Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. A majority of the characters in the story are owned by Nickelodeon.
Double Clique
Chapter 10: Girls' Night
Sam had waited outside the Nasty Burger for about twenty minutes. It was enough that Danny and Tucker had convinced her to spend a night with Paulina, but waiting as long as she had been for her to show up had made her feel especially foolish.
"She's standing me up," Sam seemed to realize.
The long wait gave Sam time to think. Think about her last interactions with Paulina. How she took Danny to the school dance purely to spite her. How she was rude to her in the bathroom of Floody Waters Water Park. How she acted like she was nothing at the North Mercy Hospital. Every interaction at the beauty pageant.
The last one she thought of was the worst. She remembered when Paulina had attacked her at the school. She remembered the terror she felt when Paulina had her in an inescapable position. She remembered how close she came to drowning her alive.
Sam shook off the memory and placed in back into the back of mind. "Whatever happens tonight," she reassured herself, "it can't get worse than that." She looked around again and spotted no sign of Paulina. She sighed and told herself, "This was a mistake."
Sam was ready to just up and leave right then and there. Nothing was stopping her from doing so. But she did not leave. She thought about how convinced Tucker seemed about Paulina being a team player. She thought about how hard Danny worked to get Paulina this far in getting Paulina back. Even prior to the Downpour incident, Paulina had been helpful in fighting off Youngblood's pirates and eluding the Guys in White when Danny was exposed (not that she'd remember the latter). As much as she didn't want to admit it, there was a small part of Sam that wanted to believe Paulina was doing this for the right reasons.
Sam huffed and decided, "I'll give her five more minutes."
Almost as soon she had made that decision, Sam saw someone strange approach the restaurant. Strange, yet familiar. It appeared to be a girl her age, and she was dressed in dark glasses, a beige raincoat, and a matching fedora. The same outfit Sam wore when she didn't want to be recognized at Eternal Seventeen.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me," Sam said, the puzzle pieces fitting just right at who this person was.
Paulina walked up to Sam, trying to keep a low profile. "Sam," she casually greeted.
"Wendy," Sam responded in turn, smirking.
"Can you not call me that?" Paulina requested, still irked by the nickname.
"Why not?" Sam asked. "It's clear you don't want to be Paulina right now."
"I can't risk anyone seeing us together," Paulina explained, "and no one's gonna pay attention to anyone wearing beige."
Sam couldn't help but chuckle a bit, telling Paulina, "You know, it's kinda funny, I thought the same-" Sam caught herself actually being pleasant with Paulina, reverting back to having a reason to be mad with her. "Wait, wait, wait. You're really think being seen with me would be that detrimental to your precious social standing?"
"Can we just go inside already?" Paulina said, walking past Sam not even waiting for her to answer.
Sam just glared at Paulina as she entered the restaurant and turned around, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for Sam to catch up. "It can't possibly go up from here," Sam said as she followed.
Sam walked into the Nasty Burger, right past Paulina, just as she did to her, and toward the cashier. Paulina caught up to Sam as the two made it to the cashier simultaneously.
"What can I get for you two today?" the cashier asked.
Paulina looked up at the menu and answered, "I'll have the Mighty Mini Meaty Cheesy Melt."
Sam added, "And I'll have your plant protein-based meat substitute burger."
"You mean our Nastier Burger?" the cashier asked.
"Yeah, I'm not calling it that," Sam responded, slapping down a twenty dollar bill and leaving for the nearest open table.
Paulina looked down at the bill that Sam just left behind and asked, "Aren't you gonna the change?"
"Sit down and let's just get this over with!" Sam said, not wanting to be around Paulina longer than she had to. Paulina huffed and took her seat at the table, sitting across from Sam.
The next minute was especially tense. The two simply stared at each other, not speaking, not giving any indication they were interested in what the other would have to say.
It was finally Paulina who broke the stalemate. "I guess I like your hair," she muttered.
"Wow, going straight to the superficial," Sam sarcastically said. "You're really that shallow."
"Maybe if you weren't so boring, I'd have something else to talk about," Paulina said.
"I'm boring?" Sam said. "Have you forgotten I fight ghosts, too? Do you expect me to dress up in bright colors like every other girl in school? Like you?"
"You're telling me you actually dress that way to stand out? You've obviously failed at that. Maybe if you cared a little bit about your appearance, people might actually want to be around you."
"Right, because if you can't win 'em over with your lovely personality, you may as well try to look hot."
Paulina was beginning to get fed up with Sam's berating. There was nothing she knew she could say to please this girl, and her frustration was reaching a boiling point. Sam, meanwhile, was growing increasingly angry that in a night she was supposed to get to know Paulina a little better, she was turning out to be everything she thought she was. The night was just turning into a waste of her time.
