THE LUNCH CLUB
I'm a child of the 80s, so The Breakfast Club was pretty much required viewing. Long before High School Musical, it was the coming-of-age movie about the dangers of cliques and stereotypes and how friendships can cross those artificial boundaries we create for ourselves. Sam, Tucker, and Danny have a friendship that is a really wonderful example of this. But how exactly did a Goth, a Techno-Geek, and a kid who just wanted to be "normal" end up so tight?
We know from Splitting Images that they've known each other since at least second grade, but I have a real hard time imagining Sam as Danny's and Tucker's childhood friend. Second grade seems a little early for her to make the choice to hide her parents' wealth from her friends, and surely she would have had lavish birthday parties as a kid that Danny and Tuck would've attended. And Tucker has to explain Danny's issues with Christmas to her in the ninth grade—how could she have gone all those years without knowing that if they were close?
So I picture them becoming friends much later, in middle school. That's where the idea for The Lunch Club was born. Also, in Fanning the Flames, Danny's scary collection of Sam memorabilia includes a really awesome picture of a slightly younger Sam with half her head shaved. It was that visual image that really pulled this whole idea together.
Disclaimer: Butch Hartman and I grew up around the same time, in the same state, and apparently we watched all the same cartoons as kids. But only one of us thought up Danny Phantom and, sadly, it wasn't me.
Acknowledgements: Big thanks to Dragondancer1014 and Ginef for beta-testing. You guys are the best!
ETA 6/22/12: The gorgeous cover image is by Shaed-Knightwing, used with permission. Please visit her DeviantArt page at shaed-knightwing dot deviantart dot com to see more of her excellent artwork.
Day One
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. The Larceny II videogame was being released on a Tuesday, and by the time school got out, every store in Amity Park would be sold out. So, Danny and Tucker did what any other self-respecting seventh-grade video game connoisseurs would do—they ditched school to wait in line for 3D Games to open to make sure they didn't miss out.
In retrospect, it hadn't been a very well-thought-out plan. Tucker didn't sound very much like Danny's mom, and Danny didn't sound very much like Tucker's mom, so the school office wasn't impressed when they'd called each other in sick. And their real moms were even less impressed. Both boys were grounded, the Larceny II games confiscated, and they were stuck with a whole week of lunch detention starting the following Monday. And even worse—this week's detention monitor was none other than Mr. Gleason. A tall, thin, rail of a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetual scowl, Gleason was Muddlemore Middle School's answer to Professor Snape. Danny tried not to grimace as he and Tucker entered the dreaded room. One whole week.
"Mr. Fenton, Mr. Foley, take a seat."
Danny slipped behind a desk in the third row, and Tucker sat down beside him. As they put their backpacks on the floor and pulled out their sack lunches, Tucker gave a small exhale of relief. "At least we're the only ones here. Some of those detention regulars can be pretty scary."
Danny was about to voice his agreement when Mr. Gleason cut him off. "Mr. Foley!" Tucker sat bolt upright in his seat. "Lunch detention is not social hour. If you were here to chat with your friends, it wouldn't be detention, now, would it?"
"Er…no?"
Gleason raised his eyebrows.
"No, Mr. Gleason, sir."
Danny fought against the temptation to roll his eyes. What was it with adults, always demanding respect they hadn't bothered to earn first?
Gleason smirked at them from behind his desk. "You will not talk. You will not move from your seats. You will eat your lunch, and when you are finished, you will sit with your hands folded on your desk. Are we clear, gentlemen?"
"Yes. Mr. Gleason. Sir." Danny and Tucker nodded in unison.
"Good. Ah, Miss Manson, so good of you to join us."
Danny's and Tucker's eyes swung to the door where a girl had just entered the room. A really scary girl. She was dressed all in black, with heavy-soled black army boots on her feet and a black studded dog-collar around her neck. Her black hair hung shoulder-length on the left, while the right side of her head was shaved almost bald. She wore black lipstick, heavy black eyeliner, and at least three earrings in the ear they could see. Danny was pretty sure her nose was pierced as well, but as nose rings weren't allowed in school, there was no way to tell.
Danny leaned infinitesimally closer to Tucker and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "Dude. Isn't that the girl whose lunch box you threw up in in second grade? What's her name again?"
Tucker slumped down in his seat, looking terrified. "Shh! I told her Ricky Marsh did it. And she doesn't exactly look like the forgiving type."
"Perhaps tomorrow you will remember that lunch detention starts promptly at noon?" Gleason continued, not noticing his other two charges already disobeying his first rule. "If that's too difficult to remember, then you can make up the time next week. One additional day for every day you're late this week."
"Yes, Mr. Gleason, sir."
The teacher glared at her. "Are you being smart with me, Miss Manson?"
Danny frowned. He didn't think she'd sounded sarcastic. A little monotone, maybe, but how else did he expect them to sound when parroting back what he made them say?
"No, Mr. Gleason, sir."
Gleason looked only slightly mollified. "Then take your seat. You will not talk. You will not move from your seat. You will eat your lunch, and when you are finished, you will sit with your hands folded on your desk."
The girl nodded, then turned on her black-booted heel and tromped to a seat in the last row, barely sparing Danny and Tucker a glance as she passed by. Tucker gave another exhale of relief.
The half hour passed more slowly than Danny could have ever imagined. He'd finished his lunch within the first ten minutes, and sitting with his hands folded on his desk for the remaining twenty had been boring to the point of excruciating. At one point, he was sure the clock had not only slowed to a stop, but had begun moving backwards.
Then the bell rang, and he was pretty sure he'd never heard a sweeter sound in his life. He'd started to bend down to collect his backpack, but a loud cough from the front of the room stopped him.
"The bell does not dismiss you. I dismiss you." Gleason paused, then favored them with a smug grin. "You are dismissed."
Danny swept up his bag and was out of his chair almost before the word dismissed was out of Gleason's mouth. They bolted from the room.
"Man, that was the longest half hour of my life," Tucker said when they were safely out in the hall. "As if being bored to death by Gleason wasn't bad enough, we have to share detention with the biggest freak in the school."
Someone brushed by them in a haze of black. Tucker stopped short, fear frozen on his face, but she didn't stop or even look back at them as she disappeared into the crowd of students changing classes.
"Nice going, Tuck. If she didn't have reason to beat the crap out of you before, she does now."
"I… I can't get beaten up by a girl! It'll kill my social standing!"
"Uh… you can't kill something that's already dead. And buried. And has completely decomposed."
"Okay, I get it!"
"Well, look on the bright side. We've only got four more days of this."
Tucker paled. "Oh man, four days. I'm so dead."
Author's Notes:
Since Casper High is named after a Friendly Ghost, I named their middle school after a more obscure—yet still friendly—ghost: Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore, aka The Funky Phantom, a really lame 70s knockoff of Scooby-Doo. It had virtually no redeeming qualities, other than its deliciously awful 70s title and the fact that Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees was one of the voice actors. But given the wide range of cartoons Butch parodies in The Fairly Oddparents, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd heard of old Mudsy.
Mr. Gleason was named after actor Paul Gleason, who played the uptight petty tyrant, Principal "Dick" Vernon in The Breakfast Club.