Phantom by Retifer M. (debian ebook reader .txt) 📖

Θ

I lie still in my bed, keeping my breathing steady and low and my hands on my chest. My insides are cold, but I’m overheated and sweaty.

That feeling in my chest came back and will not go away and I’m sure I’ve been lying here for a long time. I can’t just ignore it and sleep because I’m afraid that I might… I dunno, turn into a freaking ghost again and my parents will burst into my room and see, and I don’t want to lock the door just in case.

Oh, how right I was to keep my bedroom door unlocked.

I make by far the weirdest noise I’ve ever heard, a blend of a drawn out gasp and a mute scream as I fall through my bed, through the floor and land on the kitchen table. For a split second I think the table might break but it holds, only clattering a napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers, and a few other miscellaneous things onto the floor.

I hold my breath and don’t bother moving, glaring at the ceiling as if it was the culprit and not my own stupid fault. Shoulda moved.

My back hits the freshly cleaned tile after I pass through the table as well a second later. I groan and roll over onto my stomach, rubbing at my back. The floor smells like fake lemons and dishsoap and it does not make things any better. In fact, it just pisses me off even more.

I wait for myself to phase yet again and to smack into concrete. When it doesn’t come I crawl out from the table, stand up and, purposely avoiding the clock and luminescent floor, leave to go back to my room.

I try not to take my anger out on the creaky stairs and pad lightly down the hall back to my room. The door is too loud opening, and my parents left their door open as usual but it doesn’t seem to wake them so I’m good.

It’s all still annoying though.

I shut my door with a small click and collapse back onto my bed.

S’all good. I just went downstairs for a drink. I totally walked down the stairs normally. Did not fall down there by accident in a one hundred percent impossible way. Because you can’t just go through solid objects like that.

My skin has cooled down but that just makes the cold in my chest seem worse somehow. When I rub my chest I can feel the annoying little ball of ice, like touching the door of a freezer. The cool seeps through and my body frustratingly refuses to shiver, as if it’s just used to it now.

It’s alien, but it still feels infuriatingly normal. It’s really obviously there, but at the same time it feels like if I stopped paying so much attention to it I could just… live with it. Ignore it.

But not right now. Right now it’s unusual and scary and annoying. It’s something I never asked for- okay, maybe I asked it for once when I was seven, but I didn’t mean this. If I ever asked for weird abilities it would’ve been something a little more controllable and fun.

Super speed. Pausing time. Flight. Inivisibility. Teleportation.

I don’t know, just anything that isn’t turning into a ghost and falling through things at unpredictable times. Something less what the heck and more awesome.

My thoughts are interrupted by that cold, not there feeling again and I suffer a shorter fall this time. I hit the ground, my head bounces off the carpet and my forehead smacks into the underside of my bed.

I groan and hold my head, kicking my legs around. I’m so exhausted.

 I stare groggily up at the school as Jazz pulls up in her small, blue car. I was totally up for taking the bus or walking but mom was having none of it. She got Jazz to drive me and, of course, she talked the entire ride to school about oddly specific things, like joining clubs or sports teams, hinting that I need to, I dunno, get more friends or something.

We pull into the school parking lot. I close my eyes for a second, and then open them slowly.

When I got up this morning I noticed that my leg was even less messed up and no longer had that fuzzy, numb feeling. It still doesn’t hurt though. When I left the house I noticed something else that had me officially worried that I might be imagining everything weird that’s happened since Friday.

Dark, vaguely animal-like creatures ignoring the laws of physics glide through the air as if it were water, some internal light flickering as the blackness that is their bodies shift with movement. They don’t bother going around people or things, just go right through them as if they didn’t even exist.

I stare out the windshield at the school, stomach filling with dread.

Back towards FentonWorks, they’d only been shadows in the corner of my eye. The closer to school- or maybe the more I woke up- the more popped up, the more I saw.

I try to brush it all off as another side effect from exposure to ectoplasm, just like the glowing and falling through the floor.

Ugh, I thought- er, hoped that the side effects would stop, if you can even call them side effects. The more I think about it the more it sounds like I’m ignoring an actual problem.

I have a feeling today isn’t going to be the greatest as I step out of Jazz’s car and make my way as slowly as possible towards the building. Whatever, just a few hours and then I can go home and sleep. Or try to, if my brain will let me.

