Disclaimer: Butch Hartman created 'em and Nickelodeon owns 'em. I borrow 'em for a little while with no intention of disrespect or hope of personal gain.

A Thermos for Valerie

by Bluemoonalto

Chapter 2

The sign warned me that the park closed at sunset, which had come about an hour earlier. The iron gates were locked, but after glancing around to check for witnesses I phased right through the bars. No doubt Valerie would find her own way in. Neither one of us was in the habit of letting pesky signs—No Trespassing, Keep Out, Danger!—stop us from going pretty much wherever we wanted to go.

I had chosen the day (Saturday) and the time (eight o'clock) with care. After a year of fighting ghosts I had become pretty adept at predicting the timing of attacks. They tended to come just before my curfew (to get me in trouble) or in the deepest hours of the night (to deprive me of sleep) or in the middle of the day (to increase my risk of exposure). The evening hours were usually the most peaceful and uneventful of the day. Furthermore, ghosts attacked more often on school nights, wearing me down along with my grades. So eight o'clock on a Saturday was the perfect choice for my fateful (but hopefully not fatal) confrontation with Amity Park's not-so-mysterious red-suited ghost hunter.

Making sure that Valerie would be available at the same time had been tricky. She usually works Saturday evenings at the Nasty Burger, in part (I assumed) because of the low level of ghost activity on those nights. Making sure she would have this Saturday night off without arousing her suspicions had required a bit of unethical slight of hand. . . .

Okay, I had overshadowed her boss while he wrote up the schedule. So sue me.

As I trudged up the long, grassy slope towards the picnic area, I gradually became aware of the residue of the evening's thunderstorms soaking through my shoes. I looked up to the eastern sky, where the thunderclouds had broken up and a nearly full harvest moon was rising, swollen to almost three times its normal size. (It's amazing how that illusion never goes away.) Dammit, I wish I could have flown! It would have been faster, easier, and my feet wouldn't have gotten wet. But I had steeled myself for this evening's work: to meet Valerie as a human and tell her what I needed to tell her as a human and take the consequences, whatever they might be, as a human. Wet feet were a minor inconvenience.

My path took me into a thick copse of trees at the top of the hill, just beyond the Centennial Fountain. I turned on the Fenton All-Spectrum Ghost Illuminator (a souped-up flashlight that had given me the rampaging heebie-jeebies until Jazz pointed out that it wasn't actually called the Fenton All-Spectrum Ghost Eliminator) and picked my way through the dark woods, my footsteps rustling softly in the carpet of damp leaves.

I emerged from the trees into the picnic area at three minutes before eight. Valerie was waiting for me. By unspoken agreement we sat opposite one another at a picnic table near the center of the clearing, and I tossed my backpack on the table between us. She leaned back, arms crossed, gave me a bored look and asked, "So. . . what was so important that I had to meet you here? You do realize that the park is closed after dark?"

"I wanted to make sure we wouldn't be overheard." I paused, bracing myself for what was to follow.

I had planned this conversation for a long time. I'd even rehearsed it a few times with Sam, although she didn't have much patience for the exercise and told me, every single time, that if I ever went through with it, she'd kill me if Valerie didn't kill me first. If Sam had known about the new Thermoses, she'd probably have been here tonight, desperately trying to stop me. . . .

Opening move: "We're friends, right, Valerie?"

She countered with a long, suspicious stare. I had, after all, arranged to meet her alone on a moonlit Saturday night. "Just friends. Like I told you before, Danny, my life is way too complicated for me to have time for. . . for anything more than that right now."

"I understand that." So far, so good. I took a calming breath. "Do you remember last year, when we had that stupid flour sack to take care of, and I found out that you had that job at Nasty Burger? The one with the Nasty Ned costume?"

"Yeah." She grinned, just a little. A crack in her armor.

"I filled in for you a couple of times after that, so you could have some time off." Take it slow, take it slow. . . .

"I remember. It was real nice of you."

"I did it because we were friends. Well, at the time, I guess I did it because I wanted us to be friends. And friends should help each other."

She was starting to get a little suspicious. Which was pretty much what I expected, since I was starting to sound like a Hallmark card. So I plowed ahead, anxious to get past the first hurdle. "I want to help you with your other job."

Silence.

"I want to help you with your ghost hunting."