Falling Stinks
Sam
For a while after our fake-out make-out, things sometimes got a little awkward between me and Danny. A simple gesture, like trying to warm his hands after a fight with an ice-powered ghost, became loaded with meaning. We're holding hands. Only, I knew we weren't really holding hands, but my rebellious, hormonal teenage body decided to ignore my more sensible brain and react to his touch as if it actually meant something. So I blushed, which made him blush, and then we were both blushing and holding hands.
And yet, we didn't let go.
Then Tucker, being Tucker, ruined the moment—which wasn't really a "moment" anyway—by singing the most obnoxious song ever with all the tunefulness of a dying sea cow. Danny let go of me to cover his ears, and that was that.
Except, that wasn't really that, because stuff like that kept happening.
The next day at school, everyone was mooning over the same pre-packaged corporate bubble gum garbage that Tucker had assailed us with. Paulina, who couldn't stand it when anyone didn't fall all over themselves to follow her, lemming-like, into whatever the fad du jour was, made it a point of coming up to me to find something to mock. This time, she picked the Fenton Phones, those little wireless earphones Danny's dad had invented. We'd used them the day before to communicate in the Ghost Zone, but I kinda liked their funky, sort of techno-goth look, so I was still wearing them. When she made some crack about a sale at the Eighty-Nine Cent Store, I shot back, "For your information, Paulina, they're a gift. Danny gave them to me."
I'm not sure why I said it. It wasn't like she actually cared about something coming from Danny. But seeing him start to drool the second she walked up, and knowing how she'd used him that one time, I felt an overwhelming sense of territorial-ness.
Predictably, Danny reacted by panicking, while Paulina reacted with disdain. "Really? He gave you earrings? I always knew you two losers would end up together."
"We're not losers!" I countered.
"We're not together," Danny added.
Right. We're not together, I reminded myself.
And I had to remind myself of that a lot, so it seemed. When the corporate bubble-gum "singer" with the stupid pop diva name—I mean, Ember, how lame is that?—turned out to be a ghost who had her "fans" literally under a spell, Danny and I found ourselves having to physically restrain Tucker to keep him from ditching school to go get free Ember tickets at Bucky's Mega Music Store. Danny grabbed Tuck by the arm to stop him and, when that wasn't enough, I wrapped my arms around Danny's waist to help, and suddenly we were both hyper-aware that I had my arms around him and, hello with the awkwardness. We did manage to get Tucker into one of the school's new Cram-Tastic Mark Five machines to deprogram him, which smoothed over the moment, but when we were trying to figure out why we seemed to be the only ones who were immune from the spell, Danny suggested it was because of his ghost powers and my "individuality, or intelligence."
"You really think I'm smart?" I asked, like some giddy preteen whose hot teenage next door neighbor had just waved at her. Give me a freaking break, Manson! Could you be any more pathetic?
Apparently, I could. With Tucker safely tied down in front of the Cram-Tastic, Danny and I flew off together to Bucky's to go after Ember, and that's when I hit an all-time low.
In my defense, part of it was the flying. I can't even describe what flying is like. Because Danny could sort of transfer some of his powers to others when he touches them, it wasn't like he was carrying me so much as we were both gliding together, arm in arm. Looking down at the yards and the trees with leaves that had just turned shades of gold and red but hadn't yet fallen, I felt this amazing sense of freedom. I could go anywhere, do anything. Then I glanced up at Danny, who had a look of power in his eyes and a smile on his face that told me he was feeling the same thing, and the autumn sun was glinting off his white hair, and he looked so stunning, I actually gasped. Gasped! I just couldn't stop staring at him.
Until he noticed. He looked back at me, blinking in bewilderment. "Are you okay, Sam?"
"Huh?" And then I woke up, and was mortified. What was wrong with me? It wasn't bad enough that I was having all these new and confusing feelings about my best friend, but he actually had to catch me mooning over him? It was all I could do to not let go of him, which would have sent me plummeting to my death. Kind of tempting at the moment, actually, but instead, I covered as best I could. "Oh! It's just... really nice up here, that's all. Flying's... nice." A nervous titter escaped my lips, and I knew I hadn't fooled him, because then he was blushing too, and could someone just kill me now?
