Wes

"I know who you are." Danny didn't even need to look back toward the voice to know who it was that was trailing obnoxiously close behind him in the hallway on his way to history class. The same teenager had been saying the same thing to him literally every day, starting barely a few weeks after he'd discovered his ghost powers himself.

Wes Weston had become a major pain in his ass ever since then, and he only grew worse with each day. What had apparently started as silent suspicions had become whispered questioning had become terrifyingly straightforward accusations in the hallway such as this one.

When he'd first begun what had turned into this ritual, Danny had been terrified someone would hear the boy and seriously consider what he was saying, coming to the conclusion Danny most desperately wanted to avoid. The teen didn't seem to have any sense of respect or the slightest idea of the seriousness of the repercussions, considering that he paid no attention to whether he was alone with Danny or they were in a crowded hallway full of people who could hear him; no matter what, he would seek out Danny throughout the day to rephrase the same personal attack each day.

He'd tried playing dumb, but that got him nowhere as it would prompt the other boy to be more specific with his claims. "You're a ghost" and "You're Danny Phantom" were other common phrases from Wes. Danny had quickly realized that this boy was obsessed with the idea that he was Phantom before coming to the conclusion that he had no way to stop Wes from doing this.

And who the heck was Wes in the first place? The first time he walked up to Danny with these questions and personal attacks, Danny couldn't place him; he'd never once seen this guy in his life, but somehow this Wes already knew about him. The boy had started out less angry and more interested in him, which gave him a chance to get to know him better at first. He was in the ninth grade and really liked basketball—he was hoping to make the school team soon. He wasn't a great student, but he excelled in his science labs and he was already thinking about science majors he could choose if he went to college. He lived with his mother and his four-year-old brother a couple blocks from the school. "It's the only house on the block with a basketball hoop," he'd described it—before the relationship turned sour. Danny hadn't minded the boy so much while he'd still thought he'd be able to redirect the questions and throw off suspicions, but this didn't last long before Wes grew angry about Danny's constant avoidance of his Phantom conversations.

That was what had led to the current situation. Try as he might, Danny couldn't seem to completely avoid Wes in school. He'd made sure to stay several blocks away from the street Wes had said he lived on, and he never went anywhere near the basketball courts after school, but there was no avoiding Wes in school. Danny knew because he'd sure as hell tried: different routes to class, skipping some of his classes altogether some days, waiting out Wes until the last minute and then sprinting to class while the hallways were empty… nothing seemed to work.

He'd managed to ignore the accusations during his hurried walk to class today, and he threw himself through the classroom door as fast as possible to escape Wes, who he knew had a different class to get to. He caught a glimpse of Wes glaring at him before the boy moved on.

"I don't know how much longer I can handle him. When's he going to give this up already!?" Danny exclaimed in a whisper as he settled in his desk next to Sam with a couple minutes to spare before the start of their class.

"When's who going to give up?" Sam asked with a confused glance up from her open notebook.

"Wes!" Danny answered.

"Who the heck is Wes?" Sam repeated the same question Danny had thought when he first met the obsessive boy.

"That guy who's been following me around for awhile now," Danny explained. "I didn't know him until after you-know-what, but I thought you would. He's only one grade below us."

"Uhh… what do you mean a guy's been following you around?" Sam questioned. "Tucker and I are with you most of the time, and I've never seen anyone following you before." Danny tilted his head at her.

"You can't miss him with hair that red! He's been following me for weeks now, ever since I got my—," he lowered his voice, "—powers after the accident. He was just asking me questions before but then he started straight up accusing me of being Phantom!"

Sam didn't have a response for this before their history teacher moved in front of the blackboard and called the students' attention to class. Danny was left to wonder why neither he nor Sam had ever heard of Wes before now.

With the bell ringing after an otherwise typical history class, Danny and Sam left the classroom and headed toward their keyboarding class to meet Tucker, only for Danny to have nearly the same conversation with his other friend.

"Dude, I have no idea who you're talking about," Tucker had responded to Danny's questions, only leaving the halfa with even more questions than he'd had before.

What should have been a calm Tuesday night due to a lack of ghost attacks in the vicinity turned into a restless series of attempts to sleep with little success. Almost as exhausted as if he'd been fighting ghosts half the night, Danny trudged his way to school again the next morning, but this time he was determined to get answers.

Instead of fearfully dodging Wes's accusations today, Danny turned them back around on Wes.

"Forget me! Who are you?" He changed the topic as soon as the boy started on his regular attacks. "Why doesn't anyone know who you are!?"

Naturally, Danny didn't get any answers from the boy. He got a hurt and angry glare before the normally obsessive boy turned away and left him alone for his walk to class for the first time in weeks. Even more frustrated than before, Danny gave up and headed toward his classroom without his entourage this time.

