Discover Top Posts Tagged with #lunch lady ghost

Gaia's Shadow - Mystery Meat

Masterlist

Series Summary: Sam had originally thought having ghost powers was going to be fun. She can fly, sneaking out of the house is easier than ever, and being half-dead fits perfectly with her goth aesthetic.

But then other ghosts start showing up, and people start getting hurt. Sam isn’t thrilled about the idea of putting herself in danger all the time, especially for the jerks in her class who bully her friends and the assholes who haven’t earned it. Whether or not she's cut out to be a hero doesn't seem to matter, though, because the universe is demanding she step up either way. And if she ignores that demand, worse things could happen than she even knows to imagine.

Episode Summary: Sam hadn't thought much about the existence of the ghosts other than her. She's definitely regretting that decision now.

Author's Note: The series summary will just be on this post and the masterlist I promise. Tumblr series are so much harder to format than ones on Ao3. But this whole series was originally inspired by this fic by quishaweasley on ao3, who wrote me a no one knows au for a Phic Fight fic where Sam was the half ghost, and consequently changed my entire life. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

As a final note, all of the credit in the entire world to @lonelygrayrose, without whom this fic would not exist, and certainly not in the final polished form you will read it as. Best beta I could have possibly asked for, like half the ideas in this series came from me rubber ducking back and forth with them <3

Okay, that's enough from me, enjoy the story!

...

Sam, for her part, thinks this is a bit too much fuss to be making over a lunch menu. And yes, she does see the irony there. But in her defense, she only wanted to change the menu so that the school would stop contributing to the slaughter of helpless animals every day for lunch. She wasn’t trying to kill anyone.

Unfortunately, it looks like she’s going to have to be the one to fix her own mess, because the Lunch Lady ghost showed up in the middle of Sam eating lunch with Danny and Tucker, and didn’t stop chasing after screaming kids until Sam admitted she was the one who changed the menu.

The ghost had thankfully chased Sam far enough away from everyone else that she could change into her ghost form without anyone seeing her, but now she has a very angry ghost on her tail chasing her through their school’s underground collection of meat. Which, by the way, ew. Sam is definitely coming back and destroying that later, if she lives that long.

Well, “lives” being a relative term these days. Hence the ghost form.

In her defense, Danny had only told her three times that his parents said the portal in the lab was off limits. Everyone knows it’s the fourth time that really makes something stick. It’s not like you can blame her for sneaking back down while they thought she was in the bathroom and exploring and accidentally getting herself killed— well, sort of. She wasn’t even that upset about it at first. She got a cool alter ego and sick superpowers out of it, how could she not be stoked?

Well, except for the fact that she did something her friend explicitly told her not to do and ended up dead over it.

Okay, so maybe she hadn’t told Danny and Tucker what happened right away. It’s fine. She’ll wait for the novelty of a working portal to die down, and in the meantime learn how to use her sweet new ghost powers. Or at least, that was the plan.

“YOU WILL CHANGE THE MENU BACK!” Sam hears from behind her, and she turns to see the ghost flying right for her faster than Sam even knew was possible.

“Uh, no thank you!” Sam calls back. She turns and eyes the wall ahead of her, which she’s pretty sure leads to outside. Her ability to walk or fly through things is still hit or miss a lot of the time, but if she can make it through, maybe the ghost will leave her alone?

Before she can try, however, she hears the sound of something starting to fall above her, and she looks up just in time to see the Lunch Lady ghost send a pile of meat down on top of her.

“Oh, fantastic,” Sam mutters to herself, trying to push her way out.

The Lunch Lady ghost lands suddenly right in front of her, and Sam flinches back as much as she’s currently capable of.

The Lunch Lady holds up a plate of mush that Sam isn’t even sure Tucker would go for.

“YOU WILL EAT YOUR MEATLOAF AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!” she cries.

“Is that what that is,” Sam says, managing to lean further away from it. The Lunch Lady starts to push it towards her mouth.

Okay, now or never. Sam takes a deep breath, and on the exhale, feels her legs tingle in the way they do before she falls through the floor, then her arms, and then the meat falls to the floor around her.

