New School

Danny felt his heart beating in his chest. He felt it. That's how he knew he was really nervous.

See, Danny's heartbeat had been off for the last nine months, ever since his...accident. Calling it an accident felt strange, like there should be a more accurate word for it. But there wasn't. At the end of the day, what had happened to Danny was an accident. He hadn't meant to trip on the wires in his parents' ghost portal. He hadn't meant to press the 'on' button. But he had, and that accident had cost him half of his life.

Danny was alive...somewhat. The ghosts called him a halfa — half ghost, half human. He was an anomaly; he wasn't supposed to exist. That didn't stop him, though. He continued to exist for nine months as a paradox of sorts; alive but not, dead but not. The complexity of his existence had slowly leaked into all parts of his life, including his heartbeat, he'd found out. It beat slower than a normal human's, and so soft that Danny usually had to focus to hear it. But not right now. Right now his heart was beating as hard and fast as it had before the accident.

"You sure you're ready for this?" Danny's girlfriend, Sam, squeezed his hand gently. He looked over at her, blinking the swirling thoughts from his vision.

Danny shrugged half-heartedly, a small sigh escaping his pursed lips. "I guess."

"You guess?" Sam smiled at him, causing his heart to skip a few beats. "I thought you'd be excited!"

"Excited. Yep. I'm so excited," Danny's voice wavered against his will. He cleared his throat, straightening up and squeezing Sam's hand back. "I'll be fine."

"You're not that convincing, you know."

"I know."

Danny looked at the double doors of Casper High, willing his heartbeat to steady itself. Slowly but surely, his body responded, dropping back to its normal barely-there heartbeat. Today was his first day back in High School since he saved the world. Well, since Danny Phantom saved the world. Danny Fenton was just a regular kid — or at least, he had been. Now, he was the world famous halfa. He had statues around the world. Statues. He was working himself up again.

Taking a deep breath, Danny took a few steps forward, Sam following his lead and pushing the door open. Together, they walked into Casper High.

Immediately, Danny noticed the busy rustle of the High School hallway. He could smell the abundance of Axe body spray covering the hormone induced B.O. For half a second, everything seemed like it might be normal. Then, Paulina — who had been standing by her locker and chatting idly with her best friend, Star — saw Danny, and her eyes went as wide as saucers.

"Danny! Danny Phantom!" her shrill voice flooded the hallway, and everyone stopped. Quicker than Danny thought possible, all eyes were on him and Sam. His blood ran colder than usual.

"Uh, um," Danny began to stammer, his tongue feeling like putty in his mouth.

"Hey, move along. There's nothing to see here. It's just Danny," Sam said loudly, her voice booming through the hall. Danny sent her a grateful glance. He was lucky to have her in his life. Unfortunately, though, he wasn't lucky enough for Sam's proclamation to be the end of the sudden wave of attention.

"Hey Fenton- I mean Phantom- I mean...uh..." Dash took a few steps forward from his place next to Kwan. Danny instinctively tensed up, but quickly forced himself to relax. If Dash messed with him — he'd be stupid to do so now, but the jock was known to do dumber things — Danny would be able to evade it. After all, he didn't have his secret to keep anymore. It would be easy enough to go intangible if anyone tried to grab him.

"Dash," Danny forced his voice to sound stable. He watched as Dash awkwardly shuffled his feet, locking his fingers together and pulling them apart.

"I'm, um...I didn't really get a chance to tell you. I'm sorry, for everything. And thank you."

Dash spoke with such sincerity that Danny had to keep himself from gaping. He'd never heard the elder High Schooler show any such courtesy to even his closest friends. This apology caught Danny completely off guard.

"You're...you're welcome, Dash," Danny tried to savor the words as he spoke them, but they tasted like vanilla extract — he expected the sentiment to be sweet, but the bitterness stung down his throat.

"Oh, Danny! He's so forgiving!" Paulina squealed, and half the students in the hallway brought their hands up to their ears — Danny included. Sam scowled at the popular girl, crossing her now empty hands across her chest.

