Disclaimer: Just look at previous chapters, folks.
Inspiration for the last chapter was rather scarce. Hopefully, this chapter is better than the others.
Chapter 6: School
Danny scribbled down his answer to the last question on the English worksheet furiously, trying to get it done before the time limit was up and they would have to turn it in, but it was just so long. It seemed as though he had written a whole page, but only a short paragraph stood underneath the question. He glanced up at the clock above the door. Two minutes left! Turning frantic, he wrote faster, his handwriting becoming even sloppier, when he noticed that his hand was beginning to look slightly bluish. He had seconds before the pencil would fall from his grasp. Scratch that. Danny grabbed for his pencil franticly, but his hand kept going right through it. The intangibility began to creep up his arm like a spreading disease.
"Mr. Fenton," Lancer said firmly, "I realize you are not the most coordinated person in the world, but – Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! What's happening to your arm?"
Danny stared up at his shocked teacher with terrified eyes. What was he going to say? What could he say?
"What a geek," Dash sneered from his seat a few rows away. "No, he's worse than a geek – he's a freak!" The heads of the students around him snapped up and focused on his now-fully-intangible arm, and he glanced quickly at the looks of horror and fear on Tucker and Sam's faces, the raw repulsion his best friends felt towards him that stabbed a needle straight through his chest. The rest of the class strained their necks to see the commotion around Danny and Danny felt himself fall abruptly through his chair and hit the ground roughly. He scrambled back in a jerky crabwalk from the faces of his teacher and classmates peering down at him from above, his mind screaming for him to run, flee, disappear-
The rest of the class gasped when Danny Fenton became fully invisible from their gazes. But they still looked in his direction, seeming to be able to see right into him. He was sure they could see his heart hammering against his chest at the rate of a hummingbird's, how it suddenly hitched and stopped –
Danny sat up with a sharp gasp, eyes flying wide open. He was panting and could still feel his heart beat racing. Gulping in deep breaths, he forced it to slow down. Just a nightmare. A really scary nightmare. He laid back down and reached near his feet for the covers. It was very cold for some reason. And hard. Not comfortable at all. And for goodness' sake, where were his covers?
He peeked open an eye and glanced around at the familiar sight of the refrigerator and the breakfast table. What the – what am I doing in the kitchen? The clock over the oven said it was three forty-seven. I must have sleepwalked or something. With a sigh, Danny stumbled upstairs in a foggy stupor and climbed back into bed, but he tossed and turned, unable to close his eyes. Every time he did, he saw the disgusted faces of his friends and classmates around him. At five, he gave up and just laid there, fully awake and unable to keep his thoughts away from school and the horrible consequences that would happen if his secret was revealed. Which it probably would be.
His breathing became shallower and quick. A tingling sensation fizzed through his arms and he turned to see that they had turned invisible again. He tried to calm himself down. My emotions are sparking it, so if I just stay emotionless, I should be fine, he reasoned. Eyes closed, he shoved the feeling away and his arms returned to the visible world. The next few hours were spent trying to stay visible and tangible. He ended up phasing through his bed several times and landing underneath it, once even going through his floor as well and ending up in the kitchen (oh, so that's how I got there). Thankfully, he didn't have to deal with floating. But despite this, Danny was not happy. No matter how much he tried, Danny couldn't keep his mind from picturing all the ways he could reveal himself in school and he couldn't prevent himself from becoming scared and worried, in turn making him unable to hide his new powers.
By the time his alarm clock finally rang, Danny's mind was in state of a nervous wreck, but when he got up, he suffered from a bone-weary tiredness that only those experiencing severe mental stress and physical exhaustion could feel. He found that he couldn't summon up the energy to care as he blearily pulled his shirt on and half-walked, half-tripped down the stairs due to a foot randomly going intangible.
"Good morning, Danny," his older sister greeted him perkily.
Danny grunted in reply and pulled out his morning cereal while Jazz continued to read her book. Still groggy, he mechanically began to eat it only to find the spoon somehow in his bowl instead of his hand.
"Danny, you don't have to be so loud," Jazz said, looking at him over her book. Danny just blinked back at her and looked down. With an exasperated sigh, Jazz once again became absorbed in the mysteries of psychology while Danny observed his arm. Hmmm. Slightly bluish. A little cold and empty-feeling.
"Ak!" That woke Danny up. He quickly hid it under the table, hoping that Jazz hadn't seen it, and used his left hand to gulp down his breakfast before running out the door with his backpack and a quick "Bye!"
Jazz didn't even look up.
After a bus ride in which he half-dozed with a small string of drool dangling from the corner of his mouth, Danny trudged over to his usual meeting place with Sam and Tucker, a little apprehensive.
Tucker noticed it immediately, but chose not to say anything. It probably had something to do with yesterday. "Hey, dude."
Sam looked up. "Hi, Danny."
Danny tried to give them his customary bright smile, but was too tired to pull it off.
"Are you okay?" Sam asked.
"Yeah. A little tired, though."
"We noticed," Tucker said dryly. "What were you doing last night?"
Oh, just worrying about you guys finding out about me being a ghost. "Studying."
They both looked at him oddly. "Really?" Danny mentally smacked himself.
Tucker sighed. Danny was hiding something again, and the fact that he wasn't letting Sam know about it did little to ease the hurt or Danny's mistrust.
