Author's Introduction: Sorry it's taken me so long with this chapter—I haven't been feeling so hot lately so I've been sleeping a lot. I dream of Danny. (chuckles.) Silver linings.
This chapter: Everyone's got problems with something, but Jazz hasn't studied psychology for years without knowing how to turn it to her advantage.
Obligatory disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom—he owns me! (smiles dreamily) I also don't own any elements of the song Pavlov's Bell by Aimee Mann, which can be found on the album Lost in Space, but I do have her autograph.
Ordinary World
A Danny Phantom fanfiction
Chapter Three: Pavlov's Bell
Tell me what I already know
That we can't talk about it
No, we can't talk about it
Because nobody knows
That's how I nearly fell
Trading clothes
And ringing Pavlov's bell
History shows
There's not a chance in hell—but—
(Pavlov's Bell, Aimee Mann)
If success in school was measured by how many pictures you had in the yearbook, then Jasmine Fenton was Casper High's shining star.
If you counted formal club pictures, Jazz appeared in last year's book twenty-three times. If you didn't count them, she appeared eighteen times. You could turn to any page and see Jazz smiling from the center of the National Honor Society's group picture or cheering at the sidelines of a pep rally or frowning down at a stove in home ec. The yearbooks sat neatly on Jazz's bookshelf beside her debate team trophy and a copy of Ember McLain's debut album, "Come Over Here and Say That". (Jazz still wasn't sure why she was keeping that, but she'd inherited her father's tendency to never throw anything away.)
Hoping to beat her previous record, Jazz had made it a point to befriend Matt Prescott, who took yearbook pictures when he wasn't playing running back for the Casper High Ravens. Not a difficult thing to do—Matt was easy to talk to and had a smile that dug a cute dimple in his cheek when he was happy. She'd also decided to join another extracurricular, but it proved hard to choose. After finally narrowing it down to the newspaper staff or the track team, she reasoned that writing music and movie reviews for the Invisible Ink would be far easier than running wind sprints and jumping hurdles.
However, every so often even the Only Normal Fenton was wrong.
"Who wants to hear their horoscope?" Paulina sang from her desk near the front of the classroom, waving her already-completed "article" for this month's paper.
"Me!"
"Me, I do!"
Jazz frowned at the way everyone crowded around Paulina. It was hardly for her to care who was popular and who wasn't, but couldn't there be at least one class or activity that wasn't The Paulina Show?
" 'Midmonth Cancer turns into a daredevil'," Paulina purred to Steve Colburn, who covered all sporting events at Casper High. " 'Satisfy his thrill-seeking with erotic escapades to keep him from doing anything rash'."
"You are so right, Paulina," the sports writer purred, giving Paulina puppy-dog eyes. "I'm totally looking for a thrill. Think you can keep me from doing anything rash?"
Gross, Jazz thought, rolling her eyes. They're giving me a rash…
"And once again, Paulina is finished before everyone else!" Mr. Wat said, giving the class a squinty smile. "The rest of you better get in gear or this month's issue is going to be late!"
It was on the tip of Jazz's tongue to say that Paulina got those horoscopes from back issues of Cosmopolitan, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. Besides, the rest of the newspaper staff was already settling down at their computers to work, while Paulina swung her shoulders beneath her dark hair and belittled Steve even as she flirted with him.
"People, please spell-check your articles before submitting them," Wat said tiredly from his desk at the front of the room. "And please don't use acronyms such as 'BMOC' if you have no idea what they stand for." Wat looked up from his paperwork. "Can I see Jasmine Fenton for a moment? The rest of you continue to work."
Jazz gulped and walked up to the desk. "Hi, Mr. Wat," she said, in what she hoped was a calm, nonchalant voice. "What's up?"
Wat sighed. He had the skinny build of a computer programmer, and his clothes were always slightly wrinkled. "Jazz, we're having a bit of a problem with your reviews."
Jazz felt the blood draining from her face. "What do you mean? I thought everything was going well. I made sure my research was thorough, and I was within the word count every month!"
Wat showed her the last issue of the paper, where her review had been printed on a middle page. "Don't get me wrong, I loved your review on the latest freeform jazz CD, but then again, I'm going to be forty-three next month and haven't had a girlfriend since Foreigner was still touring."
Jazz thought that an incorrect assessment of what kids listened to—Danny, Sam and Tucker had driven her crazy last weekend listening to Foreigner while they did their homework. Tucker singing "Juke Box Hero" was Jazz's own personal idea of hell. Danny and Sam's too, judging by the stuffing leaking out of the pillows they'd beaten him with.
