It wasn't hard to find a place to change back into his human form. The dressing rooms were pretty deserted at midday. When he was human again, Danny located the food court. He scanned the tables but couldn't see Tucker or Sam. If they had been there they were long gone now. He turned in defeat and ran straight into Star. The smoothie she'd been sipping fell from her fingers to the ground and the lid popped off. Its bright pink liquid began to leak out of it and sizzle on the hot pavement. Danny, mortified, knew what would come next.

"What the Hell, Fenton!" Star screamed. "That smoothie cost me seven dollars you piece of-"

"Wow," Dash said, pushing his way through a few smaller students and toward the two of them. "You seriously wanna die today, don't you?"

Danny hesitated. His gut reaction was to take all of his buzzing adrenaline energy into putting Dash, finally, into his place. He imagined what it would feel like to punch Dash so hard that his nose broke. He imagined the cracking sound it would make, the blood, the horror of everyone around them at what he'd done. The thought didn't make him feel better. Instead, the thought scared him. This wasn't who he was. With the gruesome picture of Dash's blood in his mind's eye, Danny suddenly felt afraid of himself.

Holding back was what Tucker and Sam wanted him to do. Yes, it was for the sake of his secret, but also for the sake of stupid, innocent idiots like Dash who had no idea what they were dealing with now. Holding back was for protecting other people, not hurting them.

So Danny held back.

Kwan and Dash made short work of him. They picked him up by both his arms and his legs and carried him about fifty feet to the wave pool. With two swings and a release, Danny was flung into the lukewarm waters of Typhoon Bay and left to soak by the bullies who had been tormenting him since he'd met them. Yet, somehow, it didn't really hurt. The whole thing wasn't that bad. Compared to the rearrangement of his stomach by the gut-punch from that shadow ghost, Dash and Kwan were… tame?

That couldn't be right.

But it was. This was his new reality. He'd be pretending to be weak and feeble and picked on by his bullies until graduation, but none of it would hurt anymore. Well, not much.

This is what it means to keep my secret, he decided.

Danny picked himself up and slogged out of the wave pool. His white t-shirt stuck to him like glue and he caught more than one person staring at his pathetic expression.

He found Tucker and Sam about five minutes later by the lazy river. They were standing on their tiptoes and searching around frantically for him. People were giving them worried looks like maybe they'd lost a small child. Their worry made him feel even worse for ditching them. He scooted his way between a family of seven and walked over to greet them.

"Danny!" Sam cried. She flew forward to give him a hug but paused at the last second, staring at his wet shirt. It was still sticking to his skin. She could probably see his bare chest through it. How embarrassing.

"Yeah, Dash and Kwan made good on their promise," he told her.

Sam swallowed and then cleared her throat, her eyes finally meeting his face again. "Right. I was just going to ask."

"You look okay, though. Right?" Tucker asked. "You're not mad anymore?"

"No, you guys were right. I held back and, to be honest, it was nothing compared to…"

"Compared to what?" Sam asked.

Danny thought about the shadow ghost from before. He thought about the mysterious second ghost who had spoken to it inside Terror Mountain. He wanted to tell them everything, but he also knew there was no way they'd find a place to be alone. Maybe it was better to let them have a day off for once. He'd tell them tomorrow.

"Uh, nothing. I mean, I'll tell you later. Can we just go float around in the lazy river or something? I'm already so over this trip."

"Same," Sam said. Only now did Danny realize that she was sweating. He'd never seen Sam sweat this much before.

"Yeah, let's get wet," Tucker agreed. "Come on, before all the good innertubes are taken!"

Danny followed the pair of them toward the lazy river. It was a long, winding pool that held plenty of screaming kids, overweight dads on innertubes, and mothers trying desperately not to get their hair wet. As Tucker pulled an innertube out from under a large, discarded pile at the river entrance, Danny decided it was probably best if he just shed his t-shirt altogether. It was wet and heavy anyway. Sam kept her face low under her sunhat. She must really be overheating.

"Come on, Sam, you gotta take all that stuff off. Not to pressure you into it or anything, but I'm dying just looking at you."

She wasn't looking at him. She almost seemed to be avoiding eye contact with him.

"Sam, seriously. Are you okay-?"

Before he could approach her, Tucker gave out a yelp. The pile of innertubes was tumbling down and onto him. Danny ran forward and pulled Tucker out of the way just before he was buried.

"Tucker! Why did you pull directly from the pile?" Danny scolded.

"I-I didn't!" Tucker stammered. "I mean I was gonna, as a joke, but I could tell it would be too risky, so I just turned around to get one off the ground. It was like… it fell all on its own!"

