Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Return to the Sea" by Nightwish.


Twenty Truths about Jazz Fenton

1. No one would ever guess from her current hovering and mothering, but it took three years for little Jazzy Fenton to stop despising the little interloper her parents brought home one day.

2. Jazzy's first friend ever was a stuffed animal named Bearbert Einstein, and she loved him and played with him and took him everywhere.

3. The day before Jazzy decided her little brother wasn't so bad after all, she'd spent half the school day wearing her lunch.

4. Jazzy's first ever science fair project was a cardboard mock-up of Archimedes' screw; predictably, it fell apart upon demonstration.

5. After the cake tried to eat Mr. Kelley's head at Jazzy's first birthday party, no parent would ever let their children within miles of Fenton Works.

6. When her father came to school for Career Day, she crossed her heart, crossed her fingers and swore that she'd never seen him before in her life.

7. Every year she went to school, Jasmine sent invitations to her birthday party to everyone in class, and eventually she stopped being surprised that no one ever showed up.

8. In 1999, Jasmine started at Betelgeuse Middle School and immediately stopped wearing pink, yellow and white, because everyone said only normal girls got to dress like normal.

9. By the end of that first week, Jasmine had decided to teach herself the meaning of normalcy.

10. The fifteenth time she had to retrieve her notes from a school toilet, Jasmine realized she would never understand normalcy unless she understood how other people thought.

11. By the age of fourteen, she had already published a paper on the effects of exposure to atypical behavior on a developing mind, complete with the full transcript of an interview of a D. J. Fenton.

12. Jasmine was such an old-fashioned name, and Jazzy was just childish – Jazz was much better for her image, for her social status and for… Well, she'd think of something.

13. Less than a month into her junior year at Casper High, Jazz defeated a wicked witch, saved the day and saved her little brother, all in one fell swoop.

14. A few weeks later, as she brushed her teeth for the eighth time that day, Jazz tried very hard not to cry.

15. No one ever checks up on Jazz's claims, no matter how blatantly false, so the question of whether or not to lie for Danny isn't even worth a moment's thought.

16. Danny knows now, and his little friends know too, and a part of her is so happy that she doesn't have to hide how much she wants to help.

17. The night before Christmas, Jazz wakes up in a cold sweat with the taste of rancid grease and burnt plastic and burning meat on her tongue, and she has to throw up.

18. Jazz is in the prime of her life, her dreams grand and her burdens heavy only by comparison, so she just can't understand why she tires more easily as time goes on.

19. No matter how many hostile ghosts she defeats, she always needs help, and she keeps winding up playing the hostage, and she hates that with all her heart.

20. Jazz has taught herself word by word that every thundercloud must have a silver lining, but she never needed to be taught that knowledge is power.