"But…but…" Jazz stammered. Failure was not an option for the Only Normal Fenton. To be told she'd done something wrong made her chest hurt and her throat close.
"And your book review on Women Who Love Too Much was scintillating, but I believe its value was lost on the majority of the student body…" Wat continued.
"That book is a classic," Jazz retorted in panic. "It has helped a lot of people."
Wat looked pained. "I understand, Jazz, but we're trying to reach the student body. I think you need to…approach everyone on a level we can all understand."
Jazz was livid. She understood, too. He wanted her to dumb it down for them—for every Dash Baxter who weaseled his way out of trouble, for every Paulina who couldn't take her head out of her own cleavage for more than a minute. She was to cater to them, to stoop to their level, if she wanted to advance. Silently she seethed; aloud she said, "Sure, sir. What do you think I should do next?" It came out slightly strangled from between gritted teeth.
Wat smiled broadly and handed her something—a ticket. "Here. I asked my nephew what was 'cool' and he told me this band is huge in the 'underground' scene." From the way he spoke, Jazz had a feeling that if he hadn't been holding the ticket out to her, he'd have used his hands for quotation marks.
Jazz took the ticket. "Senses Fail?" The Rolodex in her brain flipped fast and then faster, searching for why that name sounded familiar. If she had any memories of Tucker singing, she was quitting the paper. Immediately.
"I want you to go to this concert and write a review on it for the paper," Wat was saying.
She flipped through more memories. The CDs in the car of the last boyfriend she'd had, the playlist on Tucker's PDA when he'd left it on the kitchen table—finally she found the memory she was looking for. Her brother and his friends were in the Fenton's rec room for one of their movie nights. Tucker had command of the armchair, lounging in his makeshift throne like a lazy prince, while Danny and Sam lay side by side on the floor. And when she came to the door to see what they were watching, she could read the words across the small of her brother's back, printed on his black hoodie—Senses Fail.
Jazz frowned. "If my brother likes this band, I'm going to have a headache when I get home from this concert."
She hadn't really been speaking to Mr. Wat, but he answered anyway. "It's good for all of us to expand our horizons, Jazz. It might do you well to see things from another perspective."
Jazz stamped back to her desk in defeat, turning on her computer and pulling up the band's web site. She'd have to borrow some of Danny's CDs, which meant she was in for some teasing. Great.
"Smile."
Jazz turned to see who was speaking, but was immediately blinded by a flash. "Ow!"
Blinking the afterimage away, she saw the grinning face of Matt Prescott, the football player who took yearbook pictures. "Why did you do that?"
"I'm getting some pictures of the newspaper staff for the yearbook," Matt explained, waggling the camera at her. "Action shots!"
"Action shots? There's not much action going on here," Jazz said, rolling her eyes. "You've got the easy job today."
Matt shrugged his broad shoulders. "Ah, it's not so great. Coach is on me for being late to practice because of this stuff. And I have to go to all these stupid school events to take pictures, like the chorus concert and the arts festival, and that thing they're having at the beginning of October."
"The Fall Ball?" Jazz asked, a smile playing around her lips.
Matt ran a hand through his blond hair. "Yeah, that. I have to go and take pictures of the decorations and the dancing and everything. It'll be so boring."
It didn't sound boring to Jazz. It sounded delightfully ordinary. "Can't you take a couple of pictures and then enjoy the dance?" she asked.
Matt smiled. "Yeah, probably. I mean, I don't have a date or anything." He sighed, then added, "…You know, unless, like, you wanted to come or something."
Or something. Jazz fought a grin. "That'd be cool," she said, in the same hopefully-nonchalant voice she'd used for Mr. Wat. "What day is it again?"
"October 23rd," Matt said.
"October 23rd, okay, that's—"
Jazz's gaze darted to the ticket that was sitting next to the keyboard. Senses Fail Live at the Downtown, October 23rd—
"—terrible," she groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.
The kitchen table was a lot bigger than Jazz's desk, so when she had a large project to work on she liked to spread out as much as possible. Jack Fenton had once jokingly referred to the kitchen as "Jazz's lab". Jazz hadn't laughed, not wanting to have a "lab". Too many things went wrong in Fenton labs.
Each year in the U.S., thousands of teenagers commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for 15-to-24-year-olds, and the sixth leading cause of death for 5-to-14-year-olds.
