Seeing Double

Ghosted - Part 3

 Sam was pacing. She'd blasted some of her favorite heavy metal music and was just pacing around the room, refusing to look at him or acknowledge the way she'd abruptly logged them out of the game.

He could just leave. Heck, if he really wanted to know what had happened at lunch with Paulina he could ask Fenton himself. It would be easy to just fly into his room and demand answers.

But Phantom hadn't seen him since they'd gotten back from Wisconsin.

Also he didn't know if Fenton had put together the fact that Phantom was basically stalking his friend group with a not so subtle internet alias. It shouldn't be hard for him to figure out. Phantom had chosen the name ghosted for a reason. But Fenton could be thick at the best of times.

Phantom didn't like the way this felt though. Playing under his nose and all.

But he didn't have the guts to say: "Hey, Fenton I miss you and our friends and also I miss Doomed so I'm just gonna squeeze in here now okay? I'll work hard to level up!"

Something told him Fenton wouldn't take that too well.

The whole thing had been Sam's idea in the first place. She gave him the laptop, she pulled him into the group, she even spent actual money to give him higher level items. He might have turned all that down if she wasn't loaded. But apparently she was filthy rich.

Funny what you learn when you're dead. His best friend had never let him into her house before. They'd been friends for years, but he hadn't known her as well as he'd thought.

So now he lounged on her leather sofa inside her massive bedroom and eyed the mounted speakers which were probably killing her eardrums. And for what? As Jazz might have said, this wasn't healthy.

He unplugged Sam's speakers.

"Hey!" she said. Shouted. "I was listening to that."

"Now you can listen to me tell you that you don't need to shout," Phantom said. "And that you don't have to sacrifice your hearing to avoid the topic. You don't want me to know about Fenton and Paulina. I get it. I won't ask again."

She stopped pacing. "That's not fair," Sam said. "You can't be cool about this."

"I can't?" Phantom floated over to her. He floated on his back and pretended to backstroke swim over her head. "Why can't I?"

"You should be mad!" she said. She continued pacing. "Aren't you mad?"

"I think you're the one who's mad, Sam."

"Because he doesn't even like her." She picked up a pillow and twisted it, as if she were trying to wring water out. "It's, I don't even, he didn't know her!"

Phantom didn't have a response to that. The problem, as Sam saw it, was always the same. It wasn't about Paulina. Phantom sighed and floated down to her level, allowing his feet to reach the ground.

Sam threw the pillow at him, but it sailed through him and knocked over a lamp instead.

"He doesn't deserve to go with her," Sam said. She stomped towards him and he flinched as she deliberately walked through him. She kicked the lamp. "Urgh, doesn't it make you want to... to..."

"Possess him?" He glared at her and she flinched.

Then she squared her shoulders. "Yes! Why not?"

"That wouldn't be fair either," he murmured. He thought of Vlad Masters and how easily the ghost had merged with his human counterpart.

If he tried would Phantom reunite with his own body as easily? Could he take it back, own it, as if he'd never left?

Or would it be the death of a clone, absorbed into Danny Fenton? Leaving the boy with both. Like Vlad.