Wesley Weston is a lot of things. Crazy is not one of them. Delusional is not one of them, no matter how many people spit out that descriptor. Maybe "freak" is true, and maybe "obsessed" is right. But Wes Weston is not wrong.
Daniel James Fenton—whose middle name Wes had fished from a first-grade name-writing assignment that had been tossed during spring cleaning—is Danny Phantom. They are one and the same. His "human" classmate is dead, and no one—no one will listen. Has ever listened!
He's been pursuing this stupid conspiracy for a year and a half, after he'd spotted Fenton entering an alley Phantom had come shooting out of just before the start of their junior year. Oh, Wes had had his suspicions before that—what else does one do in homeroom, staring off into space, other than theorize why random classmates take so many bathroom breaks?—but he'd never truly believed the idea. It was just too far-fetched to have any real weight.
But then Danny Phantom came from where Danny Fenton had been, and Wes had zeroed in on it. He had known. He had seen the connection, and there was the proof, before his eyes.
But no one would listen.
Wes learned quickly that spouting off his far-fetched theories would not win him any favors. In fact, the most it got him was a one-way ticket to guidance, so he could talk to his counselor first about slander, and how we do and don't talk about classmates, and then delusions, since she thought he was off his rocker. Which was fine. He didn't really expect anybody to believe him, not at first.
But no amount of evidence-gathering seemed to convince anyone. No amount of blurry photographs or logical progressions or circumstantial evidence got him anywhere. No one could find it remotely possible to believe that slim, scrawny Danny Fenton could be their hero, least of all Paulina Sanchez, who claimed to be madly in love with him.
Fenton isn't even scrawny anymore! He has muscle! From ghost fighting!
It's gotten to the point where Wes is convinced that something unnatural is interfering. Phantom himself, maybe. No matter how nuts you think Wes is, no matter how completely you look down on him, at a certain point you have to concede the idea. At a certain point you can't just keep on denying it.
Wes is not stupid, or delusional. The proof he has is proof enough to convince most people. And it hasn't.
No one believes him.
(Because—and you'll remember this, if Wesley does not—they're the star players, remember? The narrative circles them. They draw eyes, and despite all the watchers, no one figures it out. It's main character immunity. You always knew it was.)
It's infuriating.
Wes is not good at being wrong, or being told he is wrong, and not in that petty way of arguing with teachers, trying to convince them he got the problem right, it's them who made the mistake, though he's done a lot of that, too. It's more so that he's seen far too many things laid out before him, plainly betrayed to his prying eyes, and been told he'd seen wrong. It was a trick of the light, a misunderstanding, you've got it all wrong, son. Your mother and I love each other. He was here on business.
Wes is not good at being wrong, and he is not wrong, and he needs someone to confirm it for him. Just—just one person. Just one, single, individual human being to agree. That's all it would take.
He approaches Valerie Gray first. Former A-Lister, two-times local kickbox champion, old flame of Fenton, and a girl who hates ghosts. She's a perfect target, he thinks: chipped down enough to stoop to talking to the weedy basketball kid, bitter enough to be willing to believe a bad break-up was more than her fault.
Instead, she punches him in the face, muttering something about Danny being a hell of a lot sweeter than that ass of a ghost, and hurries away.
She does not believe him.
After a lot of miscellaneous people in between, next is Jazz Fenton, who is… admittedly not ideal; she was the most outspoken ghost skeptic before the attacks began in earnest, and she adores Fenton enough that the whole school gets to bear witness to her overbearing older sister routine almost weekly. But she's also very logical, very intelligent, and honestly, if she saw, really saw the things Fenton was getting into, she'd want to protect him, right? She should want to protect him.
She graduated three years ago, but she's hung around Amity—god knows why—and he manages to catch her one day, when she comes to pick up Fenton from detention. She's waiting on him in the parking lot, the asphalt empty and quiet. He presents it all before her: his hands splayed open with the evidence on his palms, desperate words spilling between his fingers. Jazz just creases her brows, bites her lip. She gives him this soft, regretful look that says, you stupid, delusional boy, and he remembers she's not a kid anymore in the same way he is. She looks at him the way his guidance counselor did: where can I put you? Which psychiatrist can I refer you to?
Wes leaves first, before she has the chance to psychoanalyze him, or punch him.
He tries Fenton's friends, though they're his last resort. He knows before he even draws their eye that this won't end the way he wants it to. Not that they won't believe, but that it won't matter whether they do or don't. Either they know and are helping Phantom or they don't and they're loyal to Fenton anyway; they're not going to entertain his mad, raving cautions. He goes anyway.
He tackles Tucker Foley first, because Tucker Foley is leagues less intimidating than Sam Manson, and Wes could definitely (probably? Foley's gained muscle, too) beat him up.
When he approaches Foley, the guy regards him with such an intensely fed-up stare Wes almost turns right back around and leaves. Wes knows, with certainty, that Tucker Foley already has his shtick memorized, has seen all his material, has paid for tickets to the show, and he isn't impressed. Foley knows what's coming, and nothing Wes can do will make him bend.
It's strange, knowing something so completely and certainly without real understanding of why, and acting anyway.
He says, "Foley. Your friend's dead," or something similar. Something direct, like if Wes gets it out fast enough, the switch will flip in Foley's mind. Instead, all he does is lift an incredulous eyebrow.
"Is he now?" Foley drawls, and this—this is a tone Wes has not heard from him before. There are a lot of voices a teenager will take: some to impress, or to beat down, or to implore. Very few at a public high school will head straight for disdain in the way Foley drips with it; the lack of opinion he holds of Wes is almost palpable. In Manson, it might not have been so jarring, but in Foley—renowned awful flirt, socially inept techno-freak?