A memory flashed behind Jazz's eyes—Danny's last birthday. Maddie had brought home a marshmallow-iced devil's-food cake, Danny's favorite, and he and Sam and Tucker had eaten it out of the box with spoons, not even waiting for plates. They'd curled up in the rec room and watched movies late into the night, the sound of their laughter keeping Jazz awake until she came down to watch too.
Teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. For some teens, suicide may appear to be a solution to their problems and stress. Depression and suicidal feelings are treatable mental disorders. The child or adolescent needs to have his or her illness recognized and diagnosed, and appropriate treatment plans developed. When parents are in doubt whether their child has a serious problem, a psychiatric examination can be very helpful.
Jazz remembered Penelope Spectra's brief reign of terror over their lives, how Danny had growled at her to leave him alone, to stay out of his business.
Many of the symptoms of suicidal feelings are similar to those of depression, such as change in eating and sleeping habits, violent actions, rebellious behavior, running away, marked personality change, persistent boredom, difficulty concentrating, or a decline in the quality of schoolwork…
Jazz threw the book across the table. She was feeling a distinct decline in the quality of her schoolwork, too.
Tucker Foley walked into the kitchen, picking up the fallen book. "Gives new meaning to the phrase 'hitting the books'. What's up, Jazz?"
Jazz slanted a glare at the offending techno-geek. "Hi, Tucker. Do my parents just leave the door unlocked now?"
"Pretty much." Tucker shrugged. "I think they think the ghost shield will just keep everything out."
Jazz dropped her head to the table. "I…just…live…here."
Tucker laughed. "Actually, Danny let me in. He and Sam were right behind me, but I thought I'd give them some alone-time if you know what I mean." He winked.
Jazz knew what he meant. "Are they still giving each other those meaningful looks, then blushing and averting their eyes?"
Tucker sighed as though the unspoken attraction between Danny and Sam was his greatest burden. "Constantly. All I have to do is say 'Sam', and Danny goes all goofy lately. Even goofier than normal," he emphasized, so that there might be no mistake. "It's like Pavlov's bell."
Jazz arched an auburn brow. "You know about Pavlov's bell?"
Tucker smiled, pulling a chair out and sitting down. "I may chase girls and spend too much time on the internet, but I do read every once in a while, Jazz." He rubbed a hand under his chin as though he were deep in thought. "Although, if I said 'Sam' and he started salivating, that might be cause for alarm."
Jazz grinned. "What, you've never seen him do that?"
"Do what?" Danny ambled into the kitchen with Sam in tow.
"Salivate," Tucker answered readily.
Jazz kicked him under the table.
"Ow"
"Ah—he was talking about salivating over…Paulina!" Jazz finished with happy inspiration, till she saw the scowl that immediately appeared on Sam's face. Whoops. Maybe she should have said "pork chops" or "Pamela Anderson".
"Ugh, Tucker, KYS," Sam groaned.
Jazz was confused. "What's KYS?"
"Kill Your Self," Danny explained.
"That's awful!" Jazz said.
"Yeah, I know, that's why we changed it to KYS," Sam said.
Danny opened the fridge and rummaged inside. Meanwhile, Sam jumped onto the counter and took a Twinkie out of the box in the cabinet.
"If you eat enough of those, Sam, you're going to turn into Paulina," Tucker joked.
Sam said something that sounded obscene, but her mouth was full of snack cake. She flipped a middle finger at Tucker, to be sure that she'd gotten her message across.
Jazz felt the muscle beneath her left eye twitching. "No—guys, you can't stay in here. I'm trying to work."
"It's my kitchen, too," Danny said, the jar of mayonnaise in his hand and the makings of a sandwich on the counter. "And I say we stay."
"I'm trying to do my paper, Daniel!" Jazz hissed.
"Then go to your room, Jasmine," Danny said with an infuriating smile.
Tucker put his Timberlands up on the table, one heel resting on Jazz's second page of notes. She pulled at the leg of his cargo pants. "Tucker! Get your feet off the table! Were you raised by barbarians?"
"What could you expect from a meat-eater?" Sam said from the counter, brushing crumbs off her purple plaid skirt.
"Shut up, hippie!" Tucker said, taking Jazz's eraser and throwing it at Sam.
"That's mine!" Jazz cried, making a grab for it like she was in the middle of a game of keep-away.
"Ow!" Sam squirmed on the counter, trying to block the throw.
"Stop it," Danny said, almost absently, as if he had stopped this fight more times than he cared to count.