And, because the universe was not done enjoying its cosmic laugh at my expense, someone almost did. Ember, to be exact. Or, rather, a gigantic cardboard cutout of her, which we slammed face-first into while Danny was distracted by his embarrassment at his best friend mooning over him. Our momentum gone, we no longer could stay aloft, and we tumbled to the roof below.
When I could breathe again, I raised myself up on my elbows. "Falling stinks."
In so very many ways.
But if I thought me mooning over Danny was bad, it was nothing in comparison to him mooning over me—courtesy of some sort of love spell from Ember's guitar. Apparently, the fawning from her zombified fans didn't just pump up her ego, it pumped up her powers as well. One blast from her guitar was enough to knock me, Danny, and that ridiculous giant cardboard cutout of her back across the roof, landing me on top of the cutout as it dangled over the parapet like a see-saw.
That was when I first noticed the truly gag-inducing puppy-dog look Danny was giving me. Now, I'll admit, when I commented that it was the kind of look he usually reserved for Paulina, and he responded by asking, "Who's Paulina?" that could have qualified as one of the sweetest moments of my life. Unfortunately, the drooling and babbling that followed not only had me back to wishing someone would kill me now, but Danny himself almost ensured that it happened. He was so busy gushing over how "pretty" I looked when I was "about to fall off a building" that he couldn't even be bothered to go ghost so he could fly me off the teetering cutout, even after the thing toppled over the edge. If the Amity Park P.D.'s S.W.A.T. Team hadn't been there, I'd have been a pancake on the sidewalk, and he would have just watched it all with that loopy grin on his face.
Was that how I was looking at him when we were flying together? If so, I think I might hurl.
Even after all that, however, I don't think I got how serious the spell was until I snuck over to his house later that night. I'd gone there so we could go after Ember, who was planning a televised concert to broadcast her hypno-music all over the world so she could make everyone into drooling fans, but Danny wasn't the least bit interested in Ember, or anything else except me. When I got to his house, I found this collection of stuff on his bed that I would never have imagined he'd even have, let alone lay it all out like he was preparing a shrine. The pictures were cool—old photographs of us from middle school and the first few weeks of high school. There was even one of me from that dance. But did he really save dumb notes we'd written to pass the time in class? And how the heck did he get one of my old dog collars, or a tube of my lipstick? Or... was that clippings of my hair? And a wad of chewed-up gum?
I shuddered. "Okaaaaay. Even the part of me that's kind of liking the attention is really freaked out by this."
He rushed to my side with that same stupid grin on his face he'd had since Bucky's. "It doesn't matter, just so long as we have each other."
If this was what being more than friends with Danny would be like, I was so over it. "SNAP OUT OF IT!" I grabbed him by the wrists and pushed him off of me. "You don't really feel that way about me, and I don't feel that way about you." And in that moment, it was the God's honest truth. I'd never been so squicked out in my entire life.
My response didn't faze him, though. "So why are you still holding my hands?"
Grunting in disgust, I shoved him away again and spun on my heel to leave.
"And why are you still wearing those Fenton Phones I gave you?" he finished, as if that proved his point.
I stopped short and turned back on him. "Danny, they're not even real earrings. They're just some stupid communicators that—" I stopped short, my eyes widening as it hit me. "Filter out ghost noise."
Danny completely missed the detour I'd taken as his spell-addled brain continued on its one track. "Does this mean that we're breaking up?"
"Don't you get it, Danny? That's why I haven't been affected by Ember's music! I've been wearing the Fenton Phones the whole time!"
"So... we're not breaking up?"
I wanted to throttle him. "How can we be breaking up? WE WERE NEVER TOGETHER!" I decided we needed to get him deprogrammed, like Tucker—
It was only then that I remembered that we'd left Tucker at school, tied down in front of the Cram-Tastic Mark Five. Twelve hours ago.
Fortunately, Tucker was forgiving, and the three of us made it to the place where Ember would be broadcasting her concert. Unfortunately, twelve hours of intensive standardized test prep made Tucker's brain almost as addled as Ember's magic had. He accidentally announced our presence over the in-house PA system, and the next thing we knew, Dash Baxter, along with two of his sycophants, Kwan and Dale, all dressed in yellow backstage security shirts, had grabbed us. Ember went out to start the show, and I tried to get Danny to go after her, but he kept going on about how he wouldn't leave me, like the hero in some lame 1930s action flick. Gag me. Casting around for something, anything, that would break the spell, a thought occurred to me. If I could replace the lovesickness with something else, the way we'd replaced Tucker's Ember obsession with useless test prep information, then maybe that would do it. But what would would be powerful enough to replace love?
