"Do you want to keep looking around the house?" Sam asked after a few minutes. I didn't really want to let her go but, I did have something to solve.
"Sure, but, let's look together this time." I said, and she agreed. She slid away and picked up the picture again. She set it gingerly on the bedstand again.
"And if you ever hide something like that from me again, I will personally k-" She stopped herself from saying kill.
"What are you going to do with me Sammy, now that you know killing is not an option? But no more surprises." I instantly regretted my question as I saw that light come into her eyes, the one that made me fear for my existance.
"I'm positive I can come up with something." I gulped, she noticed and laughed.
I watched her move over to a desk shoved into the corner of the room. "There's something I don't like about this desk." She announced, like she had just said, "how's the weather?"
"It's a desk."
She gave me another do-you-really-think-I'm-that-big-of-an-idiot look. "I know it's a desk. There's something I don't like about it."
"I know that, and my point is, it's a desk. What's there not to like about it?" I wondered, going over beside her to study it. I remembered the desk, but it hadn't been in my parents room. I struggled to remember it's original place, but I couldn't.
Sam pulled open the first drawer. It was filled with odds and ends. Just small household items, but something about them made me take a second look. They were stirring something in my mind. I tried to force it, but I couldn't latch onto the connection between these items.
"Any idea what these could mean?" Sam asked me.
"There's something about them that's bugging me, something I'm trying to remember, but I can't. All I know is that this desk wasn't originally placed here."
"Where was it before?" Sam closed the top drawer and pulled out a second one, which had a text book shoved into it. History. Was scrawled on it. Sam pulled it out and blew off the dust and opened the front cover. Her eyes widened. She slammed the book shut.
"I thought you said no more surprises?" She demanded, handing me the book. I opened it, feeling her eyes on me all the time.
The first thing I noticed was my name. My name? OH! The desk, it had been in my room! This was my desk! But, Sam wouldn't have reacted that way to this piece of information, so I turned to doodles on the inside of the front cover. Oh my. How was that even . . .? I looked helplessly at Sam.
"Don't look at me! I'm the one looking for an explanation!" She cried.
"I don't know! Something about all of this is nagging at me, but I can't place it." Sam shook her head and held out her hand for the book to put it back. I took one last glance at the drawings.
There was no doubt that they were mine, same style I have even now, but the freaky thing was, it was of the same girl I was staring at now. Sam. There was several of just her face, but the one in the middle, the biggest one, showed all of her body. She was wearing a dress that fit the time period, and her hair was down. Underneath the picture words were written in a curly script. Samantha Manson. It kind of scared me, if you know what I mean. And the scariest part was it was all drawn in perfect detail. Not a freckle missed.
I closed the cover of the book and handed it to Sam, who put it back. She opened the next drawer. It was empty. Sam frowned, but closed it again. She reached for the next drawer. Another textbook.
"No more surprises?" She asked. I shook my head. "Because we all know how well that answer worked out last time." She rolled her eyes. The title of the book was scratched out. She opened it and the pages were shredded to pieces. Except for on the inside front cover, where my name was written. "Explanation?"
"I really hate math?" I suggested weakly, making us both laugh.
"I could've told you that a few days ago," She said, kissing me on the forhead. She opened the next drawer, just more drawings.
All of her.
"Are you sure you don't remember drawing these?" Sma demanded, waving them in front of my face.
"I'm trying to but-" I trailed off as memories hit. The memories, the ones that had been bothering. "Sam," I whispered urgently.
"What?" I could almost picture the ticked look on her face that came with the tone of her voice.
"Turn the desk around."
"Turn it around?" Sam was skeptical, but she helped me do it anyway. There, it was, my life for ten years carved onto the back of that desk.
I stared at the scraggly signatures, carved with my penknife. One from when we were four, to fourteen.
"What's all of this?" Sam asked, tracing her name over a particularly lopsided name.
I began speaking of the memory, telling her the parts that I had just remembered, speaking them as I saw them in my minds eye.
I was three years old, being shipped off to a daycare. I had no friends, and I wasn't looking forward to going. My mother made me go, and I wasn't one to let her down. When I arrived I was quickly paired up with a boy, he hated me. His name was Dashell Baxter. That day at recess I was running from Dashell when another boy helped me, by shoving me into the woods. Tucker Foley. We became good friends. One day while I was once again running from Dashell, and once again escaping him by jumping into the woods, I met a girl. Samantha Manson.