"I think I hear the flower children calling!" Tucker continued, cupping a hand near his ear for dramatic effect. "Sam, karma is going to kick your ass when you get eaten by a cow."
Sam threw Jazz's eraser back at Tucker, but she was smiling. "Well, I hope a giant celery stick eats you."
And just like that, they were laughing. Jazz was confused. Hadn't they just been fighting?
"I need you guys to leave," she reiterated, grabbing her eraser back from Tucker. "You're way too noisy."
"You're way too uptight," Danny retorted, sitting in a chair with a sandwich three-quarter-inches thick. "What crawled up your ass and took a bite?" As he spoke of bites, he took a huge one from the sandwich, chewing loudly.
Jazz frowned, eyebrows meeting. "I had a bad day, okay? I got a stupid newspaper assignment on top of my already-huge psych paper, and now I can't go to the Fall Ball."
"I have no idea what one has to do with the other, but okay." Sam shrugged.
Jazz was about to explain about the concert review she had to write, but Tucker interrupted, crossing his arms and pouting. "Am I the only one who doesn't have a date for the Fall Ball? This is going to be a repeat of the last dance we had, isn't it?"
"Don't worry, Tuck. Sam and I don't have dates either," Danny said, clapping his friend on the shoulder.
Tucker raised his head, glancing pointedly from Danny to Sam and back again. "That's because you're both oblivious," he muttered.
"Huh?" Sam asked.
"What?" Danny said.
Jazz felt like dropping her head to the table, too.
"Well," Danny said, brightening. "Just like Sam always says, we have each other. We can go and just hang out, kind of like last time."
Tucker smiled. "We could."
Sam blushed, looking guilty. "Ummm…"
Danny and Tucker exchanged glances. " 'Um' isn't good," Tucker said.
Sam blushed harder. "I sort of have a ticket to a concert that night."
"What!" the boys exclaimed.
Sam frowned. "Danny, Senses Fail is playing at the Downtown. Remember? We talked about it this morning."
Senses Fail? That was the band that Jazz had to write the review on for the stupid newspaper. She frowned, thinking about how Matt Prescott was probably going to ask some other girl to the Fall Ball. "Yeah, I—"
But Sam was still talking. "I told you there was a presale on tickets—you said you were going to get one online with your dad's credit card. Didn't you?"
Danny's ice-blue eyes shot wide. He jumped from his chair and grabbed Sam's hands, pulling her off the counter. "We gotta get to Bucky's, right now. Gotta fly—"
At the sound of the word "fly", the three teens froze and shot horrified glances at Jazz. Quickly, she said, "Yeah, you'd better fly down there on those stupid motor scooters of yours if you want to get a ticket, Danny!"
"I'll meet you outside," Sam said, holding her hands out in front of her. "Ewww…Danny, you just got mayonnaise all over my hands. I'm going to wash them."
Danny pouted. "Hurry up, Sam! We have to get there before they sell out!" He grabbed Tucker by the scruff of his neck and dragged him out the kitchen door.
"Why do I have to go stand on line?" Tucker wailed. "I'm not getting a ticket. I don't even like that band!"
"Because you sang Ember songs until our ears bled," Danny retorted, and then the sound of the door slamming echoed through the house.
Sam turned on the tap at the kitchen sink, unbuckling the cuffs around her wrists and placing them on the sideboard so they wouldn't get wet. Jazz glanced at the kitchen roll and realized it was empty—dammit, Danny—before taking a dish towel from the rack on the stove and bringing it to the sink. "Here, Sam."
"Thanks." Sam turned from the sink to reach for the towel.
But Jazz had frozen—it was suddenly, horribly apparent why Sam never wanted to take her cuffs off. A jagged pink scar could be seen running vertically down her left wrist, and Jazz knew that if she turned Sam's right wrist over, there would be an identical scar.
Sam followed Jazz's eyes and snapped back to life; her placid expression collapsed into fury. She snatched for her cuffs, hurriedly buckling them back over her wrists. "I have to go."
"Sam—" Jazz wasn't sure what to say. Everything made sense, and she suddenly felt sick.
The goth's heavily mascaraed violet eyes darted around the kitchen, searching for an escape as she tried to push her way past the older girl. Jazz had never seen such instantaneous rage. "Get out of my way, Jazz!"
Jazz blocked her path. "Sam, wait—"
Sam put a hand on Jazz's shoulder and pushed, hard. The older girl was too shocked to put up much of a fight, and Sam raced past, out of the kitchen and into the entryway. The water was still running, but she could be heard calling, almost desperately, for her friends.
