A/N Distant Radiance: thank you so much for your feedback! I really appreciate it. Thank you for your vote of confidence, it sometimes gets a little intimidating reading other fanfictions and then comparing it to my own writing. Some people are just masters of phrasing, I guess. I do have ideas for going away from the main story-line point, but they're all so far away in the timeline…
(It was a lovely review, you really present your constructive criticism in such a nice way, thank you so much!)
Danny's cheek was resting on his fist as he discreetly (not so discreetly) admired Paulina from afar. Sam and Tucker were discussing… something, Danny had blocked out his friends' voices as soon as he saw Paulina walk in to "The Nasty Burger" and all Danny's brain could think about consisted of Paulina and how it would feel kissing her.
His attention wavered from Paulina when he saw Dash going around the joint inviting anyone above "nerd" status to his party that Saturday.
"HELLO?"
Danny's mind registered Tucker poking his shoulder and sighed.
"It's the biggest party of the year, and Paulina is going, and I'm not, again."
[The author would like to remind all readers that being popular is very important to high schoolers, especially upcoming freshmen, because a) being 'popular' means that you're accepted, which all teenagers crave, and b) the popular kids are the ones 'having fun' and are the ones that are 'happy', which is something every human longs for well past reaching adulthood. However, being 'popular' has its own negative quirks that the teens outside (and inside) of said 'popularity' don't recognize unless their maturity level is higher than usual, like Sam, in this case (Jazz, too, obviously, but she's not here at the moment, so out of sight, out of mind). Both Danny and Tucker are currently 14-year-old outsiders and therefore crave acceptance from their fellow peers. We (now) know that popularity is temporary and respect is everlasting, but at this point in time, Danny and Tucker do not know this fact and therefore cannot see past the gilded image popularity portrays. It should also be mentioned that ever since Danny's Accident with the Portal, he has even more reason to think of himself as a freak, therefore, being accepted by the 'popular' kids would obviously make his world infinitely better.]
Sam's eyebrow lifted at Danny's change in topic and successfully saw through the source of Danny's sudden need for popularity.
Paulina.
Deep inside, Sam was a bit (lot) jealous that Paulina, the shallow little witch, could do no wrong in Danny's eyes.
She kept cool on the outside.
"I don't understand what you see in her!"
"Are you kidding?"
Sam rolled her eyes and leaned back in her seat. Danny, naturally, did not notice: his attention was back on Paulina.
"She's only, like, perfectly flawless!"
Tucker ignored Danny's obvious pining over Paulina and Sam's less obvious pining over Danny ("you're right, she's a goddess") and commented in perfect Tucker self-confidence.
"Why don't we get invited to the really cool parties? We've got style, charm, good lucks- at least, I do, anyway."
"Dream on, Tucker! On the social circuit, we're as invisible as Danny in his ghost mode," Sam straightened up as she continued. "Not that it'll matter five years from now, but we have each other, right?"
Wrong, apparently. Sam's moment of maturity (let's not pretend she isn't immature at times, she's only 14, too, while the female gender tends to mature faster than the male gender, they are still immature at 14) was ruined by Dash.
"Here!" Dash literally smacked an invitation in Danny's face. "Your sister made me invite you."
Both Sam and Tucker looked up expectantly at Dash. [It should also be mentioned that Dash's actions of inviting Danny in front of his friends and not invite them was extremely rude and bad hosting and should not be taken as a role model for party hosts.]
"Just you." Dash (once again) took advantage of his impressive height and towered over Danny, poking his shoulder hard to accentuate each instruction he gave Danny.
"Show up, shut it, and go home. And nobody gets hurt."
Almost immediately, Danny seemed to be noticed more.
"Hey Danny!" a random blonde greeted Danny as she walked by. Kwan Lee, a popular football jock, greeted Danny by last name and proceeded to shout "party!" before walking away.
What really turned Danny's rational thinking off was Paulina waggling her fingers in a feminine, flirtatious way.
"See you Saturday, Danny!"
Danny was on top of the world.
"I-I'm invited."
Danny's eyes and smile widened.
"I've arrived!"
Swell. Sam rolled her eyes at Danny's lack of foresight. "Send us a postcard from popularity-ville."
"I will!" Danny jumped up and quickly followed Paulina out of the restaurant.
I said that out loud?
"You sure did, Sam." Tucker replied.
"I said that out loud, too?!"
"Nah, it was just obvious that you were thinking it," Tucker didn't even look up from his PDA.
Sam groaned. More training for keeping her emotions off of her sleeve like the 'good' goth girl she was.
