you up and seen pictures from your early days and thought that the guitarist used to be so cute,” Julie said, smiling bitterly.“And that’s it,” Luke said. His eyebrow quirked up at her comment, but he didn’t say anything.“And that’s it,” she agreed.“But that isn’t what happened.”“It isn’t.”Neither of them spoke. How could the universe give them each other but then not commit to it at all? Luke had been born decades before her and everything about him seemed to tell Julie to follow him. But a headstone sat between them, a wall of immovable stone; death. He’d died, just to meet her. How was that fair, she wondered? Not only to her, but to him. Had the universe decided his life wasn’t worth being lived?He was buried six feet underground and he sat across from her on her bed. Julie wished she could’ve met him. She wished she had known him. And despite the very glaring fact of his death… she liked him. They circled each other. His enthusiasm was infectious. His belief in the universe working everything out – the very same universe that deemed him okay to kill – made her want to tug up her boots and get on with things with him by her side. His smile made her feel warm and sunny. She wished she’d known what he was like when he was more than a memory.He was a ghost that lived in her studio, who could go anywhere he wanted. She wanted to know what Luke alive had been like, in his classes or working a job or driving a car or…Or living…“I’d like those things too,” she said, reaching forward and taking his hand in hers. And she did. She can feel him, the cool but inhuman presence of a ghost, right there under her fingers. They both sat up, rigged, staring at their touching hands in shock.“Julie?”“Yeah?”“I know I don’t dream anymore, but is this a dream?”“No,” she whispered, “I don’t think it is.” She intertwined their fingers, staring in wonder as how perfectly they fit, and then bolding takes his whole arm and tucking his hand with hers into her chest.“You’re so warm,” he whispered to her, scooting close. She shoved the blankets down with her legs so that he was sitting on the mattress and not the duvet cover, and she brought the cover up over his knees.“Julie,” he said, nervousness tinging his voice.“Get closer,” she demanded.He did.They get so close that he took his arm away from hers and looped it back over her shoulders, tucking her into his chest. How could this feel so right, when he had to die to meet her?She turned to face him, and his grin is blindingly sunny and warm, and she found herself mirroring it back to him. Their eyes locked. He might just be worth any heartbreak.“You make me feel alive,” he whispered at her, looking at her in awe. “Like right now. I feel like… like looking at you just stops my heart, even though it hasn’t beat once since I’ve met you. Longer. Like you’ve caught my breath. Like I’m in a state of being so overwhelmed by you, I don’t notice anything around me.”“I lied earlier,” she said back, raising her hand and touching his cheek. She didn’t phase through. Her fingers ghost over his skin and his eyes flutter. It made her heart pound in her chest.“Wow,” he whispered.She pressed her hand to his cheek, thumb running below his eye. “You aren’t nothing. I lied. Alex and Reggie, I really don’t feel anything. But when it’s you… I don’t even know how to describe it.”He frowned and pressed his cheek into her hand. “Mmm, don’t have to worry about it now.”She laughed. “No, but I want you to know that you aren’t nothing. Now and–.” She held up the picture of him. “–and then too. You’re real.”He opened his eyes, his eyes deep and dark and impossible to attach a color to. They shone, just a little wet with tears. “Thank you.”“When you pass through me,” she said, holding his gaze. “It’s like I’m complete. Like my soul and you are waving at each other. Like we’re–.”“The same?”“Yeah,” she said quietly.Luke looked away, and then leaned his head on hers. She turned and tucked in closer. He wasn’t warm to her, not at all. But the feel of him was comforting.“Hey, Julie?”“Yeah?”“Do you believe in soulmates?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper.She sucked in a breath. How did she feel about soulmates? If there was anyone that was her soulmate, she could quite literally believe it was Luke Patterson. But then her mind always returned to how unfair it was, that he was dead. Her soulmate had died before she’d ever even met him. Her soulmate was, most of the time, intangible to her. Her soulmate had his life ripped away from him so that he could meet her.She felt herself start to cry. She tightened her grip on his hand. “Yes.”He nodded, his head still resting on hers. “Then I’m sorry.”She jerked back. “Why are you sorry?”He’d turned, surprised. But then his brow furrowed up, and he tilted his head. His dark eyes roamed over her face, and he reached forward and tucked a curl back behind her ear. “Because passing through you makes me feel the same. And because I can’t give you anything, Julie. All those things I want to do–.” He laughed, a bitter edge to his voice. “I can’t give you any of those things. I’m sorry because I think we’re soulmates, and I can’t give you a life.”He shook his head and pulled himself away, and even though he was no longer warm, she felt him missing his presence. She reached out. “Wait, no, Luke–.”