"Danny! Tucker! Wait up!"
Dazedly, Jazz walked back to the sink and turned the tap off. She felt horribly guilty, as if she'd walked in on Sam actually cutting herself. Questions raced through her mind—did Danny know? What would make Sam do such a thing? When had it happened? Those scars looked old.
"We're scientists, Jazz, and beyond that, we're psychologists…would you do an invasive study if it meant it would someday stop a teenaged boy or girl from committing suicide?"
Not if it meant seeing that look on that teenaged boy or girl's face.
In a world of ghosts, goths, Fenton Fishers, and GPAs, Jazz Fenton was grateful for constants.
Every life had constants—certain things that never changed, that could always be counted on no matter how the maelstrom raged outside.
For her parents, Jazz knew that no matter how bad things looked, no matter what happened, they could come up with an invention to level the playing field and turn things around for them.
Danny's constants were Sam and Tucker. No matter what books Lancer stacked on his desk, no matter what punishments he suffered, no matter what bullies he faced or what ghosts had him by the throat, Danny knew Sam and Tucker were going to be right by his side, fighting with him.
Jazz's constants weren't flesh and blood. They were paper and ink, weather and worry, ordinary and safe. Her constants were the rising and setting of the sun, which never went through phases and could be measured at all times of the year. Her constants were things like formulas, routines, and she dove into them gratefully when times were hard.
For instance, in order to write a proper school paper, you had to answer any and all questions presented by the subject. You had to present your thesis, then prove the thesis by the evidence you gave in the body of the paper. That was the formula; those were the rules.
And Jazz always wrote out her questions first, so she could answer them properly and in order. That was routine; that was home.
Many people believe that teenagers are too young to suffer from depression. They say teenagers are naturally moody, and suffer many ups and downs in their changing lives. Therefore, when faced with the idea of teenage suicide, many tend to blame the media and pop culture for influencing the impressionable minds of these children. However, clinical depression is far more common than people think, affecting 3 to 5 percent of the teenage population every year. Depression is a serious disease that can be treated, and it does affect the minds of teens.
Okay, now to prove it…
It didn't help that she was trying to listen to a Senses Fail CD she'd filched from Danny's room after he'd left with Sam and Tucker hours before. Between the guitars, the bass, and the screaming, she could barely concentrate.
(I'll take my time)
To slowly plot your end.
(But now I will)
Spit bullets with my pen.
And all I know is you're cute when you scream.
You know that you are worthless
And I am better than
The games that you play princess.
(I've played) and always win.+
"Ugh." Jazz threw the headphones aside, the CD still spinning in her portable CD player. "This stuff is awful! It's nothing but screaming." She frowned at the CD player, because not only was it annoying her, it wasn't helping her argument. If Sam and Danny thought this was cool, maybe Tucker's techno-geek stuff wasn't so scary after all. She couldn't believe those morons were waiting in line for tickets to an entire concert of this bilge. They'd even missed dinner; it was getting really late.
Letting the silence soothe her ears, she looked down at her paper. There was something else that wasn't helping her argument, but she tried to shove it to the back of her mind as she continued to write. It didn't matter that she didn't have a case study yet—there had to be someone willing to talk to her. She'd start making calls to help centers tomorrow, and it was best to be prepared, so she made a list of questions, clinical, probing, unfeeling scientific questions.
There are many stereotypes about suicidal teens—how they dress, what they do, what movies they like, what music they listen to. But for research purposes, an interview was conducted with a high-school student whose name will not be disclosed. When asked about the events leading to their suicide attempt, the media was not mentioned as a cause of depression…
Then she gouged each question out with deep, dark pencil lines.
She was wrong. She was wrong about the newspaper and she was wrong about ghosts not existing and she was wrong about Johnny 13 and she was wrong about Danny—so wrong about Danny, about the reasons for his unexplained absences and bouts of moodiness.
And she was wrong about Sam, because Sam did listen to all that screaming music, and wore black clothes and dark makeup and raged against the machine. And Sam had tried to end it all. Jazz had seen the proof on her pale wrists at the sink.
She was wrong. Wrong about everything; wrong all the time.
Crumpling up the paper in fury, she threw it in the trash can, then stuffed the rest of her notes on top of it. It felt liberating and reckless to do it—she'd never been so disrespectful of her schoolwork. That was Danny's job.