Wes quit following him to class completely. He'd still see the boy glaring at him in the cafeteria or at the opposite end of a hallway sometimes, but he'd stopped approaching Danny ever since their confrontation. Danny had no idea what to think anymore. That was the way Danny's school life went on for quite some time.

After awhile—the weather had gone from slightly chilly and cloudy all the way to bright, sunny, and uncomfortably warm since their last face-to-face conversation—Danny finally saw Wes in the cafeteria for a long enough time to point him out to Sam and Tucker at lunch one day.

"Over there," he'd subtly pointed, trying to avoid Wes's notice for fear of scaring him away to another part of the school yet again. "That's the guy I was telling you about. That's Wes."

"Wait, which one?" Sam asked, squinting across the lunchroom in the direction Danny had pointed.

"The one with the bright red hair who's weirdly tall for a freshman," Danny described the boy, still watching him despite the obvious glare toward himself.

"Danny, there's no one with red hair over there…" Tucker said like it was an obvious fact that he was describing to a very young child. "I only see Dash, Kwan, Paulina, and a really hot girl with brown hair. There's no guy we don't know over there right now."

"But he's right there!" Danny quietly exclaimed, trying not to make a scene in the cafeteria despite the situation. He wasn't completely successful. "He's still staring right at us!"

"He's right, Danny," Sam responded, backing up Tucker. "There's no one else over there. There wasn't anyone staring at us until you started yelling a second ago." She threw a glance over Tucker's shoulder at the band geeks at the next table, curiously staring back at their table as they tried to figure out what was going on to make the normally close-knit trio fight.

"Forget it," Danny spat across the table as he grabbed his tray of mostly untouched food and stood up, frustrated. "I'm going to patrol until Lancer's class."

After a quick transformation in the bathroom and a few minutes in the air, Danny had cooled down enough to regret the way he'd reacted to his friends, but it was already getting close to time for the bell to ring for the students to move to their afternoon classes. Sighing, Danny promised himself to make it up to Sam and Tucker after school. They wouldn't joke around about this with him. It wasn't their fault they'd reacted honestly to yet another weird thing going on in Amity Park.

Seeing no signs of a ghost attack anywhere in sight, he swooped down and phased back into the school bathroom before transforming back and walking out to head to his English class where he would hopefully have a chance to start apologizing to Sam and Tucker for the way he'd treated them at lunch. That wasn't what fate had in store for him today, however.

"It's really rude to point and stare at people, you know."

"Greeeeaaaaat," Danny sarcastically dragged out the word upon hearing the familiar voice, "Just who I wanted to run into."

The redhead smirked at him but managed to make the expression look less friendly and more mocking than anyone else Danny knew.

"That's it! You're giving me answers this time!" Danny exclaimed in the empty hallway. "Why doesn't anyone know you? You like sports, so why don't you hang out with the other jocks? You're only one year below me! Someone should know who you are, but I've never heard anyone mention you!"

Instead of giving the answers Danny desperately sought or returning Danny's own anger in kind, Wes seemed to deflate.

"…I don't know," he admitted in the smallest voice Danny had ever heard from him. Gone were the confident accusations and the over-interested questions, and left in their place was a scared boy who seemed more like a four-year-old than fourteen now. After a long pause, he continued. "I was always really popular! The jocks were my friends. They were helping me practice to get ready for tryouts for awhile, but I haven't seen my friends for so long… I don't know anyone here anymore. I look and look for anyone I know, but they just disappeared and I don't even know when it happened!" Danny was a little surprised to see that Wes had brought himself to tears when he looked into the boy's eyes as the silence went on.

"Wait, so you don't know anyone here… and no one in the whole school seems to know you…" Danny was getting an idea of what was going on, but he'd already scared the boy away once in the past by saying the wrong thing. But it was the right thing to do to help Wes understand, right? That was better than letting things go on unchanged… right?

"Wes…" Danny trailed off, trying to find the best way to word what he needed to say. He decided to take the straightforward route. "What year are you going to graduate?"

"1994, just one year after you," Wes replied, still trying to fight back his tears at the thought of all of his friends disappearing.

That one year—a year when he himself hadn't even been old enough to walk yet—was all the confirmation Danny needed for his theory. It shouldn't be so surprising in a place like Amity Park. This was someone who knew and was known by no one. This was a boy who hadn't lived in years.

Danny didn't know quite how to reveal what he realized to the boy who wasn't his friend but wasn't quite his enemy either. He didn't even know that he wanted to share what he'd figured out. How would it even help? What use does a ghost have for knowing it's not a part of the living world any longer? So he didn't share what he now knew.

"Why don't you hang out with us from now on?" He asked instead.