Chapter Text
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020
11:04 AM
The sounds of pages turning, music blaring too loudly through earbuds, and not-so-quiet humming does very little to help Julie focus on the small paperback book in her hands. Her eyes glaze over the book’s first page, hardly taking in the words she’s ostensibly reading.
IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered the rightful property of one or other of their daughters.
Julie has a problem.
Technically, Julie has a handful of problems.
Problem #1: Nick is in her English class.
It wasn’t so bad on Wednesday when they were finally wrapping up their unit revolving around epic poetry and Ancient Greek heroism. They finished The Odyssey a few weeks ago, analyzed some excerpts from The Penelopiad, which was a re-telling of some of the events from Odysseus’ wife Penelope’s perspective, and ended the unit with an essay, a test, and watched Disney’s Hercules in class. It was an enjoyable unit that reminded Julie of reading the Percy Jackson books in middle school, but it got a little stale by the end. The English and History classes tend to try to roughly line up their units; History started the year talking about the beginnings of democracy in Greece and Rome, hence a focus on Ancient Greek literature in English class.
The history classes are moving on to some French and English history. English has followed promptly, and now a mass-market copy of a Jane Austen book rests in Julie’s hands.
But, as today has soundly proven, finishing their unit on epic poetry isn’t as great as it could be.
Problem #1.5 (it’s only a problem because Nick is in her English class): They started reading Pride and Prejudice today.
It will be a unit analyzing what author Jane Austen calls ‘the marriage state,’ focusing on the institution of marriage as a social construct and how women in this era of history had to leverage their marriage to ensure a comfortable living. It’s a very interesting topic, to be sure. Still, all Julie can think about is the fact that for all of Pride and Prejudice’s reputation as a comedy of manners, a critique of the marriage state, and so many other things, it is primarily a romance novel.
Some of Julie’s classmates keep giggling at each other in hushed breaths about Matthew Macfadyen and Collin Firth, but the running through her head is the sight of Nick turning around and looking at her throughout Mrs. Zhu’s pre-emptive lecture on the themes of the novel. Mrs. Zhu even promises that they’ll watch a few adaptations of the story once they finish reading as a class, and while that’s exciting, it doesn’t distract Julie from the weight of Nick’s impractical stare.
Nick and Julie sit on opposite sides of the classroom; he is in the front left corner with one of his lacrosse buddies, and Julie is in the back right corner with a member of the theater department who has been blessedly normal around her.
Dude… she sits behind him. At least don’t be so blatantly obvious about it.
She knows the academic English classes (as opposed to the Honors class that Julie’s in) are reading Frankenstein instead—right on time for Halloween. Even though Julie knows she loves Pride and Prejudice, she’d rather read Frankenstein if it means that Nick stops turning around and staring at her.
He’s not the only one—she’ll concede on that point. Lots of people take a few more seconds to stare than they used to. It makes it all the more annoying; all she can ever focus on is the weight of Nick’s stare. Maybe it has nothing to do with the book at all. But considering he wasn’t doing this before…
Julie re-reads the first sentence again. She’s unfocused today.
She’s seen the 2005 movie—it’s one of her Tía Victoria’s favorites. Julie knows she likes this story, leading to her second (third?) problem.
Problem #2: Julie can’t read this book and not think of Luke.
It’s ridiculous. Luke is nowhere close to being a real-life Mr. Darcy. The whole point with Mr. Darcy is that he makes a bad first impression because he’s all hoity-toity, and Elizabeth Bennet misreads him for half of the story while he spends the whole thing ardently in love with her. Luke didn’t make a bad first impression, per se. If anyone did, Julie made a bad first impression with all the yelling and attempted eviction.
She doubts he’s been in love with her during the time they’ve known each other. But as Flynn had so handily pointed out, Julie got a crush after their haze of a single songwriting weekend.
Oh no.
