B7-2 | Alone Together | Dittophobia
It can be hard when you feel like you're invisible.
"I can’t believe I didn’t realize it for so long," he started to talk with himself. "It was like a part of me was missing, and it was you ... or it was me." He shook his head, confused. "It doesn’t matter now, because, you know, now we can be together. You won’t be alone anymore and neither will I. We’ll have each other always. Pretty cool, huh?"
Nobody ever talks to Travis. He's a shy kid, a loner, and a bit of an oddball. Living with his dad and wondering when his mom will come home, Travis finds joy in his shop class. His teacher assigns a large semester project, something out of the box. Travis chooses to make a Mechanical Turk
with the face of the sunny Daycare Attendant of the nearby Pizzaplex. But as he builds, he starts to feel a weird sense of déjà vu. Weird feelings that he's done this all before. His grandmother thinks he might be haunted, and that if he wants it to stop, he needs to help the ghost find peace.
The twenty-third Tales from the Pizzaplex story, and the second of the eighth book.
Tropes related to “Alone Together”:
- Affectionate Nickname: Travis never liked that the Sun animatronic was just named "Sun," so he'd taken to calling him "the Sunman."
- All of the Other Reindeer: Travis appears to be this, as nobody ever talks to him. Turns out that's because he's not actually there.
- Alone in a Crowd: Used frequently as Travis wanders the busy school halls, while nobody notices or talks to him. When he sees Marissa talking to Trish, he has a breakdown believing he'll be alone forever, as the rest of the kids mill past him.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Marissa, who tries to avoid talking to people due to her different abilities.
- Bad Bedroom, Bad Life: Following his mom's departure, the Hutchins house is in a bad state. Travis's room is dusty and messy, which he doesn't realize is because he hasn't been in there in two years.
- Bittersweet Ending: While Travis realizes that he's been Dead All Along and his family has fallen apart, he finally feels at peace now that he's found his body, and says he'll never be alone again.
- Commonality Connection: Travis really likes shop class, and he hopes his Dad will help him with his project so they can bond over something. It seems to work...
- Cool Old Lady: Travis's Grandma, who tells Travis farm and ghost stories.
- Cool Teacher: Shop class teacher Mr. Middlefield, who wears a tool belt of pencils and seems excited to teach his students.
- Cope by Pretending: Mr. Hutchins turns out to only be speaking to Travis and making him meals out of habit and grief. He tries to build Travis's mechanical turk to feel closer to him.
- A Day in the Limelight: Travis's mechanical turk is based around Sun, the happy Daycare Attendant from Security Breach. He hasn't ever actually seen or interacted with Sun, but he's seen him on posters and commercials and thinks he's pretty cool.
- Dead All Along: The Twist Ending of the story; the "ghost" was never haunting Travis, it was Travis. Travis has been a wandering spirit for the last two years, confused and amnesiac about his death until his body could be located; it turns out his grandmother had also been a ghost, which is why she was able to talk to and understand Travis. When he finds his body, not only does he remember everything, he feels himself to be finally at peace.
- Death of a Child: Travis's disappearance breaks his parents emotionally, causing his mom to move out and his dad to withdrawn into himself.
- Discovering Your Own Dead Body: After spending the whole story trying to find the mysterious school ghost's body, Travis locates the corpse inside of the old mechanical turk... and realizes that it's been him the whole time.
- Dream Sequence: Travis has one about the Sunman and Glamrock Freddy playing chess together. Sun uses this to prompt Travis to wonder why everything he's been doing feels familiar.
- Dying Alone: Travis accidentally trapped himself in the mechanical turk and suffocated in his sleep. Nobody found his body.
- Eating Lunch Alone: Travis always eats lunch alone under the same tree. He eventually finds out that Marissa also eats alone, and she sits under his tree one day.
- Foreshadowing: Firstly, the fact that nobody ever directly talks to Travis except his father, Marissa, and Grandma. Mr. Hutchins turns out to be talking to himself, Marissa is a natural medium who can see ghosts, and Grandma is already dead.His grandma smiled at him. She opened her arms and Travis stood to give her a hug. He felt a brief comfort as she patted his back. “I’ll tell you about my new adventures another time. You’ll find your answers, Trav, just like I did. Don’t you worry."
- Friendless Background: Travis has been friendless since his mom left... AKA: since he died.
- Friendly Ghost: Travis, though it's not like he knows he's a ghost.
