I slammed my front door and turned to greet Samantha Manson (aka: Sam), my girlfriend, and Tucker Foley, my best friend, who were waiting for me to get outside so we could all walk to school together. Much to my confusion, instead of replying with the usual 'hello' or 'hi', they both busted out laughing.
"What?" I asked blankly.
The only answer I recieved was Tucker wordlessly pointing at the spot where my pants should have been. Emphasis on should have been.
'Good luck trying to live this one down, Fenton. God knows they won't let you forget it.' I thought.
I blushed and tried to casually sneak back inside my bizarre home as if I hadn't been completely humiliated for the third time that week.
My older sister, Jazz, glanced up from the news article she was reading and smiled sympathetically at my pants-less figure.
"Forget pants again, Danny?"she asked.
"Ya." my cheeks burned. 'Please don't let her notice how embarrassed I am! The last thing I need is for her to spend twenty minutes trying to do some crazy psycho-analysis on me and my mental health. What if I'm late? It's the first day of high school! You can't be late for that! OR, god help me, WHAT IF SHE'S FORCED TO DRIVE ME TO SCHOOL?' I paled at the thought of showing up to high school with my perfect sister. 'There's such a huge difference between the two of us, It would suck to have to be compared to her on the first day.'
Her red hair curled perfectly around her neck and her blue eyes sparkled in the kitchen's flourescent light. I'd heard guys around school last year make stupid comments about her behind her back during certain school events, like, "I'd ring her bell!" and "Wow, wouldn't you like to butter her biscuit?" If I wasn't related to her, I guess I would agree. My parents adored her. She was pretty, smart, mature. Then there was me. Daniel Fenton. Social reject number one since preschool. Black hair, blue eyes, not-exactly-perfect skin, B- average and to top it all off; scrawny. I might as well not even exist.
"There's a laundry basket at the bottom of the stairs. Be careful though. Mom and Dad are working on some new invention of theirs, and you know how they get when they'reinterrupted." she offered.
"Thanks." My jealousy evaporated as I opened the door to reveal our basement stairs.
I flipped the light switch and stepped down our creaky wooden steps carefully; trying not to let my parents hear me. Despite the staircase's lighting being terrible, I could still make out the pale outline of the laundry basket from the light coming from the top of the stairs.
After reaching the bottom of the stairs, I strategically avoided my sisters panties, and leaned in to grab my jeans from the newly washed clothes pile. But I was distracted by the sound of my parents conversation drifting through the door.
"Jack, dear. Can you please put down the donuts and hand me the wrench and pliers?" my mom asked my father patiently.
"Sure, honey...Uhhh, which one is the pliers, again?"
I laughed to myself, wondering how dad would survive without mom helping him all the time.
I pulled on my jeans and hurried back up the stairs, then outside to sprint to school with Tucker and Sam.
Later, at the Nasty Burger, we all enjoyed our delicious after-school snack of burgers and fries while conversing about the usual junk going on in Amity Park. Which is to say, absolutely nothing at all.
"And yet another agonizingly boring day passes in the mundane city of Amity Park, New York. The place where the weather and the people are the same every single week. This is Sam Manson here with two ordinary, teenage delinquents at the local burger joint. Tell me, what is it like having nothing remarkable to talk about every day?" Sam shoved her spork towards Tucker's chin in a mock news interrogation.
"Well, Samantha-"Tucker began dramatically.
"Don't call me that. It's girly and demeaning." Sam interjected.
"I wouldn't say that nothing remarkable has happened. Why, just this morning my good friend Danny Fenton forgot to wear pants outside Fenton Works for the third time this week. Also, my all-meat streak is still going strong." Tucker declared.
"Okay then! After that disgusting mention of meat... Tell me, Danny. How does it feel knowing that all of two people are aware that you wear spiderman boxers?"
"Well , as much as I'd love to talk about what kind of boxers I wear," I replied sarcastically while internally cringing. "I think that instead, we should talk about what crazy new invention my parents are going to be finishing this afternoon."
"What? Danny!" Sam threw the spork and jumped up. "And you didn't tell us?" She grabbed me and Tucker's wrists and yanked us away from our unfinished meals and out the door despite our many protests.
When we finally got back to my house, Sam's hair tie had fallen out, letting her short, glossy, black hair hang in her face, Tucker had dropped his red beret and his glasses were crooked, and I had nearly killed myself a few times trying to avoid my untied shoelaces.
"Alright, both of you guys know how my house is after a new experiment is finished. So, everyone is on high alert. Be ready for anything." I warned them, remembering the last incident.
I opened the door a bit and peeked inside, ready for another weiner attack, but nothing happened. I frowned and opened the door completely. Still, nothing happened. I lead my friends over the threshhold into the living room, and even further into the kitchen looking around warily. A booming voice that could only belong to my father shouted up from the basement.
"Danny?" I leapt a mile at the sound of his voice. Even when using an 'indoor voice' my dad had the power to shake the house's foundations.
"What?" I yelled back wearily.
"Are your friends with you?"
"Ya!"