"You think it's easy being me?" Paulina accused.
"Wait, wait, I've seen this movie before," Sam interrupted. "Is this the part where you tell me that everything you've ever said and done before all this was all a façade to stay in with the cool kids? Where you say you're actually jealous that I'm not bound by people's opinions of me and more free to express myself?"
"No," Paulina angrily, and honestly, answered, "because I love that I'm the most popular girl in school! I love that people fall over themselves just to get noticed by me!"
"Congratulations, Paulina!" Sam said, in mock appreciation. "You've just confirmed that everything I've ever thought about you is absolutely true. Is there any part of you that's actually a human being?"
A switch was flipped in Paulina. Sam, a girl who she was supposed to be trying to get along with that night, had just questioned her humanity. The last thing she needed was this girl reminding her of what she was. Already angry, Paulina became absolutely furious. She lifted herself off of her seat and slammed both her hands down onto the table, causing Sam to retreat into her seat.
"DON'T YOU EVER SAY THAT ABOUT ME!" she screamed at Sam's face.
The restaurant suddenly grew quiet. After venting out some rage, Paulina looked around to see most of the patrons and staff staring at her table. Only a few had just decided to go back to what they were doing. When Paulina looked back to Sam, her jaw dropped and her heart stopped.
Sam had dug back into her seat as far as it would let her. Her body was tense as if she were ready to run away at any minute. Her eyes were wide with terror.
Sam was scared.
Scared of her.
"Oh no," Paulina said, immediately distraught. She fled to the nearest exit, repeating, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" She ran out of the Nasty Burger on the verge of tears.
Following Paulina's exit, Sam let go of a breath she felt like she had been holding onto for ages. She looked out a window to see Paulina running towards the back of the restaurant. She knew right there that this night was over.
She could just leave and go home right now. Paulina had run off and there was no reason to try to get along with her anymore. All because Sam had asked...
It struck her. Sam had dehumanized Paulina. Having those powers must have made her feel abnormal, and Sam just poked into a wound she had no business digging into. "Crud," she muttered, "this is all my fault."
She thought about going out to find Paulina and apologize. Instead, she hesitated. The last time she apologized to Paulina, she wound up with egg on her face and a cursed amulet around her neck. Besides, why should she be the first one to apologize? Paulina had tried to drown her and hasn't shown anything resembling remorse to her. She should just walk away now and let this day be forgotten.
"Darn it," Sam sighed as she left her seat to search for Paulina. She just had to have a conscience, didn't she?
"Paulina!" Sam called out after exiting the restaurant. She couldn't find any sign of her in the front, but then she remembered that she ran around to the back. As she made it to the back, simultaneously thinking she had waited to long to act and that Paulina had to've been long gone by now, she heard the sound of sobbing.
Sam quickly moved to the back and just saw a dumpster. As much as she enjoyed the idea of Paulina in a dumpster, her instincts told her to check the other side. Sure enough, there she was, seated against the wall, her knees tucked to her chest, sobbing. It wasn't something Sam was used to seeing. She never thought she'd find Paulina looking so... vulnerable. She almost felt bad for her. She approached Paulina and knelt beside her.
"Hey, Paulina," Sam said, trying to be gentle. "You alright?" Paulina didn't answer. She didn't even look at Sam. She just continued sobbing. "Right, dumb question," Sam said.
Paulina breathed in to swallow a huge chunk of pride. "Look, Paulina," Sam said, "I didn't-"
"I shouldn't have snapped like that," Paulina suddenly said.
Sam let out a sigh of relief, glad that she didn't have to be the first to admit they were wrong. It wasn't a direct "I'm sorry," nor was it for the right thing, but it was a start.
"I just..." Paulina tried to explain herself, caught up in her sniveling. "I could've just thought that you were jealous of how popular I am, how pretty I was..."
"Gee, thanks for that," Sam dully said, disappointed that shades of the old Paulina were still around. Sam then realized something Paulina said. How pretty she was? Past tense?
"But now..." Paulina had finally lifted her head up, removing her sunglasses so she could wipe the tears from her eyes. She looked at Sam and said to her, "I hate this, Sam. No matter how hard I try to hide this, I'm never gonna be a normal girl again. Just... just a freak!"
Sam was at a loss for words. She was supposed to think of this night as a way to get to know Paulina more, and this new interaction really opened her eyes to her. Paulina may have still been vain and superficial, but her powers made her absolutely miserable. It was going to be very hard to turn around. Sam got them both in this mess, she may as well try to get them out.
