Inevitable

Chapter 12

The Nasty Burger turned out to be pretty crowded by the time they got there. Who would've thought that teenagers wouldn't want to go home after a traumatizing day of nearly getting killed? However, this was Amity, and ghosts were pretty much a regular occurence.

By some miracle, their usual booth wasn't taken, despite the fact that there were people sitting on the floor by the entrance because it was so crowded.

But maybe it wasn't a miracle. The second Sam entered, followed closely by Danny, and then Tucker, the entire restaurant fell silent. Someone splattered a bit of ketchup on the other side of the room, and Tucker heard it, but no one took their eyes off the trio of friends who'd stopped in their tracks.

Sam was the first to get her bearings, followed by Danny, who shook his head to dispel the shock. Tucker followed them as they made their way towards the line. Someone asked for some more packets of ketchup, and the eery silence slowly returned to the loud chattering.

Several people offered to let the three pass them in line, but they politely refused, embarassed by the fact that everyone would occasionally glance in their direction from the corner of their eyes.

"Maybe coming here was a bad idea..." Sam began once they were seated at their booth, studiously ignoring any looks sent their way.

"Are you kidding?" Tucker asked in disbelief, "They gave me a free burger! Besides, it's better to get it over with now. The faster you face everyone, the faster things can go back to normal, minus the bullying." He took a big handful of fries.

Sam and Danny just glared at him. They'd all been offered free meals by the boy behind the counter, who had been in their gym class, which Sam and Danny had politely turned down, trying to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. Tucker, however, had apparently missed the memo. He didn't understand why he'd gotten elbowed in the side--twice, by two different elbows--when he'd grinned and accepted the free meal.

"He does have a point, though," Danny grudgingly admitted.

"Yeah," Sam continued, "I just want things to go back to normal. Though at this point, I can't see that ever happening." The three sighed, looking down at their food, but then Tucker seemed to brighten.

"Hey! Speeking of abnormalities, you promised to tell me what was going on!" He grinned.

Sam and Danny looked at each other and sighed, muttering a "Fine" in unison.

"Look, like Sam said, we don't know much more than you do at this point," Danny began. Tucker raised an eyebrow, and was about to point out the fact that he hadn't been there when she'd said it, but decided not to make it any worse.

"A few months ago, I went to see Clockwork, mostly just to check on my evil future self," he said casually, "But also to ask him a few questions. Remember when I'd been getting headaches?" Tucker nodded, "Well, I asked him if it had anything to do with my ghost side, since medicine didn't seem to be working on them. He said yes.

"He didn't tell me much else, just to ask Sam if she'd been getting any headaches herself. Obviously, he knew the answer, but wanted me to hear for myself. So, I went to visit Sam, and--"

"And nearly scared her to death in the process," Sam interrupted him, grinning. They seemed to be enjoying some private joke, and Tucker just looked confused.

"I snuck up on her when she was looking for pain medicine. Stuck my head through her medicine cabinet," He explained, grinning triumphantly, but then continued, more light-hearted this time, "Anyway, she admitted that she'd been having headaches too, but didn't want to worry us," he sent an accusing glance at her from the corner of his eye.

"So we both went to see Clockwork again, since obviously, whatever we had, it was connected," Sam continued, unphased. "He told us...well...basically, he just said a bunch of cryptic things. We couldn't really make much sense out of much of it."

"Pretty much the only thing that we were able to gather was that ghosts could become...connected with humans or other ghosts when they know them well enough," Danny's face twisted as he tried to explain it, "But we didn't really understand that either, at the time."

"Until about a month ago," Sam finished for him, "We started noticing, well, mostly all the same stuff you did. The talking in sync, and just knowing things about each other without having to say them. Actually, that doesn't even begin to describe the half of it..." She had a faraway look on her face, and Danny looked over at her and smiled. Tucker just stared at them with one question on his mind: How can these two not be together? He just shook his head and waited for them to remember that he was there.

It didn't really bother him, being third wheel sometimes. He knew they still cared about him, but he also knew they really needed to figure out their relationship first. Although, he had noticed that they seemed a lot more comfortable around each other these past few weeks. He wondered vaguely, as they seemed to acknowledge his presence again, if they were secretly dating...

"So, anyways, from there, we connected it to what Clockwork had told us," Danny finished.

"Okay," Tucker finally said, "I get what you guys are saying, and really, it makes no difference to me. Just another thing to add to the list of strange things about us. But how come you guys didn't tell me when you figured out what was going on?" He asked, sounding a bit hurt.

"We're sorry, Tuck," Sam said, and she sounded like she meant it, "It's not like we were going to keep it from you forever or anything, and we were going to tell you any day now, really," This, Tucker could believe. He could see how much it had hurt them to keep it a secret. "But we weren't positive of anything, and it wasn't something concrete, like a new ghost power or something, that we could be sure of. And I think the fact that we were fighting so hard against it, and trying to hide it, made us even less convinced. But all that's down the drain now, after what happened today. We pretty much decided that this wasn't going away only in the past few days, so we really were just about to tell you.." She looked like she felt really bad about everything, and Danny put his arm around her shoulder. Tucker decided it was about time to lighten the mood.

"I get it Sam," he smiled at them, "You guys didn't wanna set off a false alarm. I know you wouldn't have kept it from me forever." Sam seemed thankful that he understood, and from there, things pretty much went back to normal.

So, they finished their meals, ignored some more stares, and made their way over to Sam's house to drop off her back pack on their way to Danny's.

Danny and Tucker were waiting outside while Sam ran inside quickly to let her grandmother know where she was going.

"So, I was kinda wondering something..." Tucker began.

"Yeah?" Danny looked away from the door where Sam had disappeared to look at Tucker expectantly.

"Why did you need to overshadow your parents, if they already know your secret?"

"Oh, I just wanted to make sure they didn't give away the fact that we lied, by not knowing what the story was. I apologized after for doing it, but they said it was fine, and--" He stopped abruptly, and he turned to stare at the door again, his eyes narrowed. Tucker hadn't seen his ghost sense go off, but maybe he'd missed it.

"Ghost?" He asked, but Danny merely shook his head. Then his eyes widened, and he ran up the door and phased into the house. Tucker followed behind, but had to stop to open the door. When he finally made it inside, he didn't have to go far.

"Sam?" Danny was asking her. She was standing next to the stairs with a fancy white sheet of paper in her hand, "Are you okay?" She looked up and seemed to realize they were both there, and the pained look on her face smoothed out to be covered by what could only be described as a mask of indifference. Her and Danny's eyes locked for only a second, and then he relaxed and seemed to understand whatever was going on. He tried to play it off.

"Sorry, you were taking a while...Ready to go?"

"Yeah, sorry," she obviously seemed determined to ignore whatever had happened too, "Let's go," she smiled, and they all made their way to Danny's.


A/N: Okay, so not too long on the update this time. I'm glad I got it done today, cause I have quite a bit of homework and reading to do for french tomorrow, so I might not be able to write any more this weekend.

Also, I would really appreciate it if you guys could please go to my profile and read the description of a story I'm planning to post. I don't have a name for it yet, though I have written most of the first chapter, but if anything comes to mind, I'd be greatful if you'd tell me! Just let me know if you think it's a good idea or not, cause I don't want to write it if nobody wants me to. :D

Thanks for reading everyone! Your reviews last chapter were really helpful!