Chapter Sixteen: The Wrong Perpetrator

It's Not Gay if He's Dead

If there was one thing that Danny and Wes could agree on, it was that those fucking t-shirts were awful. And what was worse, is that they were everywhere.

It began around Wednesday when Paulina, Dash, Kwan, Star, Mikey, Lester, and Nathan walked into Casper High wearing identical black t-shirts with the Danny Phantom logo and caption 'it's not gay if he's dead'.

"Isn't it great?" Paulina asked her entourage of girls. "The geeks are mass producing them and selling them for $8 per shirt! I bought five: one for a crop-top, I cut one up for a bandanna (they're in right now, okay?), two to wear, and one back up. Eventually I might try to tie-dye it, but I'd probably only be able to do the white print..."

During lunch, Mikey, Lester, and Nathan set up a booth in the courtyard where they had swarms upon swarms of students trying to buy their own shirt. It was chaos that Pariah himself would be proud of. Normally the teachers would be doing something to control the mayhem, but many had learned after the Ember incident that it was pointless.

"It's not gay if he's dead, Ryan," said a girl, sporting her new t-shirt. "I can fuck a ghost if I want!"

"Y'all are nasty," said another girl. "So what? Phantom's hot, but it's still necrophilia."

"YOU'RE NECROPHILIA, AMANDA!" someone screamed back.

The girl yelled in response, "THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!"

Ignoring the obscene screaming match in the courtyard, Jazz Fenton stood in the mob of students to buy a t-shirt. She had seen a few kids wearing some already, and had attested the origin of the shirts to either Danny or Tucker, it seemed like something up their alley, after all. She thought it was best to get one as future blackmail before they all ran out, so she left a ten-dollar bill and decked. After a few minutes of searching, she finally found Danny asleep against a wall while holding a partially eaten peanut-butter sandwich. She smiled, it was cute how oblivious he looked to the world.

She took a seat next to him, and his eyes immediately shot open. "Wha – Jazz?"

"Lunch's almost over," she informed him.

"It's lunch?" he asked. She looked at him expectantly, eyes flicking between him and the peanut-butter sandwich. "Oh, right, it's lunch," he laughed. "I guess I kinda lost track of time. I've been running on like three 5-hour Energy drinks. Not to mention, I missed my first two classes and just got back from fighting Ember."

"Well, sure looks like it," she ruffled his already disheveled hair.

"Stop that," he told her stubbornly, fixing his hair.

The two sat in silence for a moment as Danny finished his sandwich. Finally, Jazz pulled out her new t-shirt, "So I've been meaning to ask. Did you approve of this? It seemed like one of your jokes, so..."

Danny, who was still slightly asleep, looked at the black t-shirt in his sister's hands. 'It's not gay if he's dead'. He had to read it twice over before it sunk in what it implied and who it was about. And then suddenly, Danny was awake.

"What... the fuck? Jazz wh – what – where did you get that?" What the hell is that?

Jazz cringed, "You haven't seen it yet, have you?"

"Seen what?" he asked. "Jazz, I haven't been able to focus on anything other than ghosts and sleep today."

Jazz sighed, she had really expected him to have known something about this already. Hell, she'd expected him to be the one behind it. "The entire school is wearing this shirt right now. They went on sale at the beginning of the lunch block, and almost everyone bought one. I bought one because I thought it was another one of your jokes... but..."

"Why the fuck would I make a shirt telling people that it's okay to screw me because I'm a ghost? I'm not dead! Well, mostly. It's still gay, still very, very gay. It's gross just to think about!" he paused, "Who made these?"

"I don't-"

"Jazz," he repeated, "who made these?"

Jazz wracked her mind, trying to remember who it was that was selling the shirts. She remembered his face, but couldn't recall the name. "It was some red-headed boy in your grade. I don't know his name though."

At those words, Jazz recoiled at the sudden recognition that burned in Danny's eyes. He clenched his fists, "Wes. It's got to be Wes."

Jazz knew who Wes was, and it definitely wasn't him. "Danny I don't think-"

Danny ignored her, "I'm gonna go give that asshole a piece of my mind." He stood up, and made sure the coast was clear before he went ghost. Within seconds, he lifted off the ground.

Jazz knew she had to stop him from creating a horrible misunderstanding, "Danny wait-"

"Jazz, I won't do anything too rash, you have my word. Maybe just scare him a little..."

She hopelessly called out to him, "But it's not..." Danny had already flown off, "-Wes. It's not Wes."

