Yeah. So. Getting into this again.

-Phanny


Riley's head was swimming when she returned to school. She was just too distracted - the boy who let her call him her friend was a superhero! How cool was that? Oh, if she knew any adjectives that could describe how cool it was….she would be getting an A in English!

Riley struggled to remember her locker combination - she knew one of the biggest secrets ever, who had room in their mind for combinations? She was sure she had the right one, but her locker wasn't opening. She just continued to pull at it, instead of asking for help like she probably should have. It had to open sometime, and if she pulled hard enough-

"Ow!" Her locker flung open, and she stepped back just in time, but a poor boy walking along the hallway received a face full of metal as a result and fell backwards.

"Oh my god, I am so. Sorry," Riley panicked, looking down at the scruffy blond boy rubbing his sore nose on the ground. He looked back up at her, pushing his glasses back up as they had been hanging askew on his face earlier. "Are you okay? Oh, I should have been attention I'm such a klutz I'm so sorry did I break your nose or something I'll find a way to pay for it if I did I-"

"It's fine, it's fine," the boy said, "you could help me up, though." Riley blanched and quickly held out her hand to help him off of the floor. He smiled a nervous smile and laughed, and Riley noticed that he snorted when he did, "heh, see? Glasses aren't broken - I would have made you pay for those. Funny, I thought being a Freshman would lead me getting shoved into lockers, but I guess a girl hitting me in the face with one is fine, too."

"Again, I am totally sorry, I just…I got a lot on my mind today," Riley looked the boy over again - he wasn't bleeding, but she didn't feel any less guilty, "uhm, I'm-"

"Riley," the boy finished for her, and her eyes widened a bit, "I'm in your English class. I'm Xander. And seriously, I'm fine. You can stop freaking out."

Riley nodded and took a deep breath. She'd only been in school for a week, how did she not know this kid was in her class? She should totally remember a name like Xander - even she had to admit that that was seriously cool.

"Right, right, well-" The bell rang at that moment, and Riley winced, "shoot, uhm, lemme get my books from my homicidal locker and then I'd better go."

"Were you listening? We have English together - I'll go with you," Xander said, and Riley raised an eyebrow, "what? A guy can't escort a lady to class?"

"Lady? I wouldn't call myself a lady," Riley sighed.

"Right, right, lady is my nerdy-old-fashioned charm word. Something modern work better, shawty?"

Okay, that made her snort too.


Riley wasn't immune to common girl things - sometimes she tried to put on make up, even though she always ended up looking like a sad clown hooker. She tried to dress in a girly way, but she never seemed to get it right. She certainly wasn't immune to crushes.

Riley had eventually gotten over her crush on Danny once she realized that he was - whether he and Sam wanted to admit it or not - taken. A lot of the high school boys seemed to be either more mature than her (which wasn't hard to do) or even less mature than she remembered they were in middle school. The only boy so far who had been the slightest bit nice to her was Xander, but…and maybe this was a teeny bit superficial, he was one of the most stereotypically geeky looking guys she had ever met. Besides Tucker, and even he some sort of coolness deep, deep down.

'Okay, I am definitely swimming in the shallow end of the pool in that respect - Sam would be so disappointed…' Riley thought as she tapped her pencil on her still blank sheet of 'notes.' Mr. Lancer was lecturing on the time period in which Romeo and Juliet was written - they needed to understand it before they read the play, he said. Riley was too bust being shallow again, as she glanced at Seth Alva out of the corner of her eye every few seconds.

Riley didn't know what it was about him. He didn't really seem to be particularly smart, friendly, or taented, or…he didn't even seem to have any outstanding traits at all. But he was just. So. Cute. Every girl knew it.

"Ms. Matthews, I hope you haven't been taking lessons from Mr. Fenton in slacking off in my class," Lancer's voice startled her, as did all of the other students' tittering, "also, if you could stop ogling Mr. Alva that would be wonderful."

Riley's face reddened, and she sunk so low in her chair that she nearly fell out of it. Of all the things that man could've said!

Riley could feel Seth Alva's coal black eyes boring into her, even though she refused to look at him for the rest of the period.


"My god, that had to be the most embarrassing moment of my life," Riley whined at lunch. Sam had to laugh.

"You jump into the fountain at the mall and pretend to be a sea monster, and somehow being caught undressing a cute guy with your eyes trumps that as embarrassing?"

"Okay, first, I was not undressing him with my eyes, Sam, that's gross," Riley huffed, "and you know very well that the first one was a dare."

"I didn't think you would take it!" Tucker said from across the lunch table.

"You turn down one dare and it brands you as a chicken for the rest of your life, Foley," Riley snapped, "I will not let that happen to me! Well, it could be worse, I guess my pants could've fallen down while I talked to him or something…"

Danny slammed his fist down on the table, "which one of you told her?"

Riley's eyes widened, "…you just did. Are you serious, Danny? Oh my god…oh, I feel much better now…" Riley laughed hysterically, and Sam smirked.

"You can't blame us for that one," she said. Suddenly, a wisp of blue fog came from Danny's mouth, and he frowned.

"You are so lucky you're a girl and that I have something else to do," Danny got up and hurried out of the cafeteria. It killed Riley not to go with him, but she knew how dangerous it was. She looked down at the table.

"How do you guys stand it?" She asked, "I mean, knowing that he can get hurt at any time and that there's possibly nothing you can do about it?"

"We just accept that there a lot of things that he has to do that we can't help with," Tucker said, "it was scarier at first, but he's got a good handle on things now. And so do we."

"And you guys are sure you don't need my help?" Riley asked. Sam thought for a moment.

"Riley, the idea of you handling an ecto gun scares the crap out of us, because you haven't actually shown us any sort of…responsibility? You seem to be a magnet for trouble, and, even though it doesn't seem like it sometimes when he's mad, it would kill Danny if anything happened to you. It's different with Tucker and me, because we've been with him from the beginning, but he just can't think of you as someone he needs to help him fight, just as one of the people that he wants to keep safe. You get it, right?"

Riley sighed, "I guess that makes sense." It didn't seem very fair to her, but it made sense.


I mentioned in a chapter of Chatting to Chat that a guy for Riley would be showing up in this story. Well. There are TWO guys in here - quick, which one is it? Eh?

And the explanation makes a little sense, right? Danny cares, he just doesn't think Riley's Team Phantom material.

Disclaimer: It's not Sueish for Danny to care about her a little.