"You're onstage in 6 minutes!" shouted the assistant stage manager through the dressing room door.

"Great, thanks!" Alex called back, before turning back to his bandmates. "So we're doing it?"

"Of course we're doing it," Luke croaked, though his cold made him sound more like a frog than someone speaking English. "Why isn't Julie back yet?"

As if on cue, Julie stumbled through the doorway of the bathroom back into her dressing room. "There's no hope," she said forlornly. "My contacts are done for."

Meanwhile, Reggie was staring into the mirror, an expression of equal hopelessness on his face. "My hair," he whimpered. "Look at it!"

"I can't, Reggie," Julie said, sounding slightly hysterical. "My contacts are broken."

"And Kayla's in the audience tonight, too," he continued, as if she hadn't said anything. "This is a disaster."

"Okay, yes," Luke admitted. "Things aren't going great. Julie can't see, I have a minor cold..." He paused to hack out a cough. "Alex's hand is broken--"

"My hair is broken!"

"--Reggie's hair is broken. But we gotta pull through! Come on, Julie-and-boys. We've been through worse! Remember Caleb's jolts? We can handle these totally tiny problems!"

There was a pause.

"Luke," Alex said slowly. "I'm sure whatever you just said was very inspirational. But I couldn't understand any of it. You sound like a rusty door."

"This is a disaster," Julie mumbled into her hands, ignoring a That's what I'm saying! from Reggie.

"Three minutes!"

"Okay, okay," Julie said, regrouping her thoughts. "We just need to deal with this however we can, and then it will be over. Can someone find Reggie a hat, please?"

"A hat!" Reggie cried. "Julie, you're a genius. Okay, come on, Alex, Luke. Give me your hats."

"Both of them?" Alex asked skeptically, handing his over.

"Obviously, Alex. I need to hide this--" he made wild gestures toward his hair "--as much as possible." Placing the two hats onto his head, his eyes suddenly widened. "I'm... gonna be right back." He poofed away.

"I don't even wanna know what that was about," Alex grumbled, then turned to face Luke. "Are you sure you're okay to perform? Back when we were alive, you used to literally pass out when you got sick."

"I'm sorry," Julie interjected. "He used to what?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't matter anymore! I'm a ghost! Ghosts can't pass out!"

"They can get sick, though," Julie pointed out, gesturing toward him.

"It doesn't matter, okay? We'll go out there, we'll rock, and then I can get better or whatever. For now, I'm fine." As if his body was laughing at him, it chose that very second to commence a coughing fit that lasted at least a minute. Much to Luke's delight, however, Julie and Alex were distracted from commenting by Reggie's reappearance with 9 hats jammed onto his head.

"Reggie?" Julie said. "I can't see anything right now, but you look a LOT taller than you did two minutes ago."

"Yeah," Reggie said cheerfully as Alex gaped in horror. "You know that kid from your school, Nick? And how he has like 10 fedoras? I stole seven of them."

"You stole them," Alex squeaked. "Of course. It's not like you could've... Oh, I don't know... Not done that?"

"Kayla's in the audience!"

"That means nothing to me!"

"Kayla! You know, purple?"

"What?"

"One of Carrie's backup dancers," Julie interrupted, looking up from squinting at her phone(which was brushing her nose) as she responded to Flynn's good-luck text. "She goes to my school. Carrie's entire group is going to be watching us tonight."

"You're on in one!" called the assistant stage manager.

"Okay, let's do this," Julie declared, before opening the door.

"Now give it up... For Julie and the Phantoms!" shouted the gleeful announcer. Julie walked onstage, nearly tripping over three separate wires, before finally finding her seat at her keyboard. Her brain chose this moment to realize that she wouldn't be able to read any of her sheet music. Oh, well. She could totally do it from memory. Totally. 100%.

She waved to the audience and found the right keys. Then, taking a breath, she commenced the song, which was supposed to be the first of three.

It started well. She knew this part by heart, and she sounded great. The first chorus was a bit more difficult, but though she fumbled some notes, overall it was decent, if not up to her usual standard. Once the boys poofed in, however, things started to go downhill.

Luke had the second singing part, but he had to stop in the middle of his sentence to cough. Instead of "In times that I doubted myself/I felt like I needed some help/Stuck in my head with nothing left", it sounded more like "In times that I/cough cough cough/cough cough/Doubted-- some help/Stuck in my head with/Cough cough".

Instead of continuing, he had to bend over, hacking and wheezing. Alex, who could see even less straight than usual from the pain(he had really underestimated how much playing the drums with a broken hand would hurt), was left with no choice but to take over since Reggie was busy somehow adjusting his hat collection and playing at the same time. Unfortunately, Alex did not know the words to Luke's part.

"I feel something in-round me now/It's very clear/Something out/Something something/La la laaaa..." He was saved by Julie, Luke, and Reggie rejoining for the pre-chorus, although Julie had completely forgotten her playing part and was now sadly plunking her middle F key over and over.

"Life is a risk but we will take it/Close my eyes and jump/Together I think that--" CRASH.

