Author's note: (sighs) Is there really any point? Because if no one is reading this, there's no point in putting it up.
Chapter Two: Brother
They met up in front of the building after school. Lanna's last class had been right by the doors, so she had waited by a tree and watched for the other three.
"Hey, guys! I called my brother from my cell phone, why don't you come over to my house, instead? My brother wants to meet you all."
They agreed, and Danny told Jazz where he was going. None of their parents would miss the trio right away, but Jazz would.
Lanna led the way, walking down the street, and answered some more of their questions – some before they even asked them. She was visibly nervous, and seemed to be babbling.
"My brother and I moved here just the other day from New Jersey. He's so worried about me, it's sweet but annoying. He's twenty-six, and I have no other real relatives. Actually, there's a cousin or two somewhere or something. I forget… Where was he? Somewhere in the Midwest or something… I wasn't really paying attention when Matt mentioned it." Lanna looked upwards at the clouds thoughtfully, with a slight twist of her lips and cock of the head.
"That's cool," Sam said, "What brought you here?"
"Oh." Lanna snapped out of her 'thinking' daze, "Well, my brother just graduated from college last year, and is an engineer with a couple of … odd hobbies. He found a job opening here a couple weeks ago and jumped at the chance."
"That's cool, but why Amity? I mean what happens here that he'd jump to come here?" asked Tucker.
Sam rolled her eyes at him.
"Oh, well…" Lanna shifted uncomfortably (again), "For some reason he's become obsessed with ghosts and this was recently dubbed the 'ghost capital of the world' for some odd reason."
Sam and Danny exchanged glances; they could guess what the "reason" was.
"That's cool. Did Jazz tell you that Danny's parents are ghost hunters?" Tucker blurted out the question and received a jab of the elbow from Sam out of Lanna's sight line.
"No, she didn't. Wait, what's your last name again, Danny?"
"Fenton," said Danny, a bit morosely.
"Hey! My brother has heard of your parents. I think. He did mention something about them, at least. At some point or another," she replied, and then stared into space like she was trying to remember something again.
Lanna looked around suddenly. "Uh, guys? Where are we?"
"We were going to your house, weren't we?" asked Tucker.
"Yeah, but then I got caught up in walking, and I lost track of where I was going. I'm not used to the route yet," Lanna mumbled, visibly embarrassed.
She looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. "Actually," she added, "I'm not used to walking home at all. I lived in suburbia before and always took the bus."
The trio stared at her, dumbfounded.
"Well, what's your address? I'm sure we can find it," said Sam, capable and confidant as always.
Lanna's house was two doors down from Danny's place.
"Oh," said Tuck when she gave them the address and they realized where it was, "So you guys are the ones who bought the old Miller place. I was wondering about that."
"Yeah. The former owner told us that the people with the weird stuff on their house a couple doors down are crazy but harmless. My brother had been a little bit freaked out by that."
Danny blushed. "That's my house," he mumbled.
"Your house? Cool!" Lanna's reaction was completely different from what Danny had expected. "I bet you never get lost! All you have to do is look up and find the place! How did your parents get all that stuff?"
"Danny's parents invent ghost-catching equipment," said Tucker.
"Or they try to, at least," added Danny, "They can't get any of the stuff they make to work, and if some of it does, they haven't found anything to test it on." The last statement was said tongue-in-cheek, as while Danny, Tucker, and Sam had used it often, Danny's parents actually had not used it effectively on a regular basis.
"It's still cool," Lanna argued, opening the door.
At that, they stepped inside her house…
…Only to find that they could not get beyond two feet of the door, as the floor was covered in boxes.
Lanna looked extremely annoyed, as she had not expected to come home to this.
"Brother! Matt! Matthew!" she shouted. When no response came, she stepped forward from the group and shouted at the top of her lungs.
"MATTHEW RYAN TURNER SPATZA! GET YOUR BUTT OVER HERE AND HELP ME THROUGH THE DOOR NOW!" Danny and Tucker flinched back from her shout, while Sam simply looked impressed.
"Nice volume there. How do you do that?" she asked Lanna.
"Practice and a special pitch of the voice. I picked it up from… a relative. I'll teach you sometime."
That's when the footsteps came thumping up from the basement.
"Oww, Lanna. When are you ever going to tone down that voice of yours?" an annoyed baritone voice wafted through the house.
"When you quit annoying me, bro," replied Lanna glibly. "This place is worse than when I left for school! Did you get anything productive done all day, or did you get distracted by some project or something?" she asked.
"No, Lanna," the man said, walking into the room. He was obviously a close relation to the girl, with the same hair and eyes, though the nose and lips were a bit different, thin where Lanna's were more curvilinear. He continued, "I didn't forget anything. These are the empty boxes and I was moving them to the basement."
"Good boy."
