They are a unit, and they were of perfectly little note right up until October of freshman year. A person's eyes will slide right over the faces they don't know or care about, especially in the crowded halls of Casper High School, and so it was for them, even if one of their members was strikingly gothic, and another was the son of the town freakshow. They were the whatever-kids, the miscellaneous, and nothing happened to thrust them into the spotlight.
It was simply that one day—or over a period of days, a stretch of weeks, an adjustment period—they had or came to have a certain relevance that was unexplainable. A narrative importance. Something changed in their construction, their context; the boy at the center gained something that had its own sort of gravity, and those two at his sides were in his orbit. They began to draw people in. Valerie Gray interpreted the allure as love, and maybe it was. He really seemed to like her, after all. Dash Baxter tended to let only his fist succumb to that pull.
Suddenly they were drawing eyes. And it's not like people knew their names, or cared, really, because they didn't. She wasn't Samantha Manson but the vegan chick and he wasn't Danny Fenton but the Fenton's son and Tucker Foley was that freak who names his electronics more than anything. But one day, inexplicably, students began to pick their faces out of crowds more easily. Eyes settled on those purple lips, those blue eyes (I thought they were green?), that red beret. People began to see them, whether they knew it or not.
Only three people ever find out that Danny Fenton is Danny Phantom. This is a fact. Jasmine Fenton was always meant to know, and Vladimir Masters was always going to be Danny's foil. Wes Weston was an accident, if a necessary one.
The students at Casper High don't see that particular part of him. Regardless of what Sam says, Danny is good at hiding it, and the fact that no one expects a ghost and a boy to be the same entity definitely helps. No, it's not the ghostliness that draws their eyes, though maybe that was the catalyst.
Instead it's them. They as a unit, a trio, an inseparable three. It's Manson and Fenton and Foley, it's that you'll never see a red beret not accompanied by a black ponytail or a plaid skirt by blue jeans or red sneakers by brown boots. It's that there's something in the way they look at each other—not just friendship but camaraderie, not just camaraderie but a shared something no one else can name.
Paulina Sanchez bets on how long it'll take for Manson and Fenton to get together. Mikey Voss bets on Fenton and Foley. It's only Jazz who gets it right, in the end, and the hefty sum of money she accrues goes straight toward Danny's hopeful college fund.
It's those three together, intertwined, a tangled lock of lips and limbs, because Danny can't live without either of them and neither can they live without him or each other. They're each other's weaknesses and lifelines. It's Manson loves Fenton loves Foley loves Manson, no one left out or behind, and they were always going to end up that way.
A trio, a them, closer than close.