Phantom - Retifer M. (color ebook reader txt) 📗

the house look okay with a couple of hours, as if nothing at all had happened. And then, because there always has to be something, Sam says, as we stand in the kitchen, “We don’t need to waste electricity; it’s daytime!” and turns off the lights in the kitchen. Unfortunately the blinds on the windows are down.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me right now.” Tucker throws his hands up.

“Oh man. I’m so sorry guys.”

Sam drags a hand down her face, cracking her fingers on her cheeks. “It’s fine, Danny, it’s not your fault.” She somehow sounds apologetic and done with my crap at the same time.

The floor is glowing slightly right where the stains were, not a lot but definitely enough that it’s noticeable and will be questioned if seen. There’s a handprint. It looks like a murder scene under blacklight. I can’t think of a single excuse that wouldn’t get me in a heck of a lot of trouble.

“Hey, maybe I’ll get lucky and my parents’ll think it was one of their experiments?” I feel my shoulders raise along with my voice the further into that sentence I get.

“Actually,” Sam says, snapping her fingers, “that could work.”

“Oh wait, no, guys!” Tucker slaps his forehead with a groan. “The bathroom.”

“Great, just wonderful.” I hook my hands around the back of my neck, arms pressed against the side of my head and elbows in the air. “Sorry about this you guys. So much for a fun weekend.”

“Shut up, it’s not your fault.” Sam repeats, more forcefully this time. I get the feeling she’ll punch me if I apologize again. “Let’s just try to get it out I guess.”

“Leave the lab and kitchen, they won’t care about those.” I say, really not wanting to do any more cleaning. This is getting ridiculous. “They work on their stuff up here at breakfast all the time.”

“So, just the bathroom then?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and turn to go up the stairs.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sam asks, following close behind.

“Yeah, all that was probably just temporary. I’ll be fine.” I know I’m lying, and swallow a lump of gunk that’d risen in my throat when they can’t see.

When we get to the bathroom we don’t turn on the light. Luckily, it isn’t as bad as the kitchen or lab since the ectoplasm hadn’t sat for as long as it had downstairs, so we leave it. I guess we should have cleaned it up right away. Darn.

“Glad that’s over.” I lean on the countertop back in the kitchen and try to block out everything that had happened over the course of the weekend. I stare at my foot as I slide it back and forth on the tile, feeling none of it.

Tucker huffs, “Seriously.”

“Okay,” I straighten up. “From now on, no more movie nights at my house.” I’m half serious, but keep a light tone.

Sam rolls her eyes and opens the fridge, tapping at a tray of test tubes and a shivering box. “Is anything in here edible?”

“I don’t think so. Unless you want to be throwing up ectoplasm for two days, you probably shouldn’t eat anything in there.”

She shakes a carton of milk, then puts it back uncertainly.

“Maybe we should get out of here for a while.” She looks around the room, eyes flickering towards the basement more than once. “We’ve been cooped up here since Friday.”

“Yeah,” Tuck agrees.

I cover a yawn with my hand. “…Sure.”

Jeez, I hadn’t even really noticed it was Sunday already. That was the worst weekend of my life, and I was blacked out for most of it.

We go over the house once more, remembering to scrub down the chair I’d been sitting on after they’d brought me upstairs and to bring the garbage bag filled to the top with paper towels outside before putting on some decent clothes and getting the heck out of FentonWorks.

Θ

My parents get home in the afternoon.

Jazz stops half way to the stairs to give me, wrapped up in a comforter and surrounded by junk food wrappers, an incredulous look. I blink at her and almost panic when I remember the only thing we hadn’t cleaned up was the living room.

My parents walk in, dad not really noticing the mess. Mom stops in her tracks.

“The power went out all weekend.” I say conversationally, voice rasping, and then turn back to the tv.

“Daniel James Fenton, what did you do to the living room?”

I freeze, thumb hovering over the unmute button on the remote, and make a split second decision.

I turn to look up at my mom and say, in as sick a voice I can manage, “I got the flu. Would’a called but… power was out.”

“Oh honey,” mom coos and sets down her bag. She kneels in front of me and presses her hand to my forehead. “You’re feeling a little cold. Did you throw up?”

“Yeh.” I glance at the bucket still on the coffee table.

“You still feeling a little sick?”

I don’t need to exaggerate the answer for this one. “Yeah.” I make a face.

“You’re sure it was the flu?”

I try to keep a pokerface. “Yeah.”

She stands up and turns to dad. “How didn’t I notice my baby getting sick?”

“Baby…? Mo-om.” I look to dad and Jazz but Jazz is dragging her stuff up the stairs and dad looks like he doesn’t know whether to coddle me or not.