"Hey, look," Sam said as Paulina put her head back down, "I know I screwed up tonight. I didn't mean... well, what you thought I meant. But you know what? Normal is overrated. I stuck it to normal when I was old enough to dress myself."
Paulina didn't react. She continued looking glum as Sam tried to come up with something else to say.
"You know," Sam tried, "Danny struggled with reentering school life after her got his powers, too. How else would you explain that time he tried talking to you and his pants dropped?" Paulina snorted at what Sam said. It was the first time Sam saw her smile since the night began. "See? You're not so gloomy."
Paulina's smile faded when she thought back to Danny. She said to Sam, "But Danny doesn't have to try hard to pass for human. He can just... 'whoosh' between ghost and human. I'm... I'm stuck like this."
"You're doing good so far!" Sam said, trying to be encouraging. "Everyone's still in love with you, and after yesterday, no one's made any connection to you and Downpour. You got this!"
"You don't know anything," Paulina said. "I have this secret so big, that if anyone found out about it, it could change what everyone thinks about me forever. You can't understand what I'm going through."
Sam looked down as she seriously thought about her next words. She looked back to Paulina and said, "You're right, I really don't know what you're going through. Though I do know a thing about keeping secrets like that. You know, my family is actually super rich."
Paulina looked at Sam with a look of surprise and confusion.
"It's true," Sam further elaborated. "My family's the reason toothpicks have that colored cellophane wrapped at the end. I know it's not exactly the same as having water powers or ghost powers, but it's something I'd rather not have everyone now about me either. They'd just... stop seeing me for me."
There was a pause as Paulina was processing what Sam said to her. She finally spoke up, saying, "Why tell me this?"
"I really don't know," Sam answered. "I was supposed to do this just to make Danny and Tucker happy, but I guess there's this part of me that wanted to make a connection with you tonight. And I guess there's this other part of me that wants to believe that we really can be friends."
Paulina genuinely smiled at Sam, saying, "A fresh start."
Sam rose back to her feet and extended her hand to Paulina. "Come on," she said. "Let's go back inside before they throw away our food."
Feeling more comfortable with Sam, Paulina removed the the fedora from her head (revealing her knit cap beneath) and accepted Sam's hand to help her up.
Sam noticed the double hat after she helped Paulina up, and rather than accept it as a symbolic gesture of Paulina becoming more secure of being around her, she asked, "You were wearing a hat underneath your hat?"
"This one doesn't have a plastic lining beneath it," Paulina said, gesturing with the fedora. "Besides, it would just get wet. You don't get a fedora wet, it ruins the fedora."
The two both looked at the fedora and, somehow, simultaneously said, "So it's really an improvement." They then looked at each other and, after a brief pause, both laughed out loud.
"First well kept secrets, now a distaste in headwear," Sam said as the two made their way back into the Nasty Burger. "This is way more productive than I thought it would be."
As Sam and Paulina took their seats, another pair of students had arrived at the Nasty Burger. Star and Kwan, aboard the latter's moped, had decided to end a romantic evening with a pair of milkshakes, largely on Star's insistence. As the two stepped off the moped and removed their helmets, Star had revealed an orange knit cap on her head, matching the highlights on her shirt.
After Paulina had once again gotten more attention than her at school that day, she had demanded Kwan take her to the mall to get a hat similar to Paulina's. She thought that by latching onto her friend's latest style choice, she could attract the same attention, however she insisted that the hat was to show solidarity with Paulina after her terrifying experience in the Ghost Zone. "We'll be Beanie Buddies!" She had told Kwan.
Speaking of Paulina, Star stopped dead in her tracks as she had witnessed her through the Nasty Burger window before stepping inside. It wasn't so much that she saw Paulina, but who she was with.
"Kwan, baby," Star called to her boyfriend. "What do you see through that window?"
Kwan scanned for the window Star was pointing at. Finding it, he answered, "Sam Manson chatting with someone remarkably uninteresting for some reason?" Star huffed and put her hand in front of Kwan's face, covering his line of sight just enough to block out her beige raincoat.
"Hey, it's Paulina!" Kwan happily said. He then became confused and asked, "What's Paulina doing hanging out with Sam?"
"I don't know, and I don't care," Star said, taking out her phone and snapping some pictures of the two. "This is just priceless."
"Why are you taking pictures of them?" Kwan asked. "Isn't that, like, an invasion of privacy or something?"
"If there's one thing I know about Paulina," Star began to explain, "it's that she cares more about what people think of her than anything else. Pictures of her hanging out with that goth geek Sam Manson? Smiling? Laughing? Enjoying her company? No one's ever gonna see her the way they do now!"