It was also Danny's job to clean up the kitchen this week, but it was obvious he hadn't done it. Glaring, Jazz realized that the trash can was overflowing. Just like he hadn't replaced the kitchen roll, Danny hadn't taken the garbage out either. Momentarily heartened by the simple big-sister pleasure of tattling on him, she stomped toward the living room, where her parents had been for the last half-hour. Risking being attacked by another one of their nets, lasers, or vacuum cleaners, Jazz strode to the center of the room.
"Mom! Dad! Danny hasn't been doing his chores, and I—"
"Just a second, Jazzie," Jack said, holding a hand up in a stop-right-there gesture. "Hold that thought. Ready, Maddie?"
It was then that Jazz realized they were waiting for something, staking out the front door as if they expected a ghost to phase through it at any second, but none of their crazy weapons were in sight.
Maddie's lips skinned back from her teeth in a bloodthirsty smile. "Five…four…three…two…one…"
The tumblers of the front door lock were pronounced in the silence. The door squeaked open and Danny slid inside, his stance tense, as if he were deliberately trying to be quiet. As soon as he shut the door, he sighed in relief.
"Daniel Fenton!" Maddie's voice cracked like a whip, and Danny spun, eyes wide beneath his dark bangs as he flattened himself back against the door.
"Busted!" Jack Fenton sang, grinning.
Danny groaned. "Oh, hell…"
Jazz raised an eyebrow at her parents. They looked gleeful, as if this was the highlight of their day.
Maddie stalked forward. "Where have you been, young man? It's nearly midnight."
"Give him hell, baby!" Jack encouraged. Jazz frowned at him.
Danny shuffled his feet, embarrassed at being caught. "Bucky's Music Megastore. Sam said they were selling tickets to the Senses Fail concert, and the line stretched all the way to Dimmsdale." His lower lip dropped in a pout, his bluesky eyes troubled. "Am I grounded?"
Jack and Maddie Fenton exchanged glances.
"Fenton Huddle."
As their parents conferred in hushed voices, Jazz took the opportunity to poke her finger into Danny's chest. "You haven't been doing your chores, Danny. The kitchen is a wreck!"
"Chill out, Jazz." Danny rolled his eyes. "Apparently whatever crawled up your ass has pitched a tent."
"Did you get tickets to the concert?" Jack asked, interrupting.
Danny shook his head miserably. "No, they sold out."
Jack chuckled. "I think you've suffered enough, then."
"What!" Jazz exclaimed. "You're not going to ground him?"
"Shut up, Jazz," Danny hissed, tensed for flight.
"But he stayed out till midnight!" Jazz stamped her foot. "And he hasn't been doing his chores—and—"
Maddie turned to Jazz. "Don't whine, Jazz, honey. We never ground you, either."
"I never do anything that requires grounding!" Jazz retorted.
"Maybe that's why they don't ground you," Danny chuckled wickedly. "They feel sorry for you because you're so boring!"
"Danny!"
"Danny, you go to your room. You've got school in the morning," Maddie ordered. She didn't have to tell Danny twice—he shot out of the room and up the stairs.
"And the next time you come in after curfew without calling, you will be grounded, young man!" Maddie called after him, red hair fanning over her shoulders as she turned.
"Mom!" Jazz whined, watching her brother escape.
"Jazz, go to your room. You've got school in the morning," Jack interjected, then grinned at his wife, shoving a gentle elbow into her side. Given his large frame, even a gentle elbow caused Maddie to stumble. "See, I can do that parenting thing, too."
Maddie frowned. "Jack, repeating everything I say is called 'cribbing', not 'parenting'."
It was obvious her parents' attention was elsewhere. Jazz sighed. It was so unfair that Danny wasn't in trouble, even if he didn't get a ticket to his stupid concert. It was totally stupid that she was going to have to go, when he couldn't even get a—
Struck by another one of her brilliant ideas, Jazz ran up the stairs. "Danny! Wait up!"
Danny was singing along with his radio when she forced his door open.
"I won't forget the day that, that I came to and I started thinking that there's more than just perfect prom queens and silver spoons, and all I ever wanted was someone to knock me back to the bliss of ignorance, 'cause I feel like running head first into traffic…"&
She turned the volume down on his stereo. "Jeez, Danny. It's after midnight. Could you give it a rest?"
"You still don't know how to knock, do you?" Danny regarded her coolly. "Look, I'm sorry about the kitchen, okay? I'll do it tomorrow."
