Work Text:
William Lancer opened the curtains in his living room. Despite being mid-afternoon, little light filtered in through the clouds, leaving the room fairly dim, lit mostly by a single floor lamp on the lowest dimmer setting. Rain pounded on the windows, turning his front yard into blurry streaks. William liked dimly lit rooms anyway; after standing under fluorescent lights all day at work, this was much kinder to his eyes.
The thin walls of William’s home did little to shield from the chill outside, and goosebumps raised on his arms. It was unseasonably cold for April, but he didn’t want to turn the heater on; when it hadn’t been used in a couple months, it would fill his whole house with the smell of burning dust for a couple days. No, he could just bundle up under a blanket until the rain passed.
A shrill tone sounded from the kitchen. William’s fuzzy slippers flip-flopped on the vinyl as he walked over to the teapot, removing it from the stove. As he poured himself a cup of tea, he pondered on his latest freshman English assignment.
Ninth grade students were in a confusing time in their lives. The start of high school was stressful for many kids. High school asked a lot of its students in class, and cliques started forming, causing social pressures. Puberty on top of that meant that his freshman students were often highly emotional.
William decided that the best thing he could do for his students in such a confusing time was to offer them an ear to listen. He asked his classes to write a journal entry about the things that were weighing on their mind, the things that stress them the most. In order to encourage honesty, the assignment was to be anonymous and graded on a pass/fail basis. As long as they handed something in, typed and printed out, they would pass. (William was quite familiar with his students’ handwriting, so the assignment wouldn’t be very anonymous if it was handwritten.)
The students predictably groaned about it. Asking for vulnerability from teenagers was difficult. But he had little doubt that they would end up writing about something they cared about. Anonymity was a strong motivator, since there would be little consequence to what they say. This was an experiment for William; he’d never assigned anonymous homework before. He hoped he wouldn't regret this.
He wondered what he would do if a student confessed to being a victim of child abuse in their paper. As a school teacher, William was a mandated reporter, so was legally obligated to report any abuse. But it was hard to report abuse if you didn’t know who was being abused. He supposed that, if it were to come to that, he would ask Yuna for advice. As the principal, she would know more about the proper procedure.
William brought his tea to the living room, setting it on the table next to his soft leather recliner. He lifted his fuzzy blue blanket off the chair and got settled underneath it. This was his favorite place to be during a storm. The pitter-patter of rain, the chill in the air mitigated by the blanket and tea, laying back on his recliner with a good book. Unfortunately, the book would have to wait until after he was finished reading these papers.
He pulled the first paper off the stack.
“I can’t stand the pressure my parents are putting on me to get good grades,” it began. “I try so hard but it’s never enough. I want to pay attention, I really do, but after a few minutes my mind starts to wander and it’s like there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I try to do my homework, but I can’t focus on it for more than a few minutes. My parents say I’m lazy because I just watch a lot of TV after school, but it’s the only thing I really find myself caring about.”
The paper continued along those lines. William was not a doctor by any means, but he had been teaching a long time, and this student sounded like they had ADD and would need accommodations.
A few papers later, William realized that his students needed help more than he thought. He made a mental note to try to hold office hours and make it clear that he was willing to talk about anything and help if he could. He hadn’t realized how bad the bullying problem was at Casper High; he would need to keep a closer eye on the football team.
The next paper was creased as if it had been shoved in a backpack outside of a folder. He didn’t have high hopes for this one. Students who showed such little care for their school supplies often weren’t trying their hardest in class.
“Six months ago, I died, and nobody noticed.” Okay, that was an unexpectedly interesting start to the paper. He wondered where this was going. He took a sip of his tea and continued reading.
“Well, that’s not entirely true. My two best friends were there when it happened. But ever since then, I’ve been dragging my corpse to school and slogging through my schoolwork as best as I can.” William was impressed by the writer’s use of metaphor here. He wondered what happened to them that was so extreme they would refer to it as death.
“Back when I was alive, people would ask why I stayed up all night playing video games. ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead,’ I’d say, laughing. Turns out even death didn’t stop me from losing sleep.
