Phantom by Retifer M. (best large ereader .txt) 📕

Pins and staples, pinning the contrastingly coloured monochrome missing persons posters and neon club flyers to the school’s corkboard, dig into my back as Dash holds me up by the front of my shirt against the wall.

I quickly flip through my mental check-list of what could have caused this, almost missing the muffled “Hey!” yelled from somewhere down the hallway. It’s too early in the year for anything that could’ve gotten Dash this mad; there haven’t even been any tests for Dash to fail. Maybe Paulina dumped him.

“See ya at lunch, freak.” He growls close to my face and then drops me to the floor. I feel his shoe press into my stomach before I slide across the hall into traffic, and scramble to my hands & knees in time to see my backpack get dropkicked into the opposite wall.

He joins his buddies, all looking ridiculous in my opinion in their matching red and white letter jackets, leaving me to pick up my stuff. The other kids in the hall don’t make my life any easier, walking over my binders and- I’m sure accidentally but who knows- my hands as I put my stuff back in my bag.

“Rough.” A familiar voice behind me says.

I make sure to close the zipper this time before grabbing Tucker’s offered hand and getting up.

“Seriously.” I reply as I shoulder my backpack, rubbing the back of my neck self consciously.

“I was just about to tell ‘em off for you.”

“Sure you were, Tuck.”

“I was!”

“You called me over to your house to help you beat Twilight Princess because the Twili dungeon was too scary.” I give him a flat look.

“That hand chases you, man. Slowly.” He shudders. “It’s anxiety inducing.”

I roll my eyes. “I appreciate the thought that you wanted to help.”

“You are welcome.” He says pointedly. Tucker looks down at his phone briefly, fiddles with it, then looks back up and grimaces. “Not to ruin this wonderful moment of friendship, but fix your shirt, dude.”

I look down at myself; it’s sticking up in the places where Dash had it balled up in his fist and, to my utter delight, there is a partial footprint right on the sore spot where I got kicked. That’ll leave a mark, and not just on my clothes.

With a sigh I smooth my shirt down and try to scrub the dirt off, stopping when Tuck gives me the thumbs-up. We agree to just drop the subject of Dash and his posse and get on to more positive topics. We’re used to it by now, anyways.

“So,” I start when we continue walking to class. “Wanna come over this weekend?”

“Your parents are going to that thing, right?”

“Yep, and they got Jazz to go too.” I grin. “Something about some university nearby the convention. I’ve got the house all to myself ‘til Sunday night.”

“Dead Teacher marathon?” Tucker stuffs his phone in one of the pockets in his cargo pants.

I nod, the anger from Dash’s bullying melting away into anticipation on our first movie marathon of the school year. “Dead Teacher marathon.”

We head into Mr. Lancer’s classroom and sit down, trying to plan out the weekend. Emphasis on trying. I roll my eyes at Tuck; this always happens. Well, not always always, but someone usually starts a thing over who’s in charge of bringing what.

“Tucker.”

“I’m just sayin’ Danny-”

“Tuck, are you really up for eating any of the food in my fridge?”

“Then get Sam to bring snacks.”

I grumble at the compromise. “Then you’re bringing the movies.”

“Sure, but I don’t have the last two.”

“You’re the techno-geek, Tuck,” We both look up as Sam sits down on the other side of Tucker. “Just pirate ‘em from the internet… wait, why do you need movies?”

“Danny’s parents are gone for the weekend so we’re marathoning all the Dead Teacher movies at his house.” Tucker informs Sam.

“Ah.” She leans back in her chair. “I can just bring them then; I have the whole collection.”

“Tucker doesn’t want to bring the snacks, though.” I stare accusingly at Tuck. “And I’m not willing to potentially poison you guys; I’m pretty sure I saw a-.”

“Alright class,” Mr. Lancer says loudly as he marches into the room.

“We’ll talk about this later.” I say quickly.

They mumble their responses as class starts, cutting off our chance at conversation.

Θ

After much debating at lunch, we finally agreed that Sam’s bringing the movies, Tucker’s bringing snacks, and we’ll all meet at my house for the movie marathon. It would’ve been an okay lunch, but, like he promised, Dash interrupted us.

Tucker ended up with Sam’s salad all over his sweater, and I ended up with Tucker’s glasses in my food. Sam had a field day trying to get Principal Ishiyama to listen.

I try to forget the cruddy day I’d had as I walk down the sidewalk. I see the emergency ops center and the glow of the FentonWorks sign before the actual house. One good thing about having crazy ghost hunter parents; I can’t get lost when I can see my house from basically anywhere in Amity Park.

Mom, Dad and Jazz are already gone by the time I get in- along with the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle, or GAV by my parents, RV by Jazz- but they told me this morning that they would probably leave around lunch time so no surprise there.

