The silence in my room was heavy, laden with the echo of my own ghostly incompetence. Peter was still standing in the doorway, staring at the spot in space where I had reappeared.
"Invisibility, huh?" he finally said, whistling low. "That's... incredibly useful. And incredibly problematic for your love life."
"Not helping, Peter," I grumbled, letting myself fall onto the bed and covering my face with a pillow. The shame still burned on my face. "I ruined everything. She must think I'm a lunatic. Or a coward."
"Or both," Peter added, pragmatically. "But hey, at least you don't have to worry about hiding a costume."
I lowered the pillow and stared at him.
"What?"
"Your suit!" he explained, gesturing at my normal clothes. "When you... you know, turn ghost, it just appears. Magic. Ectoplasmia. Whatever it is." He sighed, genuinely tired. "Me, on the other hand, I just spent the last half hour in my room sewing a bullet hole in my uniform. Again. Mrs. Jenkins in 3-B does amazing seamstress work, but it's expensive. Sometimes I'm a little jealous."
I had never thought about that. For me, transforming was natural, like blinking. The suit was part of me. Peter's struggle was... well, having to deal with logistics.
"Being a ghost does have its advantages."
"Don't worry about it. It's the job. Now, about your existential-romantic crisis..." He came closer, sitting in my desk chair. "You need to apologize."
"How? 'Sorry for turning invisible when you tried to kiss me, it's just that I'm half-ghost'? That'll work wonders."
"No, you idiot!" he exclaimed, throwing a pen at me. I turned intangible, and it went right through my chest. "See? Annoying. No, you make up a normal excuse. Say you had an anxiety attack. That you got scared. That it wasn't her, it was you. All the classic lies guys use."
Sunday afternoon in Queens had that characteristic laziness, but inside me, a storm of anxiety and shame roared. The "strategic retreat incident" in my room echoed in my mind on a loop. I needed to fix it. Peter might suggest flimsy excuses, but I wasn't a fan of lies. I preferred to face the problem head-on.
I found MJ sitting on her front steps, absorbed in reading a play. Her red hair fell over her face, and she distractedly chewed on the end of a pen.
"If I'd known I'd find an intellectual, I would've brought my comic book collection to impress," I said, approaching with my hands in my pockets.
She looked up, and for a brief moment, I saw a flash of surprise, followed by an amused look.
"Fenton. Vanished after your... memorable performance yesterday."
"Performance?" I put on an expression of modest pride. "I call it a 'tactical retreat'. A classic move, very underrated."
She closed the book, interested.
"Oh, really? And what justifies this... tactical retreat?"
"The overwhelming presence of your beauty, of course," I replied, sitting a few steps below her. "Seeing you so close, so... determined. My average teenage nervous system short-circuited. The circuits fried, and the 'immediate evacuation' protocol was activated."
She arched an eyebrow, clearly trying not to laugh.
"So you're saying I'm intimidating?"
"Like a hungry lioness," I corrected, pointing to her long nails. "And I, apparently, have the reflexes of a scared kitten."
This time, she laughed for real, a clear sound that eased some of the tension in the air.
"Scared kitten. I like that. Sounds cute, but not very heroic."
"Heroism is overrated," I declared, with a dramatic wave of my hand. "So, what does a former scared kitten have to do to be forgiven?"
She tilted her head, studying me.
"Hmm..." she pretended to think. "I accept a public apology. Maybe with a little sign that says 'MJ, I'm a chicken'."
"I don't have a sign. The best I can offer is writing it in the dust on my dad's car hood. He won't even notice."
"Alright, that works," she agreed, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "And I also accept... a proper date. One where you promise not to run away."
My heart jumped, but I kept the casual pose.
"The Midtown Theatre is staging A Midsummer Night's Dream," I proposed, trying to sound confident. "It has fairies, mistaken identity, people talking funny... basically, a normal day at school, but with better costumes. What do you think?"
Her face lit up in a way that made all the previous shame worth it.
"Shakespeare?" she said, surprised and clearly impressed. "You're a box of surprises, Danny Fenton. First you act like a typical teenager, then you invite me to classic theater."
"I'm a man of many talents," I agreed, with a dramatic sigh. "Most of them hidden under a layer of casualness and bad jokes."
