And here it is! I hope you like the rewritten version, everyone. It's over three times as long and I'm so much more pleased with it. The next update will be over a week's time, and that goes for my other fics – I'm on a German exchange, sorry.

Enjoy!

School is a bad time of the day for me. Seven hours of stress, worry and physical pain without a break. But I should be able to handle it – I'm 14. A teenager for over a year. The age where I have to start to stand up for myself. I'm not a little kid anymore.

The problem is, though, neither is anyone around me.

It's only been a few weeks into the year and I've already been shoved into my locker 30 times by various jocks (mainly a jerky guy called Dash). You see, I'm not exactly well-built in terms of muscle. I'm small, I'm skinny and I'm brittle, thank you very much. And there's this one really hot girl, Paulina's her name, who I spent ages building up the confidence to ask out. She rejected me in front of everyone during english when the teacher wasn't in the room.

I don't even know what started it. I know I'm not the best looking person out there; my hair is a little scruffy and I don't have a particular interest in the latest fashion trends. Gaming is one of my hobbies, but I wouldn't so far as to say that I was a nerd… but others seemed to think so. It's like it's decided on the first day who you are going to be for the rest of your high school career.

But when you lived in a family like mine, school wasn't the worst part of the day.

The bell for the end of last period rang through the school and chairs clattered around me as I stood up, shoving my textbooks into my bag. I sighed happily, closing my eyes. Friday. A whole weekend was ahead of me which included a movie marathon with Sam Manson and Tucker Foley. Mr Lancer wasn't in, so I didn't have an unholy amount of homework to get through. I'd got away with just a few pages of algebra which I could quickly finish when I got home.

"Your usual teacher will be back on Monday," the substitute said, erasing everything off of the board. A few murmurs were heard in reply, but most students just wanted to leave. Like me.

"Hey Danny," someone patted my shoulder after I stepped out into in hall. I recognised her voice before I even looked to check. It was Sam, with Tucker behind her.

"Oh, hey, Sam. Tucker." Her hair was the same ebony-colour as mine and like usual she'd tied a small portion of it up. She was wearing a black tank top and skirt, with some dark combat boots and purple lipstick. Her regular goth look.

Tucker was, unsurprisingly, completely absorbed in his PDA. The African-American had his recurring red beret on his head and yellow sweater that was slightly too small for him.

Everything was normal. Nothing had changed.

"Up for a Nasty Burger?" Sam asked as we automatically walked to our lockers, "my treat, by the way."

"Not today, sorry. My parents want me home all evening."

"Still cleaning up all the stuff from your party?"

I immediately stiffened, halfway into putting in my combination. To put it simply, my 14th birthday party had been a disaster. It was of course, my dad's fault. My mum said that that was the last time she'd let him help make the cake.

"No, I finished that yesterday," I told her.

"Well, whatever it is, Danny, good luck with it!" Tucker cheerfully joined in the conversation, "me and Sam are off to get some good old meat."

"No," she replied, "just you for the meat. I don't eat it."

"Whatever. See you tomorrow for the movies, Danny!"

"Yeah," Sam waved as they departed off down the hall, "see you tomorrow."

"Bye…" I watched my only two friends turn a corner and disappear out of sight.

I shut my locker and rested against it for a second, regarding everyone that passed me. A couple gave me weird looks back, but that wasn't the point. Everyone was talking, laughing, sharing jokes with each other. Heck, even the bullies were having fun beating up geeks together. It was just so average and normal and there was just me, here on my own. I wasn't part of the normal. The nerds had their friends, the jocks theirs. Sam and Tucker had left me to go Nasty Burger and I was alone again. That's not to say I was angry at them – just part of me wished that they'd stayed a little… longer… walked with me to the front entrance or maybe a little way down the street; my house was in the same general direction that they were going. At least they'd been nice enough to talk to me before instead of just leaving without a word.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and stood up straight, ready to walk home.

"Hey, Fen-toenail," Dash's annoying, screeching voice sounded behind me and I stopped walking before I started, ready for the inevitable.

"What is it this time, Dash?" I deadpanned, "look, I gotta get home so please could y-"

Something – probably a fist – knocked all the wind out of me and before I knew I was in the air. He pinned me against the lockers, my face hitting the metal hard. I groaned. That would bruise later.

One of his friends forced my locker open with something I couldn't see from that angle and I was lifted up again. The sound of my books crashing to the floor made me wince and I knew there'd be no one to help pick those up. My body was squashed inside and the door slammed shut after me, stuck tight.