The social ladder of Casper High went something along this way: on the top were the A-listers: they were the pretty and rich kids that had enough money to be fashionable and enough looks to be influential. Below the A-listers were the popular kids, those that had enough money or enough looks without any weird relations or "uncool" habits or opinions. They consisted of sports-driven basketball or soccer or volleyball players that played a popular competitive sport that wasn't football and the cheerleaders and dancers that weren't rich. The next tier were the arts students: these students were the ones that focused their hobbies on singing, acting, or drawing. If they played instruments, they played "cool" instruments, like the guitar or drums. These kids were considered "cool" and "popular".
The top tier of the underdogs consisted of the intelligent community, those that enjoyed mathematics and the hard sciences. Just below them were the writers, those that poured their emotions into poetry and short stories. If these teenagers were pretty or rich enough, they'd be considered "popular" and would stand at the bottom of the popular ladder.
Finally, towards the bottom of the pyramid were the geeks, the nerds, and the losers.
[Casper High was a small high school that had a large variety of small clicks: the geeks, nerds, and losers were the largest 'clicks' because they included the "orch dorks", "band geeks" and anybody else that weren't specified previously.]
And Sam was very accurate when she described herself, Tucker, and Danny as invisible: they were at the bottom, lowest of the low, when it came to the social ladder.
Danny being invited to Dash's party had rocketed his social status (temporarily) to the bottom tier of popularity. It inflated his head and ego the next couple days to think and do of nothing but what is "in".
Sam and Tucker both found it to be highly annoying. All that Danny would do was say 'Hi' to random people that he barely even knew or talk to Dash, Kwan, or Paulina.
Kwan seemed to be the most genuine of the three, but that wasn't saying much.
As the week progressed, Danny started talking with the popular kids more than he spoke with his true friends. Sam and Tucker found that their opinion or advice went through one ear and out the other and quickly became tired of Danny ignoring them, even though he was clueless about what was happening.
Two days before "Da Dash Bash", Sam and Tucker decided to confront Danny about his behavior.
Of course, Danny ignored them but started freaking out about the "high-in, hip, and dash" sweat outfit that he had to wear to the party that he in no way possible could afford to buy.
Sam was about to offer Danny money, but was abruptly cut off by Paulina. Danny immediately stopped listening (if he was even listening in the first place) to Sam and rushed over to where Paulina was sitting with a small radio.
"Ooookay, this is getting annoying," Sam muttered.
"You're telling me," Tucker murmured right back. They left Danny with Paulina and decided to simply have a movie night at Sam's place for their Saturday activity.
Which left Danny with the predicament of procuring money for the sweat outfit for the party.
The boy naturally asked his parents.
Danny could hear small snippets of his family's conversation in the kitchen. As he walked in, Jazz said,
"Great: you've figured out how to put the 'frank' back in 'Frankenstein'."
Danny had no clue what had just happened, and he honestly didn't want to know.
"Hey Dad, can you spare me some cash? I need to buy some clothes for Saturday."
"Danny, Danny, Danny- you know, as inventors, your mother and I have plenty of money,"
As long as we're successful and have investors.
"But as parents, we understand that you need to understand the value of money. If you want money, you gotta earn it," Maddie added, rubbing her fingers together as she said the second "money".
Their recent success with the portal had many investors flock to their business, which in turn supplied them with enough money to almost forget that they ever had financial problems.
"You mean," Danny was horrified, "get a job?"
"That or sell something! Like your old comic books or some other junk you don't need!" Jack suggested.
Danny's mouth dropped open in absolute terror.
Sell my comic books?!
"Uh, speaking of which, that old junk from the Ghost Weasel explosion needs to go in the shed: if there's room. That old barn hasn't been cleaned out in years." Maddie's childhood Southern accent always shone through when she was irritated or angry, and Maddie was very irritated that Jack had a full barn of junk that nobody was using.
Jack was instantly on defense mode.
"This is not junk! Every single item in this box is of vital importance to me!" He hugged the large box of junk to his face, close enough to his face to get a bit of ecto-goo on his cheek.
Maddie picked out a random piece of technological equipment that wasn't splattered with goo and proceeded to ask,
"Do you even know what this is?"
Jack observed the piece of junk, narrowing his eyes as the seconds passed.
"Haven't a clue. BUT, I know it's important, so it's off to the shed!" Jack reclaimed the unknown piece of tech (cough*junk*cough) and shoved the box he was holding into Danny's arms.
Danny and Jack quickly made the journey to the barn of a shed in their backyard (Danny stumbled several times for various reasons). The shed's shelves were long-since packed with forgotten technological equipment. When there wasn't any room left on the shelves, the floor had been arranged in a rather precarious Tetris stack from the back of the barn to the door, leaving only a few empty spaces for Danny and Jack to squeeze in the new junk.
"You know, maybe I should get rid of some of this junk," Jack murmured. "WELL, that's a job for another day!"
