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

I find myself relenting anyways. “Yeah, I guess. We’ll go after school.”

We sit around in the closet discussing random stuff until the bell rings, signaling the end of lunch. Sam and Tucker give each other uncertain looks.

“You guys don’t have to stay.” I say as I start to float higher. “I can just stick around here-”

 “By yourself?” Sam interrupts. “No. We’re not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

I lift my hands above my head and scowl as they bump the ceiling. I push against the ceiling and drift back down to the floor, legs still crossed. I bet this is what it’s like being in space. I can’t help the small grin.

“You’ll be late for class.”

“So will you.” Sam counters.

“We’re staying.” Tuck leans back on his hands comfortably, as if to say there’s nothing I can do about it.

I stiffen and spread my arms out as I lose balance and start to spin upside down. “Darn it,” I grumble, starting to move towards the ceiling again. My back touches the ceiling. I give up on staying near the ground with an aggravated noise in my throat. I’m lying on the ceiling. Don’t get to say that every day.

Tucker smirks. “Hangin’ out on the ceiling again?”

“Shut up.”

“Just don’t hurt yourself this time.”

I glower down at him.

“Flying… heh.” He smiles, knowing exactly what he’s saying. “Ya feel like an astronaut up there?”

I laugh, and it seems to dispel the nervousness. Flying.

“Yeah, actually. It’s weird; I can’t really feel gravity right now. It’s trippy.” I place my hands on the ceiling behind me and push, rotating into a sitting position. “It looks like you guys are on the ceiling.” I point out.

“Hate to break it to ya,” Sam leans back as well to get a better look up at me.

I fake laugh, and push off from the ceiling again, twisting mid air and spreading out my legs to land on the ground. Maybe flying is more manageable than I thought. Or maybe not; I am using the floor and ceiling to move around. Still better than falling though.

“Hey, I think I’m getting the hang of this.” I say as I stay on the ground for a few seconds before beginning to float upwards against my will again. “Oh no.”

Instead of stopping myself, my hand goes straight through the ceiling and I continue floating up past it. Sam and Tucker yell incoherently after me. To my utter horror, I go right through a second floor classroom and stare at the room full of students all wearing wide-eyed expressions matching my own as I float on by.

I slap my hand over my face- er, mask when I disappear through the ceiling and hear the entire room blow up as the class flips out. I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry, so I decide to do neither for now and take a crack at stopping my skyward descent.

I will definitely hear about this later.

I finally come to a reeling stop a few meters above the roof. As if swimming in water and not floating through the air, I windmill my arms and kick my legs to right myself. I try to remember all those videos of astronauts navigating zero gravity; this is a lot harder than it looked on those. Then again, zero g is falling around the earth, whereas I’m… floating.

“Whoa,” I breathe, worn out. Whatever I’m doing, it’s a lot more tiring than it looks. “There we go.”

I unintentionally lean to the side, causing me to move in that direction. I try to course correct and drift around in a small circle. Okay, so, leaning apparently equals moving. Now I just need to figure out how to descend.

Only problem; I’m not quite sure how to go down.

The class below me seems to have calmed down finally, however there’s probably no learning going on down there right now. I don’t let myself think about the fact that I’m flying- or can tell what the class below me is up to- but it’s difficult. I attempt to focus on other things instead.

Like the view from up here. I can see the Nasty Burger sign, and the ops center looking like a UFO in the distance. The world looks different from above. I’m level with some birds and weird hallucination-y creatures flying above the houses near the school, which is kind of weird. It’s all weird, everything about this situation right now. Flight.

I shake my head. No, don’t think about it. Think about… going down. Yeah, think about gravity.

I look down at the roof of the school, those little rocks that I’d never seen up close before scattered all over the place. I never knew why they covered the top of the school in rocks; it’s always been a mystery to me. I think about touching my feet down on those.

Nothing happens.

I wave my arms in circles, spinning myself upside down again and kick my feet out, getting a little momentum. I feel my cheeks burn when I realize how stupid I must look, but continue swimming mid-air until my fingers brush the roof. I feel myself slowly start to float back up as my fingertips bump against the roof, rocks shifting under my hands. I realize with annoyance that the only thing I can grip to pull myself down is a bunch of loose rocks and turn right side up again.

I throw a rock I’d caught in my hand and watch it soar over the edge of the roof. I just barely hear it clack against the pavement somewhere below. I cross my arms and look around, a bit flustered. How am I supposed to get down? I just had to go and phase through stuff while uncontrollably floating up into the damn sky.