They all ended up eating cookies around the kitchen table (It only had four chairs, though, so Lanna sat on the counter) and talking about their families and friends.
"So, you're Sam, Tucker, and Danny, right?" Matt, Lanna's brother, asked. He was trying to get the names straight.
"Yep, that's us," replied Tucker.
"You all go to Casper High with Lanna then? That's good."
"Yeah," said Sam, "It's cool that we're together, but the school still won't listen to me about going vegetarian again."
"Uh, Sam? Don't you remember what happened when you got the school board to change the lunch menu? It wasn't exactly pretty." Danny's comment rang through the room.
"Well, it's not my fault you had to start a food fight," Sam said, steering the topic as far away from ghosts as she could.
"Garbage fight," Tucker accused, not noticing what Sam was doing.
"Ok, guys? I don't think I want to know," said Lanna, sensing a feud and not wanting her friends to get into it in front of her brother.
The argument dissolved.
"So, Matt," said Lanna, "You mentioned the Fentons the other day?"
"I told you, I'll try to see them –" he started to reply, but Lanna cut him off.
"I forgot when." Matt sighed at this, and began to talk, but was again cut off, "Jazz, Danny's sister, introduced us at lunch, and guess what?" she was cheerful; "They're Fentons! And they're the ones a couple doors down with all the cool junk on the roof!"
Matt went pale and shifted uncomfortably (a family trait).
After a few moments of awkward silence, Lanna cleared her throat.
"Matt? What's wrong?" She raised her eyebrows questioningly.
He just stared blankly into space. "Well, that changes things. It's certainly a surprise," he said softly, still into space.
"Woo hoo? Matt? Mattie? What's wrong?" she stood up and waved her hand in front of her brother's face.
He sighed, giving a slight glare to a concerned Lanna, and then looked back at Danny. "You're Maddie Schafer's son, aren't you?"
"Umm, yeah. How do you know my mom?" Danny asked. Schafer was Maddie's maiden name.
"And," Lanna said, "Why are you looking so weird? Matt, you aren't the one who spaces out constantly!"
"Ok, ok, relax, I was just hoping to put this off," said Matt, running his hand through his strawberry-blond hair. His blue-green eyes stared at the ceiling a moment, then turned to Danny. "Look, will your mom be home tonight?"
"Yeah, I think so," said Danny.
"Well, can you tell her Maggie Turner's son would like to talk to her? Please? Here," he got out a pen and a scrap of paper and scribbled something down, "This is our phone number, she can call any time she wants to."
"Matt, what is going on?" demanded Lanna.
"I'll tell you later, Lanna. Please, Danny?"
"Uh, sure," was the reply. Danny took the phone number from his hand.
"Thank you," Matt's relief was evident in his words. "Just ask her to talk to me, please."
After another uncomfortable few minutes, Matt shooed them out, saying that he and Lanna needed to unpack some more, and the trio left for Danny's house.
"Well, Lanna seemed nice," said Tucker, with hearts in his eyes.
"I don't know, there was something funny about her," said Danny.
"Well, I liked her. She's cool with me," replied Sam. Noting Tucker's expression, she added, wryly, "Better than Valerie, at least, Tuck. Lanna probably won't be trying to kill Danny."
Tucker's star-struck gaze turned into a glare as he told Sam to shut up.
They proceeded to talk about their plans for the rest of the week, while delicately dancing around the subject of Matt's odd outbursts. No ghosts had come up recently, so it was mostly hanging at the mall and catching up on homework.
"Oh, yeah, Jazz is going to drag the whole family to the Senior Showdown on Friday – she's making some speech during half-time," said Danny.
"Well, I guess we can go. We'll have to see if Lanna wants too. Does she like to watch sports?" said Tucker.
"It didn't come up yet, Tucker," Sam reminded him, "I have English with her tomorrow, I'll ask her then."
"I'm still not sure about her, guys," said Danny, a slight mist coming out of his mouth, "Man, I hope this cold spell snaps soon," he said after a quick glance around, "I keep thinking it's my ghost sense, and it doesn't help that the school has the stupid air conditioner on." Despite it being late spring, a frost had hit the night before, and janitorial staffs everywhere tend to look at the calendar rather than the weather report to decide issues of heating and air conditioning.
"Why aren't you sure of her? I mean, it's not like there were ghosts around her or anything, right?" Tucker replied, suddenly overly defensive about Lanna.
"Well, yeah. But, I don't know, I still got this odd feeling."
"Maybe it was grief or something?" asked Sam, "She did mention that her parents died."
"Yeah, forgot about that. I guess so…" Danny's voice faded as they walked around the corner to Danny's door.
None of them noticed a small hand curved around the brick building behind them, and a vaguely familiar face peered around the corner at the trio, wide eyes glowing green even in the sunlight.
With a worried, confused expression on her face, the ghost floated away into the afternoon sky.