"Look, lets just move on with the day, ok?" Sam's voice immediately put Danny at ease, and he dropped his hands back down to his sides. "Nothing's changed. Not really. It's the same old Danny, alright?"

"The same old Danny?! How can you say that!" Paulina made her way towards Danny, and he had to fight his instinct to back up. "She doesn't deserve you, Phantom. Come on, let me walk you to class."

Danny bit his tongue — he didn't necessarily want to hurt Paulina (though in that moment he had a few choice words on the tip of his tongue). He turned to Sam and slung an arm around her shoulder. Immediately, she beamed up at him, cuddling in not-so-subtly. Paulina, who must have gotten the message, huffed and turned around, stomping over to Star once again. The chatter in the hallway slowly picked up, but over it Danny could still hear the Latina's whiny voice.

"Can you believe him? How could he not want me?!"

"I- I don't know, 'Lina," Star signed, and Danny could've sworn she sounded the slightest bit disappointed. He pushed that thought aside and turned back to his girlfriend, smiling and walking to their homeroom together.

"How was the first day back, man?" Tucker asked expectantly, hastily unbuttoning his crisp white shirt. The navy tie he'd been wearing was already on the floor of his messy bedroom.

"Weird," Danny breathed the word out slowly. "Really weird. People wouldn't stop staring."

"Well, duh. You saved the world! Of course that's gonna make things weird!"

"Yeah, I know. I just didn't want to think about that, y'know?"

"Yeah," Tucker sighed, now taking off the dress shirt to reveal a plain white tank top. He threw the dress shirt on the floor next to the tie and picked up a yellow sweater from the floor, pulling it over his head. "I know what you mean. Sometimes I wish things could go back to normal."

Danny smiled sadly at his best friend. Tucker didn't understand exactly what Danny was going through, but he did get the yearning for normalcy. Everyone's lives had been turned upside down after earth's near-destruction, but Tucker and Danny were the only ones who had to adjust to a completely new way of life.

"You mean running around and fighting ghosts non-stop?" Danny asked with nostalgia in his voice, smiling when a devious smirk fell onto Tucker's face.

"We thought we were so sneaky."

"We were vigilantes, running from the law, protecting people off the record."

"And now," Tucker sighed heavily, "now that I'm Amity's youngest mayor—"

"Amity's youngest junior assistant mayor," Danny corrected.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. It's basically the same thing for now while they're searching for a replacement. They need someone who knows how to deal with ghosts. All the public servants know is politics," Tucker fiddled with the cuffs of his mustard sweater, twisting the fabric between his fingers.

"Yeah, but you're just fifteen," Danny said almost silently before catching himself and speaking up. "Technically you're just a kid. How can they put that much responsibility on you?"

"I mean," Tucker sighed, dropping his hands to his sides, "usually the position goes to a college kid, but when Jazz turned them down they looked at my grades and...well, they made up their minds on who they wanted."

Danny laid a hand on Tucker's shoulder, sending him a small smile. "You're doing great. Ghost attacks have been down since you took the position—"

"And that's just because of you," Tucker shook Danny's hand off his shoulder. "Dude, thanks for the sentiment and all, but you can't save me, ok? Not from this," he grumbled, looking down at his lap.

Danny sat there for a moment, looking at Tucker and letting out a heavy sigh. "Yeah. Yeah ok. Sorry."

The two best friends sat in an awkward silence for a minute or two. Tucker finally cleared his throat, drawing Danny's attention back up to him. "I talked to Marsha about you, you know. About the private lessons she's giving me. She said she can take you on too. We could be classmates again, and you wouldn't have to go back to Casper."

Danny's spine straightened at the mention of private lessons. For some reason, that made him feel...uncomfortable, maybe? Tense? It made him feel something, deep in the pit of his stomach. He didn't know why, but he didn't want to take those private lessons. Not at all.

"Woah, dude, you don't have to," Tucker put his hands up in surrender, noticing Danny's obvious change in posture.

"I just..." Danny looked down, trying to think. There was something about isolating himself that made him nervous. "I don't think it's a good idea, Tuck."