Sam turns and flies as fast as she can for the wall, just in time to hear the Lunch Lady start to chase her again.

But thankfully, either Sam’s getting better, or the adrenaline is helping, because her go-through-things ability lasts just long enough for her to soar through the wall.

…and then she immediately loses both that ability and her flight and crashes to the ground. Sam groans and pushes herself up as her ghostly white hair and outfit return to their usual black, not having enough energy left to keep them up. Thankfully, when she looks back towards the school, she doesn’t see an angry ghost following her. A reprieve.

The reprieve is over, however, a second later, when she hears the front door to the school slam open.

“Sam!” calls a familiar voice, and a second later Danny runs around the corner and into her line of sight. Relief fills his face the second he sees her, and he runs over.

“Thank goodness you’re okay,” Danny says, dropping down in front of Sam and pulling her into a hug. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! What on earth happened?”

“I’ll tell you when I figure it out,” Sam says. Danny sits back a second later and pushes herself to her feet. “Where’s Tucker? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Danny says, standing up after her. “I’m more worried about you. You’re the one who got chased down by a crazy ghost. Still kinda reeling about that, by the way.”

Sam looks at Danny and is reminded of the other reason she didn’t tell him what happened. Danny had never believed his parents’ insistence that ghosts are real. If she told him, there was a good chance he’d laugh at her.

At least, until now.

“I’m okay,” she says anyway, brushing her skirt off. “I lost her in this like, giant meat cooler under the school, and made it back to an exit. Did you know there’s a giant meat cooler under the school?”

“No, but I’ll tell Tucker,” Danny says with a small smile. “Come on, he’s back inside. He hid in a closet.”

Sam grins. She can definitely tease him about that.

She glances back at the wall she and Danny are walking away from, still tense. The ghost doesn’t seem to be following her, which is good, but what was that?

Sure, she’d suspected after what happened to her that other ghosts existed, but suspecting it and having it confirmed by being attacked by one are two different things.

But then, she supposes it follows logically that if other ghosts exist, some will be jerks who want to stop her from trying to make the world better. Because they can’t see past their attachment to eating creatures that can’t fight back.

Whatever, Sam doesn’t have to be intimidated by that. Just look at how easily she handled that last ghost, right? Totally didn’t get trapped in a pile of meat and almost had meatloaf forcibly shoved down her throat.

Sam shudders at the thought, and shakes herself back into the present, following Danny towards wherever Tucker’s hiding. It’s fine. She’ll figure this out. She just wasn’t expecting this to happen. If it does again, she’ll be more prepared.

Most of the halls she and Danny walk through are empty, though Sam spots a couple of students hiding in classrooms. Apparently the ghost really spooked everyone, which she understands. She still feels some of the adrenaline running through her too.

They stop outside the janitor’s closet, where Danny knocks on the door.

“Tucker, it’s me,” he calls. “Sam’s here, she got away.”

The door opens so quickly that Sam jumps, startled.

“Sam, thank goodness!” Tucker says, rushing forward and throwing his arms around her shoulders. “That thing was freaky, are you okay? I— I totally would have come after you too, obviously, I just, uh—”

Sam spots the guilt in his eyes as he pulls back, and reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” she says. “Seriously. I’m okay.”

“Good,” Tucker says with a weak smile. “But seriously, what was that thing?”

“Someone super mad that I changed the menu,” Sam says, rolling her eyes. “Whatever. It’s gonna take a lot more than that to change my mind.”

“Oh, great,” Tucker mutters, an obvious lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Danny asks, giving Sam a look of concern. “If the ghost was that mad you changed the menu, it’ll probably show up again, right?”

“Come on, it took way too long for me to wear the administration down for me to give up after one ghost shows up,” Sam says. “Besides, I totally handled it. We’re all good.”

Danny and Tucker exchange a glance, which Sam promptly ignores.

“So have they canceled school for the day, or do we still have to go back to class?”

“I don’t think anyone ever really made a decision,” Danny says, starting after Sam. “A lot of teachers just kind of screamed and ran.”

“I’d say that means we can go home,” Tucker says. “You guys want to stop at one of our places to play Doomed? I’d rather do that than just go home.”