The wheels in Kwan's head started turning as he was figuring out what Star was going to do with the photos. Before smoke could billow out of his ears, he deducted, "So you're gonna post those pictures on the internet and shame Paulina into obscurity so you can retake her spot as the most popular girl in school, right?"
Star gasped, as if appalled that Kwan would suggest such a thing. "Kwan, I'm shocked!" Star said, fiddling with her phone. "I value our friendship too much to do something so... pedestrian! But if Paulina knew I had these pictures and didn't want them getting out..." She showed Kwan one of the photos she took on her phone, with her thumb agonizingly close to a "Post" button. "...Maybe she'll learn to value our friendship in her own way."
Kwan thought some more and responded, "Ooohh, now I see. You're gonna blackmail her into doing whatever you want so you won't post the photos, and while she still gets to be the queen bee, you'll be pulling her strings like some kind of puppet master!"
"Exactly!" Star said. "I get to control our clique, she gets to stand there and be pretty. It's a win-win!"
"It doesn't sound like Paulina really wins anything," Kwan realized.
"You think too much," Star dismissed. She put her helmet back on and requested, "Now take me home."
"But milkshakes!" Kwan protested.
"Home, Kwan!" Star ordered. "I just got a taste of something much, much sweeter."
"He did not!" Paulina gasped.
"Yep," Sam confirmed, "every last blood blossom. And Tucker says he never had a vegetable in his life, so his body was not prepared. So when we were having our little adventure through time... Well, let's just say Tucker left a little part of himself everywhere we went."
"He just... ate them off the ground?" Paulina said, laughing and squirming.
Sam chuckled and queried, "I just told you about how we used a Ghost Zone artifact that flung us through time to chase after Danny's arch rival, who is both also half-ghost and the mayor of the city, a story which includes Tucker needing to use the bathroom every two minutes, and the thing that weirds you out is Tucker eating food off of the ground?"
"Well," Paulina said, trying to defend herself, "were the roads just dirt then? The blood blossoms had dirt on them right?"
"He was just taking one for the team, we all have," Sam explained. "Tucker ate veggies, Danny took I-don't-know-how-many hits from ghosts, I..." She hesitated over what she was about to say, finally muttering very quickly, "I kissed Dash..."
"You what?!" Paulina's jaw dropped.
"Don't act like you didn't hear what I said," Sam warned.
"Oh, you have to tell me about that one!" Paulina said.
"Actually, I don't," Sam remarked, trying to get away from the story. "I'm just trying to put out that we all look out for each other. It's what friends do."
After hearing Sam's explanation of friendship, Paulina immediately thought back to yesterday at the mall. She had saved Star from a frying kiosk, while Star abandoned and left her at the mercy of a giant ghost rat. It made her really think about her current relationship with Star, but she didn't let in on to Sam.
"Yeah, friends do do that, don't they?" Paulina said.
"Man, how long have we been here just talking?" Sam asked, having lost track of time. "Maybe we should wrap this up."
Paulina was just about to get up, in agreement. But then an idea struck her. "Should we though?"
Sam looked at her quizzically. "Huh?"
"I mean, sure, let's finish up tonight," Paulina said. "But the weekend's just getting started. We ought to make tomorrow..."
"Don't say 'girls' da-'"
"A girls' day!" Paulina exclaimed.
"Look, Paulina," Sam said, trying to talk her way out of it, "I really just did this for the good of the team. Don't get me wrong, today was good for us and everything-"
"Then let's make tomorrow great!" Paulina pleaded. "I'll be honest Sam, I didn't have high hopes for tonight either, but this has really been the best day I've had since coming back. It just feels so much better having another girl to talk to about all of this, you know what I mean?"
Sam didn't answer right away. As she thought about it, the only other people she hung around with were Danny and Tucker. She only rarely hung out with Jazz, so she didn't really have many girl friends. Was tonight simply better than it was just because the two of them were both girls?
"Honestly, Paulina," Sam said, "I don't." Sam was surprised with how sad she suddenly felt from admitting that. She took a little bit more time to mull it over before finally deciding, "You know what? Let's do it. You and me versus Amity Park."
"Yay!" Paulina jumped for joy. "This is great! We can have fun together and you can tell me what happened between you and Dash."
"I'm not telling you that story!" Sam insisted.
Author's commentary: I felt I could've done better with Sam and Paulina's argument. I knew how I wanted to end it, but getting to that ending was harder than I thought it would be. I also feel I didn't do enough with the chapter ending. Really it's just there to set up the next one.