You could barely see it under the red lining of his shirt sleeve. It was very faint, but it looked at least a couple of days old. But it hadn't been there the day before, not this large bruise.
It couldn't have been Dashiel. I know he's a bully, most of the teachers do, but we can never pin anything large enough to actually suspend him. Most of the students are afraid of him, so they don't come to us to explain anything, either, even with the multitudes of lessons on bullying and how to stop it. Still, he's not the bully that actually harms kids, he just uses his muscle to intimidate. No, he goes for the embarrassment route, and is definitely the curator of the photo of Daniel's underpants being hung on the flag pole instead of the flag. No one could pin that to him, unfortunately, otherwise he would have suffered enormous consequences.
I'm becoming sidetracked, though.
The point it, Dashiel could not of caused this injury, nor could he have caused the bruises I constantly see on Daniel's body. He often comes to class late, rubbing the back of his neck. There are four, long, skinny, curved bruises imprinted in his skin which he's trying (and mostly failing) to cover. Faint strangling marks on one of my students two out of every five days a week. He came with those today in addition to the bruise on his right arm.
I knew I needed to do something. I hadn't acted soon enough, probably, but it was better to intervene later than never at all, lest he end up killed. "Mr. Fenton, I need to see you after school today," I explained to him as I handed out the latest quiz. Daniel looked at his grade and sighed, grimacing slightly. Whether it was from telling him to stay after class or from the sixty-eight percent on the quiz, I didn't know. As I grabbed a new piece of chalk from my painted metallic desk and went to the blackboard to start class, I saw Tucker and Sam give Daniel a sympathetic glance, which he returned with a thankful smile.
I started on my planned lesson for the day, thankful that one of the most notorious skippers was in my class for the lesson instead of doing whatever it was he did to get those bruises. Well, at least for now.
When Mr. Fenton walked into my classroom, I was surprised, to say the least. I had completely forgotten that I had planned to talk to Daniel about his constant injuries after school today. It must've been completely obvious that the meeting had slipped my mind by the first comment he uttered when he slung his bag across the back of a desk chair and sat on the desktop.
"You wanted to talk to me after school Mr. Lancer?" Daniel asked, rubbing the back of his neck, tired bags from lack of sleep clearly showing on his skinny, pale face.
"Yes. I did," I declared, rising from my desk chair. I walked over to him and crossed my arms. "Mr. Fenton, I noticed that you had an extremely large bruise on your right arm during class today." Daniel looked at me, a confused expression on his face. "May I ask where you got it from?" I questioned gently. He bit his lip and looked at his elbow. He became a little less tense, but kept rubbing the back of his neck. I realized he was pretending to be nervous then, and most likely had pretended to be confused.
"What bruise?" He asked. He held out his right arm on the desk and rolled up his sleeve. To my astonishment, there was no bruise on his skin. Maybe he hadn't been pretended to be confused.
"You had a big purple mark during class, Mr. Fenton," I stammered out. I was thinking about how he could hide such a remarkable injury when he responded.
"Oh!" Daniel exclaimed. "That was a red mark. Jazz gave me a ride to school, and I sat on my arm for the entire ride. I guess that could've looked like a bruise," he reasoned. I looked at him skeptically and he blinked and kept looking back at me. I could've sworn I heard him gasp almost inaudibly and saw a mist in the air for a split second. Daniel looked at the clock on the wall and jumped off of his makeshift seat, grabbing his backpack. "Sorry Mr. Lancer, I gotta go. See you tomorrow!" Daniel waved slightly before racing down the hall and bursting out of the school. I scratched my head.
I didn't believe him, that mark was almost certainly a bruise. But he clearly looked confused, and his arm was as healthy as a thin teenager's arm should've been. Maybe I was going crazy, but I knew to pay special attention to his health from then on.
The next day, a faint scar could be seen running down the length of Daniel's lower arm if a person just so happened to look closely at Daniel enough. Once again, at the end of the day, when I called him in, the injury was gone and Daniel had an explanation. I didn't buy this story, though. A bruise is easier to explain away; a deep scratch wound, not so much. Still, I had no evidence he was lying, and no reason to keep him after school. So, I had to let him go.
He wasn't injured the day after, though I kept him after school so he could serve a detention for being late. The next day, he was injured, but I decided to not call him in. He would come in, some days with a bruise, some without, and most of the time he was late. I'd call him in once a week, asking about his strange, disappearing injuries, but he never explained them. He stopped making excuses, though, and didn't really try to hide them from me. He knew I caught on, and I thought maybe I'd made a mistake for calling him out at all.
I never did build a rapport with him, never attempted to build trust. Like a fool, I assumed he would trust me, especially after I let him retake his exam last year.
I figured out that calling Daniel in was a good idea when the ghosts attacked.