“Yeah, let’s go to my place,” Danny says. “Besides, I think my parents will want to hear that there was an actual real ghost at school today.”

Sam’s nerves jump to her throat, as she’s reminded of the other other reason she didn’t tell Danny what happened— he has ghost hunters for parents.

“Or we could not,” she says, trying to keep her voice as casual as she can. “I mean, they’re just going to ask us a billion follow up questions and eat up all our game time. Can’t you just tell them later? When we’re not there? If you have to tell them?”

“Uh, okay,” Danny says. She can tell from the look on his face that he thinks that was a little rude, and she tries to feel bad. But either way, Danny agrees, “Sure. Let’s just go play Doomed.”

So they all walk towards the front doors, past the other students who have started reappearing out of classrooms and bathrooms and whatever other hiding places they chose for themselves. They all seem a little more shaken up than her or Danny or even Tucker, or maybe they’re just worse at hiding it. Sam can’t blame them. She’s definitely going to have nightmares tonight about that ghost chasing her. But there’s no reason she has to let that spoil her afternoon.

So she follows her best friends out the door, and focuses on the prospect of just hanging out with them, instead of the definitely-a-fluke Lunch Lady ghost that chased her. It works so well, that on the whole walk home, she only starts to fall through things once, and it’s not hard to hide— just her foot sinking into the ground for half a second. She easily passes it off as a trip.

…

Danny’s parents are already there when the three of them arrive, in the living room unpacking a bunch of ghost gear from what looks like another unsuccessful hunt. Sam takes a brief moment to feel relief that it means they don’t know about anything that just happened at school.

Then both of them turn, and look more than a little surprised at the sight of the three of them in the entryway.

“Hey kids, you’re here early,” Mr Fenton says.

“Yeah, I uh, forgot to tell you it was a half day today,” Danny says. He clearly doesn’t like lying to his parents, and that successfully makes Sam feel that guilt she was trying for earlier, but she can’t help it. She doesn’t want to see his parents reaction if he says there was a ghost attack at school.

“Oh, that’s okay,” Mrs Fenton says. “You kids can feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Sam, there’s some vegan ice cream in the fridge if you’d like it.”

Sam smiles in thanks, even though she’s not feeling particularly hungry.

Danny opens his mouth to say something, probably about how they’re going to play Doomed for a little while, when the door slams open behind them and Jazz stumbles in, looking shell-shocked and haggard.

“Where the heck were you guys?” she exclaims, gesturing wildly at Mr and Mrs Fenton. “How does a ghost show up at school and you’re just not there?!”

Sam and Danny exchange an immediate look, and Sam can tell they both feel like idiots. How on earth did they forget Jazz was at school during the ghost attack too?

“There was a ghost attack at the school?” Mr Fenton cries. He immediately leaps for his gun, and Sam can’t help but take a small step back.

“Yeah,” Jazz says, still sounding shellshocked and frantic, “it went after Sam!”

Sam is definitely going to feel like a terrible friend later, but as soon as Jazz says that, she immediately ducks behind Danny.

She can still see Mr and Mrs Fenton’s gazes from behind him, but for the moment at least, they’re looking at Danny, not her.

“Danny,” Mrs Fenton says. “Did you know that?”

“Um,” Danny says. Sam can feel Tucker and Jazz both staring at her. She wishes it wouldn’t make things infinitely worse if she just disappeared.

Then, as if the universe has planned a special kind of ‘fuck you’ today, Sam feels her feet start to fall through the floor. She shifts quickly to the space between Danny and the wall and grabs on tightly to his shoulders, holding on for dear life, which thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Danny, why on earth would you lie to us about that?” Mr Fenton says, crossing his arms and doing nothing to help ease Sam’s panic.

“I’m sorry,” Danny says, looking down at the floor. Sam can hear the tension in his voice.

Mrs Fenton sighs. “We’ll talk about that later,” she says. “Sam, come downstairs so we can make sure the ghost didn’t hurt you.”

“No!” Sam says, way too many nerves obvious in her voice. It definitely just makes her sound suspicious, but she can’t let the Fentons examine her, and she cannot go back to that lab. Especially not while her stupid powers are already trying to take her there.

