Neutral (Danny Fenton/Phantom x Reader)

Chapter 8 - Amity

I had expected the classroom to be empty when I entered it, but I was surprised to see Mr. Lancer still sitting behind his desk, eating a sandwich in one hand and grading papers with the other.

"First day not going so well?"

"No, not really." I answered back, laying my plastic lunch tray down onto one of the desks, slipping into the seat.

And, in truth, it wasn't going well.

The lunch bell rang through a blur of classes I didn't take much interest in, and I had started searching the lunch room for Kwan after I got my food, hoping I could take a seat with him. I spotted him and waved, he did wave back, but he was given disapproving looks by the other kids at his table, to which he avoided eye contact from that point on. It hurt to be ignored by the most promising candidate for a friend.

Speaking of friends, I figured make the best of a bad situation and sit with my newly assigned best bud for the next year, but he wasn't anywhere to be found either. After standing alone awkwardly for so long, people started to stare so I just left the cafeteria, I debated eating my lunch here or the bathroom, this option seemed less pathetic.

Mr. Lancer looked up at me, he was staring with concern, a look I hadn't gotten much until I came here.

"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't make any friends on my first day to a new school either, it just takes some time." He smiled sympathetically, "Don't feel too badly about it."

I nodded, but how long would that take? Clearly, I must have been born with some sort of social repellant.

Jeez, since when did I care about what people think? I suppose it's for the best I do, in case I need to work my way through the social chain to get to this blue-eyed wonder.

To take my mind off the issue, I began playing with an odd mush on my tray with a plastic spork, trying to guess what it was. It's green, looks like mashed potatoes, and yet it smells like ham.

I don't think I'm that hungry anymore.

Instead of messing with anything else on the tray, I took the Styrofoam cup of peach slices next to an apple I grabbed on my way out of the lunchroom, and pulled The Body out of my backpack. Mr. Lancer let out a nostalgic laugh, "I remember reading that back in the 80's, it's been adapted into a movie since then."

A movie? Huh, I may need to try to invest in a TV sometime...when I have money, that is. A little light bulb went off in my head, a thought I had been wondering for a while, "Since you know a lot about literature, why do you think so many of Stephen King's novels set in Maine?"

Mr. Lancer seemed a bit surprised by the random question, or maybe he was surprised I caught onto the detail, and stared up at a ceiling tile in thought, "Well, King grew up in Maine, so being able to see it and experience it first hand for so long more than likely made him grow familiar with it. I actually went on a trip to Maine once with some friends and their parents when I was child on Summer break back in..."

He paused, "1979, I believe. I don't remember much from it, but it felt very small and isolated."

"Kind of like here." I caught myself mumble.

Lancer didn't pay much attention to my somewhat bitter statement, and instead nodded along and continued trying to pick his brain for any more details about the trip there. He looked like he gave up trying, and with a shrug, he looked back at me. "They say that the best advice to authors is to write what you know, I take it that he understood that considering his success."

"Yeah, I'd like to read more from him, and I like a good spook but I'm too much of a chicken to even try picking up something like IT or Carrie..." Says the kid who literally grew up around ghosts, and lived in a place called The Ghost Zone. Wow, I'm a wimp.