Wes was about to die. They were everywhere, everywhere. They swarmed around him, taunting him. The ignorance of the surrounding population was overwhelming; he couldn't take this. He felt like he was drowning in the futility of the human race. He had to remind himself: it was just some twisted joke. A very disgusting joke, a 'joke' that tempted him to take a few shots of bleach.

Wes struggled to hold onto his control. He just couldn't grasp why they were unable to understand! It isgay if he's dead. Really, really gay. They might as well all be wearing shirts that say 'HOMO' in giant red letters.

"Are you okay, Wes?" Justin questioned his friend. The two of them were standing alone in the gym. Wes was possessively holding a basketball while convulsing. "You're – uh – sorta shaking right now."

Wes hissed, "I'm going to kill him."

"Kill who?" Justin asked, "Lemme guess, Fenton? I don't see how'd you kill him, since according to you he's dead or something."

"Not Fenton... right now," Wes said. "Mikey Hobaken. He's the one who started making and selling the shirts. He's the one who gets all the money out of this-"

"Actually I think the nerds are sharing profits-"

"He's the one who gets the final laugh," Wes looked towards Justin. "Mikey's the evil mastermind," he finished.

"I'm just going to pretend you never said that," Justin groaned. "Remind me again why I'm still hanging out with you, especially through all your conspiracy theory shit."

"Is it really a conspiracy if it's true?" Wes countered.

"Yeah," Justin said sarcastically, "because I'm sure that the weakest kid in school secretly lives some kind of double life as a ghost."

"He's literally turned into a ghost in front of me. Multiple times," Wes added.

"Until I see it with my own eyes," Justin says, "it's a conspiracy."

At those words, the temperature in the gym dropped a noticeable ten degrees, and the lights dimmed. Justin shivered, and Wes's grip on his basketball loosened as a pair of glowing green eyes materialized directly in front of him. Phantom leaned forward and grabbed Wes by the shirt collar, controlled rage evident in his expression, "We need to talk."

Seemingly oblivious to the pissed ghost in front of him, Wes threw a smirk at Justin, "Is this conspiracy enough for you?"

Without a moments warning, Danny pulled Wes off the floor and phased the two of them through a wall, leaving Justin alone with Wes's abandoned basketball. He scanned the gym, looking for signs that his eyes had deceived him. Though he found none, he was trapped in denial that whatever just happened had happened.

"Wes?" Justin called out apprehensively. "Dude, this isn't funny. If this is payback for me not believing you..."

When Wes didn't answer, Justin took one more look at the wall his friend had just been pulled through, "Shit."

Danny flew Wes to the food storage room, knowing that nobody ever went down there with the expectation of the occasional cafeteria lady. It was better that they were somewhere out of the way, it would prevent a lot of questions being asked by surrounding ears. Danny let go of Wes, and hovered to where he was a good two inches above the red-head.

"What the fuck did you do, Weston?" he finally said.

Wes looked at him with an unaffected stare; his accusation hadn't fazed him in the slightest. "I don't know," he shrugged. "What do you think I did?"

Wes was actually clueless this time. There could be a number of reasons Danny could be pissed at him, after all his main hobby was coming up with new ways to expose him. Hopefully he hadn't found out about his plans to rig a camera in his room, that would be awkward.

Under the impression that Wes was playing dumb, Danny allowed his eyes to glow brighter in irritation, "Are you kidding me? I'm not an idiot. I know that it was you."

Wes was silent for a moment, trying to think which of his plans Danny might've found out about. "What's me?"

"Stop pretending like you don't know! 'It's not gay if I'm dead'!"

Wes's entire demeanor changed instantly, "You think that I came up with that? No – just ew! I can't believe you would think I'd be that disgusting."

"But-"

Wes cut Danny off, continuing his rant, "It's just so fucking sick! And everyone's in on it!Literally everyone, everyone. I had to pull my best friend away from buying one of those stupid shirts! It's a trap, an evil plot! I feel violated, the human race has resorted to the lowest of the low ignorance! It's not that gay shit that even bothers me, I mean I'm pretty sure my own Dad is at least bi, and I can accept that. I just can't take the fact that nobody realizes what those shirts actually mean! They all want to fuck you, and it's just... just-"

Wes screamed in frustration.

Once Wes had calmed down a notch, Danny backtracked, "So... you didn't make those shirts?"

"Of course I fucking did," Wes rolled his eyes, "because apparently I'm some kind of self-fulfilling hypocrite."

"So if you didn't make them," Danny questioned, "who did?"

"Have you even talked to anyone today?" Wes gave a humorless laugh, "It's Mikey and his little gang of nerds. They were selling them outside the cafeteria earlier."