Mom turns back to me and sits on the edge of the couch. She runs her hand through my hair. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. I would never have left you by yourself if I knew.”

“It’s fine.” I wave her off. “Tuck and Sam were here.”

“Oh, well I’m glad you weren’t alone, but still…” She leans over and looks me in the eye. “You know we love you right?”

“He knows that, Mads.” Dad laughs, picks up both his and mom’s luggage and starts heading up the stairs.

She smiles at him, but looks back me anyways. “You know that right?”

“Yeah, I-” I suddenly feel guilty. They’re my parents, why am I not telling them what happened? “I-” Even if I get in trouble for it.

I look away bashfully. “I love you too mom.”

She gives me a side hug, the gun on her belt cold even through the comforter. She gets up. “You look tired, hon. Why don’t you take a nap? Or have a bath? There’s a bathbomb in the cupboard, I think.”

“Uh- ye-yeah, I think I’ll go lay down in my room.” I turn off the tv and stand up, letting the comforter fall back on the couch.

I run up the stairs, stumbling once, and retreat into my room.

I’m not that tired and I don’t think I could fall asleep so I don’t bother lying down, just close my door and stand around in my room. I wander around, itching my stomach. The scratching goes down to my hip, thigh and then knee.

At my knee I gasp and yank my hand back. My knee gives out and I almost fall, but catch myself on my bed. Oh yeah, my leg. I shift it, feeling the wrapping under my pants loosen a little bit.

Tucker and Sam had avoided talking about that particular detail and I hadn’t brought it up. Along with the odd tingly sensation, my leg’s been stiff, but I think I’ve hidden it well enough that my parents and Jazz haven’t noticed. Or maybe they just think I’m tired.

I lock my door and go to sit in front of my mirror. I slip my pants off and carefully remove my socks too as I’d worn them over the bandages, partially to hide them. I roll up my boxers until I see where it ends on my thigh.

I rip off the piece of medical tape and begin to unravel the binding, trying to keep my hands still as I grow more nervous the more I peel off. Whoever did this must’ve used up all of the freaking stuff because oh my. I think it just looks bad because of how much medical wrap they used. It’s fine.

I get to the skin. There’re dark green and purple bruises running up my leg. I push the bandages down and follow the lines, getting darker the closer to my foot I get. I grimace as I pull the bandages off of my knee, green stained fabric sticking slightly to skin that doesn’t just look weirdly burned, but…

I hold my breath as I peek under the wrapping at my shin and lower. Parts of my skin looks scraped, like someone tried to sharpen a knife on my leg. I look up at myself in the mirror and wrap my leg back up to my knee as quickly as I can with my hands shaking and my throat closing up.

How this is not incredibly painful is beyond me, but what’s even weirder is the fact that there’s… scar tissue and new, pink skin around the worst parts of it; it looks like it’d been healing for a long time, like I hadn’t just gotten this. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure burns like this don’t heal in two days.

I lean back and stare at my mirror to get a better look at the parts of my leg that isn’t making me want to puke.

I follow the bruises going up my leg, past my underwear, up under my shirt. Crap, is this what’s so itchy? It’s not super bad, but it’s bad enough that I can’t ignore it and might scratch it by mistake.

I lift my shirt and feel my stomach drop.

It’s… what was it called? A Lichtenberg scar? Like what people get from getting struck by lightning. Green lightning arcs up my reddened skin. From my hip and up the bruising and redness fades, leaving just a ridiculous- and kind of badass- scar spreading up my side towards my shoulder. I gape at myself in the mirror.

How the hell am I going to hide this? Do I hide it? Should I?

I start to cover the rest of my leg up again. I can’t show anyone this; they’d freak out. They’d wanna know how and when I got it. Then they’d question why it’s healing so fast, why there’s green, why it does not hurt and how the hell I’m even still alive and running around when I just got electrocuted so bad it left a Lichtenberg scar all the way up to my abdomen.

No, I don’t want to scare anyone. If I tell my parents what happened it’ll be after I’m better, when they won’t just ignore everything I say and only pay attention to the fact that I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing, and that I got hurt doing it.

I slip my pants back on, my socks too, mindful all the while of my totally wrecked appendage.

I might never be able to tell them, though; my parents will always freak out, even if I tell them years from now they won’t just brush it off as some childhood story we can laugh about. It’ll be obvious it was something way worse than any watered-down version I might tell when they see how bad the scarring is.

“Oh god.” I falter, the bunched up fabric of my socks slipping out of my hand. Tiny, wrinkled, green ghosts stare up at me.

If I’m seeing the healed version of this what the heck did Sam and Tucker see?

I fall backwards onto the carpet. Why do I have the literal best friends in the universe? And how in the scorching depths of hell did they put up with this, and the