MONDAY

On Monday, Sam was back in school and Tucker still hadn't told her or Danny about the ghost in his computer. Saturday had been quiet without any more visitors from ghostly viruses, and on Sunday he'd dropped off Mikey's build. Nothing much of note happened after that, so he kept telling himself that there was nothing to tell.

But to be honest, Tucker didn't want to admit that he'd accidentally let a ghost loose into his computer by clicking on a clearly rigged link.

"Hey, how are you feeling?" he asked Sam at her locker early Monday morning. Danny stood just nearby, munching on a whey protein power bar for breakfast and looking slightly disgusted.

"Better, thanks." Sam turned the dial on her lock. "Grandma and I stayed home all Sunday watching movies in her room. The bowling alley is under renovation and that means the basement movie theater is, too."

"Yeah, she mentioned that," Danny said, distracted. "Why doesn't the school vending machine sell Doritos anymore?"

"Healthy food initiative." Tucker groaned. Danny suffered through another bite. "Sam went and complained to the principal."

Sam unlocked her locker and peered inside. Temporary Halloween wallpaper adorned the interior, perfectly complimenting the Casper High hallways that hung paper cut-out skeletons and large posters that said "BOO!" and "Happy Halloween!" Danny laughed when Sam sighed longingly at her "Countdown to Halloween" advent calendar. She opened up one of the slots and popped a bar of bat-shaped chocolate into her mouth. Finally, she collected her notebooks and her emergency hoodie for cold days.

"You should be thanking me," Sam continued after she swallowed her piece of chocolate bat. "I bet you have more energy and an easier time breathing when you run up the front steps of the school don't you?"

"I mean I guess," Tucker said, leaning against the neighboring locker. "I still say that food should be a choice, not a dictatorship."

"If you want Doritos, bring them from home," Sam grumbled. "Don't blame me for getting the school to cough up money for actually healthy food alternatives. I hear today's lunch is literally just mashed potatoes and mac-and-cheese. That's it. That's the whole menu."

"That sounds amazing," Tucker said as Sam closed her locker. The three of them made their way down the hall.

"Not the way our school makes it," Danny disagreed.

"Where is the protein? Where are the vegetables?" Sam elbowed Tucker. "Come on, you're all about eating meat and stuff. You can't tell me you'd survive on starch and carbs alone?"

"Can we stop talking about this? You're making me hungry!"

Danny held out the half-eaten protein bar to Tucker who scrunched up his face in distaste.

"Not that hungry."

Sam rolled her eyes.

The five-minute warning bell rang shortly after and they each said their goodbyes. Tucker headed straight for first-hour calculus and slumped into his seat in the fourth row behind Valerie.

Except she was absent today.

Tucker hadn't realized how much he'd been unconsciously absorbing Valerie's presence until she was just... gone.

He hoped she wasn't sick. He also realized that he never got his pen back.

As it turns out, returning to calculus lectures on a Monday after a stressful weekend was just enough to send Tucker over the edge into complete distraction. He began jotting down notes and whatever he could remember about the virus ghost's conversation with him in his notebook. Calculus was completely forgotten.

He called himself Technus, and said something about looking for a form? I dunno what that means but all the movies say that's most likely "possession talk." Gonna stay far away from that. Ghost has clearly been haunting (ha) the forums for a while now. Why? What exactly did I do when I clicked on that link?

Mrs. Shelley ignored her class on Monday just like on Friday, and simply went through the motions of jotting everything down on the board. Tucker's scribbled notes became absent-minded doodles. When he gave up on his art skills, he decided once more to text in class, peering nonchalantly beneath his desk and thumbing a few words to both Danny and Sam.

Danny responded but Sam didn't - no doubt in fear that Mr. Lancer would catch her - and even though Danny's responses were funny, Tucker still felt the pang of guilt in his chest about not telling either of them about the ghost in his computer.

The bell rang a long-suffering thirty minutes later, and just as he breathed the fresh air of freedom in the halls, he felt a hard shove against the back of his right shoulder and his backpack fell to the floor. The laptop inside thudded hard against the linoleum.

"Hey!" he cried without thinking. "What the hell, man?"

Tucker turned and saw Valerie Gray panting and staring at him like she had something incredibly important to say, but she didn't. Instead, she screwed up her face in defiance.

"Watch where I'm going? Why don't you move it and stop standing in the middle of the hallway like a complete moron!"

Tucker was too stunned to answer so Valerie shoved past him and stalked into Mrs. Shelley's classroom at a fast pace, no doubt to ask for notes on what she had missed.

Tucker reached down to pick up his backpack and prayed that his laptop wasn't destroyed. He stepped to the side of the hallway and leaned against the wall. Then he reached a hand inside and pulled it out. Upon closer inspection, the laptop seemed unharmed. He cringed when he thought of how badly he had snapped at Valerie. Even if she had called him a moron, he shouldn't have lost his cool.