Danny was starting to scare Sam, she was sure he wasn't making it up, but the way he looked, staring off into the distance, eyes clouded over, it was like he wasn't in the room with her anymore.
She'd been hiding from another girl in the 'class' Paulina Sanchez and her lackies, Starr Lopez and Valerie Grey. We talked, and also became good friends. Tucker didn't take to the girl like I did, and often asked as we were growing up why I didn't spend more time with the guys. But, here I am getting ahead of myself.
It was my fourth birthday, and I'd already gotten my first present from my father. A penknife I wasn't allowed to tell my mother about. I wanted to show it to Tucker, but he was sick, so Samantha was coming over. I met her down the road, and walked her back to my house, showing her my penknife. We marvelled over it, but when we reached my house, I safely stowed it back in pocket. My mother loved her, calling her an angel.
At the time, I had to wonder why. Samantha was loud, opinionated, outspoken and didn't give a damn about anyone else. She was diffent, which I guess, is why I was drawn to her in the first place. Then we went up to my room. I showed her an assortment of things. But, she showed me different things too, household items that could do a million different things when put together. That was when we started the collection in the top drawer of my desk.
It was just after we'd eaten the cake that we were up in my room and I was complaining that I'd never get to use my knife, so Samantha declared that every year on my birthday she'd come over and we'd carve our names on the back of the desk that held our collection, that way I'd get to use it at least once a year.
That's how the signatures started.
As the years progressed, the signatures grew. Back then we got married at an early age, and if the woman wasn't asked by her fourteenth birthday then her parents planned an arranged marriage. I was two months older than Samantha. The day before I turned fourteen I told my parents of my plan to ask her to marry me. They were delighted, to say the least. Samantha come over like always, and she chased me around with a spoon with chocolate icing on it for a few minutes, for a reason I can't remember, before we went upstairs to carve our names into the desk.
We did so, and I noticed that she looked upset. When a asked her about it she admitted that her parents were planning on marrying her off to Dashell Baxter, a boy whom I still despised. I shook my head, and proposed to her that very second. I knew I'd lost my heart to her the second I met her, I just hadn't realized what it meant at the time. I knew I surprised, and I was praying I hadn't made a mistake and ruined our friendship, but she threw her arms around me with a loud scream of yes. I couldn't believe it. I was about to kiss her when my parents barged in on us, congratulating me to no end. My cousin was also there, smiling, so I knew she was pleased with my decision, and it was very hard to make her approve of something.
We didn't get a moment alone until her mother came to collect her. I still remember the look on her face at seeing Samantha's tiny diamond, it being all I could afford. But, laws applied, and I would have Samantha for my wife a week after her fourteenth birthday. I walked to Tucker's to tell him the good news. He congratulated me, but sounded a little strained about it. I put it off as nothing.
That night I was murdered.
I came out of his memory trance, still not believing any word that I'd said. He looked at the Samantha Manson stitting in front of him, her mouth gaping open. He could see her perfectly in all of my memories, I could see her in the usual black dress Samantha of 1812 usually wore.
"Danny," Sam croaked out. "When's your birthday?"
"July twenty first, why?"
"May twenty first." Sam answered with her own birthday.
"Two months." I whispered, remembering Samantha's birthday. "It matches."
Sam shook her head. "This is impossible." I knew it my heart right then and there that this was it. This is when she got freaked out, left and never spoke to me again. I'd have to go through the pain that I'd been trying to put off. "But, then again . . ." Sam traced the old name again. Her name. Samantha Manson. "Everyone's in there. Dash, Paulina, Tucker, Valerie, Starr . . . me." Her expression turned thoughtful. Mine turned hopeful. Maybe she wasn't scared off by me. Suddenly she laughed.
"I saw that look." She scolded. I tried to look innocent. She wasn't fooled. "Did you think I'd just walk off because you were going to get married to my great-great something or other?" Sam demanded.
"That doesn't creep you out?"
"Just a bit, but, it's all in the past." She gave me a dry look.
"The past is coming back now Sam."
"There's still something I don't like about this desk." Sam commented again, glaring daggers at the simple, unmoving carved piece of wood.
"Should we check someone else before it's gets dark?" I asked.
"Quick search of the other rooms, and then there's somewhere else we need to go."
"Where?"
"Does it matter?"
"Not at the moment."
"Exactly." Sam commented, pushing the desk back in place. Then she strode out into the hallway. I followed her. She'd pushed open the door to the spare room, where Jasmine had often stayed, but she didn't find anything. She checked the 'bathroom' and the went to push open the last door on the floor.