"Ok. That's fine," Tucker sighed, avoiding Danny's gaze. "I think you should leave. Mom's gonna have dinner ready soon."

The rest of the week was hardly eventful. People still stared at Danny and Sam whenever they walked past, but slowly Danny got used to it. Sam was still upset about the sudden attention.

"They didn't give two shits before!" she'd yelled at him once when they were hanging out at Nasty Burger. Luckily, the rest of the restaurant was empty. The only other person in the dining space was the worker at the register, who was staring at the two with a look of awe written all over his face.

"Yeah, before they only gave one shit!" Danny teased his girlfriend, who rolled her eyes and elbowed him lightly in response.

"You know what I mean. Dash is being nice, Paulina won't stop flirting with you. Hell, even Lancer looks like he's scared of you! What's that all about?"

"I know. It's weird," Danny took a large sip of his chocolate milkshake, closing his eyes for a moment as his migraine, which came and went the last few days, subsided.

"You feeling ok? I know you had a headache earlier today—"

"Yeah," Danny cut her off, not wanting her to keep worrying. "It's totally fine. I promise."

The problem was that it wasn't totally fine. Danny had had a pounding headache since he'd returned to school, and it had hastily grown into a head splitting migraine by the end of the week. Sam didn't need to know that, though. They were already dealing with so much. It was like they'd both been dropped into a new school. They had been all but invisible before, and now it was the complete opposite. Danny didn't know if the stress was causing the migraine, or if it was something else. He hoped it was something else. Besides, if it grew into anything more, he'd tell Sam or Jazz. Maybe his parents, if he really needed to. He'd play it by ear, he decided.

Friday morning came with almost impossible haste, the rest of the week flying by too fast for Danny's taste. He woke up with a headache so bad he thought his skull might just split in half, but swallowed the discomfort and moved on with his day. Throwing on his usual shirt and jeans, he made his way downstairs, finding Jazz already eating a bagel at the table.

"Hey, what's up?" Jazz asked, immediately picking up on his dampened mood.

"Oh, just a little headache," Danny lied, grabbing an apple from the table and taking a bite. The crunching sound made his head throb.

"Really? You've had one since Tuesday, right?"

"It's not a big deal. I'm probably just stressed or something," Danny mumbled softly, grabbing a knife from the knife block on the counter and cutting the apple to spare his poor head.

"Well, if it keeps up, we should probably get you to a doctor or something. Or let mom and dad know. They'd know what to do," Jazz explained, finishing her bagel and throwing away the paper towel she'd been eating it off of.

Danny sighed, shaking his head. "Yeah, I'm sure they'd know what to do."

"Danny," Jazz laid her hand on Danny's arm, "they know what they're doing, even if it doesn't seem like it all the time."

Danny turned away, grabbing the apple slices and sticking them in a plastic bag. "I'm gonna fly to school. I'll see you later."

Danny transformed with his backpack on, turning intangible before he flew through the ceiling. As he flew higher into the sky, he grabbed his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Sam.

"Hey you, you coming to pick me up?" her voice immediately eased Danny's headache just a bit.

"You know it. Just wanted to make sure you're ready," Danny answered.

"Yeah, I am. I'm just finishing my makeup, but that'll take...there! Done!"

"Wait, you're doing your makeup and talking on the phone?" Danny chuckled, shaking his head.

"Oh, shut up. I'll see ya soon."

Sam hung up, and Danny swerved towards her house. When he was hardly a minute away, a sinking feeling fell into his gut. He hadn't felt this in a while — not since he'd helped to save the world.

His ghost sense went off, and he got a feeling this would be a big one.

Hi all! Ash here :)

Welcome to my latest story! I've been obsessed with this idea for a while now, but didn't know where to take it until recently. Plus, with everything going on, I figured everyone could use a nice angsty post-PP fic.

Please like and comment! It really means so so much to me, and if you all are bored, feel free to check out my account and my other stories! I'll be updating this one twice a week (Fridays and Tuesdays) so stay tuned for Tuesday's update!

See y'all next time!

~Ashtyn