Taylor stomped through her cluttered apartment. She couldn’t even see the floor anymore. All of Harper’s junk had ended up at her place. Colby had it easy. He just floated over all the stuff.

"I swear, I'm going to break my foot here today. I can already see it coming," she complained.

"I have no idea what that bitch collected about me. But hopefully, she’ll finally leave us alone now?"

Taylor nearly slipped on some loose photos on the floor. "Can’t you organize this a bit? With your abilities? Please?"

"I have absolutely no idea how to do that." Colby crossed his arms and watched Taylor’s struggle. "Should I put you on the table?"

"You can do that? But the table is full too."

The ghost snapped his fingers, and all the stuff on the table was thrown onto the pile on the floor. Now the mess reached Taylor’s hips.

"So, shall I?" he grinned.

"But no teleporting, yeah? Promise me, you won’t teleport any living beings. I don't want to imagine what happens if something ends up inside a wall or something. Can you make me float?"

"Of course, Tay-Tay." He snapped his fingers again, and Taylor gently rose into the air.

"Cool," she said, impressed, as she was set down on the table. "So, with all this junk, this is our chance to get further with your case."

Colby teleported next to her. "Okay, so, what do we know?" He let a notepad and a pen float over from the kitchen into Taylor’s hands, and she began to jot everything down.

"Your disappearance was probably in that room over there, which was a guest room back then." She pointed to the room where she had first met Colby. "And it happened on the evening of May 23, 2003, at your friend Brad's party."

"I went into the room around 10 PM and then I was gone," Colby continued. "No fingerprints, nothing. Not even on the windows. Also, I remember almost nothing."

"And anonymous sources reported hearing a woman's voice in there with you. Before you showed up with me 20 years later, did you have a girlfriend or something? I mean, it was a guest room, and you're Colby."

"No girlfriend, no. Just several hot quickies in the weeks before, but nothing serious, no."

"That basically doesn't help us at all. It could've been anyone."

He grinned confidently. "Damn right."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "So, then your pockets were empty when I found you."

"But I should've had at least my phone and my weed on me."

"Exactly. And in that short window of time, no one could've taken you out so easily."

He grinned again. "Damn right. Again."

"Then there's the matter of your MySpace account." Taylor picked up her phone and visited Colby's profile. "You disappeared on May 23, 2003, but the last login was on December 14, 2004. Almost 19 months later. And we have no clue who that could've been, because no one had your login details, as you said back then. Are you really sure about that? You never wrote down your password on a piece of paper or anything? Diary? Something?"

The frat boy laughed. "Sometimes you're really cute, Tay. Do I look like someone who'd have a diary? Seriously."

She lightly tapped him on the head with the pen, surprising him. "Focus, Ghost Boy."

"Sorry."

"Polaroid, please," Taylor requested, and Colby immediately floated it into her hand. "And then there's this guy here." She pointed to the young man on the far right in the front row, right in front of Colby and Brad.

The ghost looked at the picture again, scrutinizing it carefully. But he really didn't recognize him. "Who the fuck is thaahat?" he asked, frustrated.

"I don't get it either. How can there be someone so prominent in the picture, but none of you know who he is? When was this taken? You all look so dressed up."

"We always looked good. Always. But this must have been at the party my fraternity had at a country club. The celebration lasted the whole weekend. Brad took a thousand photos, both Polaroids and regular ones."

"So there are definitely more pictures from that night." Taylor glanced around the chaotic room. "And Harper must have a few more of them."

"But the party was almost a year before I disappeared. What's the point?"

"Honestly, I don't know. But you don't know who the guy is. I call that a lead. Plus, now I want to know who that is too. So help me find the other photos."

Colby nodded and immediately teleported to one of the larger boxes standing at the edge of the room. He had been curious about what was inside for a while. With a wave of his hand, he opened the lid and began to sift through the photos and documents inside. Taylor also got to work, carefully lifting an old photo album from the mess.