I stumble up the front steps and into the school, ignoring the creepy hallucinations the best I can while hoping that today can just go by fast and simple, with no screw-ups or odd powers- side effects acting up.

Sam and Tuck meet me at my locker, seemingly having decided not to talk about the accident or anything that had happened over the weekend, at least not in a crowded public space.

Instead they chatter away about usual things as if it were a regular day; new tech, a big crossover movie that Sam’s excited for, video games, the Halloween dance next month. I’m almost convinced that everything from Friday until now has just been all my imagination. Almost.

Seeing that I’m not exactly joining in, Tuck pulls me to the side of the hallway as we make our way to homeroom.

“So, um…” He begins, tense. “Has anything, you know, happened since yesterday?”

I don’t answer right away. “Mmm, not really.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asks.

“Nothing’s happened. I’m fine.”

“You’re fine?”

“Yup.”

Sam narrows her eyes.

Tucker taps his finger on the side of his cell phone and looks quizzically at me. “Nothing happened? At all? You sure, dude?”

“Yeah.” I stare at Tuck’s ugly sweater, and then the shadow thing gliding past on the other side of the hall. At least they’re putting a large amount of space between me and them.

Tucker and Sam look at each other, then down. It takes me a moment to realize what they’re about to ask.

It’s Sam who says it. “You’re… walking around pretty okay.”

“Yeh.”

“Why?”

The worst leg-related thing that I’ve had to deal with today was hiding my new limp. It’s not even because I’m in pain or anything, just that my leg is stiff. I can’t really bend my knee too far; it was harder to put on my socks than it should have been. Other than that, nothing’s wrong at all.

I open my mouth, unsure of what to say. Oh, don’t worry about me, I just healed super fast. Maybe I do have superpowers. Maybe I have superhealing.

I look down at my leg and then back up at them. “Because I’m fine.”

“We’re gonna need a little more than that, Danny.” Sam crosses her arms.

“I’m gonna be straight with you, man; your leg was pretty messed up.” Tucker seems like he’s forcing himself to tell me, as if saying it brings back terrible memories. “You… do you remember what went down?”

I remember ending up on the couch. I remember falling. I don’t remember much before that other than secondhand fear and feeling really far away. “No…?”

“It was bad.” Sam says quietly. “So why are you walking around like it never happened?”

“‘Cause I’m fine. Really, I feel okay. My leg doesn’t even hurt.” To prove this I lift my leg and shake it side to side. They give me skeptical looks.

“Seriously guys.” The warning bell goes off and I sigh. “Let’s go; we’re gonna be late.”

I lead the way to class since they don’t seem to want to move and we make it in time for the late bell.

 Θ

So far, the day is okay. I almost fall asleep in class, and frustratingly can’t write notes for a good twenty minutes because I can’t keep my pencil in my hand, but other than that everything is weirdly fine, a lot better than I thought it would be.

Until lunch that is.

We’ve barely sat down before I hear “Fenton!” being yelled from across the cafeteria. I don’t look, hoping that if I don’t respond Dash will just forget I’m even here. But of course, I chose wrong. I feel him grab my shirt from behind.

“Hey, Fen-toenail, I’m talkin’ to you.”

Sam raises her eyebrows at his butchered version of my last name. She leaps out of her seat and angrily yells “Hey!” when Dash yanks me up from my seat and drags me away by the collar of my shirt.

“Why don’t we have a nice, friendly chat, Fenton.” He says, not a question.

I look back long enough to see the other A-Listers blocking Sam and Tucker, preventing Sam from verbally destroying Dash like she typically does. He hauls me through the doors to the cafeteria and into the hallway, pushing me up against some lockers when we’re out of clear view from the lunch room.

I want to say something snarky but bite my tongue, knowing it’ll just get me into even bigger trouble if I say something stupid now. Instead I try to think of why he could be bullying me today. Bad grade? Got dumped? Something to do with football, maybe? Still too early in the year for anything; he’s probably just doing this for fun.

He sneers at me. “What should we do today, Fenton?” He spits my name out like saying it correctly puts a bad taste in his mouth.

He doesn’t give me time to answer, instead he rips open the nearest locker and begins to stuff me in it. Instinctively, I catch the sides of the locker and struggle against him, twisting myself so that my back is against Dash and my feet are on either side of the locker.

“Come on!” Dash growls. “Just go in-”