Luke had gone over to share Reggie's microphone, as usual. Reggie was both wearing 9 hats precariously balanced on his head that could probably have been knocked over by Luke exhaling too hard and also did not want to become sick, so he moved out of the way, not as usual. Luke, who was having cold-induced depth perception problems and did not understand why Reggie was backing away, tried to move forward and in doing so knocked the entire microphone stand over.

There was a moment of silence, then Julie, who had determined that the microphone stand on the ground was too skinny to be either Reggie or Luke and that both her friends were fine(she hoped), started playing again, with the others joining her soon after, Luke and Reggie now sharing Luke's microphone.

"Rise through the night/You and I/We will fight to shine together/Bright forever/And rise through the night/You and I/We will fight to shine together/Bright forever!"

"In times that I doubted myself/I felt like I nuhhhhhh.." Just as they thought they might actually make it through the song, Luke passed out. He collapsed in a heap on the stage. There was another moment of silence, then Julie, trying desperately to salvage the performance, leapt to her feet, carefully walked around the piano to the center of the stage, and started singing Luke's part as Alex tried to roll Luke off the stage.

"Stuck in my head/With nothing left/And when I feel lost and alone/I know that I can make it home/Fight through the dark/Relight the spark/And rise--" As she started the chorus dancing a bit too enthusiastically, the microphone flew out of her hand and collided with Reggie's stack of hats, shoving them off his head.

Reggie let out an ungodly shriek, yelled "MY HAIR!" and poofed away, leaving hats to fall on the ground where he used to be, like an absurd rainfall.

Julie sped backward but overcompensated and knocked her keyboard over, falling with it, and then crawling offstage.

Alex, having finally managed to get Luke offstage by poofing to Julie's house with him and then poofing back by himself, did not see the demolishing of Reggie's hat stack and tripped over a fallen fedora, landing right on his broken hand. After yelling "AAAGH" a bit, he finally gave up on the performance and, with a great sigh, poofed away.

The sudden absence of three people made evident the presence of Caleb Covington onstage, who had been planning to poof the boys away himself but hadn't managed to complete the act before the performance was in shambles and everyone was gone. Since Caleb was in his visible-and-tangible mode, and because he was extra, he started his own performance, beginning with a mini tap routine, then a grand monologue.

"Well, hello, everyone. I am the one, the only, Caleb Covington. And I am here tonight to show you the most amazing performance you've ever-- who are you three?"

For Carrie, Carlos, and Flynn were now all on stage as well, for a variety of reasons.

Carrie was there because although she wasn't on good terms with Julie, she also recognized that Julie was talented, and this jerk was definitely not going to steal the show like that, especially without having even worked to book the venue.

Carlos, like Carrie, didn't know who Caleb was, but he was remarkably smart for a 10-year-old and sensed that Caleb was both a ghost and not on the side of Julie and her friends, and of course, he wasn't just going to sit by and do nothing, especially when this weirdo might have caused the chaos in the performance with his weird ghost powers.

Flynn, on the other hand, both knew who Caleb was and knew how evil he was, and therefore realized he was probably up to no good. The three of them had leapt(or climbed with great difficulty, in the case of Carlos, who was a bit shorter) onstage as soon as they had been able to make their way past the railing placed in front of the audience.

"Go away!" Carlos yelled dramatically, flinging his arm and pointing his finger at Caleb, who chuckled.

"My dear boy, what could you even do to--" He yelped and ducked, the chair Flynn had thrown whistling over his head.

"Really?" Carrie hissed.

"I don't see YOU doing anything to get rid of him! Besides, he deserves it," Flynn responded.

With a great roll of her eyes, Carrie picked up Julie's binder of sheet music and threw it at the squawking Caleb. "Happy?"

"Now LEAVE!" bellowed Carlos, launching the fedoras he had collected from the stage floor at the ghost.

"Fine then," said Caleb, trying to appear as if this had all gone according to plan. "The things I want aren't here anymore anyway." And he poofed back to the Hollywood Ghost Club to lick his wounds.

The lighting woman, who was having trouble keeping up with what was going on, decided to focus the spotlight on the cluster of angry children and hoped no one else appeared and/or disappeared.

Said angry children, blinking in the sudden light, realized they were now expected to perform. Awkwardly glancing at each other, the girls grabbed the fallen microphones. Carrie started singing a Dirty Candy song at the same time as Flynn panicked and started singing various jingles. Once she heard what Carrie was doing, she attempted to add backing vocals, while the actual other Dirty Candy members still in the audience wondered if they should join the duo singing a cappella onstage.

Carlos, who was living his best life, was Fortnite dancing to the side of the two.

They managed to fill the rest of the 20 minutes, and as the curtains closed, they each let out a sigh of relief. Before Flynn or Carlos could say anything, Carrie poked them and said, "We'll never speak of this again." And with that, she headed back to the lobby to greet her father, who was thinking that that was probably the worst performance he'd ever seen any of his friends give.

Flynn patted Carlos's shoulder. "Shall we go see if your sister's okay?"

"We shall," Carlos responded grandly.