Is Julie Mr. Darcy? If Luke is Elizabeth, Alex could totally be Jane (after all, his suitor ran off like Mr. Bingley), and maybe Reggie could be Charlotte… But only if she didn’t marry Mr. Collins…
Julie forces herself to focus, eyes skimming the rest of the first page.
“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
No, no. Neither of them are Mr. Darcy or Elizabeth Bennet—they’re Julie Molina and Luke Patterson. Nothing more, nothing less.
After thirty minutes of silent reading, Julie barely finds herself in the middle of chapter two (and it’s not like Pride and Prejudice has long chapters). Luckily, their homework for the weekend is reading and annotating up to the fourth chapter anyway.
The rest of the day moves like a blur. She goes to dance class distracted and stumbles her way through math, processing nothing about circles and pi but accepting the homework packet at the end of the day regardless. Julie finds the history wing abandoned and texts the boys to pick her up. Flynn is going home normally today, so Julie latches onto Reggie’s arm all by herself.
When they appear in the garage, the other boys aren’t home. Reggie tells Julie they went to buy snacks at the closest available store.
“It’s Friday!” Reggie cheers. “How are you going to celebrate the end of the week?”
Well, last week, they celebrated by scheming their way into a show at the Orpheum. This week…
“Let me finish some homework first,” Julie wrinkles her nose. “I need to finish some packets for history and chem. Those will be the most annoying, so I should get them done as fast as possible.”
“Ugh,” Reggie whines. “I hate that you’re so responsible; you’re just like Alex. When we were sophomores, we had to read Frankenstein—”
“The other class is reading that,” Julie muses.
“—and even though I thought it was a conceptually pretty cool story, I hated reading it. But Alex knew we had to scrape by with decent grades to stay enrolled in extracurriculars like orchestra and marching band, so he always read it to me out loud so I’d do okay during the reading quizzes.”
Julie’s eyes widen. “Back up, back up- orchestra? Marching band!?”
Reggie grins, clearly relieved to talk about music again. “I was in orchestra; I can play the double bass. And Alex was in marching band. The people in the drum line were, like, the only universally respected musicians at our high school. We didn’t go to a fancy-schmancy music school like you do! Crossroads was an option but a private option, so…”
“How many instruments can you play!?” Julie demands. “Bass guitar, normal guitar, banjo, keyboard, and double bass!?”
Reggie’s smile shifts to something bashful. “I get around. I just had a lot of time on my hands as a kid. And, honestly, I can barely play the keyboard. I only learned enough for Luke to take advantage of it for Sunset Curve songs, but you’re definitely the pianist among us. And, like, most of those instruments are basically all transferable skills.”
Julie disagrees and thinks Reggie underestimates himself, but she won’t linger.
“I only know piano,” Julie hums. “I have a working understanding of guitar but hate playing it. Don’t have it in me to develop the callouses. And, like, I can play the tambourine—but who’s out here patting me on the back because I can play the tambourine?”
“Me!” Reggie says, patting Julie startlingly hard on the back.
Julie winces but takes it. His pats aren’t unlike Carlos’ when he’s being obnoxious.
“Well, thank you,” Julie rolls her shoulders. “I need to learn the fiddle, though… But that’s for later! It’s homework time,” she declares, sending her dad a text letting him know she’s home before marching off to her bedroom, leaving Reggie behind.
She takes out her contacts and replaces them with her glasses before hunkering down to start her homework.
Her AP classes have a dreaded love of homework packets. They’re… not too bad. She doesn’t like them, though, and the questions are usually worded in the most obtuse way imaginable, but they’re not the hardest things in the world. They’re just long and tedious. She flips through her chemistry textbook, ignoring the purple sheet of paper tucked between the pages, intent on balancing some stupid chemistry equations and filling out the short answer questions.
It is, indeed, a long and tedious process.
She can’t wait until she’s done with her sophomore year and never has to think about math and science again.