"No, I'm sorry," said Jazz, even though she really wasn't. "I'm sorry I told on you, and I'm sorry you didn't get a ticket to the concert. It sure is ironic that I have to go to it, you know, since you like them so much…"
"You're going! How did you get Senses Fail tickets?" Danny demanded, coming to vibrant life as he shot off the bed. "It got sold out in a matter of seconds! We waited on line for hours!"
"It's called a perk, Danny," Jazz said, waving the ticket at him. "When you have to write a review of the show for the school newspaper, you need to go to the show. That's called a perk."
"I know what a perk is, Jasmine," Danny seethed. "Why do you get to go? You don't even like Senses Fail."
Snap. The sound of the closing trap. Jazz waved the ticket again. "You could go in my place."
"Yeah, right. I'll owe you and you'll lord it over me until there's something you want. Thanks but no thanks." He folded his arms.
Wondering why she was bothering to be nice to such a little punk, she grit her teeth. "Really, Danny. Go. I want you to. All you have to do is tell me how it was so I can write a review."
Danny scowled, searching for the catch. "There's something to this."
Jazz played a last desperate card. "Sam's going," she said. "She has a ticket, right? They're all general admission. You can go with her. You'll have a way better time than I would."
Danny's icy eyes melted a little, and his sneer crumbled. Tucker was right—all you had to do was say 'Sam'.
"You really don't want it?"
"I hate those screaming bands, Danny. You know that." She teased the ticket in front of his nose. She knew she'd won but decided to press the advantage. "Ask Sam to go with you. This way, I'll still get my review done, and you get to spend the whole night with Sam. Everybody wins."
Danny took the ticket carefully, as if it would gain him entrance to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. "Wow. This is pretty cool of you, Jazz."
She rolled her eyes. "Just go call Sam, loser."
Danny waited two more seconds for the other shoe to drop, and when it didn't, bolted for the phone. She heard him talking excitedly as she walked down the hall to her own room.
"Sam? Did I wake you up? Guess what—it looks like Tucker's on his own for the Fall Ball—I just scored a Senses Fail ticket!"
Jazz smirked. As usual, her brother had played right into her hands.
"Who cares how I got it? I'm awesome, that's all!"
Jazz frowned.
Danny was wrong—Jazz knew how to knock. She rapped her knuckles lightly on Matt Prescott's locker the next day, causing him to look over at her. "Hi," she said, trying to be cool.
"Hey, Jazz." He brightened. "What's up?"
Crossing one leg behind the other girlishly, she fluttered her lashes and said, "Oh, well, nothing. I was just wondering if you still wanted company for the Fall Ball."
"Sure," he said, looking pleasantly surprised. "That'd be—that'd be great! But—I thought you had to write that concert review for the newspaper."
"Taken care of," Jazz said smoothly.
"Cool! How'd you manage to get out of it?"
She smiled silkily. "I rang Pavlov's bell."
Matt chuckled. "Okay, not sure I get it, but I'm glad you can come. We can even go out for something to eat before, you know, if you want. Or after. Or whatever."
He really was cute when he smiled. "I'd like that," Jazz said.
The bell rang. "Which way are you headed?"
Jazz checked her watch. "Psych. Second floor. Want to walk me?"
Despite her victory over Danny and the rescheduling of her date with Matt Prescott, Jazz's day didn't go as well as she'd planned. Regardless of shameless begging and an offer to do an extra ten pages on a different subject, Mr. Worth had vetoed her petition to change the focus of her paper, using the age-old teacher argument, "well, then I'd have to let everyone in the class do that". Being a warrior of age-old arguments herself, Jazz was furious to have her own weapons turned on her.
Danny, Sam and Tucker weren't in the kitchen when she got home, but she saw the signs of their passing—the breadbox was open, a bottle of cherry Coke was empty on the counter, and the kitchen roll had been refilled. Upon seeing the kitchen roll, Jazz glanced in panic to the garbage can. If Danny had thrown out her notes, she was dead—
But her brother's short attention span had come to her rescue. The trash can was still overflowing with empty boxes and crumpled paper, including her notes. Wrinkling her nose, she pulled the can to the center of the floor and began to pick out her papers one by one, recognizing each by what she had written.
After five minutes, she forgot about being meticulous and dumped the whole thing out onto the floor. Pawing through the trash like a raccoon, she heard a gasp come from her throat. "No way. No way! I threw them all in together!"
"Jazz? What's all the—eeh," Maddie said, coming into the kitchen to find her daughter sitting in the middle of a pile of garbage. Her mother cocked a brow. "Jazzie? Honey? Something you want to tell me?"
Jazz's heart sank. "Um—no, Mom. I'm just—cleaning."
