Sing to Life
Disclaimer: Wow, I completely forgot about this. Danny Phantom and all associated characters are the blah blah blah blah blah Nickelodeon blah blah blah. Blah blah don't sue blah. Alex is MINE!
Chapter 3: Danny Takes a Test
The weekend had gone so well for Danny. On Saturday morning, he and Tucker had gone out ghost-hunting at the zoo to catch a ghostly tiger cub. It had startled visitors, but Danny and Tucker found the furry ghost to be playful and benign. They chased it around the zoo and searched for some ghost-mice to feed it, but eventually they had to put it in the thermos. They showed it to Sam, who had vehemently opposed returning it to the ghost zone, but Tucker had saved the day by 'accidentally' knocking the thermos' contents into the portal.
On Sunday, Danny and Sam had gone to a movie. They'd laughed at the comedy, and the two of them made a game of Danny trying to sneak his arm around Sam's shoulder. They'd followed it up with dinner at Nasty Burger and a stroll in Amity Park, and after walking Sam home, Danny had returned to his own domicile with a spring in his step. His parents hadn't even bothered him with any new ghost devices.
Danny looked down at the test lying in front of him. He should have known better than to expect mercy from a Monday just because of a good weekend.
The test declared itself to be on geometry, specifically on the properties of triangles. It asked him to prove this relation given that set of data using only the knowledge he'd presumably acquired while STUDYING over the weekend.
Danny didn't know how he could possibly be expected to study when there were ghost tiger cubs to be caught and Samantha Mansons to be treated to movies, but the test remained ambivalent to these important considerations.
A glance around at the other students wasn't encouraging either. Everyone else worked away without a single pause or nervous pencil tap, heads down and eyes on their papers. The teacher sat reclined at her desk, reading a magazine. The room was silent but for the scratching of pencils on paper.
Danny wondered what planet these people had come from that they found the test easy. Even that idiot Joseph was working away. Danny craned his neck to get a look at his paper. Joseph hunched over his desk, etching out a fire-breathing dragon.
That made Danny feel a little better. Still, Joseph's bad study habits didn't do anything to make up for his own. Danny took one last frustrated look around before starting in on the test, hunching over the paper and fidgeting with his mechanical pencil. He clicked his pencil thoughtfully at first, but it gradually increased in frequency as he met more and more difficult problems. Students started to glare and shush him as the clicking became intrusive, and Danny stopped it altogether when the teacher lowered her magazine to give him a warning look.
He dropped the pencil on his desk and glared out the window, listening to the wind as it played in the trees. Only a few whispy clouds marred the sky, and the Sun's rays painted a choppy, vivid texture on the grass outside. Danny watched it for a moment before returning to his test.
When at last the bell rang, Danny had finished most of the problems. He dumped his paper in the wire tray and grabbed his backpack.
"One moment, Danny."
Danny stopped on the threshold of the door and looked up to see his teacher sorting out some papers. He leaned against the doorjamb, worrying the straps of his backpack as his classmates poured outside.
The teacher stood and asked Danny how he was doing.
Danny shrugged, glancing at the kids rushing around outside. "Fine I guess, Mrs. Lows."
She looked over her glasses at him. "Really."
"Yeah..."
"I saw you were having some trouble on the test today."
Danny shifted his weight and leaned on a desk. "I did okay. It's just Monday. Nobody does well on Mondays."
"Hm." She scribbled a note on a stray scrap of paper and stuck it in a drawer. "You haven't been doing too well in my class recently. We have tutoring after school on Wednesdays, and I'm going to line up an appointment with your counselor for you."
"But I-"
"Listen, I've been wondering if you're ready for this class. I'm afraid that if your grades don't start to come up I'm going to have to put you in Algebra B."
"What?" Danny sputtered. "But I-"
"I'm sorry Danny, but you just might not be ready for this class. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You might just need a little more time to learn the material." The warning bell rang, and the teacher withdrew another note. "Here. I'll write you a tardy note for your next class." She scrawled a message and held it out to him. Danny's eyes pleaded with her, but his teacher didn't budge. He pursed his lips and snatched the note.
"Thanks," he mumbled, starting for the door.
"Danny, you're not a dumb kid. Go to your counselor, come in on Wednesday for tutoring, and we'll see what can be done with you."
Danny listened to the wind and tramped on to his next class.
Nobody else asked anything of him for the rest of the day. His PE class stayed in the gym and played basketball, so Danny took to the hoops and dribbled off some of his geometry frustrations. He shouted and competed along with a team of loose acquaintances, all of them bumping and shoving one another in their efforts to capture the aging school basketball. The game was fair and evenly matched, and Danny found himself caught up in the camaraderie in spite of himself. He jogged back to the lockers sweaty and short of breath, but the test and his threatened status in geometry no longer loomed titanic in his mind.
