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Orange leaves fluttered down from their trees to touch upon the lightly frosted grass, crunching beneath the sneakers of those who walked over them. Dash Baxter didn't care for autumn. It signified the start of school and stupid classes, the weather being too cold for t-shirts, but too warm for other clothing. The only things he truly enjoyed looking forward to was football season and putting nerds, geeks, and dweebs in their places.
Unfortunately, that also meant having to see Daniel Fenton.
Dash hadn't minded him at first. He was just another clumsy nerd stuck in his own world at first, head stuck in dreams of stardust and nebula. This year though, it seemed as if he'd grown a backbone. Sure, Dash knew some of the things he did were accidents, but if he let Fenton get off scott free, then other nerds would get the idea to stand up to him and he couldn't have that.
Aside from the newfound confidence, Fenton had changed in a way he couldn't put his finger on. Everyone changed over the summer, over months of not seeing one another, but Fenton had an air of something... off, that he hadn't had before.
The temperature seemed to drop when he entered the room, subtle enough to be written off as faulty air conditioning. Fenton never seemed to notice. Dash didn't think he would anyways. He'd seen him standing outside a few days ago while it had gotten cold enough to snow. Fenton's breath had fogged before his face, puffs of white clouding the air. Though he wore nothing but his normal jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt.
Cameras didn't capture him well anymore. Each shot he was in, he was blurrier than the rest of the photo, like the lens just wouldn't focus on him. Sometimes it looked like Fenton's inky black hair was snow white, but he was so grainy that it could be written off as faulty lighting.
There were times that it looked like, for a split second, Fenton's eyes were a radioactive green instead of the gentle blue. When he thought Dash wasn't looking, Fenton would glare holes in his back, his eyes looking more green than blue. Dash wrote it off as a trick of the light every time.
Until the time where he actually caught Fenton's eyes glowing like ectoplasm. Fenton quickly had stammered through the excuse of having eaten ectoplasm as a child enough that his eyes just sometimes did that. Dash wasn't sure that he'd believed him at first, until he saw Jazz's eyes glowing once.
Maddie and Jack Fenton were infamous ghost fanatics and the few times he'd been to their house, he'd been shocked at the ectoplasm stored in the fridge, the lack of a lock on the lab door, the weapons and inventions lying around. It wasn't a stretch to assume that Jazz and Fenton had some... developments due to that.
That didn't explain how Fenton sometimes didn't look like he was solid. For a split second, it looked like Dash could see right through him. How his reflection didn't match up sometimes. Hazy like the photos, snow white hair, green eyes instead of blue. He wrote it all off as a trick of the light.
Dash kept finding excuses for it all.
The lights flickered when Fenton entered the room, or got too angry? Casper High was an old building, the electricity was probably a little faulty.
Fenton seemed to disappear or run off every time a ghost attacked? He was just scared. With parents like his, it wasn't a stretch to think they'd told their children all about the horrors of ghosts.
Mist that looked a bit too blue escaped Fenton's mouth? Maybe he vaped or something. Everyone knew he wasn't all there at times. If he was, he wouldn't be falling asleep every day in class, yawning wide enough to see his too long, too sharp canines.
There was just no way that Danny Fenton was anything more than a lame nerd that had gotten a recent confidence boost.
He couldn't be anything more than that.
Dash ignored the times he'd seen Fenton's arm phasing through his locker. The times he'd seen him floating when he thought nobody was around. The times where he'd just vanished while Dash or someone else was chasing him.
He ignored how it was practically impossible to find Fenton when he didn't want to be found. How there always seemed to be something off happening around him. How the ghosts seemed to know him, know who he was.
How he seemed to get along with the dead more than the living.
Yes, Danny Fenton was a nerd, but he was also odd in a way Dash couldn't place. Weird in a way that he and most other students turned a blind eye to. Odd in a way Dash didn't know if he was comfortable with.