slugzilla: y wernt u on last nite
jonesy: srry, ghost got me in trouble again.
slugzilla: dude, u gotta do something about that ghost.
jonesy: i know, but...what?
slugzilla: wel...who u gonna call?
jonesy: wybie, ghostbusters arent real.
slugzilla: thats what you say.
slugzilla: u no, the girl who battled n evil hand.
Coraline couldn't help but giggle. At least in the face of whatever problem she had, Wybie could always make her laugh. Even if it was usually by annoying her until she hit her breaking point.
But, she realised as she mulled it over, he did have a point. The world was full of strange and unusual things, things that most people would scoff at if you tried to tell them. But she'd seen one of those things, she'd beaten it at its own game, and now...well, she had no right to be laughing at people who believed in ghosts. Especially since there was one haunting her bedroom.
And if there were people out there who believed in ghosts, maybe who had even fought them...then it wasn't that much of a leap to assume they'd still be fighting. That somewhere out there, there actually were ghostbusters.
Coraline laughed again, but it sounded kind of weak to her. She was being silly. People who actually believed in the paranormal were considered crazy. She had no idea who to call, and it wasn't like she could just go up to people and ask, "Excuse me, I know this sounds weird, but do you hunt ghosts?"
There was an important thought there that she wasn't having, and she waited patiently for it to turn up. The room seemed oddly quiet, and she wondered if her parents had gone out somewhere, if they were making friends. Probably not, she decided. Her parents almost never went out, and they weren't exactly the social type. Not to mention that her mother had no desire to have anything to do with their neighbours, complaining that Mrs. Parker was a nosy old busybody who was trying to run her household for her and that the Fentons were just plain weird.
She paused, staring at the blinking message bar on her computer screen flash orange, then gray, as things began to line up in her head. Weird, yes. Crazy? Maybe not so much.
"You could have picked worse friends than the Goth girl, the techno-geek, and the kid whose parents hunt ghosts..."
slugzilla: jonesy? you there?
Coraline couldn't help the wide grin that snuck across her face as she typed a reply, not paying a huge amount of attention to what she was saying. If she played her cards right, she could get rid of her resident poltergeist, and convince her new friends that she wasn't crazy or a liar, in one fell swoop.
Now, all she needed was a plan.
...
Going up and knocking on the Fenton's door and asking if they really hunted ghosts was probably not the best idea. And yet, that was exactly what Coraline was doing.
She paused at the foot of the steps, wondering if this was really such a brilliant idea after all. So far, her poltergeist had only struck at night, and if this went wrong, she was going to look like a total, complete idiot. Not to mention she'd probably wind up branded "that crazy girl who believes in monsters" again...
Taking a deep breath, Coraline squared her shoulders, readjusted her exploring bag so it didn't slide off her shoulder, and, almost without realising she was doing it, reached up and grabbed the stone with a hole in it. Just rubbing her thumb over its smooth, hard surface made her feel a little calmer.
"Okay. Let's get this over with," she said aloud, to no one in particular. Before she could lose her nerve, she plastered her best ingratiating smile over her face, marched up the stairs, and rang the doorbell.
Or rather, tried to ring the doorbell. She wasn't expecting the doorbell to suddenly start glowing green, grow teeth, and snap at her finger, and barely pulled the appendage away in time. Unfortunately, the snarling (and the strangled half-scream she'd never admit to letting out) didn't seem to have been loud enough to alert anyone within the house to her presence. After a few minutes of waiting in awkward silence, Coraline reached for the bell again, thought better of it, and knocked on the door.
Coraline waited for a few more minutes, then pounded on the door as hard as she could. If nobody was home...
But she was rewarded by a shout of, "Is somebody gonna get that?" from somewhere inside the house. No answer was received, and Coraline heard footsteps from the other side of the door, before it swung open. The redheaded girl who opened the door stared at Coraline for a moment, and then raised an eyebrow. "I'm guessing you're here to see Danny."
"Actually -" Coraline began, but the girl cut her off.
"Well, it's good to see that he's socializing." She stepped out of the doorway. "He's up in his room with Tucker."
Coraline opened her mouth to explain that Danny wasn't expecting her, but the girl was already walking back into the house, her nose buried in a large book. Coraline was left alone on the doorstep, with the door wide open before her.
She only hesitated a few seconds, debating with herself, before she hurried inside, half-afraid that someone would see her and demand to know what she was doing there.
Coraline wasn't sure exactly where upstairs Danny's room was, or even where 'upstairs' was, but after a bit of nosing around she quickly found herself outside of what had to be his door. She arrived just in time to hear Tucker's raised voice from the other side of the door. "Not everything is about you, dude!"
"Whatever." Danny sounded frustrated, angry even. Suddenly Coraline wasn't so sure that this was the best time for her plan. She squashed that squiggle of doubt, though. She was here now.
She raised a hand to knock, but before she could move, the door swung open and she found herself face-to-face with a very startled-looking Danny. She caught a glimpse of blue walls and a model rocket hanging from the ceiling before Danny slammed the door behind him, a frown of deep suspicion forming on his face. "What are you doing in my house?"
Coraline tried on her best sheepish grin. "What, can't I come over and say hi to a friend who just happens to be my neighbour?"
"Nice try." Danny shifted slightly, and Coraline noticed that he looked prepared to run. Or fight, she realised a half second later. She wondered if he knew any martial arts. "And that totally explains why you're standing outside my door listening in on me and Tucker."
"I wasn't listening in," Coraline argued, even though she had a strong feeling it wouldn't do any good. "I was going to knock, but you opened the door on me."
"Yeah, right." Danny was still eyeing her like he'd caught her with her hand in the cookie jar, but at least he hadn't outright thrown her out yet. Coraline decided to take that as a good sign.
"Look, I know you don't really like me," she started. "But just hear me out, okay? I don't know what I did, but whatever it is, I'm sorry. And it's really awkward trying to hang out with your friends when you hate my guts, so...truce?"
"Wait, you want a truce so that you can hang out with my friends?"
"That came out wrong." Coraline shifted nervously. This wasn't going quite as well as she'd hoped, though it was going about as well as she'd expected. "I meant - oh, forget it. This was a stupid idea. I'll just go home and we can go on awkwardly trying to avoid each other in a school with five hundred students. And pretending we don't notice each other when we're both talking to Sam and Tucker. Up to you."
Danny folded his arms across his chest, but he relaxed slightly. "Fine. Truce. But this doesn't mean we're friends."
"Got it." Coraline couldn't help a small grin. It wasn't perfect, but this was already way easier than convincing Wybie that she wasn't crazy had been. "Shake on it?"
Danny looked at her hand as though it were a live wire. "Thanks, but I'll pass."
"Wha -" And then it clicked. "Wait, you think I shocked you in history class on purpose?"
"I don't know," Danny admitted, grudgingly, "but I'm not gonna risk it."
"Look, I don't know what happened any more than you -" Coraline stopped. "No, wait, that's not true." She reached up and carefully unclasped her necklace, dropping the stone with a hole in it into her open palm. "Here, give this a poke."
"And get zapped again?" Danny shook his head. "What is that, anyway?"
"It's a stone with a hole in it." Coraline dangled it from its chain, then playfully held it up to her eye. "It's good for...bad...things..."
"What?" Danny asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing," Coraline answered, a little too quickly, pulling the stone away from her eye and blinking. She couldn't have seen that, could she? A second look just confirmed it, though. Seen through the hole in the stone, Danny was outlined with a faint greenish glow.
Just like the ghost in her bedroom.
Her plan was suddenly the last thing on her mind. Without thinking, she blurted out the first thing that came into her head. "You're a ghost?"