After a brief hydration break and ten minutes uselessly scrolling through TikTok (and embarrassingly coming across one of the TikToks Flynn made for the band’s account), she slogs through another hour of homework and studying her flashcards on Absolutism and Constitutionalism for the first time before calling it for the evening.
When she finally descends the staircase, she finds the boys getting their asses handed to them by Carlos at Smash again. A few bags from 7-11 are strewn about the living room, full of unopened snacks and drinks, and a huge bowl of popcorn rests on the coffee table.
“Oh!” She exclaims. “Having fun?”
“Yes,” Carlos says, performing some intricate button combination that throws Alex and Luke’s characters off the stage. Both boys groan, but Reggie takes advantage of the situation and manages to hit Carlos off the stage in turn. Julie laughs as Reggie lets out a loud whoop in celebration—that was Carlos’ last life.
“We were playing using stock,” Carlos says begrudgingly, turning toward Reggie. “If this were timed, I would have totally kicked your a—”
“Language,” Julie cuts him off, gently tugging his hair in reprimand. Carlos scowls at her, waving her hand away, but doesn’t argue.
“I won!” Reggie does a victorious shimmy that both Luke and Alex join in.
It’s cute. One of them winning is all of them winning.
(And, again: it does nothing to curb Julie’s impulse to categorize the boys as their own unique sort of Bennet family.)
“Where’s Papi?” Julie frowns, swiveling her head around in search of him. Carlos didn’t take his bike to school this morning… Did he drop Carlos off before leaving again if her dad wasn’t here? Unless Tía brought Carlos home—but she would have certainly made a fuss of giving Julie a hug and a kiss if she had swung by, even if Carlos said she was busy doing homework.
Carlos grunts, closing Smash and switching over to Super Mario Odyssey. “Not home yet. Long day today. Three back-to-back baptisms, I think. Reggie picked me up from school.”
Julie raises her eyebrows. “Not Tía?”
“Gabriel has soccer practice on Fridays, Julie. She doesn’t have the car today.”
“Right,” Julie says. She forgot her cousin’s season started. She turns toward the bassist and tilts her head inquisitively.
Reggie smiles awkwardly. “It makes Ray’s life a little easier!”
Aw. He’s sweet.
“I don’t mind,” Julie says kindly, watching with interest as Reggie relaxes. “We all appreciate the help,” she adds, glancing knowingly at her little brother. Carlos shrugs, ignoring them all in favor of his video games. She doubts he has any homework done, but it’s Friday, so she’ll let it go. Julie juts her chin out to the kitchen, and all of her phantoms follow her willingly.
They seem a little different after Wednesday night. Reggie is more keyed up, fidgeting with his jacket or whatever he has in his hands. He was already pretty attentive to Julie and her family, but it’s been noticeably… more. Alex is quiet, on the other hand, like he’s embarrassed. Whether or not that’s for having a homophobic family that may or may not miss him, Julie would have to ask. And she’s not asking him that—not without him prompting her first.
As for Luke…
He seems… okay. Catharsis can be a hell of a thing, but Julie can tell that he doesn’t want to keep his parents in the dark. He wants to see them… and he wants them to see him.
Julie can’t blame him for that.
Ugh. Julie feels like she’s been caught up in—she doesn’t even know. Philosophizing? Waxing theatrics in her own head, projecting all sorts of dramatic feelings onto everyone around her? It’s hard to say. Sure, her period is coming soon, but ignoring that… Everything around her has been so dramatic lately that mundanity almost feels beyond her.
That’s no good.
She wants to help her boys feel better but doesn’t want them to hide behind music. Not today.
She wants some mundanity back.
So…
“Reggie, you said you wanted to celebrate, right?”
He nods excitedly.
“We’re celebrating by making dinner together. Can you get the biggest pot in there?” Julie asks, pointing to the oven. Reggie grins eagerly, opening the oven and rummaging around for exactly that.