She takes a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she says, forcing her tone to be calmer even as she tightens her grip on Danny, who gives her a weird look and a wince.

“It didn’t even touch me,” Sam says, ignoring him. “I got away before it could. It was just mad that I changed the lunch menu.”

Mrs Fenton still looks unsure. “I’d really prefer if we examined you,” she says. “We don’t know what kind of harm just being near one could cause.”

Well, so far the harm seems to be falling through the floor in my sleep and making myself and my best friend look like total jerks.

“I’ll come find you if anything weird happens,” Sam lies. “I feel fine. Plus, don’t you need to go see if there’s any evidence at the school still?”

“She’s right Mads, we don’t know what evidence will be there or how long it’ll last,” Mr Fenton says. “We have to strike while it’s hot.”

Mrs Fenton sighs. “Alright, but I’ll be calling your parents to check on you later,” Mrs Fenton says, reaching for her own gun.

Oh, awesome.

For now, at least, she and Mr Fenton leave, and as soon as the front door closes after them, Sam’s feet turn back to normal, and she lets go of Danny’s shoulders. Not a moment too soon either, because immediately after, all eyes in the room turn to Sam.

Well, at least none of the people looking at her are ghost hunters this time.

“Okay!” Sam says, holding up her hands, and looking mainly at Danny. “I’m sorry. I should’ve… that was dumb.”

“You mean the part where we lied to my parents for no reason or the part where we forgot Jazz was at school today?” Danny says.

“Why on earth would you lie to mom and dad about the ghost attack?” Jazz asks, putting her hands on her hips. “Did you think they weren’t gonna find out eventually?”

Sam opens her mouth to try and come up with something that doesn’t make her sound like a total asshole, but Danny speaks before she can.

“We just didn’t want it to take up the whole afternoon,” he says. “I was gonna tell them later, after Sam and Tucker went home.”

“Dumb move on your part, little brother,” Jazz says, raising an eyebrow.

“I know,” Danny says. “Rub it in later, okay? We did come here for a reason.” And with that, he starts for the steps, leaving no space for Sam and Tucker to do anything other than follow him. Jazz lets them go, and Danny leads them up and into his room.

Sam doesn’t know what to say, so instead she ends up just standing there awkwardly, feeling Tucker’s eyes on her. Danny is intentionally not looking at her, just walking over to his gaming console.

After he gets there, however, he seems to give up, and sighs and turns to face Sam.

“Okay, next time, I’m just gonna tell them what happened, alright?” he says.

Sam winces. “Okay,” she says. Words race to the edge of her tongue, spanning from I’m sorry to I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble to hey it’s not so much that I wanted to have more time to play games as it is that I didn’t want to hear your parents talk about ghosts because that’s really personal and scary now. She doesn’t say any of them.

Danny sighs again, but then shakes his hands, like he’s dispelling the event from the universe. “Okay, let’s drop it,” he says. “We have the afternoon off, let’s use it to have some actual fun.” He holds up his two controllers as he settles down on one of the three bean bags. “Who wants first dibs?”

Sam ends up letting him and Tucker play first, as the best non-verbal apology she can come up with, since her words don’t seem to be cooperating. As the two of them play Doomed, the tension in the air slowly fades, and finally, as Tucker and Danny set their controllers down after a level, Tucker says, “I can’t believe you two idiots forgot Jazz goes to our school.”

“Look,” Sam says, as Danny exclaims “I never said I was smart!”

“Besides, why didn’t you say anything?” Sam asks, crossing her arms and looking at Tucker.

“I don’t have to justify myself, it wasn’t my plan.”

“Sounds to me like he forgot too, Danny,” Sam says, with a smile towards him.

“He definitely did,” Danny agrees with a grin of his own.

“Hey don’t turn this back around to me, this is about me making fun of you both for being stupid.”

“Aww, Tucker, you know we’re at our best when we’re all being stupid together,” Sam says, leaning forward and slinging her arm around Tucker’s shoulder.

“I will have no part in this,” Tucker says, pulling out of Sam’s grip.

“Booo,” Danny says, cupping his hands around his mouth to better mock Tucker.