- Ghost Amnesia: Until Travis's body is located, he lives in a confused haze, not processing that he's actually dead, that nobody can see him, and that he's just been wandering the same few locations and doing the same actions on repeat. Travis gets his memories back when he, himself, finds his body.
- Ghostly Goals: Grandma explains to Travis that ghosts tend to wander the place they died, "especially if their remains are undiscovered." She suggests that the School Ghost is simply someone who wants to be found.
- Goth: Marissa wears all-black.
- Goth Girls Know Magic: To a lesser degree, as it's implied Marissa does not want to be able to see and talk to ghosts.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: On shy, kind Travis, who wants to help the mysterious school ghost move on.
- Hates Being Alone: Travis pretends that he's not that bothered by his isolation, trying to remain hopeful that he'll eventually have better connections. But he eventually breaks and admits that he feels like everyone has abandoned him.
- Invisible Introvert: Travis was always a shy kid. Once he became a ghost, he became more asocial due to, well, nobody being able to see or talk to him.
- Invisible to Normals: It's clear at the end that only Marissa was able to see Travis, and only because she had a special sense.
- I See Dead People: At first, Travis thinks he might apply to this trope, as his grandmother says that "special people" can see and contact ghosts. It turns out that he was a ghost, and the special ghost-seer was Marissa, the only person who talked to him, which re-contextualizes her hesitation on interacting with him.
- Jacob Marley Apparel: Travis continues wearing the exact same outfit from his death-day, without realizing or processing this. He recognizes his body based on them having the same clothes.
- Like Father, Like Son: Both Travis and his dad are shy, quiet mechanics who dislike change.
- Lonely Together: How Travis manages to bond with his own corpse.
- Magnetic Medium: It seems like this is far from Marissa's first encounter with ghosts, and she has closed herself off to them by acting rude and standoffish towards Travis. Unfortunately for her, Travis is excited that she actually talks to him, and finds her interesting enough to keep seeking her out.
- Missing Child: Considering Travis's body was never found, he was probably never declared legally dead. Nobody knows what happened to him.
- Missing Mom: At first played straight, with Travis saying his mom had left two years ago, he never understood why, and he started dropping out of all his clubs and drifting away from his friends. It turns out that this was actually subverted; Ms. Hutchins was present for all of Travis's life, and she "left" after Travis had already died and begun haunting his own house.
- Mr. Fixit: Mr. Hutchins is a very talented mechanic, who's able to rebuild car engines on his own.
- Ms. Exposition: Grandma's purpose in the story is to explain how possessions and hauntings work to Travis, in order to convince him to look for the school ghost.
- New Transfer Student: Marissa, who's just moved and seems hesitant to make friends.
- No Full Name Given: For Marissa.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Offscreen, Mr. Hutchins has an emotional break and destroys the mechanical turk. Travis thinks he did it out of anger for him never being there, not knowing that he's been dead for two years.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Marissa is described as having purple streaks in her brunette hair.
- No Social Skills: Travis believes that he's unable to make friends due to his grief and confusion over his mom leaving. Even putting aside the Dead All Along twist, when he first talks to Marissa, he acts completely stunned and awkward, and in their second conversation, he immediately tells her about his quest to find a dead body.
- Parental Abandonment: After Travis's mom leaves, he becomes even shyer, stops talking to his friends, and pulls out of activities. The end subverts this by revealing that Ms. Hutchins actually did not leave until after Travis had already died, but Travis's Ghost Amnesia prevented him from reconciling this.
- The Quiet One: Travis's dad isn't much of a talker, even before the incident. His mom was the one who was able to get him to talk.
- Signature Headgear: Travis's old, frayed Little League hat. He wears it constantly, which is how he's eventually able to identify his own corpse.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: Implied to be the reason Grandma and Marissa don't tell Travis that he's a ghost. He won't be able to understand or process until his body is found.She met with Travis because he kept thinking of her, but in her heart, she knew he needed to find his own answers like she had.
- Tomato in the Mirror: That's right, Travis! You were the ghost all along!
- Trespassing Hero: Travis repeatedly sneaks onto school grounds after hours in hopes of finding the ghost's body. Somewhat subverted when it's eventually revealed that Travis is a ghost who's unknowingly haunting the area.
- Used to Be More Social: Travis was always a shy kid, but used to have friends and be part of clubs before his mom left. (Before he died, actually.)
