Negative Feedback (Danny Phantom Fic)

Chapter 26

There's a bit of language in the video above, but the song is awesome and kinda fits the story if you think about it. I recommend listening to it while you read!

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Maybe it's a little strange to look at something mundane and realize exactly how much you miss home, but it was the familiarity and sense of normalcy wafting out of the box that had Camry realizing the back of her eyes were prickling with heat that was unrelated to her core. She smiled and pushed down the urge to cry before reaching in and pulling out a small, 15 milliliter bottle that glimmered ever so softly in the dim light cast by the portal faces in the tower.

"Nail polish?" Tucker asked, disbelief obvious in his tone. 

"But why is it in a storage box...?" Cam muttered, too softly to expect any sort of reply from the others around her. They didn't offer a hypothesis, and the topic floated away on the nonexistent breeze. "Ugh, and they totally ruined my system for arranging these. Hang on, this is going to bug me until I fix it."

She began by drawing them all out two or three at a time, then carefully ordered them in straight lines on the floor of the clock tower. Each type of polish had its own row, and within each row they formed a rainbow of color schemes. Little did the other three teens know, but this was exactly what the doctor ordered: focusing on a simple task that would eventually get rid of a source of unease was the perfect solution for calming her tumultuous brain. After all, it had been blown at least three times in the span of roughly fifteen minutes, and that was more than plenty for someone without a mild anxiety disorder. 

"Wait, why do you have so many of these?" Danny asked as he picked up a glittery bottle and held it up to his eye. The bright yellow polish reflected rainbow in the right light, though that specific angle wasn't readily available in the dim green world of the Ghost Zone. "Who even needs this many?"

"I do," Camry answered shortly, looking irked at how he had put a hole in her holographic lineup. She glanced over and noticed the name of the polish printed on the bottom and couldn't help but snicker a little too loudly at the irony. 

"What's so funny?" he asked, setting it down where he'd found it. 

"No, no, it's insensitive," she replied, waving her hand flippantly. Heat flared up in her cheeks again, but it was duller than it used to be. Maybe that was a sign that she was slowly growing more at ease around him.

"Oh, come on, you can say it," he assured her. Now Tucker and Sam were intrigued as well, so there was little Camry could do to play it off.

"Uh, it's just... You got shocked by that portal in your parents' basement when you became half-ghost, right?"

Danny nodded slowly, unsure of where this was going.

Camry picked up the same bottle and showed him the label, which read in a fancy script, 'Electrified.' "I had to laugh 'cause it's from the High Voltage collection..."

Instead of looking offended or hurt, as she'd feared, Danny snorted before reaching for a few more bottles in the same row. He squinted at the labels and then showed her the bottom of a teal-colored bottle from that collection. "Well then, if that one's me, this one's you."

It read 'Splice' in that same ornate font. Camry did that thing where a little puff of air escaped through her nose when she tried to hold in a laugh, but it turned into silent giggles that only lasted a couple of seconds. "Oh, man, that's so perfect. I should wear this one next, just 'cause of that."

"How is nail polish going to convince Kitty to help you, though?" Sam wondered with an air of condescension to her tone and body language as she held up a bottle of deep purple polish curiously.