English class held a discussion of the weekend reading assignment, which Danny had done. Midway through the class he felt a tap on the shoulder, and he turned to take a folded slip of paper from the student behind him. The kid nodded and smiled across the room. Danny followed the gesture to Tucker's smirking countenance. He returned Tucker's grin and unfolded the note. Tucker had sketched in a caricature of the English teacher, teeth bared and snarling, being sucked into Danny's thermos. Danny chuckled and gave Tucker a thumbs-up.
History was his last class before lunch. The only thing he had learned so far was that the easiest was to mitigate the boredom was to sleep through it, so after a nap and a short trip to his locker, Danny dropped his tray down at his friends' lunch table. Sam moved over to make room.
"Hey guys." Danny sat next to Sam. "Happy Monday to you."
"Ugh," Sam groaned. "I hate Mondays. The kids in my class are really slow, and we spent about twenty minutes debating how NOT to spell raconteur."
Danny managed a laugh and rubbed his neck. "Yeah, that can get annoying alright."
Tucker raised an eyebrow. He'd been in a better position than Sam to catch Danny's reaction. He was about to inquire further, but Danny cut him off. "Not now," he mouthed.
Sam looked between them. "Something you guys want to say?"
"Nah," Tucker covered. "Who's your teacher again?"
Sam leaped at the question. "Mrs. Johnson. I swear, that woman does not know how to teach. Just the other day she was telling us that there's a difference between 'tone' and 'mood,' and then she misused them both on the test!"
Danny nodded to Tucker, who acknowledged him with a glance. They'd talk about it later.
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Danny's mouse rattled like a machine gun as he fired round after round into an advancing swarm of lurching zombies. The dim halls were spattered with gore, and the scant overhead lights flickered, threatening to go out at any moment. To his left, a shotgun cracked out periodically as another player added his own gun to the battle. Danny took a few bites from one of the monsters, but his body armor easily absorbed the blows, and the battle was quickly won. Danny moved the mouse to walk along to the next room.
"Tough day today?" The message appeared in a gray text box at the corner of his computer screen.
"Oh yeah."
"Geometry test?" They both paused for a second to dispense with the undead occupants of that room. A snorting hog-beast gave a grisly cry before crumpling to the tiled floor.
"Yup. How'd you know?"
"Everybody was complaining about it," Tucker replied.
"I have to go in for tutoring on Wednesday! And Lows says she might kick me out of the class."
"Why don't you have Sam 'tutor' you?"
Danny scowled. "Shut up, Tuck."
"Sorry. Couldn't resist."
Danny went back to concentrating on the game. The next task required the two of them to pilot a helicopter over some lab ruins while being bombarded by anti-aircraft fire, and Danny had never been very good at that particular virtual task.
"What're you and Sam doing this Friday?"
The distraction threw Danny out of balance, and the helicopter screamed to the ground and exploded in a blast of debris and fire. Tucker flashed a ":)" in the chat screen.
"I don't know. Why?"
Tucker didn't reply for a couple seconds, so Danny thought it safe to give the copter mission another try.
"Sam says it's your six-month anniversary this Friday."
Danny crashed again. "WHAT? I thought that that wasn't for another couple weeks!"
Tucker sent him another of those annoying smilies. "Oops."
"No kidding oops. I have no idea what I'm going to do." They paused again while Tucker took his turn at the controls. Danny watched him pilot the ruins like he was driving around the block. If he hadn't been worried about the anniversary, he would have been jealous. Tucker eased them to the ground, and their characters pushed open the doors of the next building.
"Do you have any money?"
Danny reloaded. "Nope." He moved the mouse to look over the room. None of the doors were open, and he couldn't see any switches. "Must be one of those stupid puzzle things."
"Don't worry." Tucker's character moved to a row of black, smoking machines. Danny watched the game character's boxy finger punch in a sequence on a control pad, and the boxes stopped smoking. A door to their right opened.
"You're in trouble if you don't have any money," Tucker typed.
"I'll think of something. I wish I didn't have this stupid counselor's call/tutoring business to deal with, though."
Tucker stopped to slay a reanimated rottweiler. "So, I take it you'll want to go ghost-hunting this Wednesday?"
Their characters dashed into a stairwell. Several flights down, a drooling monster roared and strained against its chains, jaws snapping and claws ripping at the metal under its feet. The chains came loose with a snap, and the monster began to pound up the stairs toward the two adventurers. Danny and Tucker cocked their weapons and aimed down at the approaching menace.
"Oh yeah," Danny typed. "I think I will want to go ghost-hunting."
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A/N: Thanx to all me reviewers: Mrs. Granger-Weasley, cheerin4danny, Wiggle Lizard (x2), Sakura Scout, autumngold, and Divagurl277. (Note to cheerin: the former title was "The Life and Death of Spirits." I dropped it because that's not actually what this story is about.) You're all such nice reviewers, taking the time to read my gargantuan novels. On that note, I am aware that this was a very boring chapter. Do me the favor of putting up with it this time, and you won't be disappointed when the payoff comes. Drop a review and tune in next chapter for prison fun with Alex and Vlad!