RING RING RING RING RING
"Oh, I'd better get to class," Danny excused himself. He rubbed the back of his neck nervously before running into the building, only to trip and fall over… well, to Tucker and Sam, it looked like his own two feet. Exchanging looks, they walked up the steps, Sam adopting a demure attitude and a slight smirk and looking down at him.
"You do that."
Danny didn't even hear it. He was frozen with horror at the sight of his absent right hand. His arm slowly followed it. No! he begged silently. Remembering his practice yesterday, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of a warm hand instead of the cold one he currently had.
"Hey, man, you're gonna be late," Tucker said worriedly as he looked down at Danny.
In response, Danny began picking up his books, only to have them fall to the ground when his left arm went intangible. He glanced at Tucker.
"Dude, are you sure you're alright?" Tucker asked as he bent down and began helping to pick up the books.
Danny nodded. "Like I said, just tired. I studied, and then I couldn't sleep last night."
"Really? I'd have thought studying was the perfect way to lull a person's brain into a dreamless stupor." Tucker tried to lighten the mood.
Danny just shrugged, making Tucker frown. "Me, too. Apparently not." They entered the classroom and Danny stopped short at the same scene he had seen in his dream. He flashed cold.
Tucker blinked hard to make his eyes focus. He must be tired, too. Danny had just flickered out of view for a nanosecond, and he only saw double or zero when he was ready to doze off.
When the class ignored him, Danny stiffly moved to his seat with Tucker behind him. He fell into his chair and felt his emotions leave him as he desperately tried to pay attention to Mr. Lancer's dull spiel on Julius Caesar.
BANG! Danny jerked awake when he dropped through his chair onto the floor. The class erupted into laughter and Mr. Lancer looked at him, annoyed, as he scrambled back into his seat and prayed no one had noticed the disappearance of his leg.
Tucker blinked again.
The rest of the class was an internal struggle between Danny and his exhaustion and barely-controllable powers that he was barely winning, especially since the class was almost an exact replica of his dream, excluding the "freak" part. He sighed with relief when it was over and absently walked to his locker, located in a secluded and inconvenient hall, to get his books when he heard a scream.
"AHHHH!" Mikey, one of the nerds, was sprinting down the hall and screaming at the top of his lungs. Well that was nothing new; Mikey was usually running away from somebody. Who is it this time? An ectopus followed him hot on his heels. Danny turned back to his locker before turning again and blinking up at the roaring ghost. I should probably stop it.
And how am I going to do that?
Too much brainpower needed. Danny just stared up at the ghost, who flew towards him.
Without thinking, Danny's arm shot out and punched it, sending it spiraling up to the ceiling. Bits of dust sprinkled down on him and the ectopus shook itself before growling at him and speeding towards him again.
Once more, Danny's arm moved in a blur and made the ghost experience a new force that caused it to see stars in front of its eyes. Dazed, it flew up through the roof with Danny staring after it.
Too tired to make any sense out of what had just happened, Danny walked numbly back to his locker and began turning the dial.
"Hey, Fen-ton!" Dash's nasal voice shouted as he rounded the corner into the corridor. A large hand grabbed Danny's shoulder and twirled him around so that Danny was looking up into the hard, blue eyes of the school bully.
"I just got a D on our spelling test! You know what that means?" the football player snarled.
Danny's mouth answered before his brain could process it. "That you belong in 1st Grade Writing class?"
Dash's face became bright red and with a growl, he shoved Danny into his locker and slammed the door, leaving the hall with an echoing laugh.
If Danny had been able to, he would have slapped himself. What was I thinking, talking back to Dash? Oh, that's right – I wasn't thinking. At all. Clearly.
"Danny?"
"Tucker!"
Tucker looked around for his friend before realizing what must have happened. Well, there was a reason he went out of his way to go down the usually-empty, minor hallway that lead to nowhere. He walked over to Danny's locker. "What's your number again?"
"58 – 42 – 54." Tucker expertly twirled the dial and Danny stepped out in relief.
"Thanks, man."
"No prob." Tucker began to fiddle with his PDA when he suddenly shook his head.
"What?" Danny asked curiously.
"Nothing. I think I'm tired, too, or I'm coming down with something, 'cause I keep seeing you sort of flicker."
"Flicker?" Danny sincerely hoped Tucker was not noticing what he thought he was noticing.
"Yeah, it's like one moment you're there, and the next you're still there, but in between, you're not. And sometimes it's just a small part of you, like your arm."
Goosebumps started crawling up Danny's arms and he felt his legs begin to go cold. With rising panic, Danny tried to beat it down, but Tucker was really not helping.
"I could have sworn you were missing an arm earlier, but after several seconds, it was right there. I don't know how I missed it. It was almost like it was … invisible or something."
On the word invisible, Danny backed up and held his hands behind him so as to brace himself against his locker, but he didn't meet any resistance. Tucker's eyes suddenly flew wide open and his mouth fell.
Danny looked down and almost screamed. He was halfway in the lockers! His chest and one of his legs were sticking out, but they were bluish and intangible. He looked back up at Tucker, unable to bear the sight of his disgusted face but also unable to look anywhere else. They locked eyes.
Tucker immediately turned to his PDA. What to do when your friend is stuck halfway into the school lockers? Nothing came up.
"EEK!" Danny's squeak made Tucker look up just in time to see his best friend slowly sink down through the floor and out of sight.
Evil cliffhanger, I know. But I'm tired! And this is the longest chapter yet! I don't mind long chapters, but I'd like the chapters in a story to have roughly the same length. Please give me feedback; criticism is welcome.