Is There Still

1

"Oh hell."

Danny Fenton cursed and pumped his legs, breaking into an uneven sprint as he headed for the doors of Caper High as the late bell shrilled through the crisp morning air. His book bag was heavy against his side, thumping him with every step as he struggled to swing it around and over his other arm even as he raced up the stairs and into the now empty halls. His sneakers thudded and he cursed again as he pushed through a set of double doors and into a stairwell, taking each two at a time and wishing for once that he dared just use his ghost powers to fly up and shave as much time off of the tardy he knew he was going to get.

It'd be a detention for sure, but at least not with Lancer. Danny sighed in relief as he finally saw the closed door to his first period and paused in front of it, huffing and trying to catch his breath before grabbing the knob and turning it, pulling the door open quickly and wincing as it squeaked. He ducked through, head down as he made his way to the back of the room and the two empty chairs that usually were home to his back pack and his rear end.

"Sorry, Mrs. Schultz," he murmured as he dug in his bag and pulled out his algebra book, frowning at the half finished homework sticking out from between the pages.

When the anticipated detention never came Danny glanced up at his teacher and finally noticed the rest of the class staring at him, along with her. Okay, so he was late. He knew that. Everyone else knew that. But why were they so surprised? Because that was as plain as day on their faces, and Danny slouched further into his seat as he glanced around and then just flipped his book open to the page on the board.

The class passed slowly, much more slowly than usual as Danny still tried to ignore the stares shot his way, the way Mrs. Schultz ran a hand over her short russet hair before standing up and teaching. If she cleared her throat nervously every time she looked his way, there really was no explanation for it, and Danny wished he could just slip through the floor and disappear long before he was lost in algebra.

The really sad thing was that he could. He actually could, but he didn't dare.

The whispers made it that much more difficult, and Danny finally gave up trying to make sense of 2x+15y(3x/4)/164y-7x(4/5x) as he let his head drop to the desk with a quiet thump. If anyone stared at least now he didn't have to see it, and given the way his teacher was acting he really, really didn't think she was going to tell him to pay attention. As a matter of fact, she was acting like she wasn't even sure what he was doing there.

With his head still flat against the desk Danny pinched his thigh, wincing as he realized that it wasn't a dream like he was beginning to hope. The whispers continued, the shifting of bodies, and Danny really wished that he at least shared the class with one of his two best friends. But Tucker had opted to go with trigonometry and Sam had already made her math requirements fro graduation by taking algebra and trigonometry both during summer school.

No, he was alone with the insanity his presence had inspired this morning, and there was no explanation.

His eyes wandered to the clock above the board at the front of the room, and he frowned as Mrs. Schultz winced and slid her gaze from him quickly. To hell with it, he decided. The bell was ringing in less than two minutes. His book found its way back into his bag and he shoved spare paper and his pencil without a care, his homework still not finished, but crushed in his hand as he popped up as the bell rang.

Nobody else moved and Danny shrugged as he threaded his way to Mrs. Schultz's desk and dropped his unfinished homework into the basket on her desk. "I didn't finish it," he muttered. "Sorry." And without a backwards glance he was out the door and diving into the throng in the halls.

It wasn't much better there, but at least he could try and blend in and ignore the occasional gasp or the way some people veered away from him like he had the plague. And when he made it to his second period he was relieved to find a still empty classroom. Thank god, he thought as he hurried to the back of the room and the trio of desks that had been his, Tucker's and Sam's for as long as they had shared homeroom at Casper. Which had been since freshman year.

He collapsed into the chair with a sigh as he dropped his bag on top of the desk, scrunching down behind it with a sigh. This was his third year sitting in this seat, he was a junior now and he'd been hiding in the same spot in homeroom since he'd started high school. It was almost depressing, he realized as he heard footsteps from the front of the room. Several, and he popped his head up to see if Sam or Tucker had made it to homeroom that quickly.

No such luck, but he hadn't expected it. They rarely made it until the bell was just ringing, both of them sharing a first period history class that was practically on the other side of the school, not to mention stopping at their lockers to change books. Or, in Tucker's case, to drop off the tome that was their shared history book. Sam had bribed him the third day of school to let her share his so she didn't have to carry hers.

Tucker was making out like a bandit.

No, the footsteps certainly weren't Sam or Tucker. In fact it was Dash with his annoying little friends dragged along. Danny smirked as he saw Paulina following Dash. She had joined the annoying little group label sometime in the middle of his sophomore year when she had tried to set him up to be caught cheating on the pre-SAT.

He'd been really lucky that Lancer had been administering the test, and that he'd already had Danny confess to wanting to cheat and then having not done it. It had given Danny the benefit of the doubt and cast suspicion on Paulina that ultimately led to her confession. And she'd done it because of Sam, according to her. But then, it fit with what she'd done the night he'd taken her to that dance in freshman year.

It had taken him almost eight months to get Sam to just tell him what Paulina had said to her when she followed her into the bathroom and managed to get the amulet of Eragon. He'd pointed out that it'd been something that she had even wanted to try and steal him from Sam. And finally realized what a, and he chuckled loudly as he thought it, shallow little wench she was.

The chuckle had heads whipping to the back of the room, most of the A-List and now his homeroom teacher. And again the surprise, which had Danny surprised all on his own.

"I am in this class," he said pointedly as the surprise began morphing into shock, and then almost fear from everyone.

It only got worse as more people filed in, and Danny frowned as he realized that people were deliberately trying not to sit near him. What, do I actually have the plague? He thought in annoyance. Maybe they were just surprised that he was on time, or in class. He was usually late, or not even there. But come on, was Danny Fenton actually showing up to class such a phenomenon that it caused mass hysteria and terror?

