"I'm supposed to be in class," Jazz growled at me.

I shrugged, apologetic. I knew that I interrupted my sister's life whenever I popped up, begging for help (which was much more frequent that I'd like to admit), but I had nowhere else to go. Who else would patch me up? I knew that Tucker would, but Jazz was much more attentive and much calmer in these situations. Tucker always panicked at seeing an injury up close, and he couldn't do stitches as well as Jazz.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

She sighed. "Blaster?" She guessed, rubbing antiseptic around the raw edge of my wound.

I nodded. "Dad," I confirmed.

She shook her head. "Danny, have you ever thought that it would be a lot easier if they knew?"

"Jazz … we've talked about this. If I'd told them in the very beginning, things might have been different. They might have accepted it, or worse, separated Phantom and I before anything could begin. Now, though, what do you think they'd do if they discovered that the ghost boy they've been hunting for years is their own son? They have too bad of an opinion of Phantom for it to work. It's easier for everyone if they never found out."

"I just don't like how we keep hiding things from them," Jazz repeated, just like the thousands of other times we had this conversation. "I feel like they have a right to know about what's happening in their son's life."

"If it was anything else, Jazz, you know I'd go to them, in a heartbeat. But this is the one thing that would destroy them to hear and it would destroy me to tell. I can't do it, okay?"

And like she had every other time before, Jazz gave in. "Okay," she sighed. "Now lay down on the bed."

"On the bed?" I squawked. "Jazz, I have places to go!"

"Not today, you don't. I have a full schedule ahead of me but you need stitches. I can't let you go anywhere until I do them but I just can't do it right now. Please, listen to me. Lay down, get some rest, I'll be back as soon as I can to fix you up, okay?"

I crossed my arms but gave in. "Fine," I agreed. "There's no reason I can't nap, right?"

"Right …" Jazz paused in the doorway. "And can you please do so as Danny for once? I don't want to explain to anyone who might walk in as to why the infamous Phantom is snoring away on my bed."

I chuckled, blushing. "Okay," I stammered, activating the blue rings that encircled my body and turned me back to my natural state.

That being done, I curled up on her bed as best as I could with my injury and fell asleep.

(-.-)

It was dark when Jazz returned, waking me up. "I brought Chinese takeout for dinner. Not the healthiest choice, I know, but it's not ecto-weenies that are going to try to eat us, so I figure it's a good choice."

I smiled at the traumatizing childhood memories. "Mmm, Chinese," I babbled, dragging myself into a sitting position.

"Ah, ah," Jazz scolded. "Stitches first."

"I hate stitches," I bitched as Jazz began to set up next to me, pushing me back into a lying position as she did so.

"I even pinched some local anaesthetic via a medical student friend," Jazz informed me. "So it won't hurt as much as it normally would."

"Your boyfriend," I teased.

Jazz blushed, as she always did when I mentioned her and a boyfriend – which as far as I knew, didn't exist.

"I keep telling you, Danny, I'm not with anyone."

"You sure?" I asked, wanting to keep the conversation going. Jazz was preparing the needle and thread and I wanted something to distract myself from what she was about to do.

"I'm sure."

"Hypothetically," I began, hissing softly as Jazz began, "if you were going to be interested in someone, what would they be like?"

She raised her eyebrows at me. "I told you that I wasn't with someone, not that I wasn't interested in someone."

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Well then who are you fucking interested in?"

"Don't swear," Jazz scolded, sounding eerily like Mom as she did so.

"Sorry … but, really, who was special enough to catch your eye?"

"Oh, it's no one really," Jazz told me, voice soft. "It's no one important."

"If my sister likes him, he's important," I responded. "Now, give me some details."

"Fine," Jazz relented but not without rolling her eyes at me. "He's sweet. We don't see each other often, but we do a lot of texting. He's really funny; a little bit of juvenile sometimes, but I find that endearing too."

"Does he go to school with you?"

"No. He used to, but not anymore."

"High school?" I guessed.

"Danny, let it go," Jazz commanded – and that's how I knew I was right.

"C'mon, Jazz," I pressed. "Let your little brother play match maker!"

She looked up from my wound long enough to glare at me.

"Or the town's hero?" I suggested.

"No," Jazz growled. "Besides, he's no one you would recognize anyway."

I sighed. "Fine, fine."

But I promised myself that I would try to figure it out. Jazz had boyfriends before, but they hadn't lasted very long and she hadn't seemed in love with any of them. I honestly just wanted her to be happy; she was my sister. I would do anything for her.

"All right," Jazz said, leaning away from me. "Let's eat and then I'll send you on your merry way."

"Good," I groaned, gently stretching. "I have places I need to go tonight."

"Paullina or Sam?"

