Chapter 3 A Walk Down Memory Lane
After Danny had finished his waffles Sam pushed him out of the kitchen. He put up a fight, wanting to help her clean the mess but she refused saying it was her job.
Feeling rejected Danny slowly looked around the living room. There was a fireplace in one wall to his right, a large bay window in another ahead of him that faced out front to the street and to his left was the stairs that he had made his way down no more than an hour ago. This room was also decorated like the bedroom and he wondered if the whole house was done this way.
All of the walls were covered in paintings and pictures. Upon closer look Danny noticed that quite a few of the framed pictures were photos that he had in his room that he remembered so clearly. The others were of things like his and Sam's wedding, the two children, and other random photos from more recently. Danny didn't remember any of those. He studied each one carefully, taking in all the details.
The paintings captured Danny's attention more than the photos did. Quite a few of them had a modern look to them and he couldn't tell what the subject was. The rest were paintings of Sanjiro, Yuriko, and himself.
"Do you like them?" Sam asked coming up behind him causing him to blush.
"Yeah, they're really beautiful," he managed. "Who painted them?"
Sam just smiled at him and motioned for him to take a closer look. Danny leaned in so he could see every brushstroke and noticed the small signature in the bottom corner, 'S. Spectra.'
"You did these Sam?" She nodded to his question. "Wow... I mean, just wow. I didn't know you could paint."
"I've been taking classes."
"It must have been really hard to get those two to sit still," he said turning to one of the paintings with the two children in it. They looked like two angels.
Sam giggled, "You have no idea."
"I take it you finished the kitchen?"
"Yeah. It looked worse than it was, plus you get used to it after a while."
"So what are we going to do now?" He had no idea what went on during the day, and he was sure he didn't want to make things hard on Sam.
"Well, usually I run some errands until it's time to pick the kids up from school."
Danny nodded, "Would you like some help?"
"Of course," she said smiling and leaned in for a kiss.
He blushed and let her lead the way to the car. Sam climbed into the driver's seat and Danny took the passenger side. They pulled out of the driveway after Sam started the car. Danny watched out the window as the streets passed by.
"You wanna see the school?"
"Hmm?" Danny asked turning back to her.
"Casper High. Do you wanna see it? It's changed quite a bit."
"Sure." Danny was unsure what she meant by changed, but it would be interesting to see his 'old' school.
Sam turned down a couple more streets and pulled to a stop in front of a building. Danny stared out the window at it. Large windows took up most of the face of the building letting in lots of light into the school. The front stairs were massive and there was a slab of cement with tables and a bike rack next to the stairs. It was at least twice the size of the school he remembered.
"Whoa."
"Big huh? I don't think I could have handled it if we had gone to Casper like it is now."
Danny laughed, "Yeah, agreed. How do these kids do it?"
"I dunno, I don't know," Sam said shaking her head. She pulled away from the sidewalk and got back on the main street.
A few minutes later they arrived at the store. The couple got out of the car and Sam took Danny's hand in hers with a smile. Another blush crossed his face. It seemed that they had become more open with their affection over the years. Sam rarely held his hand between classes, and lunch or after school was the only time she would kiss him near the school building. Now that Danny thought about it, they never held hands at the mall unless they were on a date.
The door dinged as it opened automatically. "Hold on a second," Sam said as she walked off to grab a cart. Danny watched her as she walked with a sway in her hips. Just in the way that she walked Danny could tell that Sam had changed. She walked almost lady-like.
She smiled as she caught him staring at her. "Ready?"
He nodded dumbly as he rubbed the back of his head. "Uh, yeah. Of course."
The pair walked slowly down each of the aisles. Sam would carefully pick boxes off the shelves and place them in the cart. A few times she would check something on the box as if she was deciding to buy it or not.
Danny felt slightly out of place. He never went shopping with his mother, normally Jazz went with, and he had no idea what it was they were looking for. As if she sensed his discomfort, Sam would often times ask Danny for opinions and take his hand in hers from time to time.
