Author's Note: This chapter has mentions of heavy drinking.

"Why are you buying so many bags of gummy bears?" Danny asked. They were in a convenient store by the movie theater.

"Cause the landlord wants them. They count as paying rent because apparently he doesn't do regular currency," Kara replied bitterly.

"Do you even have any money?" Danny asked as they made their way to the counter to pay. Laying down her 20 packs of gummy bears, Kara patted her pockets then gave Danny a sheepish look.

"Uh, apparently not," Danny said.

Sighing, Danny pulled out his wallet and made to give the cashier the money. Finally pulling their attention away from the Gameboy in their hand, the cashier noticed exactly who it was standing at the counter.

"Oh my god!" They exclaimed, and Kara saw Danny wince. "You're Danny Fenton!" Danny hesitantly waved at the enthusiastic teenager behind the counter.

"Uh, yeah. Hi," Danny said. The cashier smiled so wide that Kara thought her mouth would split and she was sure that if her face turned any redder, she'd pass out.

"Oh my god!" She squealed. "I can't believe you're in this shop. Oh my god this is the coolest thing ever." Danny just gave her a weary look and tried to hand her the money to pay for the candy.

"Oh, no! I can't let you pay. During my training, they stressed that if you ever came in here, anything you wanted was free," She said looking at the gummy bear packets thrown out on the counter. The cashier faltered. "Even if it is…what, twenty bags of gummy bears?" Danny just shrugged. "Well, it's no big." The girl grabbed a plastic bag from behind the counter and started putting the gummy bears in the bag. When she was finished, she held out the bag to Danny.

"Uh, thanks," Danny said, taking the bag from her.

"No problem. Thanks for stopping in! And I totally think it's cool that you're walking around with a real live ghost. Ghost Rights are totally in right now. Power to the ghosts!" She said pumping, her fist in the air. Kara bristled at the "real live ghost comment". And Ghost Rights? Really? Kara had really missed a lot in the past three years.

"It's all part of the job," Danny mumbled as he gave a weak wave to the overly enthusiastic girl and headed out the door.

"What was up with that?" Kara asked as soon as they were out of the store, bewildered by the whole experience. "Does that happen often?"

Danny sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. That's why I hardly go out unless it's for school."

"And people at school don't treat you like that?" Kara questioned.

With another sigh, Danny told her that the people at school were the people he had grown up with. For the most part, people his own age left him alone. Sometimes he'd get some of the underclassmen coming up to him and asking him for pictures or autographs but most people of his class step in and tell them to butt off.

"Even the people who I thought hated me, like Dash and Paulina- they've stepped in multiple times to keep the younger kids from harassing me. Now the younger kids mostly leave me alone," Danny explained.

"And who are Dash and Paulina?" Kara asked as Danny lead the way back to his house.

"Dash used to bully me and Paulina was my crush who only talked to me cause she had a crush on Phantom. She knew if I was around her, Phantom usually showed up. It was the only reason she even payed attention to me."

Kara gave Danny a sideways look. If she had a crush on Danny and he had a crush on her, why weren't they going out now after everything?

Seeing her look, Danny then explained that after the whole Phantom Planet thing, he had started dating Sam. Paulina, after realizing who Phantom was, while still fascinated by him, mostly stayed out of his way. It was the same thing with Dash. They had an unspoken understanding. Danny knew they wouldn't pick on him any more and they would watch his back because he had saved the both of them on multiple occasions. And for a while, Danny loved it.

"You don't love it anymore?" Kara asked as they approached Danny's house. She was extremely curious about everything that went on his head. She wanted to know everything about him. Kara had never talked to anyone else who had been suffering with depression. Hearing about his situation not only helped understand Danny better but it also made her feel a little less alone in the world.

Danny stopped walking as they reached the front door. "I wish I did. But I'm just sick of it now. I can't wait for graduation," Danny said as he turned his back on her and walked through the door.

"Is it true what Tucker said," Kara asked as she followed him into the house. "About space camp? Are you really going to Florida?"

"Yup," Danny said as he walked up the stairs, still clutching the bag of gummy bears in his right hand. "I sure am." He didn't sound too enthusiastic about it.

Without even glancing at Kara, Danny walked into a room that Kara assumed was his. Kara stopped outside the door. She had never been inside a boy's room before.

"Are you coming in?" Danny called out. Bucking up, Kara walked into the room. His room was simple. There was a bed, a desk, a dresser. Some posters about space plastered on the wall. Just very simple and somewhat neat.