The photo album was a complete jumble. Sometimes it was just newspaper clippings, other times individual photos, and occasionally even some fan art mixed in.

"Have you found anything yet?" Colby called from the other side of the room.

"No. Wait. What's this?" she asked, amused. It wasn't what they were looking for, but it was so cute that her eyes couldn't help but linger on it.

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The picture showed an adult Colby grinning from ear to ear, wearing a terrible sweater, and posing for a photo with someone in a Mickey Mouse costume.

"What did you find? Is he in that one?"

"No, but look at this!" She held up the Mickey Mouse picture with delight, and Colby began to grin. "How adorable is that?!"

"Disney World, Florida. What can I say, I love Disney." Anyone else might have been embarrassed by such a picture, but not Colby fucking Vance.

"If you want, we can watch the second movie of Finding Nemo later. You liked the first one so much, you little crybaby." She remembered it vividly.

Everything Colby was holding fell to the ground. He stared at Taylor in shock. "What did you say?! There's a second movie?! A?! Second?! Movie?!" If he wasn’t so surprised, he would probably be jumping for joy. Literally. He can do that.

Taylor just laughed. "Yeah. Finding Dory."

"Dory gets lost?!"

"Okay, we'll watch it later." She tapped on the photo album in front of her. "But first, we deal with this."

The things Colby found the creepiest, like all the fan art of him holding Harper in his strong arms, went straight into the trash. He wanted to throw the toenail away with exaggerated gagging noises, but Taylor managed to stop him just in time.

"Are you crazy?! Sure, it’s gross, and I don’t want to know how she even got a toenail from you from 20 years ago, but that’s DNA! That’s your DNA! We might need it if we ever really go to the police."

Otherwise, it was mostly photos they sorted through while searching for the mysterious guy. They found countless pictures from past parties, fraternity meetings, and trips with friends. Colby shook his head resignedly. It seemed as though this guy represented an inexplicable gap in his memory, a figure who appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as quickly. But he and Taylor couldn't give up, not now, when they had come so far.

In a moving box, Taylor found mostly old magazines covering Colby's case. She flipped through the pages hastily, hoping to find some clue, but these yellowed pages mostly contained trivial information, like how much of a heartthrob Colby was. What else could she expect from those magazines? Half of them were teen magazines. Tiger Beat, in particular, seemed very interested in Colby. He appeared on the cover more than once.

Meanwhile, Colby finally found something. "Here!" he shouted, holding up a photo, this time not a Polaroid. "There he is again!"

The photo, clearly taken at night, showed four men in total. Three of them were wearing tuxedos, while the man they were looking for was dressed only in a black sweater. All four seemed to be entering a building.

Taylor immediately made her way over to her ghost to look at the photo. "That's him, alright. Right next to you."

"I don't get it. That was a movie premiere. There were only three of us there." He pointed at one of the other men. "I walked farther to the left of him because he let out such a huge fart, the asshole, that I almost cried from the pain in my nose. But according to this photo, our dude was right between me and Toby the farter. There was no one there. I'm sure of it."

"I have to say, this is a bit creepy." Taylor examined the photo more closely. The mysterious man had completely red eyes in the picture. Supernaturally red. She just hoped it was that photo effect that used to ruin beautiful pictures and give many people glowing eyes in photos.

"Something's really off here." Colby strained to remember, trying to recall if he could, but it was no use. He simply didn't know this guy.

"May I?" Taylor took the picture in her hand. The unknown young man stood out, as if he didn't quite fit in with the group. Or maybe he couldn't. "He looks kind of lost. Like he doesn't really belong. You all have sharp tuxedos on, but not him."

"The eyes. Look at the eyes. That’s creepy as fuck," the ghost noted.

"Okay, but this proves there are indeed more pictures with him. Let's keep looking," Taylor said, handing the photo back to her ghost and returning to her previous corner.

Colby nodded absentmindedly, staring at the photo again. Why, why the hell was he in these photos? There was no one there back then. Absolutely no one.