I didn't process what room it was until I saw the mess, untouched by time or neatfreak parents. It was my room. Sam wasn't phased, although I was certain she knew what room it was, where I was mortified, scared of what she might find. But she bypassed everything, going to the farthest corner of my room.
I sighed, following her, dropping onto my bed like I hadn't done for years. "What are you looking at?" I asked as she crouched in the corner, studying it. Then she began to crawl, still staring the carpet.
"How strong was your father?" Sam asked out of no where.
"Fairly, where does this come in?"
"Would he have any reason to move your desk into his room? Or your mother?"
"No, where does this come in?" I asked again, hoping I didn't sound like a parrot and hoping I'd get an answer. No such luck though.
"There's still something I don't like about that desk."
***
"Where are you taking me now?" I demanded as Sam yanked me away from the house.
"Historical society." She answered, walking faster.
"Why?" Seriously, why must we go to a historical society. I could only pray they didn't stuff my in a glass case when they figured out I was the best preserved antique they could ever find.
"Don't you want to know what happened to them?" Sam asked, she sounded exhasperated, like she couldn't believe I hadn't gotten it.
"Well, when you put it that way." She turned and gave me a brief smirk as she continued to pull me down the street.
"Crap." She cursed softly.
"What?"
"It's closed."
"Really, Sam, for someone so smart you sure can be a little stupid sometimes."
"What?"
Instead of answering I snaked my arm around her waist and turned us both intangible, pulling her through the front doors.
"Warn me much?" Sam criticised. I rolled my eyes in reply, forgetting that she couldn't see me in the complete darkness. I felt her lips moving against my cold neck and shivered. "Do that again and I'll personally lock you inside of a small cramped space with someone you extremely hate."
"What?" I snorted, "Like Dash? You seen what he can't do to me."
"I was talking about a ghost or two that you hate." She informed me. "Now can you turn on some lights." I sighed, and fulfilled her request. We both blinked in the sudden light, and then Sam was on the move again, to a backdoor. She jiggled the knob, cursed, something clicked and the door swung open.
"That door was locked."
"I unlocked it." She answered with the obvious, although I did make a pretty obvious statement.
"What in there?" I asked, following her into a tiny little room with no windows. It was piled with boxes and filing cabnets.
"It's the archives from the 1800's."
"O-kay?"
"Information on people and stuff from back then?" Sam asked.
"Uhh?"
"It'll tell us what happened to your friends and tormentors?"
"Oh." Why she couldn't have just said that in the first place irked me.
"Did you seriously just say 'irked'?" Sam giggled from across the room, where she was leafing through a box.
"What?" I couldn't have just said that out loud . . . could I?
"Yes, you did."
"Oops."
"That's fine, just grab a box anywhere from 1812 to 1898."
"Why those dates?" I asked, grabbing a box and quickly discarding it. I found one with 1812 and settled down on top of another box.
"Because 1812 is where we want to start looking, and I think by 1898 everyone would have been dead, it being a hundred years after their birthdate." Sam explained.
We worked away in silence for a few minutes. Soon, Sam started giggling. They soon gave way to full out laughing.
"What!?" I demanded. She handed me a piece of paper. I paled, if a ghost can, when I read my birth announcement, accompanied by an accurate sketch of baby me. Naked baby me. I groaned.
"Oh, Danny, don't be sad." Sam started, her words choked by her laughter, "You've got a very cute-"
"Don't you dare finish that sentance!" I growled, flipping the paper back at her. She stuck her tongue out at me, but obeyed.
"How much older was your cousin than you?" Sam asked suddenly.
"Two years," I answered. "Hey, look, Dashell and Paulina got married September 18th 1812." I read from the flimsy piece of paper.
"Cute. That wasn't expected, no, not at all. Anyway, shouldn't she have been married?" Now that I thought about it, she should have been.
"Yes, but I never heard of a husband."
"Isn't that a little odd?"
"You're talking about my family, if there was ever any one normal in it, please, let me know." Sam smirked, and turned back to her box.
"Danny," Sam handed me another piece of paper.
"This doesn't have a naked me on it, does it?"
"If it did I would be laughing by now."
"Point taken," I noted and took the paper from her. It was my death announcement. The words swam through my head. I finally had to hand it back to Sam, who'd moved onto another box.
"Starr married a Kwan Schoshire." I read, flipping lazily through the box.
"Tucker married Valerie Gray." Sam's head shot up so fast that it cracked against the filing cabnet she had been leaning against.
