--IN MY MIND--
-CHAPTER 1-
He looked up at her face, flushed angrily pink, her hair dropping into her eyes. She pushed it back instinctively and unconsciously, glaring at the scrap of paper that she held between two black nails.
She stared at it for a few seconds, then crumpled it up and, twisting in her seat, chucked it into the garbage can. When she twisted back, she grabbed her soda and, looking up, locked onto his face. Ice blue eyes widened for a second as the owner realised that he had been caught- and then tore away quickly from the cool, if not slightly surprised amethyst ones of Sam Manson.
He blushed angrily, thankful the redness creeping up his neck was all that could be visible. He would have cried if she had seen him with a face like a beetroot.
Well, maybe not.
But he would have been- what was the word Lancer has used? Oh, yeah. Mortified. It would have been just the thing to boost his confidence: the girl that the school dork had been caught staring at saw him practically internally bleeding. Glancing at his friend Tucker, across the table, he allowed a small smile, being silently thankful that he didn't possess the flush of his best friend. Tucker didn't really mind, though. Since they had passed 15, he had become less weak of a girl magnet, and his current girlfriend thought it "cute" whenever he blushed. Or, to put it more accurately, whenever he managed to secretly stop the world, cover his face with pinky-red Magic Marker, and unfreeze it again.
Then Danny stopped thinking random thoughts, and shook his head wildly, trying to clear it. He felt strange- as though somebody had poured a load of syrup in one ear- cold syrup, at that. Before he could do anything else (including trying to duck down so that he could try and erase the fact that Sam most probably saw him shaking like a wet dog) he felt an icy shudder creep up each jutting-out bone of his spine, along the underside of his mouth, and come out with his breath, emerging as a lazy blue spiral of steamy smoke.
Tucker looked up, his mouth bulging with French fries, each one dripping with ketchup. Curiously, none of the girlfriends seemed to mind the caveman eating habits, which had… not improved from freshman year. He opened his mouth slightly, causing a fry (and a generous amount of ketchup) to drop onto the cardboard packaging.
"Ghost," he murmured, swallowing hurriedly, and reaching into his backpack to check that the thermos was in there.
"Yeah." Danny was up like a shot, his eyes flashing slightly. Just what he needed- the perfect fight to rid his mind of the syrup-y feeling and- though he didn't admit it to the more conscious part of his mind- to rid his mind of daydreaming about Sam.
Tucker and Danny walked out of the cafeteria, passing close by the table where Sam was sitting. She was new- Danny had found out her name only a couple of weeks ago- and she was a Goth. Her black hair, cut stylishly above her neck, clashed in a deep way with her purple lipstick and eggplant eyeliner. She was wearing a tiny black tank top, and a pretty plaid miniskirt. Black combat boots and striped knee socks completed the obvious evil-schoolgirl effect. She was alone at the table, and was obviously still angry for that unknown reason about the mysterious piece of paper.
Normally, Danny avoided these kinds of girls, as they had somewhat of a bad reputation. But she was different. This was more than a little kiddie crush- and… WAIT. Danny stopped his train of thoughts at a 200 mile an hour chase. Crush? He hadn't had one of those for a while… and heck, he had only just looked at the girl! Startled by this realisation, he thought back to his last crush, Paulina. Nah, he had figured late in sophomore year that she was just pretty on the outside. (Took a while, Tucker had joked, who had gone off Paulina when he had started dating the first in a long succession of girlfriends.) Valerie? Nah, she wouldn't need a reason to kick his butt whenever they met, ghost boy or not, after she discovered the secret. Luckily, her dad had scored a job guarding alien experimentation in Kauai. She wouldn't trouble Danny again, not for a while.
And how many times had he even seen the girl? Maybe a couple of times at the park, on a bench reading, and a few glances at the skating rink. And, at school? Barely anytime, except at lunches…
So why was he even doing this? Danny blinked ice eyes, barely noticing where he was going. As a result, he crashed into a potted plant that was used to mask the smell coming from the trash cans, outside of the door.
"Daniel, please watch where you are going." This time, it was that tired-sounding voice that snapped Danny from his daydream. Lancer loomed in front of the doorway, one eyebrow raised a little. Three years at Casper High, and Lancer had still never greeted him as though in any way he was pleased to see him. Well. Most of the time, no one had a reason to be impressed anyway.
"Uh, yeah, Lan- I mean, Mr. Lancer," Danny muttered, looking out to the window on the east side, where he could sense the ghost activity was growing more and more. "See you, in, um, class…"
"Indeed." The teacher had both eyebrows raised now, and was looking as tired as his voice. He sighed, and looked over at the packed cafeteria, where the hundreds of kids milled around, eating and throwing food and generally making enough noise to be kicked out of whatever dorm most seniors would be in next year. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tucker Foley shrug something under his jacket and Danny Fenton mutter something to him, before they both ran out of the cafeteria.