"Great," I mumbled.

The sound of laughter faded eventually and I had horrible images of the condition of my schoolwork, which now probably lay torn to shreds on the hall floor. Naturally, my situation was ignored and I could see the shadows of the last few students leaving the school flicker past the slits in the metal.

I couldn't really say I 'sat' there – I don't thinking the act of 'sitting' includes one of your arms being twisted painfully above your head and one of your legs squashed behind you. I just had to wait where I was for a teacher or the janitor to find me. My phone rang once, probably one of my parents calling, wondering where I was. I couldn't reach it to answer.

Some footsteps echoed into earshot, then there was a pause and I heard a sigh.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland! Daniel Fenton, is that you in there?"

"Mr Lancer?" finally, "I thought you were off?"

"I had to collect some papers that needed to be marked over the weekend… your work is all out here on the floor Mr Fenton… I'll fetch the janitor."

"Thanks," I replied as I heard him walk away.

Mr Lancer didn't come back – but the janitor broke me out with a crowbar. He was angrier that he'd need to replace my locker than anything else, and he moaned at me for not standing up for myself again because he 'wasn't paid to do this sort of thing'. So I just thanked him and salvaged as much of my stuff as I could before striding off, clinging to the last bit of dignity that I had left.

I saw no one on my way home apart from the football team practicing on the grounds next to the school. They laughed at me and my bundle of papers and books, of course. Yep, ok, I take that back. I had no dignity left now.

Wind whistled past me, carrying a few orange leaves in its wake and reminding me what time of year it was. I shivered without a jacket.

I glanced at a newsstand casually. The current top story was an attack on a little girl that happened sometime during the night before. It made my face fall even further. What kind of person would hurt a small, innocent child? Amity Park's police force was terrible on top of that. Crimes were normal. Thankfully not often, but normal. Why couldn't anyone stop that? Why couldn't anyone do something that would change something. Make life, like… more exciting. I mean, I didn't exactly hate my life. Sure, I was picked on and stuff and I had a feeling I was nobody's best friend, but I wasn't unhappy, per se. If I studied hard, I'd get a great job and hopefully have a good life.

Neon lights appeared in front of my eyes when I turned into the next street. A flashing ghost was sticking out of the wall. An Ops Centre rested on top of a building, make it taller than all the others.

I was home.

"Danny, my boy! You finally made it back!" my dad scooped me up when I walked in through the door, "come and see what your mother and I have finished – we're just about to turn it on!"

I dropped my bag and the papers on the side of the stairs before he could drag me any further. I was pushed down towards the basement door and it was opened by a pair of huge black-gloved hands.

It was darker in this room. I squinted a blinked, trying to get used the dim green lights that illuminated the wall's metallic panels and reflected off of the lab's equipment. My footsteps echoed as I stepped inside in front of Dad. He grabbed my shoulders and twisted my round a bit.

"Son, I wanna show you something," he pointed a beefy finger to a deep hole in lab wall. It was on the far side of the room so I had to step forward to see it properly. Wires trailed out of it like snakes and there were building tools in a pile by the side. Dials decorated the surrounding area; they went back and forth every now and then and I wondered curiously what they were measuring, and what was powering them. Mum was inside the hole, her goggles on over her eyes. She was fixing what looked like a circuit board to the side. Neon lights lit up her face at strange angles, making her seem like a mad scientist. Well, more mad than she already was.

"Uh, what does this…thing… actually do?" I asked my father when he excitedly rushed me forward. He picked up something to point with and tapped it on a chart labelled 'Fenton Portal'. The paper was a dark blue and the hole in the wall was drawn on carefully with a white pencil. That was probably Mum's doing. Dad's contribution was most likely the doodle of the ghost in the corner.

"When we get it working and all fired up, it'll punch open an entrance into the Ghost Zone!" My dad explained with a huge grin slapped on his face.

"The 'Ghost Zone…?" I replied, "What's tha… oh." Realisation hit me like a brick, "is this just another one of your stupid inventions that never work?"

Mum suddenly poked her head out, her expression with a smile almost as big as Dad's. "This one will work, sweetie," she signalled to a pile of paper full of blueprints and numbers with her welder. "These are all the calculations we made to be sure. I've checked over them seven times. We'll see real ghosts for the first time. We'll be able to explore their world! Oh, I wonder what it's like… I have my ideas but you can never be sure."

My unconvinced expression hadn't disappeared. I didn't want my parents to be disappointed again after their countless number of other failures and maybe acting like this would put them off a little and get them to go through things again. "Are you sure?"