“Traitor,” Sam says, leaning forward in her bean bag chair to nab Tucker’s controller. “Give me that. A coward like you isn’t fit to use it. Won’t even stand with your friends’ stupid decisions. Get up.”

Tucker gives her an irritated look, but it’s long past Sam’s turn, so he gets up and lets her take the bean bag.

Sam, as expected, kicks Danny’s butt, which she could do on her worst day, and then when he switches out with Tucker, she kicks his butt too. The afternoon ends with the three of them in high spirits, Sam because she’s proved her superiority again and Tucker and Danny because they just like basking in her presence in hopes that her awesomeness will rub off.

The mood is dampened only slightly when Danny’s parents show up again, announced by the loud banging of the front door and their voices coming from downstairs.

Danny sighs and pauses the game. “Okay,” he says. “They’re gonna want to talk to me, you guys should go.”

The idea makes Sam’s gut curl up with guilt again, and despite the nerves behind the idea, she says, “I’ll stay.”

Danny shakes his head. “You should go home and tell your parents before mine do,” he says.

Sam wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. I forgot about that.”

“Seriously, don’t worry about it,” Danny says. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow. I’ll just make you stay home with me out of solidarity if I end up grounded.”

Sam snorts, but ends on a nod at Danny. “Okay,” she says. “Good luck then.”

Danny nods back, and they all head out of his room, Danny following them down the stairs until they stop at the front door.

“See you tomorrow,” Tucker says, and before Sam can say the same, Danny’s mother’s voice come from the kitchen.

“Danny, come in here and talk to us please.”

Danny sighs, and waves at them. “See you tomorrow,” he says. Sam gives him one last apologetic look, and Danny waves her off. Then they both head out and start the walk home, splitting off in different directions with a wave.

…

Sam spends the walk home trying to think of what to tell her parents. She has told them exactly nothing about everything ghost-related in her life lately. She has no idea how to start the conversation, for one, and she can only picture two things happening if she does: they laugh and don’t believe her or they drag her back to the Fentons and demand they figure out what’s happened to her. Both would suck for different reasons, and Sam doesn’t particularly want to deal with either.

But if the Fentons are going to tell her parents she was attacked by a ghost, she has to tell them at least some part of the truth about today. She’d told Danny she’d gotten away by sheer luck, that might be a good story to stick to, for consistency if nothing else.

So, when she gets home, she goes to find her mom in the kitchen.

“Hey, Mom,” she says. Her mom is over at the stove, stirring something in a pot. Why she insists on cooking every night when they have about thirty maids at their disposal, Sam has no idea. Probably some sort of old-fashioned idea she never bothered to unlearn about what being a wife and mother is supposed to mean.

“Hello Samantha,” her mom says brightly. Sam grits her teeth, but she’s long given up on getting her mother to call her Sam instead of Samantha. “I’m making vegetable soup for dinner, does that sound good?”

“Sure mom,” Sam says. “But actually, I need to tell you something. Is dad around?”

“I think he’s in the study, dear. He’s been in there for too long anyway, you can bring him in here. I need a taste tester.”

Sam nods, and walks out of the kitchen, then down the hallway to the study.

“Study” is putting it a little generously, in her opinion. Her parents don’t spend much time reading, and there aren’t any bookshelves or desks in there with work to do, because they couldn’t be bothered to find day jobs like regular people. In reality, it’s the room where her parents plan protests and social activist rallies for all of the wrong causes. Her father is currently looking at a pinboard on the other side of the room with papers and notes about protecting kids from becoming street artists.

“Dad,” Sam says, deciding to just ignore all of that for now. “I need to talk to you and Mom. And she wants you out in the kitchen to taste test.”

“Sure Sammykins, I’ll be out there in just a second!” her father calls, turning to her with a bright smile.

“Could you not,” Sam groans, because she may have given up on Samantha, but she draws the line at Sammykins.

But her father just walks past her and gives her a bright smile, heading towards the kitchen. Sam takes a deep breath, gathers her courage, and follows him there.

Her father walks immediately up to her mother as soon as they get there, and her mother holds out one of the potatoes in the soup on a fork.

“What do you think, dear, soft enough?” she asks.