Daniel had another set of strangling marks that day, what looked like a burn mark poking out of his now long-sleeved shirt, and an ever-so-slight favor of his right foot. His mouth was trying to stay in a smile, but his eyes were downcast, grimacing. Unusually, he was actually attempting to hide this part of his injury from me. He sat at his seat quietly, doodling on his note page instead of taking notes like he usually did.
Yes, I noticed that even though he does poorly on tests, he seems to take extremely good notes. I'm not surprised; when he's studied for any exam or project with me he brings his own notes to study off of because they're detailed and make sense to him. He does well whenever he does that, and I think it's the only reason he's passing the class. Otherwise, he does poorly. I have never understood it, as I know he isn't signed up for any extracurriculars involved with the school. I guess he could be doing activities outside of school, but I doubt it.
Yet he doesn't do homework, doesn't study on his own, and subsequently fails or half-finishes most of his work.
But I'm going off on a tangent again.
As I passed out yet another quiz where Daniel had barely passed, I saw the quick sketches out of the corner of my eye. They were all of ghosts that haunted Amity, except for one. Danny Phantom. There were even two I didn't remember seeing. One was big, black, and had ram horns. Another was humanoid, had flaming hair, and he'd drawn the symbol that Danny Phantom has on his chest. But it wasn't Danny Phantom. This was the one sketch that worried me the most: it was the most detailed, the one that nobody had seen or heard of. I had heard of the black one, but I had never seen it. The flaming hair ghost I hadn't even heard of. Not by any ghost hunters.
Suddenly, a thought hit the back of my mind, one that would make sense. Could ghosts be tormenting Daniel because his parents are ghost hunters? This thought seemed the most logical. He wouldn't tell anyone about it because the ghost could've threatened anyone he told. The bruises would fade quicker because, according to the Fentons, ectoplasmic injuries hurt more at the time of injury, but healed faster because the body got rid of the ghostly ectoplasm, a toxic substance, extremely efficiently. I almost cheered out loud. I had figured Daniel out, could actually confront him about it. I let him know to drop by after school.
The ghosts attacked thirty minutes until the end of the first class. There were two. One was the Box Ghost. Everybody had known the Box Ghost by then, as he was the only ghost that Phantom could scare away with just a look. Nobody screamed or even looked remotely scared. Most of the students looked confused. Daniel was banging his head against his desk in annoyance. I grabbed a textbook from the bookshelf next to my desk and went over to swat the pesky ghost. He flew away with one of his infamous "Beware"s.
The other was a new ghost, one nobody had seen, I guess other than Daniel. It was the exact ghost he had drawn. The ghost had come intangibly through the floor under Daniel's desk, grabbing Daniel by his neck and choking him, pinning him against the ceiling. He blasted the door handle with ectoplasm that somehow melted the metal. Daniel looked at the ghost in more of surprise than terror, like all of his peers. Well, and me. The ghost hissed something in Daniel's ear and his looked hardened. He whispered something into the ghost's ear and the ghost just smiled tauntingly. The ghost swung Daniel around and let him fly across the room. Daniel's back slammed into the wall and he crumpled to the floor. He winced and stood up shakily, while the other ghost just floated there, a confident expression clearly etched on his face.
When Daniel didn't do anything other than stand, the ghost frowned. He looked around and smirked when his eyes landed on a specific young woman. Daniel snarled as the ghost picked up Samantha and held her by her neck. "Let. Her. Go," Daniel demanded menacingly. I turned towards him, shock written in my face as well as on the other students' expressions, except for Samantha and Tucker.
"Make me," The ghost goaded, still smirking. Daniel scowled and hopped over the desk with ease and grace that he was unknown for but I had thought he might posses. He punched the ghost in the face and the ghost let go of Samantha. Crouching next to his friend, Daniel carefully tended to Sam.
However, the ghost was barely hurt by the punch. He flew over to Daniel and kicked the teen, giving Daniel a nice lump on the back of his head. Daniel swiveled and pushed Samantha underneath a desk. Tucker scurried over to his injured friend and started to take over tending to Samantha, though she did most of the work herself.
Daniel sprung forwards and gave an incredibly precise roundhouse kick to the ghost's face, flinging him up to crash against the ceiling. The ghost fell down right into Daniel's well aimed powerful punch. The ghost crashed against the wall, but quickly recovered. He sent a green ray out of his hand towards Daniel, who dodged.
They exchanged blows and dodges, each countering the other's strikes. Daniel's fighting was top-notch, surpassing Ms. Grey's or even his own mother's skills. The two fought for a long time. Nobody called the Fenton's, they knew from the start of the fight Daniel was much better than his parents ever were.
However, Daniel eventually became worn down. He was fighting a ghost, and he is human. He never stopped fighting until the ghost shocked him and threw his limp body against the windows. Daniel was scratched, bruised, and bloodied. He was still very much breathing, though, a testament to the endurance he never showed.
I had been wrong, though close, in my previous assessment of Daniel's problem. He wasn't being attacked because his parents hunted ghosts. Daniel was attacked because he hunted ghosts.