Lancer sighed a little heavier. "Only a few more months of this school…" he thought to himself, the one eyebrow going up unemotionally, and a dreamy look in his eye. "Then I'll be out of Casper High for good…"
Something poked his memory a little. He frowned, thinking, as he noticed a familiar blue shape zoom past the window, and registered the kids getting up to look. Funny… how Fenton is so very much like… Phantom…
Shaking his head and doing his customary sigh, Lancer walked out of the cafeteria to the Nurse's office. I gotta do something about this headache…
Sam angrily gulped down the last dregs of her soda. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes registering a table-full of girls staring at her, eyebrows raised and whispering.
She knew what they were saying amongst themselves. "Who's she?" "Those rags are like what my sister wore in 2nd grade when she played a skunk…" "I've heard her parent's own that estate…Rowleyn Castle., or something, in New York City!" "Well, what's she doing here?" Although they were at least two tables away, Sam heard them perfectly.
She thought again of the letter her parents had sent her, the words almost emanating out of the trash can behind her, poking her on the back of the neck and sending more hot bursts of anger into her heart. She thought of her grandma, back in New York.
She thought of the letter.
Dear Samantha,
We regret to say that your grandmother has had a violent heart attack, and will not be able to accommodate you in her house anymore, as she will likely die in a few months, and the point will be spent.
Although our hearts are filled with sadness at this turn of events, we have to remind you that you will need to look for suitable accommodation in Amity, as we are going to be in L.A. for the rest of the fortnight, then back to Switzerland at the end of the month.
Apologies for this dreadful turn of events, and we will be awaiting your answer soon.
Sincerely, Mother and Father.
PS. We apologise for not being able to turn up to see you at the end of the month. I and Jeremy are extraordinarily busy with things we must attend to. An inconvenience, yes, but arranging for your grandmother's grave in the family plot must be done.
Biting her lip, Sam held back tears. Her grandma, the only one who ever understood her, was going to die. And her parents had written a letter to her as they would a foreign business person! Other things to attend to? No, thought Sam, fuming. All they want is to get tanned in LA and then ask a solicitor to arrange for the funeral!
Sam buried her face in her hands. Having to come to Amity straight out of the hustle and bustle of New York, where everyone looked at everyone else but didn't really care what they looked like- except, maybe, at school- to Amity, who's every resident had at least five things to say about one random person off the streets.
She sighed heavily. "I hate this school. No-one here seems to- well, have personalities. Other than mimicking Barbie dolls"- she looked over at the girl named Paulina's table, grimacing-"…and that's definitely not much of a personality."
Then she thought again. There had been one person- a boy. Sam silently scolded herself, as she had always been a firm believer in just taking to the studies and ignoring the male gender as a whole.
But this boy- he had a spirit. He had an aura about him- Sam didn't know what it was, but she felt almost awakened when she had, unapologetically found him staring at her. Even now, a few minutes later, she found herself thinking of how cute it was when he widened his eyes a little- ice blue eyes- and turned away. She thought again, biting her bottom lip slightly and showing a hint of a smile, of the slight blush that had crept up his neck. So sweet, Sam thought…
Then she snapped back to reality. No, Sam, she told herself. No boys. Just do the work, concentrate, and then you may be out of Amity- for good. But, absent-mindedly, Sam couldn't stop thinking of the way he had crashed into the potted plant near the exit. It was comic, yet surprisingly cute.
She picked up her fork, and stabbed at a piece of lettuce on her plate, wincing as the fork squeaked along the plastic rim. She wondered vaguely, eyes stinging as her mind turned back to the letter, whether she would see the boy again. She doubted it. In her past week or so at Amity, Sam had only seen other kids in her year at lunch, and there were two different lunch periods. Wondering dimly why she was thinking so much of a boy she had known- wait! She didn't even know him, not really- for the space of five seconds, she stared out of the window. She murmured, barely conscious of what she was saying, "Maybe it won't be so bad, if he is here…"
A blue streak whooshed past the window, causing half a dozen kids to rush over and stare, and making Sam start, right out of her daydream.
So, how'd you like it? It took less than an hour to write (mainly because I was watching video after video on YouTube and also snacking liberally on Double-Stuf mint Oreos… yep, I DID turn to the dark side of writer's block, and brought back some of the cookies! And, also, that I am a slow typist- two fingers, baby :D)
Nyita7