“You deserve so much better than a body underground,” he said, lifting himself off her bed, his voice breaking.“Luke, I don’t care.” Her own voice cracked with emotion, and she could feel the tears that had been on and off all night returning.“You should. I’m sure you’ve heard it from Flynn–.”How right he was. But dead eyes didn’t shine with so much life. He’s air. Not all the time, her voice argued back. They’d just held each other. He hadn’t felt dead then.“–and probably yourself. I’m not–,” he ran his hands through his hair and laughed humorlessly, in disbelief. “–I’m not getting any less dead, Julie. You’ll age and grow up eventually, out of… out of us, out of me, out of this.” He gestured between the two of them. “You’ll get older. And I’ll be seventeen. Still.”They stared at each other.“We should stop,” he whispered, shoulders dropping.“We’re gonna break each other’s hearts,” she agreed. Had the universe killed him just so they could meet? Probably. How could she let him die in vain? How could the universe?“We are.”They stare.Julie knew she could let it go. She should agree. But the universe, however unfair it was in killing him, in letting them meet despite everything, it had let them meet, and fall in… whatever you wanted to call them… it had brought them together. Maybe they were soulmates. Should they just throw it away? The small, practical part of her voice whispered yes. But something larger, something bigger and thrumming with life, the thing she felt when they passed through each other… that told her no, they shouldn’t throw it away.“No,” she said.Luke shut his eyes. “Julie, please–.”“I’m not having you watch me live my life from the sidelines,” she said, shaking her head. “Because you wouldn’t leave. None of you would. If I grow up… I can’t move on from you guys, not if you’d be there anyway, but even if I somehow, impossibly, managed to do that… what, you’re just going to watch? And put yourself through that?”“Dying does that to people,” he grumbled. He moved closer to her bed, but hadn’t made the move to touch it again. He crossed his arms over his chest, hanging his head. He reached forward, unfolding his arms, and leaned until his hand ghosted over her cheek, fingertips passing through. He sighed and pulled back before she could raise her hand to meet his. “You watch. You’re not supposed to do anything more than that.”“Well you’re not going to do that with me,” she said. “You’re not. I say so. We met somehow anyway. The universe had you wait. I want to think that it did that for a reason, as stupid as it is. I don’t think it did that to just… make you watch me live without you. I think we’re going to live it together. In whatever weird way it managed to concoct up for us to do it.”He didn’t move from where he stood, his face expressionless. “I died to meet you then.”“Yeah, maybe– I don’t– I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I’m not saying that, because that’s– I should apologize to you probably for that. But. But yes. I think we at least met for a reason. It just had to go about a really stupid way to get us in the same–.” She waved her hand around her head.He stared.She picked up the picture of him again, hands ghosting over the image, and smiled at it. It was Luke, alive. And god, she wished she’d known him then. But she’s so glad she knows him now. “If you crossover tomorrow, I have this.” She waved it at him. “And I’ll tell everyone that I already met my soulmate. And until you crossover, until you figure it out, then I’ll have you.”“Julie,” he whispered. “You know I’ll fight like hell to stay with you here as long as I can.”She held her hand out to him again. He looked down at it.His gaze lifted to hers.“I know,” she whispered back. “Which is why you’re not watching from the sidelines. You’re not nothing. You’re my soulmate, Luke, and you know it.”“Our interesting little relationship,” he muttered, a smile flickering across his face. “And if we break each other’s hearts? If I crossover?” He didn’t have to ask what might happen if Julie got older. She knew she might have to try and find someone else, but she also knew she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do that. He’d be by her side regardless, and she wouldn’t make him watch that. Forever feels possible at seventeen, so even so she felt that she’d love Luke forever. Besides, happiness didn’t always lie with a partner.She bit her lip, a little less confident, but meaning the next words more than anything. “Sometimes, the love of our lives die before we do.”He stared, eyes shining. “Right. Okay, that’s– um–.” He laughed. “Yeah, they do, don’t they.”Her dad would know.Luke smiled at her, watery but unwavering. She waved her hand at him, still holding it out. He reached forward. They meet.His hand felt warm. Julie smiled up at him and pulled him in close.