I breathe in deeply to calm myself. I sit on my knees in the air and rub my hands back and forth over my thighs, wincing when the action only sends pins and needles down my right leg, my left seeming hypersensitive compared to it. I bite my lip a little too hard and ball my hands into fists.

I take a couple more breaths, and then stare pointedly at the glass in front of my face, thinking over my options- er, one option, actually. I’ll just have to sit until I can get down. Or… change back?

At least my legs won’t fall asleep. Great job keeping a positive attitude, Fenton.

Scratch that. I need to get down now.

My single option almost visibly slips through my gloved fingers when I see the GAV round the corner well over the speed limit and barely keeping to the right side of the road. Dad must be driving.

A brief summary of all of mom and dad’s smaller projects, what they’re supposed to do, flashes through my mind as they screech to a halt in front of the school. Smaller, unimportant inventions that I can only see as weapons now. How did I ever see those as anything but a weapon?

Mom jumps out of the passenger side. I panic and press myself against the roof, trying to hide-

Wait a minute.

I’m back on the ground- er, roof? How- when did I-

Whatever, I can’t let my parents find me; they’ll think I’m an actual ghost.

Oh my god.

Horror fills up my chest as I realize- they’d never give up if they saw me. They’ve never even seen a ghost before, and if they see me I don’t know what they’ll do, but they won’t just let me go. There’s no way they’d let the first ghost they come in contact with just leave- if they don’t recognize me that is. Which they probably won’t with my face all covered up.

I sprint to the far side of the roof and peer over the edge. No one’s around; everyone’s in class. I could just fly down if I could find a way to control it, meet back up with Sam and Tuck, pretend everything’s perfectly normal if- or when- I run into my parents.

I can feel excitement and anticipation buzzing in the air, crawling up into my chest, and decide I don’t really have time for thinking about it, or daydreaming about acting as if things are alright. I jump up once, but am disappointed to find my feet hitting the rocks. My ankle gives and I almost fall over. I get my balance, and then jump again. No dice.

Come on, come on cold spot. I shut my eyes and focus everything on that thing.

Pulling mentally at that cold energy in my chest, trying to duplicate that feeling I felt just a minute ago, I jump once more and cry out in delight when I don’t fall back down, but start going up as if Earth’s gravity isn’t strong enough all of a sudden.

Before I can float higher, I reach down, grab the edge of the roof, and propel myself over the edge. My stomach drops out from under me and I make a prolonged whining noise, shocked at the nerve- or really, lack of thought that went into that action.

Trying not to freak out, I do a somersault so I’m rightside-up and float down from the momentum of tossing myself at the ground. I tap the brick wall every time I start to slow down. It takes a couple minutes, but I reach the ground, let out a breath as I plant my feet firmly in the grass, and look around.

Okay, now that I’m finally grounded again, I can… I can…

I’m not sure, I just didn’t want to be on the roof, in all honesty. Now that I’m on the ground, though, I feel even more vulnerable. At least on the roof it’d be about a hundred times harder to get caught chilling like… this.

A little part of me is telling me to flee up. In no specific direction, just go up.

Humans don’t look up. Like an intrusive thought, a little voice in the back of my head urges me. They won’t see me there.

I look up at some birds flying by; I suppose I can see the point of that. Even if someone did see me, they would assume they were seeing some kind of bird or something. But I’m dealing with my parents, who totally would see a UFO and go, “Oh jeez, that’s probably a ghost!”. At least dad would.

I make my way around the edge of the school, ducking under windows when I come across them. I don’t know where Sam and Tucker ran off to- if they even left the janitor’s closet- and I don’t think my cell phone is in this hazmat, so I might have to just ditch school all together.

Oh jeez, I’m gonna be in so much trouble later. On top of this… weirdness, I’m going to get detention and be grounded, all on my second week of high school.

I cut through the football field, gliding a little more than half the time, and hide under the bleachers. It smells like cigarette smoke but no one seems to be around so I just stand there, shaking my hands and worrying over what I’m going to do.

Last night it took me over an hour to change back, this time it could take even longer. Who knows, maybe I won’t even change back this time. Maybe this time it’s permanent.

I shut my eyes tight and focus on taking all the cold in my body and bundling it back up into that ball in my center. I just want to try to handle that first, and then I’ll agonize over whether or not I’m-

I curl and uncurl my fingers repeatedly, take deep breaths, do