Sam padded up to them in her sandals and reached out to touch Danny's arm.

"Did either of you see that…?"

Her voice was low and scared. Danny's skin prickled.

"No, see what?"

His voice was just as low now. Tucker looked between them, confused. Sam's fingers dug into Danny's bicep. Staring straight ahead, she pointed forward at the pile of innertubes.

"That."

Tucker and Danny looked up and – almost missing it – saw the hazy, hulking outline of the shadow ghost. Just like before it was there and gone in an instant.

"Danny?" Tucker accused.

"Yeah," he hesitated, still shivering. "That's the thing I was going to tell you about later."

"You're keeping a spooky-ass demon ghost a secret from us and I nearly get pummeled with giant innertubes!?"

"I'm sorry," he replied with vapor passing over his lips, "I just-"

A voice interrupted him. "You guys alright?"

The three turned to see a park employee standing behind them with a lazy look of concern on his face. He was a young man, easily in college, and his pale fingers were stained from cigarette smoke. He wore his stubble scruffy and his hair long. It was sandy blonde and currently pulled up into a man bun. Sam suspected that if the employee dress code would allow him to, he would probably be wearing a leather jacket and carrying a book written by Thoreau around with him. Instead, he was in the same swim trunks and red polo as the rest of the male park employees. Around his neck were a shining, silver whistle and a set of dog tags.

"Do I need to call someone?" the man asked as they stared with looks of surprise and fright on their faces.

"No," Sam finally answered. "We're fine. Just spooked is all."

"Yeah, that could've been bad," the employee said. "I mean, not 'put you in the hospital' bad, but still bad."

Tucker exchanged a look with Danny. Both noticed just how uninterested the man's tone seemed, though he was doing his duty to check on park guests.

"Thanks anyway," Tucker added. "We're gonna just head out now."

"You're from Casper High, right?" the man asked.

Danny nodded. "Yeah, we're the field trip going on right now."

The man smiled. The three of them found it discomforting.

"That's what I thought. Well, take care now. Don't stand under any more things that could topple down and crush you."

He walked away with his hands in his pockets and whistled an eerie tune. Danny felt another shiver come over his spine and turned around to check for the shadow ghost again. It must have just left. After a moment, the shivering finally stopped.

"Well," Sam sighed. "I think I'm officially done with today."

"Yah," Danny groaned.

"Me three," Tucker added with finality.

Sam pulled out her phone and dialed for Henson while Tucker went to go and explain to Mr. Lancer that they were leaving early because of a Manson family emergency. It was a lie, but Lancer wouldn't mess with the Manson family if he could help it. Not the way that Sam's family donated heaps of money to the school every spring fundraiser.

In the meantime, Danny kept watch. He was kicking himself for nearly letting Tucker get hurt because he'd decided to keep quiet about the shadow ghost. Was it really too much to ask to have a nice, quiet day at the waterpark? Regardless of how hot the days had been, Danny could sense that the winds were changing. This was literally his last day to have a dip in the pool (a dip not induced by bullies throwing him in) before autumn and the cold and then winter started to set in.

"Come on," Danny begged, grabbing Sam's hand. She jumped, startled. "I seriously just wanna take a quick dip and you're coming with me."

"Wait, Danny-!" Unable to pull her hand away, she dropped her bag onto the ground to protect her phone and wallet from what was coming.

Without further ado, he pulled her, bathing cloak and all, into the lazy river and fell backward on purpose to make as big of a splash as possible. Sam recoiled but not in time, and she found herself waist-deep in a lukewarm pool with water dripping down from her hair. Danny was underwater and so she reached forward and held his shoulders down for only a second to express her distaste by pretending to drown him. He popped up right after and grinned.

"You can't drown me," he winked and then whispered, "I'm already dead."

"What the Hell?" Tucker laughed from above them. He must've just gotten back from talking to Lancer. "You're swimming without me?"

The sign said not to jump into the lazy river, but of course, Tucker didn't care. He'd just survived an attack from Innertube Mountain, and he wasn't going to miss out on swimming with his friends one last time before autumn. With a half-hearted cannonball that wouldn't hurt his knees when he hit the bottom of the pool, Tucker created an even bigger splash and now a large disturbance. One mother who was trying to keep her hair dry was soaked. Sam was mortified and Danny laughed with Tucker as the three of them were whistled at by a lifeguard who looked like she wished she was anywhere else right now.

I decided to post two chapters this week to motivate me to get this arc finished by next week. I hope you enjoy the surprise posting!

(Although, based on my absences, every chapter is kind of like a surprise posting... *thinking emoji)

Well, anyway, I hope you liked it!

-Song