"Mikey? Then why did Jazz say..." Danny froze. Jazz hadn't said it was Wes, she had said it was a red-haired boy. Mikey was also a red-head. "Oh."

"Danny?" Wes waved his hand in front of the ghost boy's face. "Are you there?"

"Oh, yeah," Danny said. "Sorry for jumping to conclusions, someone told me that you made those damn shirts."

Wes smirked, this was a good opportunity to get under Danny's skin. "Y'know if you just told everyone your secret people would stop wearing them?"

"Fat chance," Danny said. "I'm not going to lose my secret over this."

"Then how you would like your secret to be revealed?" Wes asked. "I'm in my planning period right now, so a little input wouldn't hurt."

"You realize that your reputation is so crippled that there's nothing you can do for anyone to believe you," Danny said.

"Maybe," Wes shrugged. "But it still doesn't change the fact that everyone in Casper High is wearing a t-shirt that says it's okay to screw you."

"Do you want me to leave you down here?" Danny raised an eyebrow.

Wes snorted, "Yeah, right. You don't have the guts to."

Danny froze, remembering they were in a meat freezer. "Was that... was that a meat pun?"

The blood drained from Wes's face. "Oh, God. It was. Your cringe-worthy jokes are contagious."

Danny laughed. "It's almost like they haunt you, right?"

"You're the worst hybrid creature I've ever met," Wes said.

"Aw, how sweet. I'm already better than Plasmius," Danny said.

Wes looked at him strangely. "Who?" Was Danny implying there were other halfas?

"Uhh..." Danny said quickly, "he's another ghost. He's not a hybrid, like me, but he dresses like a vampire, so we joke that he's half vampire or something."

"That's weird," Wes deadpanned. He felt like there was something else unsaid in Danny's explanation, but he didn't really care.

Danny nodded. "You don't know the half of it."

"If that was another pun, I swear Fenton-"

A week passed, and the 'Phantom trend' as students had started to call it, had failed to cease in popularity. Almost everyone wore the same shirt five days in a row. The only people who refused to convert to the cause was Sam Manson, Danny Fenton, and Wes Weston. Each of them arguably had their own reasons for not wearing the t-shirt.

"I refuse to give in to fascism and relinquish my own uniqueness and individuality in favor some stupid trend."

"I mean, my parents are ghost hunters. According to them, Phantom is just a bunch of rancid protoplasm that endangers the town. So there'sno way they'd allow me to wear one of those shirts."

"DANNY FENTON IS DANNY PHANTOM! HE'S A FUCKING GHOST!"

When the students of Casper High realized that pressuring the them into wearing the shirts was fruitless, they eased up. However, Dash still had it in him to bully Danny and Wes due to their stubborn refusal to go with the crowd.

Around the sixth day of the Phantom trend, Danny found that someone had stuffed one of the shirts into his locker. He threw the shirt in a nearby trashcan and stood next to Sam and Tucker.

"This is horrible!" he said to his friends.

"I know!" agreed Sam. "I knew I should've patented my logo!"

"What? Sam, no, that's not what I'm worried about."

She sighed, Danny had been fretting about it for the week. While it was understandable, it started getting old around the third day. "You can live with it," she said. "Or half live. Or I don't know just keep doing whatever the hell you're doing."

"But those shirts – it's just gross!" Danny said, pulling down on some of his hair.

"I think it's poetic," Tucker (who was currently wearing one of the shirts) chimed in.

"Tucker! Dude, just no."

Across the hallway, it was clear that someone had also put a shirt in Wes's locker. Unlike Danny, his reaction was more... brazen.

He held the shirt up in his hands and shouted, "Who the hell did this?"

While most people had learned to ignore Wes's untimely outbursts (seriously, was there a time of the day where he wasn't screaming?), a number of students collectively laughed at him.

"That's it," Wes muttered. He marched across the hallway and pushed Danny forward, "PHANTOM ISN'T DEAD, HE'S BEEN RIGHT FUCKING HERE THE WHOLE TIME. YOU ARE ALL GAY FOR DANNY FENTON. YOU ARE ALL FUCKING IDIOTS!"

From his position in the center of attention, Danny sighed, "Wow, thanks for announcing that to everyone Wes. I'm just going to run into that corner and die the rest of the way."

It was quiet in the hallway for a painful minute as Danny, Sam, and Tucker stalked off to their next class. Finally Wes broke the uncomfortable silence, "You guys realize, he just admitted he was partially dead, right?"

Dash shrugged, "It's not gay if it's dead."

All hell broke loose... again.

Updates may be slowing down because I have to go to band camp (9am-9pm) next week, and start High School the week after that.