Her father takes a bite off the fork that’s still in her mother’s hand, and Sam gags and walks forward to sit at the table.

“Almost, honeybuns!” her father calls. “It’ll definitely be ready by dinner time.”

“Wonderful,” her mother says, as Sam fights the impulse to slam her head into the table multiple times. “Now, what did you want to tell us, Samantha?”

Sam takes a deep breath, accepts what the next two hours of her life are going to be like, and says, “Mr and Mrs Fenton are going to call you later tonight.”

There’s immediate distaste on her parents’ faces, and Sam realizes her mistake.

“No, not like that,” Sam says, holding out her hands, though she’s honestly not sure what “that” would refer to in her parents’ minds. “Just, something happened at school.”

“What kind of thing?” her mother asks, stepping forward.

“A ghost attack,” Sam says, and realizes only after she says it how insane that’s going to sound.

Sure enough, her mother gives her a deadpan look. “Samantha, please,” she says. “If we’re going to have to talk to those Fenton parents, could we at least have an actual reason?”

Actually… this could work out really well.

“That is the reason!” Sam exclaims, throwing her hands on the table. “God, I knew you wouldn’t believe me!”

Okay, maybe that was a bit much. It seems to surprise both her parents, which Sam gets for once.

“Samantha, for heaven’s sake,” her mom says. “Calm yourself.”

Problem is, now she’s committed.

“No!” Sam snaps, standing. “I try to tell you the truth and you don’t even believe me! Why do I even bother talking to you?”

And with that, she storms out of the room, leaving her no doubt very confused parents standing there.

Honestly, she’d forgotten what “I was attacked by a ghost” was going to sound like to her parents. That worked out well. And she knows they have enough dislike for the Fentons that, when they call later, they’ll just get irritated and hang up, maybe even before they start talking about ghosts. If they actually do come back and ask her later, she can just blame her overreaction on her teenage womanly hormones.

So, much faster than she thought she would, Sam escapes to her room. She only makes it up the steps, however, before she’s interrupted once again.

“Hello, bubbala,” comes her grandmother’s voice, and Sam turns to see her driving down the hallway on her scooter. “You’re back a little early today.”

“We got, uh, let out early,” Sam says with what hopefully comes across as a casual smile.

“Ah, and you came straight home?” her grandma says with a knowing smile.

“Of course,” Sam says, putting her hands behind her back just before her hands start fading in and out of existence. “Doesn’t mean I still don’t have a lot of homework to do though, so I’ll see you at dinner!”

She gives her grandma a nod instead of a wave, and walks backwards over to her bedroom door. She forces her hand to appear long enough to force the door open and slides inside. Then she collapses back against the door and lets out a sigh of relief. Out of the three of them, her grandmother is the most perceptive. Sure, Sam doubts she’ll guess “my granddaughter is a half ghost and is trying to keep it from all of us,” but she might pick up on “my granddaughter hung out with her friends today instead of coming straight home,” and that won’t exactly improve her parents’ opinions of the Fentons and Foleys. The point is, the less she sees of her grandma right now, the better.

And probably the best idea right now is to stay cooped up in her room until dinnertime, by which point hopefully the Fenton parents will have called hers, her parents will have hung up and/or ignored them, and Sam will be able to breathe.

…

Fortunately, her night goes pretty much in accordance with that plan. She can hear her parents rolling her eyes at the Fentons from her bedroom, and there’s no mention of it at dinner apart from them grumbling to each other about how they must be where Sam’s getting all of her dangerous ideas from. But if they don’t say anything to her directly, that means they haven’t reached a point of thinking cutting Sam off from them is a good idea. It’s a difficult balance to walk to be sure, but Sam would like to think she’s getting pretty good at it.

And therefore, by the time she gets to school tomorrow, she’s almost completely forgotten about the Lunch Lady ghost.

She’s not surprised that Danny’s in a different boat, however. He was probably grilled about every detail of the ghost attack all through dinner, and he wasn’t even there for most of it.

When she finds him and Tucker at his locker that morning, Danny’s gesturing at some kind of soup thermos, looking very exasperated by it.

“Uh, hey,” Sam says. “What are we angry about? I promise the soup won’t hurt you.”