It's like throwing your arms around someone you think you know in public, only to find it's a stranger with a similar haircut.
"Save it for the conspiracy club, Wes," Foley tells him, and he throws everything into a new, sharp, foreign focus. This Tucker Foley is greater than Wes knew he was. This Tucker Foley has to be Phantom's right-hand, because where else would he have gotten this sudden, oppressive self-confidence? Where else did he find this steel?
"But—" Wes doesn't know what he thinks he's going to say. It's almost a relief when Foley cuts him off.
"Stay the hell away from Danny. He's not dead, and we're all tired of your shit. Find something else to obsess over." While Wes struggles to find something to retort with, Foley snickers to himself. "Hah, obsess. You know, Wes, it's almost like you're the ghost."
Wes swallows back whatever he'd been about to say. Foley—this Foley, who stands like a shield before Danny Fenton, whose green eyes narrow with an iron strength Wes' words can't melt, who Wes' eyes catch in the hallways, always one-third—is a far cry from a nerd at the bottom of the pecking order.
This Tucker Foley is indomitable.
He tries Sam Manson next. She's the last resort, the end-all, be-all of this entire crusade. If Sam Manson does not believe him, he'll never get anywhere, because whether she knows it or not she's the sleeping leader of this god-forsaken school. People follow her lead. They might not like her or agree with her, but she draws a crowd—who could forget her and Foley's protest-off freshman year?—and people love to have a cause to fight for. She'd campaign against the ghost if he weren't her best friend. Casper High would rally behind her.
But, against everything, Danny Fenton is her best friend. Her more-than, her star. She's in his orbit, like Foley is, like Valerie Gray and Jazz Fenton and Dash Baxter are, and Wes feels like he's the only one who can resist that pull.
(He can't. He doesn't realize the way you and I do that this conspiracy is surrender, too.)
He goes to her in one of the rare moments she isn't flanking Fenton, when he and Foley have gotten themselves stuck in detention again and Manson's waiting to bail them out. He approaches her, photos clutched tight in one shaking grip, and she, like Foley, already knows what he wants, what he'll say. The gaze she fixes him with is not disdainful in the way Foley's was, and it both is and isn't worse.
The gaze she fixes him with is hatred incarnate. She's not dismissing him, she just despises him, that violet fire licking at her irises like threat. It both is and isn't worse to be hated. It both is and isn't worse to be waved off.
"Manson," he says, and this is the wrong way to address her. Her lip curls, and her gaze hardens, if that's even possible. Stupid. He knows (everyone knows) how much she hates her family. It's Sam, not Samantha, and it's not Manson, it's Sam.
"The hell do you want, Weston," she says, addressing him in turn. Oh, he doesn't like that. It calls up his father's silhouette, speaking to him, reassuring him with white-lie words, just business, Wes, just business. That man was Weston before he was.
Wes glares back, and says, "Stop hanging around Fenton," as if it'll do anything to dissuade her. He knows by now how this goes. He's done this song and dance, but he just—
He can't let it go.
"You want to be right so bad, don't you?" she says, with that exasperated kind of anger Wes has heard far too often before. It's like she can't believe he's this pitiful. He's a worm under her shoe, though she wouldn't press down. She'd kick him back into the dirt and keep going. He's nothing.
He can't let it go.
"You have to be the best in everything, huh? You have to be right about everything, and you have to be right about this." Manson glares at him, and glares, and Wes feels small. But he doesn't feel wrong.
"Aren't I?" he says, breaking script. His voice is plaintive, a weak plea. "If anyone knows, it's you and Foley. Aren't I right?"
Sam Manson is indomitable in the same way Tucker Foley is. She's got her back to Danny Fenton and she's a fortress, her combat boots like bricks and her joints the mortar. She's great, taller than him in spirit if not body, a wall in the prison yard no inmate can scale.
She and Foley aren't Fenton's bodyguards, really. They're closer to Saturn's asteroid belt: a dangerous, circling barrier. They keep the world away from Fenton and fling barbs when anyone's spacecraft gets too close, and here the barbs stick into Wes, and he bleeds, sluggish and cold.
"You'll never know," Sam Manson tells him.
It's in slow motion that Wes watches her walk away, after this. She leaves to head down the hallway toward the door to the detention classroom, which opens as she approaches it. From it, Foley and Fenton emerge, grinning at each other as if sharing a joke. Behind them, Mr. Lancer, today's supervisor, shoos them away with good-natured if exasperated hurry. Foley and Fenton both greet Manson immediately, showering her with chatter. Wes does not hear any of it.
Instead he watches them arrange themselves: Foley on Fenton's left, Manson on his right. Fenton in the middle, always. They press themselves against his sides, almost too close to walk, but they've been making this formation since freshman year. Fenton doesn't even seem to notice the way they close in on him, in his orbit. These are his satellites: a goth girl and a tech freak, both of them—and Wes can see it now—a little in love with him.
Fenton is radiant. He almost glows—he is taller now than he was as a freshman, if not noticeably tall, and he's built enough muscle that it's noticeable in his arms, though his shirt still hangs baggy on his frame. He's got scars criss-crossing his skin, even up his neck and onto his face, but it only accentuates him. He's content, Wes can see it. This Danny Fenton is a far cry from who he was as a freshman: timid, exhausted, overwhelmed. Wes had seen him then and he sees him now.
This Danny Fenton is strength incarnate, and he doesn't need a shield, not really. Manson and Foley act as his barriers anyway. Loyalty incarnate.
And Wes is enraptured. And it is not good.