"It's a deal, then," she agreed, her smile now open and warm. "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Tonight, at seven. And Fenton?"
"MJ?"
"If you run away again, I'll tell the whole school you cry watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
"Who doesn't cry watching Hunchback?" I protested, laughing.
I left her laughing on the steps and walked back home, a goofy grin plastered on my face. The reparations mission had been a success. Now, I just had to make sure my nerves—and any inconvenient supernatural powers—didn't ruin the night.
The Midtown Theatre was small, cozy, and smelled of velvet and history. As I waited on the front steps, I felt absurdly out of place. The last time I'd worn a dress shirt was at my father's uncle's funeral, and it had gotten so wrinkled my grandma said it looked like I'd slept in a bush.
"Wow. You clean up nice, Fenton."
MJ's voice made me spin on my heels. And she... well, she was breathtaking. She wore a simple green dress that made her eyes look like living emeralds, and her red hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders. For a second, I forgot how to breathe.
"You look radiant," I managed to say, catching my breath and my playful tone. "I mean, you'll do… Did that sound weird?"
She laughed, taking my arm.
"Sounded perfectly Danny. Come on, you clumsy poet."
The inside of the theater was magical. The audience was full, the air buzzing with anticipation. When the lights went down and the stage lit up, I was transported. The lines in archaic English, the extravagant costumes, the story of love and confusion... it was all so far from my reality of labs and ghostly powers that I found myself completely immersed.
During one intermission, in a particularly funny scene where the character Bottom gets a donkey's head, I heard MJ chuckle softly beside me. It wasn't her usual loud, contagious laugh.
"Like it?" I whispered to her.
She leaned close, her shoulder touching mine. Her perfume was something sweet, like peach.
"It's amazing. Look at how he moves on stage."
I looked at her, instead of the stage. The soft light reflected in her eyes, and there was an expression of pure wonder on her face. This was the same confident girl who teased me on the street, but now there was a vulnerability, a dream there. It was the most genuine thing I had ever seen.
When the play ended and we stepped out onto the sidewalk, night had fallen completely. The city lights twinkled, and the air was cool. We walked in silence for a while, the spell of the theater still hanging over us. We stopped at the entrance to Central Park, away from the bustle of the street.
"Thanks for this, Danny," she said, her voice softer than usual. "It was... perfect."
"Thank you for coming," I replied, my fingers finding hers naturally.
Our eyes met and held. The city around us seemed to disappear.
"You know," she continued, looking at the stars struggling to shine over New York's lights. "This is what I want. For real. Not just acting. But... to make people feel what I felt in there today. To take them to another world, even if just for a few hours."
"You will," I said, and I wasn't just being gallant. It was a fact. "You have this... light. It's impossible not to look at you."
She turned to me, her face lit by surprised gratitude.
"You really think so?"
"Yeah."
In that moment, there was no room for jokes or teasing. There was just her and me, and the simple truth of those words. When we leaned into each other, it was the most natural thing in the world.
The kiss was soft, initially hesitant, then more confident. Her lips were soft and tasted like cherry lip balm. My hand found her waist, pulling her gently closer. It was everything I imagined a first kiss should be—electrifying, scary, and incredibly real. This time, there was no panic. Just peace.
When we parted, we were both a little breathless.
"Wow," she whispered, her eyes still closed.
"Wow," I echoed, a goofy smile spreading across my face.
That's when I felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a sight. It was a vibration in my very being, an icy tingle that ran through my skeleton and made the hair on my arms stand on end. It was as if my soul, my ectoplasmic essence, had its own "spider-sense," and it was screaming.
My smile vanished. My body tensed.
"Danny?" MJ asked, sensing the change.
I didn't answer. I turned slowly, my eyes scanning the street, the buildings, the sky. What was it? Where was it?
And then I saw it.
In the night sky, above the roof of an office building across the street, a black sedan was spinning out of control in the air, silent and sinister like a dead bird. It had been thrown, and its descending arc was bringing it straight to where we stood, under the lamppost on the sidewalk.
Time slowed down. The world narrowed to that flying object, to the girl beside me, and to the warning scream from my own soul.
It was a freaking car flying right at us.