Jack practically skipped out of the shed, leaving Danny alone to his thoughts.
Saturday's another day…
Danny shut the door with a smirk on his face as he planned a way to get his parents out of the house by Saturday.
"Nooooo wayy," Sam groaned. She rubbed her temples as she sat on Danny's bed.
"You convinced your parents that there was a ghost conference in Indianapolis this weekend?" Tucker breathed.
It was Friday afternoon, and Danny had successfully found a way to get his parents away from the house for most, if not all, of Saturday, and Friday evening, and the half-ghost had just finished telling his friends his plan to get the money needed for the outfit for "Da Dash Bash".
"Actually, there is a ghost conference there this weekend. Indianapolis has at least two haunted houses, and the visitors have recently claimed that they can not only hear the screams of the dead, but can now also see the dead that are screaming. The people holding the conference are trying to decide what to do about it," Danny explained, crossing his arms and (attempt to) lean casually against his desk. His foot turned slightly intangible, thereby making Danny slip and almost fall if he had not caught himself and slightly floated to prevent falling to the floor.
"And how did you pull that off?" Sam accused.
"I found it on the internet." Danny smirked, very smug at the fact that there happened to be an important emergency conference that very weekend.
"Serious?" Sam lifted her eyebrow.
"Dead serious."
Tucker burst out laughing, then wheezed,
"That's… very convenient… that it takes… three hours… to get… to… Indianapolis then…" Tucker sighed, then chuckled before swirling around Danny's chair again.
"With my dad's driving? It only takes them 2 hours, maybe even an hour and a half, to travel to Indianapolis," Danny smirked.
"Your parents are both crazy drivers, it's a wonder you and Jazz managed to survive this long!" Tucker's voice acted up and squeaked at 'parents', but he had learned to live with and ignore the random moments when puberty decided to attack, so he wasn't embarrassed in the slightest.
"But in all seriousness, you're really holding a humongous yard sale tomorrow?" Sam could not believe Danny: he was going way out just to be cool at a party that nobody he knew very well would be going to (except for Dash, Paulina, and Kwan, and Sam knew that they were not real friends).
"It'll be fine, Mom would probably be ecstatic at the barn being cleaned out and it's on Dad's to do list," Danny was definitely trying to convince himself that selling his parents' stuff would be perfectly OK if he did all of the work (plus Sam and Tucker).
Both Sam and Tucker knew this. They just decided not to face the elephant in the room.
As soon as Danny's parents left for Indianapolis, the raven-haired freshmen and his two friends set to work on cleaning out the barn, determining what was trash and what could be sold.
Jazz knew what they were doing. She ignored them. Jack and Maddie would determine his punishment: Danny needed to learn an important lesson, and Jazz knew that the best way for him to learn that lesson was to learn it the hard way. So she ignored the three teenagers cleaning out the large barn in the Fenton backyard.
The next day, Danny, Tucker, and Sam did nothing but work from 5 AM to 3 PM. The three had set up a large banner advertising the sale, along with long tables surrounding the house by the street.
Danny had just sold a vacuum motor to Mr. Lancer when Sam came up and said, "Just sold a toaster," handing Danny a five. He quickly stuffed that and the ten he got from Mr. Lancer into his pocket.
"I'm pleased with the turnout today," Tucker smiled from the chair he was lounging in. "We're doing a really brisk business."
Danny had been counting through the large wad of cash he had in his pocket since the crowd had dwindled down a bit.
"I'm still twenty bucks short of what I need for those sweats!" Danny murmured.
"You're still welcome to hang with us tonight. Mega Movie Marathon at my place!" Sam offered again.
"Your place?" Danny was genuinely shocked, which made Sam glare at her best friend. "You've never invited us to your place before!"
Sam rolled her eyes. Of course Danny wasn't listening when she had first offered.
"That's because we're usually fighting ghosts with you!" Sam took in a deep breath and decided it was time to let her friends know her big secret. "I figured it's time to-"
"HEY FENTINA!"
Danny immediately turned away from what Sam had been saying and walked to Dash with a huge grin on his face.
"-for you to totally ignore me for about the billionth time this week."
Sam and Tucker rolled their eyes at each other as Danny kissed Dash's butt selling him the computer stuff.
Sam decided not to tell Danny. She'd tell Tucker and they'd have an awesome time without Danny, who was about to leave for the mall.
"You guys don't mind cleaning up for me, do ya? Great! See ya!"
And just like that, Danny was gone.
Sam was not impressed.
"So now we're his clean-up crew, too?" She turned to face Tucker, who had somehow managed to teleport to the other side of the street.
"See you tonight!" he called before turning around the corner.
"Ugh, stupid boys," Sam grumbled as she started cleaning up.