Another item gave him a queasy feeling in his stomach, just like the fan art and the toenail. It was an old plush doll that Harper had clearly owned as a child. It looked suspiciously like Colby. Creepy.

He couldn’t imagine Harper had ever been a child, much less owned an innocent toy. Okay, no, it’s really macabre to have a plush doll that clearly resembles a missing man. Colby shook off the thought, tossed the doll into the garbage bag behind him, and refocused on the search for answers.

It didn’t take long before Taylor found the next picture with the man.

"Look, here’s a picture from the party at the country club. Look, because of the clothes. There he is again, that guy. And that’s Brad, right?"

Colby quickly teleported over to her. "Yeah, that’s Brad." He looked at the photo with a disturbed expression.

The Polaroid was very blurry, but Brad was clearly visible. He was holding a camera in his hands and looked undeniably drunk. To his right, you could see the mysterious man at the edge of the picture, although he was partially cut off.

"What?" Taylor asked worriedly when she saw Colby's expression. "What's different about this picture?"

"Well, yes. It's from the country club. And that's Brad. But the difference is … that … this time, I took the photo. Tay, there was no one there. Only Brad. Really. I swear it."

"But that can't be!"

The ghost took the picture in his trembling hands. "Damn it, how is it possible that I don't remember him at all?"

"Brad looks wasted. Maybe you were too?" Taylor suggested. "No offense."

"Nah, I can't take that the wrong way. It's a valid point. Yes, Brad was drunk from vodka, but I wasn't. I think."

"Maybe he just photobombed every picture," Taylor proposed, although she didn’t really believe it herself. "There are always guys who want to get in the spotlight." She looked at her Ghost Boy and grinned. "I know another one like that."

"Taylor. There. Was. No one."

The grin on Taylor's face disappeared. Wow, a moment where Colby wasn't just cheerful. "Okay, I believe you. Really."

"The guy is smiling in every fucking picture we find of him. The bastard is fucking happy. Like he’s having the time of his life scaring the shit out of us."

Taylor had a new idea. "What if Harper digitally edited them? That's possible nowadays."

"The original photos?" Colby countered.

"Well, I don't know either."

Colby used his abilities to push all the stuff on the floor away from him and his girl so they could sit down. Both pouted. It had kind of become their thing, sulking on the floor together.

"Maybe we should give up," Colby said. "There's no point. I just know I definitely can't sleep tonight. In fact, I might never forget that smiling face."

"A-actually," came a voice from a direction Colby couldn’t pinpoint. It was like the voice came from every corner at once. "T-that wasn’t my intention. Really."

"Who's there?!" Colby shouted, jumping up.

"What?" Taylor asked, confused.

"Didn’t you hear that?!"

"Hear what?" Now Taylor stood up too, following Colby's gaze around the whole apartment, although she couldn’t see anything.

"T-then I should probably finally show myself, I guess," said a young man's voice that frightened the frat boy even more.

Colby spun around several times but still saw nothing, just like Taylor. However, he could definitely hear the voice, unlike her, it seemed. "W-where are you?!"

"Colby. Hey. What’s wrong?" Taylor asked worriedly, taking his hand.

"H-here. The stove."

Colby looked toward the kitchen. And then he probably would have had a heart attack if he weren’t already dead.

There he was. The mysterious, smiling man from the photos. He was sitting on the stove with his arms crossed. Unlike in all the pictures, he wasn’t smiling now. He looked more like he had done something he now deeply regretted.

"Y-you're the one! From the photos!" Colby shouted, pointing at the stove.

Taylor followed Colby's finger but couldn’t see anything. "Huh?"

The man nervously opened his mouth. "S-so. Um. Hi. I'm Charlie." He casually lifted his hand in greeting and then quickly tucked it back into his other arm. "And... I’ve been following you for half your life and your entire afterlife. Y-your personal ghost, so to speak." He smiled sheepishly. "Surprise?"