Julie whips out her phone and Googles ‘panera broccoli cheddar soup recipe,’ clicking on the first option and scrolling through the hoard of ads that remind her why she usually uses her laptop for this sort of thing. She gets to the ingredients list once she makes it past this lady’s life story and deep personal connection to Panera. This recipe serves eight… that’s enough.
Perfect.
“We’re making broccoli cheddar soup,” Julie announces, opening the fridge after she washes her hands and grabs the stuff they need. “Can any of you mince?”
“Reggie can,” Luke says with a smile, pretending to roll up his sleeves as he washes his hands.
Julie gives Luke the cheddar and carrots before gesturing in the direction of the grater before grimacing at herself.
“Sorry, your hands are full; I literally just—let me get it,” Julie frowns at herself. She moves away from him to open the cupboard with the grater inside, tucked away next to the can opener and juicer. She leans on her toes to reach it, but then her entire body floods with tension as she feels Luke stand behind her, surrounding her body with his, as he grabs the grater himself.
“I can put things down,” Luke murmurs. His voice is low, and he’s right behind her.
“Right,” she breathes before stepping away from him. Tentatively, she lifts her head to meet his gaze.
His stupid white boy eyes are twinkling.
She looks away.
“All of it needs to be shredded. All of it. Make use of those arms. Reggie, you’re mincing the onion and cooking them in butter once you’re done… Alex, wash the vegetables,” she commands.
“On it, boss,” Luke salutes with two fingers. Julie fights back her smile in response.
…Why is she fighting it?
She lets her smile push into the apples of her cheeks, wide and uncontrolled. It feels like when he used his guitar to sing the bridge of Edge of Great with her. Smiling at him is just… the easiest thing to do. And, like he did that day, once he sees her lips move, his do, too.
She needs to give him the song.
“Can I add garlic?” Reggie asks.
Julie turns away from Luke and scrolls through the recipe with Alex over her shoulder. His body is so much less imposing to her despite being taller.
“The recipe doesn’t call for it,” Alex says doubtfully.
Julie shrugs. “But garlic won’t hurt. Go for it, Reggie.”
Reggie nods happily, taking a garlic bulb and crushing a clove beneath his knife. While she still has her phone on her, she connects it to the speaker in the kitchen and shuffles her sfh (safe for home) playlist that she shares with Carlos. She rolls her eyes fondly when Old Town Road by Lil Nas X starts to play—soft enough to stay background noise but loud enough for Julie to hum along.
“Horse?” Reggie whispers reverently.
No one mentions him bouncing a little as he minces the garlic.
“You can ignore recipes?” Alex asks, almost in awe, before coming back to himself. “I mean, obviously you can. I just…”
Julie takes pity on him. “I get what you mean. Recipes are helpful when you’re starting out, but they feel more like outlines the more you do it. The garlic will be good, I promise.”
“Right,” Alex sighs. “We always needed recipes at my house. Once, my m-mom tried to make spaghetti off the top of her head and she forgot to add onion or basil to the sauce. It… wasn’t good. She never really… got better at it? It was never her thing, but she always insisted on doing it.”
He busies himself with tearing the broccoli into smaller florets. Julie lets him. As Luke finishes with the carrots and starts shredding the cheese, Reggie minces the onion, and Julie grabs the bag of flour and scavenges through the spice cabinet in search of cumin.
“I’ve never helped with cooking before,” Alex shares. “And I don’t think I’ve ever had this soup.”
“Never? And soak the carrots, please.” Julie gasps, grabbing a spice bottle full of brown powder, squinting her eyes at the label.
Nope, not cumin. That’s nutmeg. She resumes her search.
“Got it… and no, never,” Alex confirms, wrinkling his nose. “We had weekly meal rotations. Monday was spaghetti night, Tuesday was chicken and veggies night… You get the picture. My mom wasn’t a very adventurous chef.”
Luke lets out a snort. “Understatement of the last century, dude.”
