The Grammy nominations had been announced that morning, and the aftershocks were still rippling through Alex's life. His phone, which he had finally started charging again, had been buzzing on his desk all day, a relentless, cheerful vibration. A constant stream of congratulatory messages from his publicist, his father, his distributor in Germany, and a dozen other industry figures whose names he barely recognized. He was, by all accounts, a dominant force. Best New Artist. Song of the Year. Best Pop Solo Performance. The nominations were a stunning, undeniable validation of everything he had built.
He sat alone in his room, ignoring the buzz.
The space was clean now, organized. The chaotic clutter of his creative process and the stagnant disarray of his grief had both been cleared away, leaving something that felt sterile and impersonal, like a well-appointed hotel room he was just passing through. The tools of his success were all on display, arranged like artifacts in a museum exhibit about his own life.
The sharp, star-shaped AMA award he had won sat on his desk, its polished surface catching the dim afternoon light. On the wall above it, the Gold and Platinum plaques for "Lost Boy" and "Youth" were now properly hung, their gleaming surfaces a testament to his meteoric rise. A framed copy of the SPIN cover, his own face staring out with a haunted, soulful expression the photographer had painstakingly captured, leaned against a stack of books. The room was a shrine to his achievements, a meticulously curated gallery of his triumph.
He stared at these symbols, these monuments to his new reality, and felt absolutely nothing. No pride. No thrill. No flicker of excitement. Just a profound, hollow emptiness that seemed to emanate from the very center of his being. The success was real, tangible, global. The ghost's ambition, the desperate drive to rewrite a failed future, had been fulfilled beyond its wildest dreams. But the victory tasted like ash in his mouth. The entire edifice was built on a foundation of his deepest, most unforgivable regret.
His gaze drifted from the glittering awards on the wall to a small, simple object on his nightstand. It was a plain wooden frame, the kind you could buy for a few dollars at any drugstore. Inside it was the picture of him and Leo from the middle school science fair, the one that had flashed on the screen at the funeral. He'd asked his mom to find the original for him. In the photo, they were just two goofy, impossibly young kids, their faces split with triumphant, gap-toothed grins, their arms slung around each other's shoulders. Their future was a vast, unwritten page. There was no ghost in his eyes then, only the simple, uncomplicated joy of a moment shared with his best friend.
He reached out and picked up the frame, his fingers tracing the cheap wood. The contrast between the gleaming, impersonal trophies that surrounded him and this small, precious, almost sacred memory was devastating. The awards were loud. They screamed of success, of numbers, of industry validation. The photo was quiet. It spoke of a shared joke, of late nights spent building a stupid volcano out of paper-mâché, of a friendship that had been the unquestioned center of his universe.
This was what was real. This was what had mattered. And it was gone.
He looked from the platinum plaque on the wall, a symbol of a song about being lost, to the photo in his hand, a symbol of a time when he had been found. The glittering awards no longer looked like trophies. They looked like tombstones, marking the death of the boy in the picture.
He sat on the edge of his bed, the phone on his desk buzzing with another congratulatory text he would never answer. He held the small photo frame in both hands, his thumb stroking the glass over Leo's smiling face. He had reached the top of the mountain they had dreamed of climbing together. He had conquered the world. And he was a king in a cold, empty castle, haunted by the ghost of the only person whose applause he had ever truly wanted to hear.