"Sam. I think I'm seeing Paullina sometime next week." I said this very tentatively. I didn't know what Paullina wanted lately – she was barely talking to me, which I couldn't exactly blame her for. I wasn't talking to her a lot either. But next week was when she came back to school so I assumed that we would be seeing each other there and spending more time together than we had been.

"To break up with her?" Jazz asked hopefully.

"No, it's not the right time."

"Danny, if you wait for the right time it'll never happen, you understand that, right? It should be now at this very moment that you break up with Paullina and tell Sam the truth."

"I told you how I've treated Sam as Fenton. When I tell her the truth, I'll lose her."

"The longer you let it drag on, the more likely you are to lose her anyway. And as for your behaviour … Damn it, I thought you were raised better than that. You can't continue to treat people like they're nothing. I've noticed that you've been a bully ever since you started to break into the popular crowd. Some of the people you bring around are really nice – like Kwan – and some really aren't – Paullina, for example. Stop emulating her, the whole degenerate lot of them."

"They're my friends, and that's my girlfriend."

"Who do you really mean when you say 'girlfriend'?" Jazz prompted. "And are they all really your friends?"

I dropped my food onto her desk with a thump and transformed back into Phantom.

"I'm finished with this conversation."

"Fine, but think about what I said. Eventually you'll see that I am right, I just hope it's not too late when you do."

I didn't bother to answer her, instead turning intangible and gliding out of her dorm room wall. Who was she to tell me about my life? Who was she to think that she knew everything? No one else knew what it was like to live in two completely separate worlds. No one else knew what it was like to have their heart torn so painfully in two completely different directions. Just because she and Tucker lobbed advice at me, just because she and Tucker thought they understood the situation from my words, didn't mean that they really knew what was going on. This was not their life. It was mine – for all my fuck-ups, for all my headaches, it was all mine and they just couldn't understand that.

I put a halt to my brooding as I arrived at Sam's. I landed on her balcony, peeking into her window. She was curled up on her bed, book lying at her side, hands rubbing up and down her legs. I knocked on the window, chuckling over the second of panic she had before she saw it was me.

"Get in here," she rumbled.

I smiled, trying to show her that I was all right. "Sorry it took me so long to get here," I apologized, walking into her room.

"Are you okay?" Sam demanded. "I was at school and there was this loud bang and I was so worried about you! What happened? Are you bleeding; hurt?"

I was fine, after Jazz's nursing foray.

"I'm fine," I assured her, dropping to the end of her bed. I guess my extended nap hadn't completely recovered me. "A bit tired though. And that bang was a Fenton Blaster-"

Sam interrupted me. "Jackson told me."

Who in the fuck was Jackson? Should I be jealous when I had technically been cheating on her the whole time? No. Was I? Hell yes. I wanted her all to myself.

"Jealous?"

She knew me too well, though I think a blind man would be able to sense my green-eyed monster.

"A little," I growled.

"What's a Fenton Blaster?" Sam asked me, not telling me who this 'Jackson' was.

Still, I answered her. "It's a type of gun that was made by Fenton Works. It'll blow anything it's pointed at to pieces, even when the blaster hits a ghost, but usually the ghost will quickly reform." If that ghost isn't a halfa, that is – I defied all of the typical ghost qualities and most of the typical human ones when it came to my reaction to weapons. "It didn't take me long to defeat the dragon ghost. She was very weak."

Maybe defeat wasn't the right word, since Dora and I both bailed out of that situation but I always had to make things sound different than they actually were when it came to Sam. I couldn't tell her the truth about most things, for fear of her finding out – or at least make her more suspicious than she already had been in the past.

"Then what took you so long to get here?"

Good question, Sam. I muttered internally. I repositioned myself closer to her as I thought about it.

"I had to fight some others. They get stirred up during any kind of holiday. Christmas is a crazy time."

That last part wasn't a lie – ghosts loved holidays. But they wouldn't start going Christmas crazy for another week or so, by my calculations anyway.

"Speaking of Christmas, should I get you something?" Sam asked, spreading herself across my chest.

I tried not to wince when she brushed my bad shoulder. I didn't want her to know about my injury; I didn't want her to worry.

"What would I do with a Christmas gift?"

"I was just asking," Sam snapped.

Fuck; I'd upset her.

"I just want to see you on Christmas," I told her, hoping that I sounded cute and got some brownie points while I was at it. "I don't really need anything beyond that."

"You're cute," Sam told me, smiling.

Ha; Danny wins again.

"You're cute," I responded, keeping the fluff filled moment going. But, after a pause, I had to ask, "Now, who is Jackson?"

"He's Tara's sister."

"And who's Tara?"

"A girl."

Oh. My. Fuck. "Sam, I'm gonna …"

"Gonna what?" She teased, laughing.