"Great! They can witness the christening of our newest invention! Bring them to the basement!"
I rolled my eyes. "'Kay, Dad!"
Motioning for Sam and Tucker to follow me, we all headed into the basement. Sam was practically jumping in excitement and Tucker's eyes were bright with fascination at the prospect of technology in my parents lab. I was indifferent, figuring that my parents had just made another lame, little ghost detector, but upon entering the lab I immediately became more interested in what was going on.
A huge gaping hole was in the lab's wall with wires spilling out all over the place. My mom stood on the right side of it with a blowtorch making some final adjustments in her blue jumpsuit and my dad stood on the left holding a wrench in his neon orange jumpsuit. He grinned at us and walked over to some blueprints hanging on the wall.
"See kids?" he gestured wildly at the vague blueprints. "It's a ghost portal!"
"What does it do?" Tucker asked, trying to figure something out from the blueprints since the only thing labeled was the name scrawled along the top of the paper.
"It will make a portal in between our, um, worlds, so we can, uh, go into the ghost zone and they can come to, uh um, ask your mother." he gave up trying to explain.
'Seems like he only knows a little more than us...this should be interesting' I grinned to myself in anticipation for whatever might occur.
"Are you ready, Jack?" my mom called.
"Totally, Maddie!" my dad called back to her.
He headed over to my mom who was holding two ends of some seemingly random chords. My mom handed them over to my dad lovingly, like they were her newest children. Turning, she nodded to let us know that they were about to turn the machine on. We watched the two chords plug into each other and then quickly switched our views to the hole in the wall where a bright spark of electricity leapt out at us with a loud snapping noise.
Tucker yelled loudly in surprise to the spark, just as the whole machine died down. My parents faces fell. In devastation, my father dropped the still connected wires with a dull 'thunk' and walked out of the lab, shoulders slumped with my mother following closely behind.
Sam waited for my parents to completely exit the lab before declaring, "Well that was way too anticlimatic for my tastes. This machine has got to work. We can't have run all the way from the Nasty Burger for nothing to happen." She stared at the hole in the wall like she was trying to will the experiment to work. Then, she turned to be with a determined look on her face. "Danny, you fix it."
"What?" I asked in total shock. "How would I possibly know the first thing about fixing a ghost portal?" Sam just glared at me.
"Fine," I grumbled and dragged my feet over to the closet with all of my family's spare jumpsuits.
"Dude, you have a jumpsuit?" Tucker teased.
I rolled my eyes. "It's not like I've ever put it on before now, Tuck."
I pulled my black and white jumpsuit off of its hangar and looked at it in dread. 'I cannot believe they're going to make me put this on.' Grimacing, I unzipped the front and slipped into the suprisingly comfortable suit.
"Seriously? You guys are really gonna make me go into a hole in the wall full of wires to try and fix a probably lost cause just because you want to see some ghosts? Not to mention the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing."
Sam walked over to me, grabbed the zipper and slowly zipped the jumpsuit closed while whispering in my ear.
"Yes."
I blushed and tugged at my collar. "Okay, uh, I geuss I'll just, um, check the wires then."
"Wait." Sam pulled me back towards her, ripped a large sticker of my dad's face off of my jumpsuit and grinned. "There."
I smiled nervously at her and headed towards the portal. The portal loomed in front of me formidably, reminding me that anything could happen once I was inside.
'I swear if I die in here, I will haunt Sam and Tucker for the rest of their lives. My god I can't believe I'm actually doing this.' I thought.
Breathing deeply to calm myself, I stepped into the portal. It was dark, circuit boards covered the walls and wires littered the floors. The wires on the floors looked like snakes, and I had to step carefully to avoid tripping.
"Do you see anything?" Tucker yelled curiously. I knew it was killing him that I got to check out all of the technology inside and he didn't. I also knew that no matter how much he wanted to see the inside of the stupid portal, he would never come inside for fear of what potentially dangerous things could occur inside.
I put my hand against the wall to steady myself after maneuvering myself around a particularly large bundle of wires. "Of course I see things Tucker! I'm in a freaking portal!" I screamed, shook my head in aggravation, and continued walking with my hand against the circuit boards for support.
"Danny, maybe you should come back! You could get hurt!" Sam shouted.
I shook my head in disbelief. "Oh, sure now you notice! I'm knee-deep in wires and now you guys think it's dangerous?"
I spun around to glare at them, but my feet got tangled in the chords and I went down. Hard.
"SON OF A BITCH!" I lost it. My ankles were completely wrapped up in thick and thin wires and the rest of my body was tangled too. I reached up to the wall to pull myself up and my hand closed over a small box attached to the circuit board. My frustration was replaced by curiosity as a small click resounded through the tunnel.
"Danny?" Sam called.
I raised my head to see what I had pressed just as a blinding flash lit up the portal. The wires wrapped around me hummed for a moment. 'Shit.' Electricity coursed through my veins, making me feel as though I would explode. I was so cold, I felt like I was on fire. My limbs tingled and burned. My last rational thought before blacking out was, 'Well, shit.'