The couple ran into Valerie Gray in the frozen food department. Danny silently freaked out trying to avoid eye contact. How could they run into the one ghost hunter that he had nearly lost to? However, Danny's wish of remaining undetected by the ghost-hunting girl was far from granted.
"Valerie! It's so good to see you," Sam said as she walked over to the girl. Danny had no choice but to follow with a worried look on his face.
"Sam, Danny. Fancy meeting you here. I'm surprised to see that they let you out of the office," the girl joked towards Danny. He could only smile weakly in response.
"I figured it was time he had a day off. All that time at the lab isn't good for him you know," Sam continued.
Valerie nodded in agreement. "I know, I know. I can't tell you how hard it is to get my boyfriend away from work. At least you managed to snag him before he got into the working world."
Sam laughed, "Yeah, I suppose that was for the best. Any plans of wedding bells in the near future?"
"I wish! Alex would rather die than look at a ring."
The two girls continued chatting for a while and Danny could only stare in shock. The last time Danny checked Sam hated Valerie because Valerie was trying to kill him making her father lose his job. That and Valerie catching him and Sam in the bushes. Of course that had been Sam's doing. Stupid fake out make out. The whole school talked about it for weeks afterwards.
Danny went slightly pink at the memory and he came back to earth enough to notice that the girls were saying their goodbyes. Sam led him off down the cereal aisle and he followed like a lost puppy.
"What just happened?"
"What do you mean?" Sam asked as she considered the boxes lining the shelves.
"You, Valerie, talking like normal people. Did I miss something?"
Sam turned to face Danny and gave him another dazzling smile. "A lot of things have changed over the years, honey. Valerie and I being friends is just one of them."
"Clearly. I just feel like I'm missing so much."
"Twelve years actually."
"Twelve?"
Sam nodded as she turned back to the cereal. "We were 14 when we fought Thokk, and now we're 26. You've missed most of high school, college, births, and so much more Danny."
"Thokk?" he asked. That was the only thing he could focus on at the moment.
"The vampire hunter ghost who attacked us at the movie theater and you at the warehouse when..." she trailed off not wanting to remember.
He put a hand on her shoulder and she smiled at him. "That's not important right now."
"You right. Let's finish up here and I'll tell you everything you've missed when we get home. All right?"
"Sounds like a plan."
Sam grabbed a box of cereal and the couple headed to the check out lanes. While they waited in line Sam made small talk about Valerie and her boyfriend, Alex. Danny just sort of zoned out and looked around the store for a while.
"Good afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Fenton. How are you today?" a voice asked waking Danny from his daydream. He knew that voice.
Turning around Danny saw Dash standing behind the register in a purple apron. He almost looked meek compared to his glory days in high school.
Again Sam didn't miss a beat. "Hello Dash, how is everything?" she asked as she emptied the cart with Danny's help.
"Things are starting to get back to normal. I think Paulina is starting to recover from the fire. It was a major blow to everyone in the mobile home community," he said as he rang up the items. Danny couldn't help but notice the scars covering Dash's arms.
"She can't still be mad though, can she? Insurance covered everything that was lost, right?"
"Most of it, but she was very attached to her things."
Danny listened quietly while the two talked. The couple bid goodbye to the former football player after paying for their food. Once they had loaded everything into the back of the car and gotten buckled in Danny asked Sam what that had been about.
"Dash? Well, it's a long story."
"We have time. What happened? I saw the scars." Danny couldn't believe this, but he almost felt sorry for Dash at the moment.
"It was a few months ago, a fire burnt down the mobile home community that Dash and Paulina were living in at the time. Paulina was trapped inside and Dash just barely managed to save her from the flames. Dash's arms got burned really badly. Paulina wasn't so lucky. I think most of her flesh was burned off."
"Burned off?"
"Yeah. It was really bad. She refuses to leave the house and will only let Dash see her. Although she's still annoyed with him for not saving her things," Sam added jokingly.