Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I really didn't want my friends seeing where I lived for fear that they'd either tell the authorities or spend their time trying to convince me to live with one of them. I was perfectly fine where I was, thank you!
"U-Uh, t-that's not a good idea," I stuttered, shrinking away from them just a tiny bit.
"Why not?" Danny asked, leaning over onto my desk. "Is there something you don't want us to know?"
A small electric shock ran through me and Danny's hand, which he had been using to pin my hand to my desk so that I wouldn't run away, jerked back. Those little electric shocks happened all the time, they never really hurt. They just stung a bit. Before I could gather the courage to leave the room, Danny recovered from the sting and pinned my hand to my desk again, leaving no way to escape.
"T-The house i-is just a m-mess, t-that's all," I laughed nervously. "I-I have t-to finish cleaning..."
Apparently, they were not letting this go. Even Tucker got in on trying to make me tell them where I lived, and eventually I just fell silent and, hanging my head, thought for a while. I didn't have this problem in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, everyone pretty much ignored me and I was just the quiet kid who knew the answers to everything and was too kind to not help you study right before the test. I'd never been pressured like this to let someone come over my house; everyone had just really... known. No one ever tried to come over my house there anyway, though. Most people only dropped by to do school projects or for me to help them study.
"You guys aren't going to let this go, are you," I eventually sighed, stating my sentence instead of phrasing it as a question.
"No, not really," Sam said, trying not to laugh.
I sighed again and finally relented my aversion to them coming over, but I did force them to promise to not tell anyone where I lived and to not freak out. They promise, and then I made Tucker and Danny double-promise because Danny had his fingers crossed and Tucker wasn't paying attention. For the rest of the Biology period, I was silent and refusing to pass notes with them, silently upset that they had pressured me into letting them follow me home. Though, I guess it didn't really count as home when you were living there illegally and you had hacked the circuits for everything you needed. But home was where you lived, right? It was confusing.
After school, I led them to the apartment complex but this time, instead of phasing through the wall, I picked the lock on the door and let them in. For the most part, they didn't freak out. Not even Sam freaked out, and I ended up baking cookies for us all. Well, since Sam was a vegetarian and didn't eat anything with animal product in it, I made special vegetarian-friendly cookies for her. She instructed me on the specific recipe of her favorite kind, and she was rather happy that the cookies turned out well.
"So, you live here? I heard this apartment was haunted and that's why it hasn't been rented out for a while," Danny commented, eating the cookies with a casualness I wished I had. We had all settled on the long couch, but I still wasn't used to the questions.
"U-Uh, yeah... T-There was a g-ghost here, b-but I m-managed to convince i-it to l-leave." Instead, it now haunted my old home in Wisconsin.
"And now it's haunted by you? Sick!" Tucker exclaimed, getting really excited over this. I thought everyone could talk to ghosts in the calm, persuasive way that I did. Was this something only I could do because of my personality?
"I-I guess you could say that," I whispered, trying not to squeak. Everything was okay for about an hour until Sam brought up a question I was dreading.
"So, Rose," she said, a concerned frown on her face, "why do you live here? Don't you have parents?"
Danny and Tucker winced when I obviously retreated into my shy turtle shell. "U-Um, n-no. My p-parents h-have been d-dead for a l-long t-time..." I mumbled into my shirt, shivering when I let out a ghost sense. At the same time, Danny gasped and shivered as well. I didn't notice anything, so maybe I had accidentally shocked him again?
Danny disappeared to the kitchen, while I turned to the closet. Tucker and Sam had run with Danny, which was better for me. I changed to my ghost form and became invisible and intangible, ready to fight. It was one thing to be hunted down outside. It was another thing entirely to be tracked to my house and hunted there. Why did Skulker come after me so much? Or maybe he was here for Tucker, Sam, or Danny, or maybe all three?
Why would he be after them?
I narrowed my eyes and tensed, watching Skulker's every move. However, I got distracted by a new presence, one that I knew far too well for my liking. Danny Phantom. Oh great, now four people knew where I lived...
Skulker chuckled, to my great confusion. "Aha... I was tracking the shadow ghost, but now I get both your pelts on my wall!"
Phantom grimaced and said, "Dude, gross."
I coughed and winced at Skulker's eagerness to get our pelts on his wall. "Gross is right. Who puts pelts on their wall?"
Phantom gave me a quick glance, and I immediately knew he hadn't been aware of me until now. Together, we defeated Skulker yet again and this time we wrecked Skulker's suit pretty good. As soon as Phantom had sucked Skulker back up again, I disappeared. I saw him look around for me, disappointment on his face, before he too disappeared. I went back to the closet and changed back into Rose, peeking out when I heard my friends come back into the living room. I tried not to limp when I exited the closet, having gotten hit on the leg pretty badly.
"Are you guys okay?" I asked them apologetically. I noticed that Danny also seemed to be trying not to limp. Sam shook her head at my question and cast an annoyed glance at Danny.
"He fell down the stairs like an idiot," she sighed, checking his heavily bruised calf for breaks. I gave a tiny sigh of relief, glad that my friends hadn't been hurt any worse than a bruised calf from "falling like an idiot". Only when they went home to get their homework done did I realize something.
I didn't have stairs in my apartment that went down from the kitchen. I didn't really understand why Sam would lie to me like that, but I shrugged it off. I was lying to them too, so I guess I had no say on their lying to me. I sighed and did my own homework, texting Tucker the answers to the participial phrases worksheet and asking him to send the answers to Danny too, and Sam if she wanted them. He thanked me and Danny later texted me saying thanks. I saved his number for future use.
Sam apparently didn't want the answers, but I knew she was smart. She didn't need them. Tucker and Danny were smart as well, but they just decided not to put in any effort. Not that I minded sharing my answers with them.
The next day, my third day at school, was Friday. None of my friends said anything about my living arrangements, for which I was grateful. Unfortunately, Dash had gotten over the horror that was my missing eye and he shoved Danny and I into his locker. I didn't dare go intangible now, not when someone else was nearby. Sam and Tucker were already in their separate classes, so we were let out of the locker by another geek named Mikey. Mikey was a rather nice kid, and I thanked him.
He acted like no one had ever thanked him before, which might have been the sad truth, and hurried off to his own class. Danny and I ran to Lancer's class, getting into our seats just before the bell rung. Mr. Lancer gave us a strange look, but he said nothing. As long as we were here on time, I guessed. Danny and I passed notes again, taking turns writing down notes for the other to copy after class. My leg had healed overnight and Danny's seemed to have as well, for which I was grateful. He couldn't question me if he had healed just as fast.
I tried to pay attention to Mr. Lancer, I really did, but I was far more interested in sketching a picture of Danny Phantom shoving Skulker into the tiny thermos device. Danny looked at me, surprised, but he must have realized that I was only drawing this because I was bored because he didn't comment on the picture when he passed a note to me again.
What do you say to coming over to my house today? My parents really want to meet you. My dad mostly just wants to blather on about ghosts to you. Danny's note almost my heart freeze, the very first line startling me. I wrote out a quick Sure to his question, and then tried to focus on not hyperventilating. I only hoped they didn't try out their inventions on me. I didn't want to be discovered as a half-ghost, something that was supposed to be physically impossible.