“It’s a ghost weapon,” Danny says, and Sam takes as imperceptible a step back as she can manage.

“Oh,” she says. “From your parents?”

“They made me bring it with me,” Danny says, looking down at it. “They say it’s supposed to capture a ghost inside of it. But it doesn’t even work. Look.”

And before Sam can say anything, he points it right at Sam and hits the button.

Sam can’t help but yelp and take a step back, but the only thing that happens is there’s a tiny spark and the thermos continues being a thermos.

“See?” Danny says, seeming content to brush past Sam’s reaction. “Honestly, if they’re going to send me to school with weapons to protect me against ghosts, you’d think they’d make sure they actually function how they’re supposed to.”

“Maybe it worked when they used it?” Tucker suggests.

“I doubt it. Their stuff never works,” Danny says, pulling his backpack around to his front and shoving the thermos inside it. “But I also doubt that’ll stop them from trying. Especially now that they know ghosts are actually real.”

That’s kind of what I’m afraid of, Sam doesn’t say.

“I’m sure yesterday was just some kind of weird fluke,” she says instead. “I doubt the Lunch Lady ghost even shows up again.”

“Why, because you’re changing the menu back?” Tucker asks hopefully.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sam says, waving her hand dismissively. “Because it’s a weird fluke, that’s why. I’m sure if she comes back, it’ll be to say that she’s given it some thought over the past day, and she’s realized that vegetarianism is actually the superior diet for growing teenagers.”

“I don’t think that’s how ghosts work, Sam,” Danny says. “My parents say they’re pretty laser-focused on whatever they represent.”

Sam snorts. “Because your parents are the leading experts on ghosts.”

“I mean, they kinda… are?”

“Oh, whatever. Just wait for lunchtime, you’ll see.”

Danny shrugs. “Alright. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. And please be careful, Sam.”

“Don’t worry, Danny, I got this. I’m gonna go drop my stuff off in my locker. I’ll meet you guys in homeroom.”

With that, she heads off, and puts the Lunch Lady firmly out of her mind. It’s not like she’s going to need to worry about her anymore.

And she actually does get through the first half of the day without any problems, but as soon as she walks into the lunch room, she can tell everyone who isn’t her is anxious that the same thing is going to happen again, because they’re all sitting together in groups, talking in hushed whispers, and looking around the room. And as soon as they spot Sam, the tension in the room immediately shoots up several degrees.

Sam rolls her eyes and ignores them. Whether it’s just that they’re nervous about the ghost, or if its also irritation about the lunch menu, none of them are worth her attention.

She gets her lunch from the front and walks over to her usual table, where Danny and Tucker are sitting and talking. Tucker’s poking at the grass toast on his plate and looking very uncomfortable with it.

As soon as Sam sits down, however, he glares at her, discomfort still obvious.

“Sam, I don’t see how I’m ever supposed to choke this stuff down,” he says.

“Easy,” Sam says with a smirk. “Eventually you’ll be hungry enough to.”

Tucker does not look amused, and Sam responds by taking a happy bite of her lunch. As soon as she’s about to say to Tucker that he should try it, however, a strong smell of dandelions fills the air. Sam stops and looks around, hoping she can find where it’s coming from this time. Dandelions are exactly what she smelled yesterday, just before the Lunch Lady ghost showed up. But she couldn’t find the source of them then either. It’s not that she would object to dandelions being added to the menu, but they haven’t been yet.

It could be a coincidence. But it could just as easily not be.

“Hey, Danny,” Sam asks, looking anxiously around. “Could I borrow that Fenton thermos?”

“What? I mean, sure,” Danny says, reaching down to grab his backpack. “It still doesn’t work.”

He holds it out to her anyway, and Sam takes it. Not even a second later, there’s a loud crash, and the human lunch ladies run screaming from behind the counter. Sam turns to look and sees what looks like a huge monster made of meat tearing the counter apart.

“IT’S LUNCHTIME!” it yells in the Lunch Lady ghost’s voice.

That… okay, she looks a little different than yesterday.

Students start to run screaming from the room, and before Sam can even decide if she wants to do the same, she feels someone grab her arm, and looks over her shoulder to see Danny has grabbed ahold of her and Tucker and is pulling them both from the room.