Valerie came out of the classroom and shot him a dirty look as she did. She was in the "in" crowd, the ones with money who threw raging parties and got drunk on their parents' vodka on weekends. Valerie Gray had never been a friend to him, Danny, or Sam. It was unlikely that that would change now.

Still, Tucker caught up to her.

"Valerie, look," he began, but she didn't turn and she didn't slow her stride. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I'm sorry, I thought my laptop had gotten broken and I snapped. You weren't in class and you seemed to be in a hurry so I just wanted to see if you were okay-"

"Oh my God, could you stop talking? Or following me? I don't care about you yelling at me, I'm not a child."

Yep. That was about what Tucker had expected.

"Okay, well..." he tried to continue, but Valerie ducked into the girls' bathroom and slammed the swinging door back at him. "Just wanted to check."

…

"Hey, Danny?" Tucker asked on the walk home from school. "Have you considered trying to possess things? Not people, obviously, but like… inanimate objects?"

"Like what? Like a lamp?"

Sam shuffled along behind them and laughed a little at the thought of Danny possessing a lamp. The sun was out as a rare treat and they relished in it even as their boots tramped through wet, dead October leaves.

"I was thinking of something more advanced," Tucker clarified. "Like a phone or a computer."

"I dunno, I guess it never occurred to me? I mean, the Box Ghost can make boxes move and the lunch lady ghost shot meat at us that one time. That dragon amulet kind of possessed Sam… Do you mean something like that?"

"No," Tucker said, his tone a little insistent, "I don't mean levitating things or making cursed objects. I mean like physically getting inside them and manipulating them. Like a TV or a computer."

"Can you levitate things?" Sam suddenly interrupted.

Danny thought about it. He pulled his phone from his pocket, thought better of it, and then pulled out a textbook from his bag.

"I'm not talking about levitation!" Tucker protested again, but they stepped to the side of the sidewalk and hid behind a large, barren tree.

"I just wanna see," Danny said.

Danny held the textbook out in front of him with both hands and stared at it, hard. They watched as his eyes flickered from blue to green and back again, his powers leaking slightly out as he attempted to lift the book.

Nothing seemed to happen. He tried a few more times, but after straining with no results, they determined that no, Danny could not levitate things.

"Can we focus on my original question now?" Tucker snapped. Sam gave him a reproachful look that sent a small jab through his gut. "I just feel like you guys are ignoring me."

"Right, sorry Tuck," Danny said, disappointed. "So, possession, huh? I mean, I guess anything's possible. Like I said I've never seen anything like that before, but that doesn't mean it isn't a power that exists. I can't do much more than fly, turn invisible and sometimes successfully walk you and me through walls."

Sam ticked off her fingers as he listed his powers and nodded. "I often wonder if your powers are absolute, or if you keep developing new ones?"

"Like learning by association?" Tucker asked.

"Yeah, like that," Sam finished.

"So, you're saying that if Danny met a ghost that could possess objects - like a computer - then he could learn that power?"

"Or he already has that power and just needs to unlock it. If he doesn't have it, then he can never learn it."

"But we won't know unless he meets a ghost that can?"

"Anything's possible," Sam said with a nod.

Danny watched them banter back and forth about it. It was like watching a slightly worrisome tennis match, this time with Danny lagging behind. Tucker was weirdly all for testing it while Sam made a good point about how it was better they didn't go looking for trouble. Especially for ghosts that could cause trouble.

Finally, he interrupted.

"What makes you ask, Tuck?"

Tucker stopped walking. Sam trotted ahead a few steps before she, too, stopped.

"Um…" Tucker began.

Ideally, he would have avoided the conversation about the computer ghost for as long as possible but, given his line of questioning to Danny about possessing electronics, it seemed this was the best time to come clean.

"You're saying…" Danny began after Tucker finished his tale, "that a ghost is in your computer?"

"I mean, more or less. It admitted to being a ghost. Although I'm not sure if it is still there or not. I haven't seen it since Friday night."

"But why didn't you call me Friday!?"

Tucker winced. "I dunno, I was embarrassed. I'm supposed to be the tech-savvy one and I went and clicked on what was basically a virus without hesitation!"

"You know we're not going to judge you for something like that," Sam said. "You should have told us,"

Tucker shrugged, but his ears turned pink with shame. Of course, they wouldn't judge him. Why had he been so hesitant? Now he felt like an idiot - and also guilty for letting the ghost get away.

"Now what do we do?" Sam asked. "Wait for it to come back?"

"You could bring your PC to my house and we could scan it with my mom's tech?" Danny suggested. "We should definitely check if it's still in there, right?"

Tucker nodded. "Right. Okay, let's do it."

"Let's go right now," Sam said, pulling out her phone. "I'll call Henson."