THOME 2: RESTART

REMEMBER

"Hi I'm Engel" Those words resounded in Sam's ears day and night, and even more while she paced in her room, looking as troubled as an old general would in a Zugzwang situation.

The boy they had met the day before was just so similar to Danny! Tucker and her didn't talk much after what happened at The Witch's Brew", mostly they exchanged a series of babbling sounds and questions that only the other could understand, separated by very long pauses:

"Did you see...?"

"I did, was it real?"

"I think...?" another pause"Are we losing it?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

"How is that possible?"

"Coincidence, perhaps?"

"A coincidence, is another way to call destiny when she's being 'bee' with an 'itch'" Sam whispered to herself. Just what kind of sick game was karma playing on her? First, her superhero boyfriend dies after, barely, a year of having saved the planet; then when she had finally overcome her grief and the depression (or so she thought) she meets this boy that looks exactly like him. Maybe Tuck was right about him turning into another amnesic ghost trying to satisfy an obsession that had to do with his dead...

No, there was no way this was Danny being amnesic as Tuck had suggested. This boy had a family, a mother and a sister, and she was pretty sure he was not a ghost.

It was a very painful coincidence...

Sam opened her closet, removed a couple of boxes to reveal a galaxy-printed gift bag; and from the inside she took out a black t-shirt that made her memory float away to the past, a little more than a year before:

"It's a Sam Manson original" the goth girl declared after the boys pointed the change in her tank-top that, now, had bones printed on it, as if simulateing her own skeleton, with the addition of a bloody-looking ruby-red realistic heart inside the ribcage.

"Is the disturbing bloody organ necessary?" Tuck questioned.

"Why do you ask? Does it make you feel uncomfortable?" A smug Sam asked with a smirk.

"Yes" Affirmed the other with a raised eyebrow.

"Uncomfortable enough to stop eating meat?" This time it was Tuck's turn to smirk, he had found out Sam's game.

"Not even close. Actually, it is the opposite. I'm dying for a half cooked fillet mignon right now", he answered, making Sam curse under her breath in an exasperated manner. "Nice try, though." The techno-geek complemented.

"Well, I think it looks good." Danny intervend. "I actually like it"

"Really? I can make you a t-shirt, then"

"Great! And we'll match like couples on Halloween" Danny's smiley face dropped when he noticed Sam's puzzled expression.

"You want... matching clothes?" She asked.

"Well… yes. I'd like to… Of course, if you don't want, it's fine too..." He smiled sheepishly as Tucker facepalmed, not sure if crying or laughing at the sight of this. "I'm not good at this romantic stuff, ok? "

A month later, Danny received the promised t-shirt for his birthday (it wasn't a carbon copy of the design on Sam's tank top, since it had the bleeding heart painted in neon green, making it look more ghostly). Danny wore it everyday since and, unfortunately, it didn't survive the attack of a ghost squid at the end of the week. He got another one the next month, which had an accident in his parent's lab. The third-one had been a little more lucky, since Danny had decided to wear it only once a week, but the washer machine chose the right moment to malfunction and wash it with scalding water and ruin the bone print. The forth endured for a month, until Ember appeared with a new scheme and it got burned to ashes. Danny was very unnerved by this. What was a guy supposed to do to wear his new favorite t-shirt without it being thorn, burned to ashes or dissolved in acid? Wear it as a pyjama, perhaps…?

"SILVER STARS IN MY BLACK NIGHT,

COLD AS ICE BUT BEAUTIFUL …"

Some lyrics sounded, Sam woke from her journey to the past and took the tears off of her eyes before picking up her phone.

"Hello? Hi Jazz… Yeah… Do you have time? Tuck said he'd be a little late, but I'm sure he'll video-call if he can't make it, so… Ah…? Really? No, I'm fine I… I can't tell you over the phone... Ok, I'll wait then. Oh! And bring Danielle with you, please." She hanged up the phone and took the black skeleton-printed t-shirt back into the bag with the other eleven, then she dedicated a few moments to admire the tag that was still attached to it:

"Happy Anniversary, my hero"

For the first time in months, she wished she had given Danny his gift earlier.

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