"He couldn't have . . ."
"Mind explaining?" I asked. Silence as Sam riffled through her box after yanking Tucker's marriage announcement from my hand. "Thought not."
"Odd," She mumbled. "Danny help me stack all the boxes from 1812 over here." Shrugging I sorted through boxes and stacked all of the 1812 ones in a corner. Sam gave a low growl as she reached the last box, abviously not finding what she was looking for.
"Sam?"
"We should be getting home." Sam stated and tucked two pieces of paper into her pocket.
"Sam?"
"I'll explain on the way back to my house."
"Sure."
We moved to the front doors. "Permission to take you through the doors?" I asked her. Sam placed her arms around me, in a tight hug. I wrapped my arms around her and we slipped through the front doors.
I quickly scooped her up bridal style and took to the skies, transforming into my ghost self. "Danny, what are you do-" She caught sight of my face and turned away.
"Sam, look at me." I asked.
"I . . . I can't." She admitted.
"Why not?" How could she not accept my ghost look, yet she could accept everything else?
"I don't think I'll be able to until we solve this mystery, but, after that is done, the first thing I'll do is kiss Danny Phantom."
"What did you just call me?"
"What do you mean?" She asked nervously. I wondered if she was afraid of offending me with the name, then I realized Sam wouldn't give a care. Besides, I liked it.
"What you just called me, Danny Phantom was it?" She nodded, looking down at the town. "Well, I like it. It's original, but not obvious."
"Everything's obvious, you just need to know what you're looking for." Sam pointed out. "Which is why I'm absolutely hating being confused like this. It's almost like that the notice I'm looking for has just disappeared."
"What notice?" Did this have to do with the two pieces of paper she had stuffed in her pocket.
"Either Samantha Manson or Valerie Gray's death notice."
"Are you going to elborate?" Sam sighed and rolled her eyes in a way that told me she should have suspected my in the darkness. Sam pulled out two pieces of paper.
"This is the paper you found. Tucker's engagement to Valerie. This is the paper I found. Tucker's engagement to Samantha."
Wait, hold it. "Samantha, as in, my Samantha?" Sam stuck her tongue out at me with a yes. "Well, just look at the dates, which one came first."
"There are no dates on them."
"Oh, well, that's difficult." Sam just gave me a look.
"Well, tomorrow's Monday, so I have to face Dash." Sam murmered. I set Sam down on her balcony.
"Well, if he comes anywhere near you I can hit him again." I suggested, having enjoyed it throughly the first time I had done it.
"Tempting offer, but I want to hit him myself first."
"Fine." We both grinned at the word. "Just to be sure, you are going to be goth Sam, not preppy blonde Sam right?"
"Yes," Sam opened the doors and lead me into her room. "I'm not going back to blonde again. Ever." Sam disappeared inside her closet and came out a few minutes wearing her pajamas. Purple tank top and black and purple plaid pajama bottoms. I hoped I wasn't drooling.
"Danny, can you close the doors?" Sam asked, motioning to the balcony where the coold breeze was sweeping in.
"Sure." I went and closed them, and when I turned around, Sam had already gotten into bed. I went around to the other side and laid down beside her, putting my cold arms around her. She flinched at my touch for a second, then relaxed against me. I turned out the light and laid beside her in the darkness.
"Danny?" Sam asked, her voice serious.
"What?"
"I chased you with the spoon and icing because you made fun of my vegetarian diet." With those words Sam drifted off to sleep. But I, who could not sleep, in ghost form or human, was left to puzzle over her words.
Samantha Manson of 1812 had chased me with the spoon.
Things may not be historically accurate. I'm creating my own little universe. Deal with it. Don't know Starr's last name. Ditto Kwan's. Deal with it. I don't know their actual birthday's. Deal with it. Happy New Year. Well, Happy Few Minutes After New Year! I'd like to thank bloodmoon13 right now for the awesome ideas. I'm only planning on using one of them right now, but all of them are awesome. And, because I'm feeling generous, I'd just like to mention my friend, westcoastishome, because she's always wanted her name on a fanfic. I don't know if she's read this one yet or not, but if she has I'll be sure to hear about it soon. I have hit a small case of writer's block, so, any ideas, really appreciated this time around. I have some Danny Phantom summaries that I'm willing to hand out if anyone needs something to write. Just pm me. Ideas are appreciated, you'll get your credit. Complaints ignored unless it's in the form of constructive criticism. Reviews motivate me. Don't own it.
~DI4MGZ~