Prompt 2, bubblegum (School Spirits, Wally)

[tellshannon815]

Title: Peaking as a Ghost
Fandom: School Spirits
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Wally
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers all through season 3
Summary: Wally realises he did peak in high school, but as a ghost.




Wally thought back to that memory of himself in senior year, in the last few weeks he was alive, popping his bubblegum as he listened to that radio story of his success in the game that was now no longer important to him. The Wally from back then felt like a totally different person; he was the Big Man on Campus, the guy all the girls wanted to date and all the guys wanted to be, who hung out with the popular kids and dated girls like that Livia character.

Kids like Charley? Wally would probably have been sticking his bubblegum in their hair (well, in freshman year, maybe; by senior year he thought he’d have outgrown that). But he realised now that guy from the class reunion was right, and he’d been an ass. Wally may not have been the ringleader in the so-called pranks, but he’d usually been a participant, going along with whatever his friends suggested just to please them rather than telling them not to be dicks. And he knows now that he loves Maddie, but Big Man On Campus Wally probably wouldn’t have glanced her way, wouldn’t have seen past the Livia types to get to know the real Maddie.

Wally thought about how he’d never really wanted to leave high school, thought about that version of himself, and realised that maybe he had peaked in high school after all, just not in the way he always thought. Because the best version of Wally was the current one, the ghost Wally, the one who’d been shaped by his time with Charley, Rhonda and Maddie.

Comments

[pattrose]

Very nicely done.