“I do so much for everybody, sacrificing so many things in my life. Or what’s left of it, anyway. I don’t sleep, my grades are garbage, my parents hate me half the time.” The metaphor was starting to slip; this part was clearly literal. William could think of a few students who clearly didn’t get enough sleep. He wondered who “everybody” was that the writer was referring to. Their family, perhaps? Some kids sacrificed a lot for parents that didn’t show enough affection. Unfortunate and concerning, but ultimately unactionable if there were no clear signs of abuse.
“I fight every day to protect people, and what do I get in return? I’m called a monster, inhuman, a danger to society. If it weren’t for me, people would be dead. I have saved so many lives.” This… didn’t sound like a metaphor. How could a teenager be saving countless lives, without anybody knowing? Why would they be called a monster for it?
“I always wanted to be popular. Then, after the accident, I wanted to be normal. I don’t even know what I want now. There’s no going back to normal, I know that now. I made decisions that have changed the trajectory of my life, and I have no clue what I’ll be in a year. But I guess that’s called being human, right? Even if I’m not fully human, at least I have that in common with them.” This was getting worrisome, William thought. Not fully human? How? Was this related to the death metaphor from earlier?
“If I could go back and prevent the accident, I don’t think I’d do it. I wouldn’t be who I am without my powers. But it’s tempting sometimes, to just give up. Just act like I’m normal and ignore all my responsibilities. But somebody has to protect this town, and nobody else has the advantages I have. There’s nobody else like me.
“Well, technically, there’s one more like me. But he’s evil, and I would rather die again than trust him. I wish I could talk to somebody who understands what this is like. But nobody gets it. And nobody ever will. My friends, they try, but humans will never really get what it’s like to be a ghost.”
It ended there. A ghost. Clearly it was not a metaphor after all. And it was obviously referring to Phantom, because what other ghost could possibly be protecting the town? But the implications of that were absurd. That Phantom was partially human, and alive enough to still attend school without anybody knowing who he is, was a baffling thought.
Who could have written this paper? If this was true, and one of his students really was the town’s savior, he wanted to do anything he could to help. Did his parents know? Or just the two friends he referred to at the beginning? The other partial-ghost he referred to at the end must have known as well, but he didn’t have nearly enough information to figure out who that could be.
William’s mind raced as he tried to figure out who Phantom really was. A student who was always tired and had bad grades. Who wouldn’t be present during Phantom’s ghost fights. Whose parents hated him.
Oh no. There was only one student William could think of who matched those criteria. But young Mr. Fenton’s parents didn’t hate him. They were not the secretive type, and they very clearly cared about their children. But, William realized, they hated Phantom. Publicly and loudly. And violently.
Did this count as child abuse? How could he report this? Was Child Protective Services capable of protecting a child who wasn’t even fully human? Would the Guys in White step in? That was the last thing they needed, William thought. The government agents didn’t think any more highly of Phantom than his parents did.
No, William would have to approach this carefully. Office hours wouldn’t do; Daniel would never willingly reveal his secret to someone who hadn’t shown himself as trustworthy. And he had been a harsh teacher. He wanted Daniel to succeed, as he did for all his students, but he hadn’t realized that pushing him was only making things worse, considering everything he had on his plate.
William decided he needed to pull aside each student privately and offer them help with anything they needed to talk about. It was clear from these papers that many of his students were struggling in some way, so it would not be a bad idea to show more active support. And it would prevent him from bringing further attention to Daniel, who he had never been shy about reprimanding in the past.
Would he tell Daniel that he figured out which paper was his? There wasn’t really any better way to approach this. He needed to make sure Daniel wouldn’t run as soon as he revealed it, though. And it would be easy enough to run, considering the boy could walk through walls. He would have to start with apologies for the way he had treated him.
He could do this. It would be difficult to get through to Daniel, he knew, but it was of paramount importance that somebody show this boy some support. Phantom certainly did enough for the people of Amity Park that he deserved to have somebody on his side.
William sighed and put the crumpled paper beside the stack of homework. He would continue working through these assignments later. For now, he needed a break, and getting lost in a book may have been the only thing that could get his mind off of the fact that one of his students was somehow a ghost. He leaned his recliner back, picked a novel from the bookshelf beside his chair, and started to read.