Except it did, he realized as he searched his classmates' faces, the teacher, Mr. Moody's face. They really were scared of him, but for nothing that Danny could figure out. Maybe his parents had done something before he'd managed to get to school, blown something up. Torn a ghost apart molecule by molecule in front of everyone.

Maybe witnessing that could make everyone scared of him.

But Danny was beginning to think it wasn't that, and then the bell rang making him jump. There was a long silence after that and then another set of footsteps. Slow and dragging and echoing as he realized it was two pairs, and he stood up uncertainly as Sam and Tucker rounded the door of the classroom and slipped in quietly, not even trying to apologize for being late.

And Mr. Moody said nothing.

Something was wrong, Danny finally understood, and his stomach clenched and rolled in his belly with sudden fear induced nausea. Something was really wrong, and he must be the only one who didn't know it. Sam and Tucker… They looked horrible, like they'd been to hell and back. Or something even worse.

Tucker was pale, even with his dark skin, and his eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. He looked like he'd worn the same clothes for days on end, they were that rumpled and wrinkled, and he didn't even have his beret on. Danny blinked. Even Tucker's PDA wasn't in evidence. There wasn't even a telltale bulge in his pocket where it normally resided.

Sam looked worse, if that was possible. It was probably because she was already so pale, and had a propensity to black. She was paler than she usually was, which was saying a lot, and her eyes mirrored Tucker's, shot red and swollen. Like she'd been crying for hours, days on end. Her clothes were straight black, which was odd, and for Sam to be so unkempt as the wrinkles showed was unusual. She might not have been a fashion plate, but Sam did care about her appearance inasmuch as it was how she presented herself to the world: Goth, and proud of it.

"Guys?" he said softly as they plodded quietly and unseeing to empty chairs nowhere near him. Like they were avoiding where they normally sat.

Two pairs of eyes whipped towards him, one jade green, the other a piercing violet, and two mouths dropped open in shocked gasps. It hurt Danny, cut him to the core to read the motions that flickered across both of his best friend's faces in the moments they stared. Sorrow, happiness, those were fine. But fear? That sudden flickering of pain and maybe even anger?

No, those weren't something he had expected to see, and he hesitated to even ask them what was wrong. Had he done something? Maybe he should be begging to fix it. He was about to when he was thrown of balance by Sam racing for him and flinging her arms tight around his neck as the morning announcements began to play across the PA.

Danny ignored Lancer's tired monotonous voice as Sam sobbed against his neck, and he shot Tucker a confused glance as he stroked Sam's back. He was more than a little afraid, and the feeling built as Tucker joined suit, following Sam and throwing an arm around Danny's other shoulder, the one that Sam hadn't claimed for her own shoulder to cry on, and Tucker clapped a hand to his back, thumping it soundly enough that Danny winced.

"What's wrong?" he finally asked, and Tucker only shook his head as the announcements stopped for a moment.

"As you all know, one our fellow student's was buried yesterday morning," Lancer said and Danny glanced up at the speaker hanging on the wall curiously.

The silence was broken by a faintly, pained, "Oh, god," and Sam wrenched herself away from Danny, and wrapped an arm around Tucker as she stared at Danny, tears streaming down her face.

It only got worse as Danny realized Tucker was nearly in tears himself. He was desperately trying to surprises them, but Danny could see them gathering at the corners of his eyes, and then beginning to slide down dark cheeks in glistening trails as Sam finally turned her face away from Danny, her hands coming up to cover her face as she collapsed against Tucker, her entire body shaking.

The PA system suddenly barked to life, and Danny frowned as he realized that MR. Lancer was sniffling as he started talking again. "So let's all observe a moment of silence for Danny Fenton, and keep him in our thoughts as we go about our lives."

"What?"

It was a whisper. A choked, painful, terrifying whisper that was torn from Danny's throat as he looked frantically around the room. The way people were looking at him, the way he frightened them, the way they had avoided him like the… like the ghost he was. Danny looked down and let out a strangled gasp at what he saw. His eyes shot back up to Sam and Tucker, both of them now crying openly, no attempts at trying to hide it, and Sam nodding yes even as Danny shook his head no.

"We buried you yesterday, Danny," she whispered as she reached out to him again.

As she reached out to his gloved hand.

Danny closed his eyes as her fingers threaded through his, and he let his head drop down, feeling her hot hands against his cheek. His cold cheek, he realized. His cold, ghostly cheek. "I don't understand," he whispered.

And he didn't. If he died, wouldn't he be Fenton? But there he was in his familiar black hazmat, the emblem Sam had designed for him so long ago emblazoned across his chest, and he flinched back as he felt her lips against his cheek, and the slim fingers that found his other hand and slipped something into them. His hand fisted involuntarily around whatever it was, and Sam stepped back, rubbing her face with her hands as she nodded at him to look at his hand.

A mirror.

She'd given him a mirror, and he looked back at her, wondering if his eyes were glowing now that he was all ghost. She nodded again, and Tucker slipped an arm around her as Danny raised the mirror to his face. His face. Danny Fenton. Not Danny Phantom.

He was in his hazmat, yes. But he was still Fenton. Black hair, blue eyes, Fenton.

"I don't understand," he whispered again, and glanced around the still quiet room, wondering if anyone else did. Maybe if they did they could explain it to him.

The mirror slipped from numb fingers and shattered across the floor as Danny stumbled back into a desk, then through it without a thought. "Oh god," he choked out. His classmates, still staring at him, Sam and Tucker, still crying.

The moment of silence for Danny Fenton still quiet.

"Oh god," he whispered again. And he closed his eyes and shot up through the ceiling, seeking the escape of anywhere but Casper High.