“What, you don’t think Susan Mercer is the greatest cook of our time?” Alex’s voice is heavy with sarcasm. “Her steamed carrots were all the rage.”
Julie hums in acknowledgment. Another bottle—no, that’s cinnamon.
“Rage is right… for a certain definition of the word,” Reggie muses, plopping a slice of butter into the pot and letting it sizzle. “Nothing beat Emily’s cooking back in the day—well, my mom made- makes a killer matzah ball soup—but Luke, your mom was the best. My mom only cooked for special occasions. We were a big leftovers family. Lots of pizza and pasta. Just like Ray!”
Rose was the main cook of the home, with Julie and Carlos as her sous-chefs, though Ray was always best at breakfast. He can make a mean brunch if he follows a recipe, but her mom spearheaded the daily dinners. She learned Puerto Rican foods for Papi and taught them to Tía; she made the foods she grew up eating, and she had recipe books from all sorts of places filled with scribbled notes of her additions and subtractions…
A small weight settles inside her, but Julie rubs her chest as she finally finds the cumin.
“I always helped, but I don’t have a lot of recipes memorized,” Julie says, clutching the spice bottle tightly. “And trying to do it again was hard, even to help my dad. It was another thing I did with my mom, so… But I missed it, too. It’s more fun to cook together.”
“Yeah,” Alex agrees, washing the torn broccoli in a large bowl. “You’re right.”
“It’s faster, too!” Reggie cheers, dumping the onion in the pot.
“It’s faster because I’m shredding the cheese,” Luke grumbles, moving his arm fast enough to break a sweat. “It’s objectively the longest singular task. If you’re doing this alone, it’ll take twice as long.”
Julie sets the cumin next to the stove and starts melting the rest of the butter in a saucepan with her whisk, 1/4 cup of flour, and milk on standby. Once she dumps the flour in and stirs with the whisk, she yells, “Alex, pour the milk in! Slowly!”
Alex is at her side instantly, adding splashes of milk to the butter and flour mixture until all that’s left is a smooth, lumpless, pale roux.
“That was so scary,” Alex breathes. “It kept clumping, and—”
“Chicken stock!” Julie yells again.
“Jesus Christ—you don’t have to yell, I’m right here,” he mutters before finishing off with a sardonic, “Yes, chef.”
She’s not the sous-chef anymore. Julie feels the weight in her chest again a little heavier, but… it’s not bad. It hurts to remember that her mom will never be able to do this with her again, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t do this at all.
Rose Molina is everywhere in this house. Once upon a time, that used to be the problem. Now, Julie can only be grateful.
Reggie has moved the sautéed onion and garlic out of the pot and washed the celery stalk, so Julie pours the roux into the larger pot and swirls it around with a ladle, letting it pick remnant onion and garlic flavors. She pours the chicken stock in slowly, too, mixing all the while, and stands back once she’s done, undeniably pleased.
“And now we wait,” she declares.
Julie turns around to look at Luke. His knuckles are terrifyingly close to the grater, and he hasn’t slowed down—ugh, boys. Carlos always does the same thing.
“For how long?” Reggie whines.
“Fifteen to twenty minutes,” Alex recites dutifully. “Until it starts to simmer.”
“And that’s when we put in the veggies and let them cook,” Julie nods. “The cheese goes in last.”
“I’ll wash the dishes,” Reggie says glumly, taking the saucepan, knives, cutting board, measuring cup, and whisk. As he turns on the faucet, Luke places the grater in the sink with a shit-eating grin.
“Done,” he says smugly, holding his hand out dramatically for inspection. “And without scraping my knuckles.”
“You sound way too proud of that,” Alex mutters.
Julie has to literally drag the boys out of the kitchen afterward since they prove incapable of patiently waiting for more than two minutes. Reggie leaps over the back of the couch and lands next to Carlos, eagerly asking him questions about the state of Super Mario since the last game he remembers is Super Mario World.