When I figured out the answer, it almost made me want to hurl more than the stupid spell did, but desperate times, and all that. "I hate to do this to you, Danny." Or to myself. "But if I can't break Ember's spell, I'm gonna have to break your heart."
With a jerk, I twisted out of Dash's grip and turned to face him. He towered over me by at least a foot, but using his arms as leverage, I jumped up, threw my arms around his neck, and kissed him.
It was like the fake-out make-out all over again, only instead of kissing Danny, I was kissing the most obnoxious moron in the entire school.
But it had the desired effect. Behind me, I heard Danny's stunned voice. "Sam... how could you? How...?" And then he sounded furious. "Hey! Get away from her!"
Dash managed to get over his surprise by this point and push me away from him so that we each ended up on opposite sides of the room, reeling in disgust. The funny thing was, that one kiss had been enough to rattle not only Dash but all three of those hulking idiots. They ran away in fright, as if I might kiss all of them and, I don't know, give them goth cooties or something. But they were gone, and Danny, Tucker and I were alone.
I turned to Danny, and when I saw the look on his face, even knowing it was because of a spell, I felt awful. "Danny, I'm so sorry. I-I..."
"You and Dash? But we were..." He sighed. "But... we weren't, were we?"
I should have been glad he was finally coming back to his right mind again, but I couldn't stop feeling like I'd betrayed him somehow. Like I'd betrayed me. "No, Ember did that." But there was more to it than just Ember, and I felt compelled to say more, to be honest with him, as if that could make up for what she'd done. "It's just... this is so hard, because part of me... part of me really liked this, and..."
Danny turned away, toward the stage where Ember was playing and, when he caught sight of her, he clenched his fists and growled. "Ember!"
Alarmed and more than a little worried that I'd pushed him too far while that spell was controlling him, I put a tentative hand on his arm. "Danny? Are you okay?"
"No. I feel like my heart's been ripped out. But I know who I can take it out on!"
And that's when he finally went ghost for the first time since the whole stupid spell thing had begun. He flew off to go after Ember, and I found myself smiling as I watched him. I'd been kidding myself when I thought the creepiness from the spell was enough to get me over whatever it was I'd been starting to feel about him. Watching him do whatever he had to do to stop her, I was right back where I'd been the last few weeks, when a simple dance sparked something new in me, and a single fake kiss fanned the ember and turned it into a flame.
And speaking of Embers... once Danny had her trapped inside a Fenton Thermos, he flew backstage, changing back into human form as he landed in front of me. I was so glad to have him back, kicking ass and acting like himself again, I couldn't help but throw my arms around his neck. "Danny, that was awesome!"
For a moment, everything else faded away, and it was just me and Danny holding each other. It was only when that now-familiar electric thrill traveled down my spine that I realized what I was doing, and I pulled back from him, my cheeks burning in embarrassment. Danny was blushing, too, and I coughed, looking for some excuse that would make the situation less awkward. "Uh... I guess Ember's spell hasn't quite worn off."
"You were never under Ember's spell." That was Tucker, whom I hadn't even realized until that moment was standing right behind me. I elbowed him as hard as I could to shut him up, but I relaxed when I saw that Danny was smiling at us. Not an embarrassed, sheepish smile, or a let's-pretend-I-didn't-hear-that smile, but an amused smile, laughing at Tucker's big mouth and at my quick temper.
That was when I knew, for the first time since before that fake-out make-out, that everything was going to be okay. It was almost like Ember's spell had taken all that awkward crush stuff to such a ridiculous extreme, the kiss we'd shared and the discomfort that followed no longer mattered. Whatever weirdness had been there before was gone now, washed away by a single kiss with Dash—and the gallons of antiseptic I'd no doubt be gargling with as soon as I got home.
Ironic, though, that awkwardness that started with one fake kiss would be ended by another.
So things were back to normal after that, but it wasn't really the same normal. It was a new normal, a normal where I could no longer deny to myself, even if I would still deny it to everyone else on the planet, that I was crushing pretty hard on my best friend. And he, barring the influence of creepy love spells, was clearly not crushing at all on me.
Falling really does stink.
