.
A short drive and he was home. Well, home might have been too strong a word for it. He was back to the generic beige apartment building where he lived in one of the generic beige apartments on one of the five stories that each looked like the other. Still, the rent wasn't bad, and he wasn't living with his parents.
He walked in the door and threw his keys on the small table in the living room/dining room/office/den/study that served as the main room of the apartment. It took a full two minutes for him to notice the woman sitting in his computer chair. He smiled as his sister made an "it's about time you noticed me" face and pounced at him for a hug.
"What are you doing here?" he asked after she'd finished crushing the breath out of him. He couldn't help returning her warm smile as she flopped onto his futon. Jazz could always cheer him up. He supposed that was why she was going to be such a good psychiatrist, but he liked to think--or at least hope--that he was more than a practice case.
"You know, I had a couple days free," she answered, picking at some imaginary lint on her slacks, a sure sign she was lying.
"Yeah. Right at the beginning of the semester,most med students suddenly find themselves with nothing to do." He walked the ten steps to his tiny kitchen, grabbing two sodas from the refrigerator and banging his head on that one cupboard door that would never stay shut. He returned to see his sister grinning.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just nice to see you haven't changed so much after all." She accepted the soda and snapped the top open while she gave him a minute to try to come up with a good way to evade the questions she knew he knew were coming. He sat down. She ran one long finger around the rim of her can.
Finally, he broke the silence like she knew he would. "I hate when you do that."
"Do what?" She looked at him with a perfectly innocent expression, then broke into a wide grin. "You may as well just talk to me. It's easier in the long run. How was the first day?"
He took a long drink of his soda, emptying half the can in one swallow. "It was...you know. Felt like stepping back in time. I have a new appreciation for all the teachers that put up with us."
"And..." she hesitated just enough for him to worry. "...how is everything else?" She set her soda down and looked directly at him, not giving him a chance to evade her. She watched his face go from genial to closed, as though he'd slammed a door between them.
"Fine. Everything's good." He finished his soda and stood up, walking to toss the can in the recycling bin, keeping his back to her. "What do you want to do for dinner? Do Mom and Dad know you're here? We could order pizza, or there's this new Mexican place that's opened up over on Dey Street." He felt her eyes on the back of his head and knew she wasn't going to give up that easily. He walked back over and settled himself into a chair. "It's as good as can be expected. And no, I haven't talked to Mom and Dad about the portal. Or about anything else. And no," he held up his hand before she could say anything, "I'm not going to."
"Danny," she leaned forward with a worried expression that somehow made her look more like their mother than he was comfortable with, "you can't keep this up. And I can't keep waiting to get a phone call telling me that you're dead. There's some reason why the ghost infestation is getting so much worse, why these new spirits are getting through. And it's more than you can handle alone."
Alone. That was funny, considering how hard he'd worked to be just that. Alone.
.
"I told you guys, I've got this one. Don't miss the concert. I'll catch up with you."
They hesitated, like he knew they would. They argued with him. He looked at the spectre looming over the Amity Park Mall and reached out to Tucker with one gloved hand.
"The longer you argue, the longer that thing is busting up the arcade. Give me the thermos and get moving."
In the end, he won. He'd been winning more and more lately. He could tell they were hurt, the way he kept pushing them away. Sam especially. It was for their own good. He watched the pair run from the mall parking lot before he took off into the air. Just because he was doomed to a life of second choices and limited possibilities, that didn't mean his friends were stuck too. In another six months they'd be looking at colleges, planning futures and heading off into the great unknown.
He'd be damned if he'd hold them back.