A/N: Edited 4/8/2007. I am going through the chapters, correcting the punctuation and making it easier to read by separating the dialogue from the narration. So bear with me, I'm not going to do this all at once.

Disclaimer: I don´t own Danny Phantom

Lazy days

Three teenagers were sitting on the beach, in the shade of a huge parasol. The two boys were lazily eying the cold water, working up courage to get in and cool off some of the heat. The sea was calm. The dark skinned boy was holding a frisbee and was idly flipping it in his hands, occasionally throwing it up in the air and catching it again, untill he missed.

"Ouch", the other boy yelped as the thing bounced of his head. He turned sidewards and glared at his friend with ice blue eyes.

"Watch it Tucker," he said.

Tucker grinned, "Sorry".

"Why don´t you guys go cool off in the water," the girl said.

She had a huge black hat on her head and was sitting under a black and purple towel. Tucker jumped up.

"Good idea, come on Danny, race you," and he sprinted towards the sea.

Danny turned his head backward, his eyebrows raised, his face forming somehow a big question mark. "Sam?" he said. Sam shook her head. "Your loss."

He got up, ran to the water and splashed right into it, in front of Tucker who had stopped at the edge of the water to carefully dip his toe in.

"Aaaarch," he yelled and jumped backwards.

"Come on Tuck I thought you wanted to swim," Danny yelled from the water, shaking his head to clear the water from his black hair.

He swam a couple of strokes and then turned to his back and drifted some.

"Yes but I like to take it slow," Tucker said indignantly.

At that moment he felt a push in his back and he stumbled forward, falling into the water face first. Sam laughed so hard that her side hurt. She had ditched the hat and the towel, revealing a black (what else) bathing suit. Danny looked at her laughing and then looked at Tucker who was now on his knees in the water, totally wet. They grinned at each other. Danny quickly swam to where he could stand and started running out of the water, as Tucker slowly got up. They reached Sam at the same time.

"NO!" she screamed, "Nononono!"

But the boys had a head start and managed to grab her in the momentum. They dragged her to the water and the three of them fell forward with a big splash. After that they played around in the water some more. Sam managed to pull Tucker under water a couple of times but she couldn´t catch Danny who quickly swam away from her each time she tried to approach him.

"Hey," she yelled, "Since when can you out-swim me anyway?"

"Dunno, maybe you got slower?"

She started swimming towards him again and he let her approach this time and pull him under. And stayed under. He let himself sink to the bottom of the murky water and transformed into Phantom with a bright flash, which he hoped wasn´t visible from the surface, so he didn´t have to breathe.

Sam floated, waiting. One minute passed, two. She turned around, scanning the surface, willing Danny to come up.

"Where are you," she muttered, "Come on Danny this isn´t funny..."

Another minute passed. Tucker was calling her from the shore but she didn´t pay attention to him. Then suddenly the water around her turned even colder and she started shivering. Something tickeled her feet. There was a dimmed white flash just beneath the surface and Danny burst through, gasping for air.

"Danny this is so not funny," Sam screamed at him.

"Aw come on Sam you knew I would´t drown," Danny grinned, closing in on her.

Sam glared at him, "You could have hit your head for all I knew".

He was very close now, smiling. Suddenly his hart was pounding in his chest. She looked nice with her hair all wet, drops of water hanging from her eyelashes. He drifted a little closer, staring into her purple eyes. She stared right back.

"Hey," Tucker yelled from the shore, "Get a room."

Danny and Sam both blushed and quickly turned away from each other to swim to the shore.

Later that day they went to Tucker´s house for the barbecue. It wasn´t any special occasion, just a friendly get together with some neighbours and friends. Danny, Sam and Tucker sat in a corner in the back yard with some other kids, goofing around and eating their meat. Or in Sam´s case, a veggie burger the Foleys had prepared especially for her.

"I love barbeques," Tucker said, "So much meat!"

Sam scowled at him. Ashley Summers, one of Tucker´s neighbours, nudged Danny and pointed at his father.

"So that is the famous ghost hunter," she said to him, smiling, "He´s your dad right?"

"Yup," Danny said, looking at the blonde girl next to him, "Don´t let him start about ghosts. You´ll never get away. He is the only person I know who can actually bore you to death and then dissect your ghost." He said it with a smile, not revealing the fact that the idea really terrified him.

Danny looked around at the other people. He recognized some of the Foley´s neighbours and of course his parents. A large man was talking to his mother, complaining about taxes. She looked bored. His father was standing close to the table that contained the salads and the bread, talking to a man Danny didn´t recognize. He was a tall black man, about forty, who was leaning against the table, looking around for an escape. Danny smiled. His dad was probably talking about ghosts.

"Hey, who is that?" he asked Tucker, putting another piece of bread in his mouth.

Tucker looked in the direction Danny poited.

"Dunno," he said, a puzzled expression on his face, "Oh wait, that is probably my dad´s cousin. He mentioned him the other day, apparently he ran into him in Chicago and invited him here because he is going through a divorce or something. Don´t know how long he will be staying".

At that moment Tuckers father called Tucker over to him. Danny watched as Tucker was introduced to his father´s cousin, effectively saving him from Jack Fenton. They talked for a short while and then Tucker returned to his friends.

"Yep, that´s him alright", he said, sitting down again, "His name is Mike, and he is a cop in Chicago. He is staying for two whole weeks, so until the beginning of the school year. He seems like a pretty cool guy."

At that point Danny´s ghost sense went off. Danny got up, mumbling some excuse about going to the bathroom and ran into the house. Once out of sight, he transformed quickly, went invisible and intangible, flew through the roof out of the house, and looked around. Nothing to be seen, but he felt the ghost was near. The people were still chattering aimiable in the garden, oblivious.

He saw Tucker and Sam look up, trying to locate him and he briefly went visible to show himself, his bright green eyes sparkling. Sam smiled at him and got up. She casually walked to her bag that held her beach stuff and retrieved the thermos she always carried with her. Danny circled above the house and the garden, looking intently at the shadows formed by the house, the fence and the trashcans. And that is where he saw some movement.

The spirit, or ghost what was he, drifted behind some trashcans, watching the people mingle happily at their party, unaware of him. Could they even see him? He didn´t think so, twice somebody passed him and they hadn´t noticed him. Of course he was in the shadow behind the trashcans but somebody could easily have spotted him. He could see he was translucent, and it was freaking him out. He was floating. He coudn´t touch anything and he could see through his hands! It was very unnerving and he felt unhappy.

Suddenly he heard a voice behind him. He turned around in fright and watched a boy float towards him.Wait, float? He was floating, like him! He had white hair and bright, glowing green eyes that looked at him warily. He wore some black and white hazemat suit and looked very... ghostly.

"I said, what are you up to", the ghost boy repeated, his fists glowing green in preparation of a fight.

The ghost behind the trashcans backed away, through the trashcans, then turned around and fled around the corner of the house, right into something warm... wait, warm?