Pre-Fenton Ghost Portal accident.
ANCIENT CELLULAR TECHNOLOGY OF YESTERYEAR.
The first thought that came to the minds of most people when they heard the word Illinois was, oh, Chicago! The second thought was, wait, how the hell is that even pronounced? I thought it was Illi-noise, not Illi-noy! Crap! My whole life has been a lie!
It was pronounced Illi-noy, by the way.
Danny Fenton did not live in Chicago. He'd never step foot in a large city throughout his entire thirteen–fourteen–years of life. Actually, he had, twice, but he was young back then and hardly remembered any of it. Just faded images of looming skyscrapers, honking cars, and lots, lots of crowding people. He was pretty sure no one could blame him if he said he kind of preferred his hometown of Amity Park over some place like that.
On the other hand, there were tons of things he disliked about Amity Park. The lack of keeping up with the times, for one. It was 2002, and he, for a fact, knew that he was one of six teenagers in his entire middle school who had a Deadjournal. How did he do that? With a survey. "Survey says," he muttered, bemused, tapping his stack of papers against his desk to even it, "This town is prehistoric."
"Well, duh!" His best friend, Samantha E. Manson chimed in from across the room. She shoved the classroom door open with her foot. "I've been saying that for, like, ever." She was on the short side, pale and Jewish. The fact she wore a thigh-high skirt revealed nothing, due to wearing knee-length black shorts underneath them. Gothic fashion was weird. On top of that, she had too much dignity to go around giving out shots. She said so. Repeatedly.
"Saying such would imply you've been around for, like, ever." His other best friend, Tuckard Foley pointed out, just to annoy her. His high-pitched, youthful voice cracked. Puberty was a bitch. He was dark-skinned and green-eyed, absolutely hyper-intelligent, and, unfortunately, girl-crazed. Sam called it a shame, anyway. Like basically everything else Tuckard–or Tucker, as he liked to go by, instead–ever did.
Sam sent Tucker the nastiest glare. Danny swallowed a warning whistle. Tuck understood the grave he dug.
"Shut up, Tucker."
Danny was skilled at diffusing conflict between these two, not so much because they couldn't keep going back and forth til sundown, and they sure as hell could, but because it was generally accepted in their little circle that Danny usually had a clear point, "Anyway! Can you believe it? There's no way these things aren't gonna become all the rage in the future, but nobody at this school has one!" He held his fancy Nokia mobile phone for the both of them to inspect.
"Dude, you do," Tucker corrected. Danny could see why Sam so easily became incensed by his mere presence. For that reason, he grinned, "Yeah, but my family's kinda well-off. And so's yours," Danny emphasized his claim via poking at the screen of his friend's PDA, an extremely advanced piece of machinery, with a touchscreen. That's, like, Jetsons stuff! Well, sort of. A pen was needed, but it was still one incredible invention, cooler than any old–recently innovated–cellphone. Chances were, at the rate companies operated, Danny's phone was going to go out of style pretty quick. Tucker's PDA, though, would take a while to replace with anything that wasn't some cheap knock-off.