Maddie glanced at the dry-erase board over the toaster oven. "Well, it's not your turn to clean the kitchen this week. You leave that for your brother. He's not getting out of his chores. Your father and I have our eyes on him."
Jazz was tempted to roll her own eyes, but she was far more worried about what lay on the floor in front of her—or rather, what didn't lay there. She had found every single page of her psychology notes except one—the crumpled page with her questions written on it. By the time the trash was back in the can and the kitchen cleaned, Jazz had looked through all of it twice and the result was the same. All of her research was there, but the last page, the one that had infuriated her so, was missing.
Author's Notes:
Ember never actually released an album on the show, but I thought the character was so cool that I had to give her a reference or two in the story. (grins) The first week I'm dead, I am so dressing like Ember and hitting every mosh pit in town. I figure it's good to have things to look forward to, even if you are dead.
I also don't know the name of the Casper High Newspaper (if there is one), so I just made one up.
The first time I ever got my heart broken by a boy (thanks be to evil spirits; it's been years and I'd still love to sic Skulker on his ass) my father's girlfriend handed me a copy of Women Who Love Too Much. Being a devout follower of Bridget Jones' Diary, I looked at it and then at her, as if she couldn't possibly be serious. It remains on my shelf, collecting dust. Every so often I give it a panicked glance. I keep it in the room to remind me that there are worse things than being on your own.
Danny's never celebrated a birthday on the show that I know of, but I got this sudden mental picture of what that evening might be like, he and his best friends simply lounging and laughing late into the night. That incident with eating the cake out of the box with spoons actually happened to me Labor Day weekend—my best friend of thirteen years moved to California at the end of June. He came back for a surprise visit Labor Day weekend and we bought the Entemann's Marshmallow Iced Devil's Food Cake at the deli and got spoons from our other friends eating ice cream out front. Walking back to my house, we ate the cake out of the box with the spoons, complaining about how full we were, how disgusting we were to eat cake out of a box with spoons while walking, and how our lives had reached a new low. I hadn't laughed so hard in weeks. The next day felt horribly empty, but then I realized it was just the entire uncaring span of the distance between California and New York. I miss my friend.
On to cheerier topics. For anyone who doesn't know about Pavlov's bell, Ivan Pavlov studied conditioning by ringing a bell before placing meat powder beneath a dog's tongue, causing the dog to salivate. After repeating this process enough times, the dog salivated only at the sound of the bell, before even receiving the meat powder. This is what is known as a "conditioned reflex" in response to the stimulus. There's a cute little game about it on Music Megastore, like the Nasty Burger, is an actual locale in Amity Park—Ember gives concert tickets away there in one of my favorite episodes, "Fanning the Flames". Danny also says that the line at Bucky's was "all the way to Dimmsdale", which I'm sure most fans know is the hometown of more adorable Butch Hartman creations, Timmy Turner and his fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda. (grins) I love those guys.
What isn't an actual locale in Amity Park is the Downtown. The Downtown is a venue way out on the island where my best friend Shazz and I go to a lot of concerts...or we used to…they're closing it down! And now a moment of silence for the Downtown, where I met Duncan Sheik but he didn't help me de-ice my car, where I didn't get covered in Dave from Big D and the Kids' Table's blood at the Ska is Dead tour although I tried, where I finally saw Streetlight Manifesto after karma royal fuck deluxed me, where Shazz and I forever went to White Castle before I became a vegetarian…my own dear Downtown, may I honor it forever with a reference in this story. (pours a beer out for the Downtown.)
The line about Willy Wonka's chocolate factory is of course a reference to one of the greatest stories ever told, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Tim Burton's movie about it is very funny.
Jazz's "research" is all snips of things I found online at places like www.cdc.gov/ncipc, and www.nimh.nih.gov. I meant to include that last chapter.
Paulina's horoscope is taken from the web site for Cosmopolitan magazine.
Lastly, this whole chapter is a shameless plug for Senses Fail, which is one of my favorite bands. (smiles) I can just picture Danny and Sam in Danny's room, listening to punk rock music until Jazz shows up and yells at them to keep it down. I can picture Danny in a punk rock hoodie. (hearts in eyes) I don't own any lyrics by Senses Fail, but they are featured in this chapter: Jazz is listening to "Cute When You Scream" (marked by +) in the kitchen on her headphones; when she goes upstairs to confront Danny, he's listening to "Angela Baker And My Obsession With Fire" (marked by &), which can both be found on the album "Let It Enfold You".