Rewrite--
Flashback
"So, you're going to tell them?" Sam asked incredulously giving him a pointed look.
"Fiawee," Tucker muffled through large fork full of barely edible cafeteria food into his mouth. Sam's look of disgust had him shrugging, but obviously hurrying to swallow. "Ooo sood 'ave toad 'em a wong kime ago." He swallowed. "I mean, it's not like they won't understand."
"Why shouldn't they?" Sam asked, trying unsuccessfully to ignore Tucker's choice of food like she did every lunch period. "We know they will" She folded her arms, as Danny stood up.
"Yeah, but they had time to...how did Jazz say it? They had 'time to absorb it and accept it', and I practically saved their lives," Danny shook his head.
Tucker pushed the glasses on his nose a little higher before plopping his elbow on the table and waving the fork he'd just used to shovel his food into his mouth around, causing Sam's face to turn a slight shade of green. "So you've talked to Jazz about this already?" he asked. "Why would you trust her more than us?"
Danny sighed. "That's not it, and you know it," he pushed the food around on his plate, trying to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. "Jazz just drove with me to school today, and I figured it was as good a time as any to tell her."
"What does she think?" Sam asked.
An annoyed half-smile appeared on his face. "She said I should wait for a good moment to tell them."
"That's not a bad idea, Danny," Sam commented, Tucker nodding in agreement.
The half-ghost shook his head. "If I don't tell them tonight, I'll lose the guts. I have to get this over with, or it'll never happen. Besides," he sighed, "Tucker's right. If should have told them at the very beginning."
"Danny, maybe you should listen to Jazz. She may nosy and overprotective, but she knows your parents pretty well," the pale-skinned girl pointed out. Danny looked down at his plate going over everything for about the hundredth time that day.
Finally, he shook his head again. "I'm sick and tired of lying. It's gonna happen tonight." He looked down at his plate with resignation, "At least I won't be grounded any more. I'm outta here."
"You haven't eaten anything," Sam pointed out. Danny shrugged, looked at his barely-touched tray, and handed the whole thing to Tucker who took it with an eagerness that startled even Danny.
"Thanks, dude!" He grinned, then his expression sobered. "Why are you going to class early?"
Danny shrugged. "I just need some time to think," he said and walked towards the tray drop-off area. He waved at his friends before he left, not even checking to see if they would wave back. He didn't catch the worried look that they exchanged.
As he slowly trudged down the hall, his mind continued to overturn his "plan", and yet again, he came to the same conclusion. It was the right thing to do, and they deserved to know. Didn't they? Danny shook his head, half in frustration and half in determination. His mind had been made, and nothing could change that.
So why did he have such a bad feeling about this?
oOo
Danny walked in the door to his house, trying unsuccessfully to swallow the lump in his throat. He'd tried just about anything he could think of to delay coming home (he'd even asked Mr. Lancer if he needed any help with anything after class). Unfortunately, that day he had no detention, for once feeling sorry about this particular fact.
With a deep breath, he walked through the door, and tossed his backpack, years of practice landing it just by the corner of the stairs where he usually picked it up after dinner, and walked towards the basement. He needed to get this over with, or he knew that it would take him several more months to work up the courage again.
It was now or never, he knew, although his mind seemed to betray him with thoughts of "What's wo wrong with never". He quickly shook his head to clear it and tried to reassure himself.
"I know they'll accept me," he muttered to himself. "I know it. They already have." That's why he had erased their memories. He'd wanted to tell them. He didn't know why, but he felt he had to. But no matter how much he assured himself, the butterflies in his stomach only seemed to get worse.
He walked through the kitchen door slowly, watching his feet and wondering if there were any last-minute changes he could try. He'd asked Jazz before he'd come home, and then asked her to not be too close when he actually told them. "Alone" meant no sister around to back him up. Of course, she'd argued the point, but in the end conceded and promised that she would not be visible when he came in.
"Danny?" his mother's voice calling his name had him shooting his eyes around the kitchen where he saw both of his parents sitting at the table. He'd expected them to be in the lab like they usually were at this time...
"Er..." he said, suddenly realizing he was not as ready as he wanted to be. "Don't you guys usually work until dinner?"
"We missed lunch," Maddie said, standing up and taking some empty plates over to the sink.
"Oh," Danny gulped.
"Is there something you wanted to tell us, son?" Jack asked in a strangely high voice. Danny looked at him for a moment, but he seemed just as goofy and aloof as normal, studying some book (probably on ghosts) intently. Like his father often did.
Ignoring the crawling sensation crawling up the back of his neck, the half-ghost gulped and nodded. "Uh, yeah, actually," he took a deep breath. "I...er...just wanted to tell you why I sneaked out last night."
"Good," Maddie looked over at him with a glare he didn't cherish. "I've been wondering where you were. I thought I told you 'school and home'."
"Well, yeah," Danny gulped, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "I I...er...you're voices sound funny."
"I think we're both coming down with something," Maddie finished stacking the plates in the sink, and walked over to her husband. "You were saying."
He hated that tone of voice. They most certainly were not making this easier on him. "Well...I...uh...snuck out last night because I was...er...fighting ghosts. And," he went on before anyone could interrupt him, "I've been doing the same thing for the last year."
He hadn't been sure what to expect with that news, but he'd expected something, not his parents standing there blinking at him expectantly. He would have expected his father to start jumping in excitement at least (and a skeptical look from his mother), but nothing seemed to be worse than them yelling at him. Trying to push the whirling tornadoes that had replaced the butterflies in his stomach, he continued.
"You remember the accident, when I turned on the porthole, right?" He expected their faces to light up with pride like they usually did when the subject came up. They only nodded however, their attention completely on him. One thing for sure, this was getting progressively more difficult. "Well," he looked down. "Well, it's easier to show you, I guess." He concentrated and began the change. Two rings appeared around his waist like levitating hula-hoops, and separated, leaving the form of no human, but a teenage, white-haired ghost boy.
A very familiar teenage, white-haired ghost boy. "Well, when machine came on, it...er...sort of zapped me, and did more to me than I told you before." He looked down, feeling his cheeks burn in a combination of shame, worry and regret, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, but...well...what I'm trying to say is, I'm half ghost."