Sam opens her mouth to yell at him to stop, but any attempt at noise she could make is lost in the screaming and panic of the students around her, and before she even knows what’s happened Danny has pulled them both out into the hall and is running after the other students who are all making a beeline for the exit.

They end up outside, and as soon as they’re in a more open space, Sam pulls them all far enough away from the crowd that she can yank her arm out of Danny’s grip.

Danny turns to her immediately, and Sam sees her name in his mouth, but then he’s whisked away by the crowd, and Sam loses sight of him and Tucker quickly. She turns and makes her way back towards the school, though fighting against the crowd isn’t easy, but finally she manages to fight her way back inside the double doors. Thankfully, she’s still got hold of the thermos.

She glances up, and sees the Lunch Lady ghost has clearly wreaked havoc on the hallway, mostly by covering everything in various types of meat.

“Okay, okay, you can do this,” Sam says, looking down at the thermos. “If their last invention just needed a little ghostly help to get started, maybe that’s all this one needs too.” She takes a deep breath, focuses her energy, and feels the transformation rings wash over her, leaving her once again as a ghost.

And just in time too, because the next second the Lunch Lady ghost suddenly leaps up, angry meat and all, from the floor right in front of Sam.

“NO!” she screams, glaring down at the thermos. “SOUP ISN’T ON TODAY’S MENU!”

“Well, the alternative is eating you, and hate it to break it to you lady, I’m still a vegetarian,” Sam says.

In response, the Lunch Lady looks up and gives an angry roar, splattering meat all over the ceiling.

Sam holds up the thermos and shifts to her walk-through-things form just as the meat is about to fall down, making sure to bring the thermos with her into that state.

As soon as she does, the thermos starts glowing blue, and a beam of light shoots out of the end of it, pointed straight at the Lunch Lady ghost. Then the beam hits her, and she’s pulled inside, leaving nothing but the echo of a scream and a faint bit of smoke coming out of the end of the thermos.

Sam stands for a couple seconds in the empty hallway as what just happens processes.

Then she slams the lid back on the thermos in victory. “Hell yeah, I did it!”

She glances back down at her white clothing, takes a deep breath, and tries to focus in the same way she did earlier. The transformation rings appear again, and spread upwards, and when they vanish, she’s standing there once again as a human.

Sam laughs a little, then lets out a huge sigh of relief. She gives herself a couple seconds to feel the thrill of what she’s just accomplished, then she turns and runs down the hall, towards a side door, so she can reasonably pretend she wasn’t inside the school with the ghost.

No one’s there when she walks out, so she makes her way quickly to the front of the school, and slips the thermos into her backpack while she does. There’s not a ton of people there anymore, but there’s at least one very significant person— Danny, screaming her name and looking around desperately.

“Danny!” she yells back, waving her hand.

Danny’s gaze snaps immediately to her, and he starts sprinting in her direction.

“SAM!” he yells, throwing his arms around her. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I lost hold of you, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says, hugging him back, even as she feels a tinge of guilt. She hadn’t meant for Danny to think it was his fault they got separated.

But despite her reassurance, Danny pushes her back to arms length and starts looking her over like he’s checking for injuries.

“Danny, really,” she says, grasping his hands. “I’m okay. The ghost didn’t get to me.”

“It went after you specifically last time,” Danny says nervously, looking back at her face.

“And I got away last time too,” Sam points out. “I’m okay. I just— I just lost the thermos. I’m sorry.”

“Oh Sam for Pete’s sake, who cares about the thermos?” Danny says, pulling her into another hug. “It didn’t work anyway. I’m just glad you’re alright.” He pulls back again. “But seriously, let’s get out of here. We don’t know when that ghost will be back.”

He grabs her hand and pulls them both off running again before Sam can think of an excuse.

Well, she’s not going to object to two afternoons off in a row. Especially if comes off the high of easily handling the first other ghost she’d ever seen.

Certainly an eventful couple of days to be sure. But now she can go hang out with her friends for another free afternoon, and put this weird fluke behind her.

#lunch lady ghost

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#lunch lady ghost