Prologue

I tapped my pencil against the table.

Tap, tap, tap. Tap. Tap, tap, tap. Tap.

The leaves in my backyard were slowly changing color. Hints of orange and red were hidden in masses of evergreens, but there was no mistaking that fall was here, and here to stay. A chill nipped at my bare feet from under the table. No one had bothered to turn the heat on yet today.

I looked down at the homework I had abandoned, Algebra 2. The paper was mostly blank, with "x5" with a question mark written next to number one, the date 10/21 in the top right corner, and my name scrawled in the top left. Sullivan Fenton.

I looked at the clock. It was four o'clock, and I still had accomplished nothing, homework-wise. I had successfully let the cat out the pantry, taken a message from the car insurance company, and made several doodles in the margins of my notebook, though. Not that that really meant much.

I retraced each letter of my name. S-u-l-l-i-v-a-n. Why my parents had ever chosen to give me such a strange last-name-for-a-first-name I will never know. Everyone thinks that you have two last names with the name Sullivan. You can't shorten it to anything, either. Your only two options are Sully, which makes you sound like an animal trained to do tricks at the zoo, or Van, which makes you sound like you were too stupid to remember the first half of your name and instead named yourself after a car. Of course, you could take liberties with name and create names like Sunny or Vinnie- but then everyone would either think you were the son of hippies or a mob boss. So, all in all, not a good name choice.

F-e-n-t-o-n, I traced. Fenton. It sounds like such a normal name when just put by itself like that. There's probably lots of Fentons. But none like me. Well, maybe not like me, but like my dad, or anyone else in my family for that matter.

My father, Daniel Fenton, was probably the most renowned hero of his time. He was famous by fourteen- saving the world, staying in school, beating the bad guy, getting the girl. The girl, of course, being my mother- Samantha Manson-Fenton, the most strong-headed woman on the East Coast. My mom is also a small celebrity in her world of eco-green groupies. She completely revitalized the EPA and has advocated proper energy use for years now. Yes, my parents are quite the team- saving the world from evil ghosts and polluters.

And, of course, with the perfect couple comes the perfect child. Namely, my older sister, Ellie. Not only one of the most hard-hitting journalists in New York, but also a ghost-fighter. She inherited my father's powers and started helping him when she was about fifteen. Now she's nearly thirty, with two young children, with the perfect job and life- just like my parents.

Where, you ask, do I fit in? I'm the second child of Danny and Sam Fenton, born fourteen years after my sister. And despite the track record of the rest of my family, I am really nothing to behold. I am not perfect. Nor do I fight ghosts. Yes, it's true- my dad fights ghosts, and my sister, but by some amazing stroke of genetics, I was born as average and plain as a piece of white bread. My parents say that it doesn't matter, that they still love me and Ellie exactly the same. I've never doubted that they love both of us, but I was never sure about loving us the same way. Somehow, Ellie just seems to have earned their affection a lot more than I have.

I suppose I do have a secret weapon against all of this perfection, though, something that not everyone in my family has- I'm smart. It's not that my family is dumb. My dad and Ellie have a certain aptitude for battle tactics and investigation, my mom can persuade people, my Aunt Jazz can read people better than anyone else. But I see a lot of what they don't. When they decorate a room, they look at it as just placing furniture, while I see it as a complex geometry problem. When they put toast in the toaster, they're thinking about breakfast, but I'm thinking about how the electricity travels through the wires and circuit breakers. And when they toss something into the air, they're thinking about catching it- not the trajectory and physics of why it rises and falls. It really doesn't make a whole lot of difference in my family, but it's nice to know that I have something that not everyone else does.

And that does mean a lot to me, especially because my best friend, Barry, moved away at the beginning of the summer. Now I've started my freshman year of high school at Drogo High, a regional high school in my town. There are a thousand other kids there, but it's still a lonely place. I still email Barry, but it doesn't really compare to having him here with me.

In the next room, the side door creaked open.

"Hi, Mom," I said without looking up.

"Hi," she replied. I could hear her taking off her jacket. Her briefcase thumped against the wall and her high-heeled boots clicked against the linoleum floor. "How was your day at school? Make any new friends?"

"Eh," I said, my usual response. "How about yours?"

She entered the kitchen. "You know," she said, "taking down corrupt polluters, one by one. I was sitting in meetings all day. They really need to cushion those chairs better." She kissed the top of my head and studied my homework.

My mom is an enigma. She's like no other mom I've met before- clean, clear, ready to kick butt at any moment in time. Her long, pin-straight black hair reaches to her shoulders. It now has numerous flecks of gray in it as she approaches her fiftieth birthday. Her eyes are still the most perfect shade of deep purple that you can imagine, though. She appears much taller than she actually is because she stands so straight and confident, and she's very thin (mostly because she's a vegetarian). I hardly ever see her out of the color black- black suits to work, black jeans, black blouse, shiny black high-heeled devil-like boots that clicked on the floor when she walked. My mom is probably the strongest person I've ever met; I've only ever seen her cry once in my life, and that was the first time she saw my sister's children.

"Doesn't look like you're getting far on your homework," she commented.

I ran my hand over my head, fluffing up my hair in frustration. "I haven't been able to concentrate," I mumbled.

My mom ran her hand over my hair, flattening it back down. She touched my neck, sending a chill down my spine. "Wanna do this later?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, relieved.

"Get your shoes on," she said. "Our new neighbors arrived yesterday. I got a cake for them on my way home. You can come with me to say hi."

Although going with my mother to greet people I didn't know and listen to her talk about how they should switch to solar power didn't exactly sound fun, I agreed to go. It was better than nothing.