Using my supernatural speed that came along with my ghost powers, I flipped her underneath of me so that I was straddling her thighs, my hands locked next to her head, held down by my fingers.

"You're heavy," she whined.

"Are you calling me fat?"

"Yes."

"Brat," I accused.

"Eh … What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to shut you up," I threatened.

"Yeah right," Sam laughed, rolling her eyes at me.

I glared at her but proved myself right when I kissed her, silencing her just as I told her I'd do.

(-.-)

"You do realize there's this thing called exams," Sam (my tutor, the version I couldn't kiss) reminded me.

"They're not until the end of January," I pointed out, putting away the bread for my sandwich.

"There's this thing called 'you're going to fail the class'," She prompted.

"Class doesn't end until January." I joined her at the table, beginning to dig into my feast – I was seriously hungry.

"Do you care about your grade at all?" She demanded, sounding exasperated.

Nope; I was going to pass, that was all I needed. But when I looked at up at her and saw the curve of her lips and the unique depths of her eyes, that's not what I ended up saying to her. My real response was, "There are important things for me to be caring about."

"Paullina?"

"Thought you didn't like discussing personal lives?" I dodged the question by asking her that, reminding her of when I had pestered her about a boyfriend.

"I don't mind when you're nice about it," Sam responded primly.

I smiled at her, trying to show her that I could be a good guy. "When have I not been nice?"

My efforts were rewarded with a glare from her.

"Fine, fine. Don't answer that. What can I say, I'm an asshole." I should get an award for admitting that I'm a dick.

"I'll agree to that," Sam sighed. She didn't give me a chance to push the conversation further, instead presenting me with a math worksheet that I'd been avoiding for a week or more. "Do you know what method you use to solve these equations?"

"Uhh …" I tried to think of a fancy word, something that might have to do with math. "Hyperbole?"

Sam looked like she was about to throw herself out the window.

(-.-)

"Hey, Princess," I greeted, bending down next to Paullina's wheelchair. "How have you been feeling?"

"Lonely, since my boyfriend has all but abandoned me." She sniffed.

"Aww, Princess, don't talk like that," I whispered. "You know that I'm all about you."

She glared at me. "Who else would you be about?"

"No one," I said, playing my fingers along her arm. "That's my point. I'm all about you."

"You're coming over after school, right?"

"Of course."

"Good," she looked at me, dark eyes digging into mine. "Now kiss me. I have a loser to put into their place in a minute."

I kissed her lightly, trying not to get myself covered in her lipstick.

"Who's the loser?" I asked.

"Just someone who has probably been having the run of the school in my absence," she sniffed, repositioning her wheelchair a little from its original place in the school lobby. Before I could ask any more questions about this particular loser, Sam walked in and Paullina called out her name. "Samantha … How are you?"

Sam hesitated midstride, staring at Paullina and then me. "Fine … How are you feeling?"

"I could be better," Paullina snapped. "Thanks to your retarded friend."

"There's no need to disgrace the dead," Tucker growled, shocking the hell out of me. Since when did he have the balls to stand up to Paullina?

"Don't tell me what to do!" Paullina screeched at Tucker, looking like a predator.

I could feel Tucker's eyes on me and I knew what he was asking; I could practically hear his voice in my head: it's time now Danny. It's time to get away from all of her evil. Please, break up with her now, please? I shook my head, hoping that he understood what I was saying to him. I even held on tighter to Paullina, showing that I was not ready to let go of her.

And then my second surprise of the day came.

Starr retorted to Paullina. "Paully, it was a little cruel. She's gone now; can we just forget about her?"

"Just because she's dead, it does not make her a saint! It doesn't excuse what she did to me in life. I am missing important organs because of her!" Paullina glowered at Tucker and Starr. "Don't defend her or I'll make you nobodies," she threatened.

"Sorry," Starr squeaked instantly, and I could see tears in the corners of her eyes.

Tucker heaved a sigh, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave me a dirty look.

Sam went to walk away and she almost made it but Paullina had to drag her back in with one last comment.

"I'm getting close to the truth, slut. And when I do, your life here in Amity will be over."

After Sam was gone, I bent back down next to Paullina.

"What's the truth?" I asked, hoping that I sounded like I was lusting after her gossip, rather than what I actually felt. I felt sick. I could think of one thing that Paullina could find out and hold against Sam that would ruin her life in Amity – her suicide attempt. Judging by how Casper was viewing the memory of Valerie, I could only manage what they would do to a physical person.

Paullina smiled at me. "Let's just say that she's an attention seeking whore, just like I always knew she was."

My heart sunk.

I don't own anything recognizable. Thanks to my betas: Forever Sky.

~TLL~