before the pain | luke (JATP)

After The Pain

the epilogue

After having performed Julie turned around the corner to see the three boys standing on each other with huge smiles on their faces. "Julie!"  getting quite a shock she screamed. "Ahh you stop doing that! I'm serious!"

Reggie laughed gently: "Whoa! This one's all on you. We were already here, or actually we were over there and then we came over here".

"Are we not gonna talk about what just happened?" Luke asked excitedly as he looked at Julie, who was still in a small panic after the performance. "Yeah, the whole school saw you. It's kinda freaking me out"

Reggie laughed and leaned against the locker beside him which caused Luke to look at it, he became quiet, like something he had forgotten hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Are you guys okay?" The boys were quiet until Luke in a low whisper gulped: " locker 272" Luke licked his lip as he felt chills down his spine, Julie looked at the boys curious.

"Something you're not telling me? " Alex and Reggie looked at each other before looking at Julie, their eyes were filled with sorrow. "Can... you find a person for us?" Julie raised an eyebrow as she smiled. "Sure?" She took out her phone.

Luke took a deep breath as he faced Julie again. "Millianna Garcia" He answered, Julie typed into her phone and nodded. "Wait... you're looking for Mrs. Young?" It was like something inside Luke broke like his heart was smashed into a million pieces.

"She married Oliver Young, are you kidding me?" Reggie said almost in disgust, Alex shrugged. "They were cute together" Luke sent him a stare that would have killed him if he wasn't already dead.

"He sexualized her, and you think that was cute?" Julie widened her eyes not knowing what to say, not being included in the conversation. "I mean... Mr. and Mrs. Young are great together... I don't know how they used to be"

"You know her?" Luke asked looking back at Julie, who nodded slowly. "Yea... she was good friends with my mom, they met through a friend, she lives on the other side of town, Marchell Street 7800, why ... do you know her?" 

"She was our best friend," Reggie said as he put a hand on Luke's shoulder. "We will be back.." Julie nodded slowly as she watched her friends ghost away in front of her.

The house was white, with blue shedders. The three of them looked at each other as they got into the house. It smelled of home-baked cookies and coconut. "What a beautiful home..." Alex said as his hand went against the throw pillows on the couch.

Luke was about to say something as a woman walked down the stairs, her brown curly hair had strains of grey as she was wearing round glasses. Her hair was in a bun and wrinkles had formed on her face. 25 years had indeed passed. On her neck, there was only a cross yet on her wrist a bracelet was hanging. A bracelet filled with charms, and in the middle, the book and the music note was hanging like a sad memory.

"Mila..." Reggie gulped, she was walking around her home singing in a low voice. They followed her, even into an office, where the hall was filled with frames and pictures, Alex gulped. 

"Look," Alex said as he looked at the wall art. "What is that?" Reggie asked, however, his breath almost taken away as a smile formed on his lips. "After all these years, she has them hanging like art?" He whispered in disbelief, that was when they noticed every single wall art in the office was them.

The notes they once had shared in class, the good, the bad, the hurting, the loving. Every single piece of paper that had been exchanged in their senior year of the high school hung up on a wall like an old photograph.

However, something did not seem right, which was indeed correct. On the desk, laid a document, a document stating that Mila had been fired from her teaching job. The more they looked around the house and followed Mila around, it hit them.

Mila never went to New York, she never published her book, she became famous and she never had anyone else read her stories, maybe it was because she was scared, but the night she had lost the three most important people in her life, she changed and she never changed back.

Luke looked at her, his heart aching as she walked around her living room cleaning up some books and putting them on the bookshelf. The three boys observed not knowing what to say. Their thought was interrupted by the door opening.

"Mila" A voice called Mila turned around smiling brightly. "Oliver, there you are" She kissed his cheek. His hair was gone and he looked much older than he used to, instead of his athletic body, he now had a dad stomach as he placed himself on the couch.

"Your son is gonna kill me" Oliver laughed as he poured himself a cup of coffee. However, these words made the three boys look at each other in shock. Luke was about to say they should leave, as a quietness came.

"Come on, what has Luke now done?"

"Luke?" In disbelief a boy walked into the living room, he wasn't older than 15, his hair curly like his mom and his eyes the shade of his dad, but his name belonged to someone who owned Mila's heart, someone who Oliver knew he could never compete with.

"Mom, you won't believe what happened at school today" He took out his phone, Oliver sighed and leaned back on the couch. "I have heard about this the whole drive home.. I tell you" Oliver chuckled, ruffling his son's hair.

"And he still hasn't seen it dad" Julie performed and it was so good, it sounded like Trevor's song-'' Mila interrupted her son fastly. "Don¨t mention that name in this household, you know I do not want to hear that"

"But mom... please watch"

Mila sighed and took the phone, her whole body shivered as she looked at the bad recording, she shook her head. "O-Oliver?... have you seen this?"

Luke, Reggie, and Alex widened their eyes as they saw the screen indeed, then performing Mila's song on the stage with Julie singing. A tear rolled down Mila's cheek which she fastly wiped away.

"I... excuse me" She gave her son back his phone before hurrying to her office opening her computer, the boys followed her as the three of them looked at her in disbelief. For the first time in a long time, Mila opened her computer where a word document was open.

Mila looked at her draft, having read it over and over again since she was 18.  You see Mila never went to Hamilton, Mila never published a book, Mila never told the story of how a ghost fell in love with a girl, instead she wrote a book about a girl falling in love with a person who in the end passed away, so as she looked at her book licking her lips, she wrote the name of the book that would make the New York City Best Selling Writer.

Dedicated to my first kiss, my first reader,  my first everything.

"Before the pain" by Millianna Garcia Young