It’s… kind of humbling, honestly.
The boys aren’t flawless—Julie already knows that. They’re three impulsive and maybe even overpassionate teenage boys who act like each other’s echo chamber. Thinking they’d be perfect is asking for trouble.
But… even if they aren’t flawless, they’re kind.
As an older sister, Julie is predisposed to like people who treat her younger brother well. There have been classmates who came over for school projects or acquaintances invited for sleepovers who went out of their way to insult Carlos for being annoying or loud, thinking they were sympathizing with Julie somehow—and that shit doesn’t fly. He’s her brother, and no one who is a guest in her home will get away with treating her little brother like that.
But that’s never even been a question with the boys. She’s never had to scold them or remind them to be nice. They were so kind and patient with Carlos, even when he couldn’t see them. They still are. They never mutter under their breath about him crashing the studio, even when he tried salting it and erasing their souls or whatever.
These boys… they’re real.
Their permanence was already overwhelming, but now the nature of the kindness of their very existence is getting to her, too.
Julie wanders back to the kitchen and stirs the pot, putting the vegetables in the broth.
The thing is that Luke, Reggie, and Alex were always real. Even when they were only air, they were still real and not just to her. A person doesn’t become fictional when they die—Julie’s mom is real. She still is, even if she’s gone.
If there’s one thing Julie has learned to understand in the past year, it’s that absence can be just as remarkable and characteristic as presence.
But the last people who would remember these boys are only getting older. Julie doesn’t even remember everyone from middle school, and that wasn’t that long ago. She can’t imagine all of their old classmates remembering them after so long. Their parents are silver and aged… assuming they’re all still alive. And Trevor- Bobby seemed all too eager to let them be forgotten.
Stories and memories become a dead person’s tether to reality. The stories the living share prove that the deceased had (and continue to have) a tangible effect on the real world. That’s the basic idea behind Day of the Dead—and her boys have been done the cruel disservice of being buried far too soon. She doesn’t know what stories the Pattersons, Peters, and Mercers have been telling about the teenagers they lost in 1995—but she does know what stories Bobby Shaw hasn’t been telling her entire life. Memories of enlightening conversations about music are now cold and hollow—because they were lies and half-truths.
Any questions about his inspirations for his songs are useless. They aren’t his. They never were.
Her mom trusted this guy. He was her friend.
(He was their friend, too.)
The man she grew up calling Tío was content to let the memory of these boys who cook with their friend and entertain her little brother while she does homework be wasted.
Julie wonders.
What is going through Trevor- What is going through Bobby’s head right now?
She knows he saw them.
Carrie has been remarkably silent to her ever since the Orpheum show. She barely even makes a show of yawning during music class anymore, and Julie went out of her way to take the more challenging classes at school precisely because she knew Carrie wouldn’t. It’s not that Carrie’s stupid; she’s hellbent on Dirty Candy. She doesn’t bother putting more effort than she has to on her academics.
The music program keeps them in each other’s orbit, but it’s distant.
Julie likes it better that way.
Is it wishful thinking to hope she never bothers her again?
“Julie?”
She hums in response.
Luke stands next to her and faces her directly. “Is it, uh, ready yet?”
“No. We still need to stir in the cheddar,” Julie says, training her gaze on the spot between his eyebrows. “Do you want to do it?”
“Yes,” Luke replies instantly. He nudges their shoulders together, and Julie digs her nails into her hand to keep from—she doesn’t even know. Jumping him, maybe.
She steps aside and lets Luke start ladling in the cheese.
When he’s done, she sprinkles some salt and a touch of cumin over the top and tells Luke to mix that in, too. She calls Carlos to grind the pepper—he loves doing it—and lets Reggie do the taste test.
“It’s perfect!”
Maybe she’s biased, but Julie is sure he’s right.
It’s the best meal she’s ever tasted.