They both nodded.

"Well…I have a bit of homework to do. I'll leave you to it. Good luck," I turned round to walk up the stairs, but Dad put his hand on my shoulder.

"It's practically done, son," he said urgently, "couldn't you stay for a little longer – to see it turn on? Aren't you curious as to what's out there?"

Many replies drifted through my mind, but they all led to me wondering things about this 'Ghost Zone'. If ghosts were real – and that was a big if (my parents are nutjobs, after all) – what would ghosts look like? Floating bed sheets? Or more human? The thought came to me that I might be able to find out, and soon too. No matter how crazy it sounded, an invention like this would break a barrier from the normal to the… paranormal. The supernatural would become natural, and in those few seconds before answering my father, I came to terms with the fact that I was passing up the chance to experience a scientific breakthrough.

"You know…" I answered quietly and slowly as my thoughts slid back into reality, "you're right." I looked up in wonder at the 'portal' before me, taking in the flashing lights and the faint humming of the things that had to be separately powered up, "just imagine what awesome super-cool things could exist on the other side of that portal…"

"Well, we're about to find out!" Mum reminded me, handing Dad a pair of wires.

He showed them to me after "these are what's gonna turn it on!" he fidgeted eagerly, waiting for his wife to finish the final few adjustments.

After a few more minutes of bangs and clicks, Mum stepped out and came to stand beside us.

"Are you ready, sweetie?" I wasn't sure whether she was talking to me or Dad, so I nodded anyway.

"Hey, Mum," suddenly I thought of something, "wouldn't Jazz want to see this? She's into science and studying and essays and all that."

There was silence for a moment before she agreed with me. "You're right, Danny, I'll just go and get he-"

"Banzai!" My dad's yell echoed through the portal in front of us. He raised his arms quickly (and rather dramatically), connecting the wires in one swift movement. It appeared he had either ignored that last bit of conversation, or was just too impatient to wait.

My thoughts about Jazz disappeared as electricity sparked and fizzled from the connection point, crackling steadily down the wire. I stared at it intently, willing it on. Soon, it reached the portal itself and my heart raced faster, imagining what it would like when it was activated.

Nothing.

I blinked a few times, then glanced at my parents, "does it take some time to…?"

Dad was biting his lip and disappointment was spreading quickly across his face. He let the wires slide out of his hands and onto the floor before turning to Mum, who looked just as dejected.

There was a painful silence, and I kept trying to think of something else to say, something to make them feel…

"Come on," my mum's voice echoed plainly around the room, "dinner's almost ready – let's go and eat something. We'll have a nice dessert afterwards." I watched, not sure whether to answer or not, as she left without a response from either of us. I glance back at my Dad, whose face was still fixed on the portal.

I waited for him to move – I didn't want to leave it there. As he walked – or trudged –his eyes never rose higher than the floor.

"I guess ol' Vladdie was right," I muttered to no one as he started up the stairs, "I am an idiot."

The extra components of the portal we still faintly buzzing and my gaze flickered back to it. It looked so out of place there. Even if my parents' inventions never worked, they weren't as obvious and as scarring as a now meaningless hole in the wall. Will they ever feel up to dismantling it?

My grumbling stomach made me jump. I didn't even realise I was hungry.

"I'm finished. Thanks for the meal, Mum," I set my empty plate by the sink, where she was washing up. She replied with a soft thank you and continued scrubbing, some bubbles escaping and drifting into the air before quietly bursting.

"What went wrong mum? You… said you had all the right calculations."

She froze, the dishes clinking together.

Why did ask that?

She shook her head dismissively, and I was surprised when she actually replied. "I really don't know, sweetie; I thought we had everything correct. I made extra care to check everything properly, after Vlad was hurt so badly last time."

That was the name Dad had mentioned before.

"Who is Vlad?"

"He went to college with me and your father about 20 years ago. He helped us build our first attempt at a ghost portal. That failed, of course, and he was in a terrible state when it exploded."

So that was why Mum and Dad were even more upset than usual. They'd tried fruitlessly before and it even failed the second time around. It even went so far as to injure someone, which explained why they were so determined to get it right this time. And they were so confident about their hard work…

"What happened to him? Was he OK afterwards?"

"He received a powerful blast of energy to the face. He was hospitalized for a long time with an awful case of ecto-acne."

"What did he say when he got out?"

"We never saw him after that."

"That's… sad," was all I could think of to say.

"Mmmm," Mum seemed distracted again, so I turned around to check on Dad.

