He didn't read it standing up. He carried the letter to the edge of his bed and sat down, as if preparing for a formal audience. With a flick of his thumb, he switched on the small lamp on his desk, casting a single, warm pool of light in the dim, gray room. It pushed back the shadows just enough.
He held the envelope for a final moment, then carefully, with fingers that fumbled slightly, he worked a finger under the sealed flap and tore it open. The sound was quiet, but it felt momentous, a final severing. He pulled out a single sheet of notebook paper, the kind with the pale blue lines and the red margin, folded twice. He unfolded it. The page was filled with Leo's familiar, slightly-too-big handwriting, the ink a dark, solid blue.
He took a breath and began to read.
The first lines were a confession, and every word was a confirmation of Alex's deepest fears. Leo wrote about the "grayness," a word he'd circled twice. He described it as a heavy blanket that had been slowly, quietly suffocating him for months, a sadness he didn't have the words to explain. He wrote about the exhaustion of performance, of having to be the "happy-go-lucky" friend, the hype man, while feeling like he was falling apart inside. It's like I was watching a movie of my own life and I forgot all my lines, he'd written. He apologized for not being stronger, for letting the grayness win.
Alex read these lines with a dull, aching pain that settled deep in his gut. This was the verdict he had been dreading. Every sentence was another brick in the wall of his guilt, another piece of evidence in the trial against himself. I saw it, he thought, a wave of nausea rolling over him. I saw the grayness in his eyes in the cafeteria, and I called it being tired. He felt sick, his failure laid bare in his friend's gentle, apologetic prose.
He almost stopped reading. He almost folded the paper back up, unable to take any more of the quiet judgment. But he forced his eyes back to the page.
And then, the tone of the letter shifted.
In the final paragraph, Leo stopped talking about his own pain and started talking about Alex.
I know this is all heavy shit, the letter continued, but I don't want this to be a sad letter. I wanted to tell you something. Watching you this last year, man… watching you find your voice, build this thing from nothing, chase this crazy dream… it's been the one thing in my life that felt real and bright. It was like watching a star being born right in front of me. That night we heard Youth on the radio? I wasn't lying. That was one of the best nights of my entire life. Don't ever let anyone, especially those industry sharks, dull that shine. Don't let them make you forget why you started.
The words were a gut punch of a different kind. It wasn't the pain of guilt; it was the sharp, searing pain of love, of a pure, selfless belief he felt he had done nothing to earn.
Then came the final lines. The ones that would alter the course of his life, that would burn themselves into the core of his being forever. Alex read them once, his eyes scanning the words, and then again, slowly, letting each one land with its full, devastating weight.
My only sadness is I can't see you becoming the big star we dreamed about. I am 100% sure you will reach there, and I will always be there as your biggest and first fan.
The words hit Alex with the force of a physical blow, but not one that knocked him down. It was a blow that straightened his spine, that shot a current of pure, agonizing purpose through his veins. The crushing weight of his guilt didn't disappear—it was still there, a permanent part of his soul—but something new and powerful rose up to meet it, to contain it, to give it shape.
It wasn't just his dream anymore. It wasn't just the ghost's second chance. It was a promise. It was a mission. It was a sacred, unbearable debt he now had to repay to his friend's memory.
He clutched the letter in his hand, the thin paper crinkling in his tight grip. Tears, hot and thick, began to fall freely from his eyes, dripping onto his jeans, onto his hands. But they were different tears now. They were no longer the silent, empty tears of pure grief. They were the tears of a terrible, beautiful resolve.
Leo's last act hadn't been a goodbye. It had been a commission. He had passed a torch in the dark. The letter was no longer an object of dread. It was a sacred text. A constitution. A reason.
The ghost of his past life had given him the tools, the knowledge, the strategy. But the ghost of his best friend… he had just given him the why.
Sitting there in the small pool of light, in the pre-dawn quiet of his broken world, Alex Vance finally knew what he had to do next.