Reveling the emptiness of the house, I stomp up the stairs, throw open my bedroom door and toss my bag across the room onto my bed. I spin on my heel and head back down the hall to the closet where we keep our extra comforters and pillows and throw some over the banister. They fall in a heap and, satisfied with the small mess that nobody will tell me to clean up, I head back into my room.

I sit at my desk and roll a pencil between my fingers before pacing the length of my room once, grabbing my backpack and settling back down. I silently curse my boredom and the lack of anything to do before company arrives. Being home completely alone is actually kind of… boring.

With nothing else to do I pull my homework out- though it’s just a small worksheet since it’s the beginning of the year- and set to work. I try my best to prevent anything from distracting me, but with my desktop right in front of me I can’t help myself. Not even ten minutes into my homework I start playing Doomed.

The first area of the map is easy; I’ve only played it a gazillion times with Tucker. It gets harder though and it doesn’t help that there are players who don’t even try to play the game. Those jerks only camp rooms and take out other people before they can get through.

I’ve just started really getting into it when I hear Tucker barge into the house downstairs, talking loudly about the food he’d brought.

Logging out and shutting my computer down, I head downstairs. As I make my way down I see that Tuck had brought some bags of chips, plus a couple of paper bags and a tray of drinks I immediately recognize are from the Nasty Burger.

I try not to look too excited. We have all the freedom to eat junk food for 3 straight days, without parental supervision- or I do, at least.

“You sure this is a veggie burger?” Sam stares into one of the bags suspiciously, as if it might suddenly grow a fangy mouth and try to take a bite out of her.

“For the bajillionth time Sam, yes.” Tuck rolls his eyes at Sam as she sits on the couch, the both of them barely acknowledging me as I come down the stairs. “I might be a carnivore, but I’m not that much of a jerk that I’d trick you into eating meat.”

Sam stares at Tuck for a moment before carefully taking the burger out of its wrapping and sniffing it. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She says, lifting the bun and taking a peek anyways. “Thanks, Tuck.”

“You are very much welcome.”

I sit on the opposite side of the coffee table from Sam, cross legged on the carpet and open the other bag. “Combo number 3?” I ask.

Tucker tries to cross his arms while still carrying the chips, dropping a bag in the process, and shakes his head at us. “Why do you two doubt me so much?” He drops the other two bags and adds, “And yes,” He points at Sam, “your milkshake is soy,” points at me, “and yours is vanilla.”

“But I wanted chocolate.” I deadpan.

“Ha ha.” He straightens up. “Wait- you did want vanilla this time, right?”

I smirk and take my milkshake from the holder and take a sip. I usually get chocolate, but I felt like vanilla today for some reason.

“‘Kay, ‘cause that would’ve been awkward.”

“Okay!” Sam claps her hands. “Let’s stop while we’re ahead, and do this already.”

“It’s only like,” I glance around the room and spot the digital clock in the tv stand. “Four-something.”

“We’re watching the whole series, Danny.” Sam rolls her eyes when I shrug. “If we want to watch more than two we should start now.”

“‘Kay.”

Tucker leans down to pick up the bags but stays crouched, probably getting a head start on those chips or settling on the floor or something.

While he’s busy doing that, I go and move the blankets and pillows over to the couch. Just as I separate them back into three different comforters and threaten a war by throwing the pillows at Sam, Tuck gets up and waves a piece of paper around.

“Dude, your parents left you a note. They finished their portal?”

“Hmm?” I walk over to him and inspect the note.

It’s chicken scratch, most likely my dad’s hand writing, but definitely mom’s words. It’s addressed to me, saying to ‘keep an eye on the portal for any changes…’ and goes on and on about scientific nonsense that I mostly don’t understand.

 “Oh, uh, yeah, they did. It didn’t work…” I add under my breath, “obviously.”

Even though it was kind of clear that it wouldn’t work- hello­, a portal to the afterlife on minimal funding?- it was sad seeing my parents so disappointed when they’d worked so hard.

I drop the note on the table, half crumpled. “It’s ‘under observation’ right now,” I use my fingers as air quotes. “I guess they wanna know if anything happens while they’re gone.”

“Oh my gosh,” Sam snatches the paper up and skims over it, flattening it out again. “Danny, you know what we should do?”

“No, you guys know I’m not supposed to bring friends down there- not when my parents aren’t home at least.” I grab the note back when she’s done and crumple it again. “Plus, I thought we were gonna watch movies and eat really unhealthy food, and not mess around with some dangerous lab stuff.” I emphasize the word “dangerous”, but they don’t really seem to care all that much.

“We don’t ever get to see this stuff though, Danny!” Tucker whines. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“And we’ll only be, like, ten minutes. Fifteen, tops.” Sam says. “We’ll still have time for the movies.”

Sam and Tuck both look at me pleadingly. I scowl.

“Guys, it’s just a boring piece of metal in the ground.” I sigh. “It doesn’t even do anything other than spark and look weird.”

“If it doesn’t do anything it can’t be dangerous then!” Tucker points out oh