He was still at the table and his food lay untouched, probably freezing cold. Even his fudge-filled dessert sat, uneaten, beside him. He was staring blankly into middle-distance, either deep in thought or thinking of nothing at all. His eyes were glazed and held no emotion.

Surely, there was only something small my parents had missed. I couldn't understand half of the notes on the blueprints – the text was too advanced for me –but it looked like it would have definitely worked. They must have overlooked a button or a wire might have been loose… that had to be it.

A determined look was set on my face when I hurried back down into the lab, with little or no reaction from Mum and Dad.

I needed to put something safe on before I went in (no one knows what chemicals could be drifting around inside that portal), which led me to search the lab's cupboards for a spare jumpsuit. Most I found were the wrong size, consisting mainly of blue or orange. Eventually, I came across a white one with black boots and accents. I must have had belonged to Dad when he was thinner – heck, it even rested snugly on me. So snug I had to take off all of my clothes (apart from my underwear) to get it to stay on without it looking weird and bulky.

Catching sight of myself in a mirror, I noticed a sticker of my dad's face plastered onto the chest of the jumpsuit. I half-smiled, prising it off. How much had he weighed when he last wore this?

Mum's blueprints were scattered, abandoned, on the metal floor.

I slowly stepped inside the portal, my eyes widening when I saw it from the inside – a different point of view than before. It may have been empty and broken, but it still seemed to have a faint buzz of potential.

I found myself stumbling – a spare circuit board, a loose wire or something. My balance tipped forward and I reached out to grab something for support.

Something flashed. Something whirred and neon lights flashed around me.

Pain. Pain like fire.

Electricity ripped its way through my skin and found my bones, burning me from the inside out as my mouth opened in a silent scream. My vision failed, followed by the rest of my senses, but I still felt pain. Everything slowed down and I was there, frozen in place, for probably an unimaginable period of time. I was dying. I knew I was. No one would survive this.

I think it stopped eventually. I don't remember. I don't even recall stumbling out of the portal – I was blind, unfeeling. My face hit the cold, hard floor, bringing back flashes of my time crushed against my locker earlier. Was I back there? Had this all been just a dream?

I fell unconscious to a bright white-blue light.

They must have seen me stir, because their calling of my name faded into earshot.

I felt my eyes open slowly, my blurred vision taking a long time to clear. The faces belonging to my family surrounded me and slowly the pins and needles in my limbs stopped and the soft cotton bed sheets around me became obvious, as well as the faint scent of strange crisps.

My room. That's where I was.

"Danny! Danny!" Jazz was speaking, her voice coarse from saying my name so many times.

"What happened?" I forced myself to sit up, only to lie back down again as more pain throbbed through my head.

"I think… the portal shocked you when it turned on," my older sister told me as I closed my eyes, trying to shut out my headache.

The portal was on? The new information failed to process in my brain properly.

"We came down after we heard you cry out… and… and you were just lying on the floor, out cold." Jazz's face was stained with dry tears. "We thought you were dead, Danny."

"I'm sure if I'm alive, I'm fine," I convinced them. My mum or dad hadn't said anything. It was obvious my parents were blaming themselves entirely for my accident. I hoped that I hadn't made things worse, although I probably had.

"If you're sure…" she replied.

"Just leave me to rest, please."

"I-We'll be back up soon. You were unconscious for a long time, Danny. You need to eat as soon as you can. There are no signs of external injury, although you were freezing when we last checked, so you should hopefully recover soon."

I 'mmm'ed softly in response as she left the room. Mum and Dad hesitated for a second, their faces saying everything without words. They were worried, they didn't even need to say it.

A nod and a small smile was what I gave them before they left too.

I rolled over onto my side and closed my eyes. My sudden migraine had gone, but I still felt faints spread all over my body, which wasn't exactly a surprise. What was the voltage of that portal? However high, it all went through me so I'd be more concerned if I wasn't feeling anything. I also vaguely wondered who had changed my clothes, but immediately pushed that to the back of my mind as something of low-priority.

I let my feet swing off the bed and touch gently the ground. I had a sudden desire to move about, but there was no way I would be allowed to leave my room, so I resorted to plodding slowly around aimlessly and then ended up almost tripping over a toy car.

Trying to remember where it came from, I picked it up. It proceeded to fall out of my hand and for a second I cared, sure I had a fairly firm grip on it. But my headache was coming back, and that was more important. I slogged back to my bed and got under the covers, letting go of the past few hours.

So… how was it? Much of an improvement? Please let me know what you think!