"Uh, nice room," Kara said, unsure of what else to say, feeling mildly uncomfortable. Danny tossed the bag he was holding off to the side then flopped back onto the bed.

"Thanks," Danny replied. "You can have a seat you know." Danny made himself comfortable as Kara hesitantly grabbed the desk chair and rolled it to where it was next to the bed.

"So, what did you wanna talk about?" Kara asked, remembering the whole reason she was even with Danny anyway.

Danny opened his eyes and his body tensed a little. "It was just something dumb. Forget about it," Danny said lightly. He sat up a bit in his bed, leaning against the headrest.

"It's obviously not dumb," Kara insisted. "You went in the Ghost Zone looking for me. I'm sorry about Kitty and Johnny by the way," Kara apologized on behalf of her only friends. "They usually put a sock or something on the door. I kept going around to their place and catching them in compromising positions. They got sick of it," Kara explained with a small laugh.

"It's fine," Danny waved it off.

"No, it's not. Kitty shouldn't have gotten all up in your business like that. It was totally uncool," Kara said.

Sighing, Danny pushed himself up, so he could sit cross-legged on the bed. "It's whatever. She's always had this crush on me. I didn't mind it, really. I was just caught off guard. I'm usually better at dealing with those situations believe me- it's happened before."

"That doesn't matter. It was wrong of her to do that," Kara pushed.

During her time at that party, before she had even taken a single sip of alcohol, she had been cornered by these athletes. They kept saying things that made her uncomfortable and touching her hair and shoulders. She had felt trapped and unsure of what to do and it wasn't till some football guy had gotten their attention that they left her alone. If that's how Danny felt, trapped and uncomfortable, when Kitty cornered him, then it was very much not okay.

"Just drop it okay. It's fine," Danny insisted. Sighing, he spread back out on the bed.

"You keep doing that," Kara calmly observed.

"Doing what?" Danny asked, exasperated.

"Sighing and snapping and saying you're fine when you're obviously not."

"Says you, miss 'I wish I had actually died,'" Danny snapped. He turned around with his back towards her and curled up in a fetal position.

Now it was Kara's turn to sigh. Danny had gone into the Ghost Zone specifically because he wanted to talk to her. Now that they could actually talk, he's pushing her away.

Slowly getting up from the chair, Kara gently sat on the edge of Danny's bed and placed a hand on his arm. He flinched but didn't pull his arm away.

"I've been struggling with depression too, ya know," Kara said softly.

Danny snorted. "I am not depressed."

"I think you are," Kara countered. "It's something that I know from experience. Low self-esteem and years of battling depression ended with me dying. I don't want you to die."

Shrugging her hand off his arm, Danny said, "I thought you wanted to actually die too. We were on the same page," Danny said, sounding frustrated. Placing her hands in her lap, Kara stared at the boy in front of her.

Taking a deep breath, Kara explained that depression was a tricky thing. One minute you're doing fine. Everything going well and you haven't felt sad in a few days. Things seem to be looking up and you're happy to be out of your funk. But then something happens. It could be as big as someone dying to something as small as your mom forgetting to buy you turkey for your school lunches. You never know what might make you depressed and sometimes you might feel that how your feeling is warranted and other times, like with "turkey situations," you feel stupid that something like that upset you. But you can't help it. It just happens.

"Trust me, Danny, it's better to talk about how you're feeling. Even if it's hard to put into words I think it's worth it to try," Kara told him gently.

When Danny just curled up into a tighter ball, Kara sighed.

"Fine, if you're not going to talk, then you're going to listen," Kara declared. She knew that even if Danny didn't respond to her, that he was listening. She wasn't about to give up on him just because he was pretending to ignore her, plus she knew she would also feel better to get what happened to her off her chest.

"The time that I was hanging out with that group of girls was a low point in my life. It was the last term of the semester. The only reason they sat with me was cause they were late on the first day and my table was empty. I was perfectly happy to only acknowledge them when the teacher forced us to work with our tables," Kara explained.

"It wasn't for about a month after Spring Break that the girls actually talked to me because they genuinely wanted to. I was wearing pink. And it was Wednesday. I didn't even mean to make a Mean Girls reference, but I did," She noticed that Danny had turned his head slightly towards her. It was subtle, but she knew he was listening. And that made Kara smile.

She took a deep breath before continuing. "The movie had just come out and they were completely obsessed. I had seen it. I love Lindsay Lohan so of course I saw the movie and it was great. But these three girls, they would quote it non-stop. They made it a goal of theirs to wear pink every Wednesday. So, when I wore pink on that Wednesday, not even thinking about it, they invited me to hang out with them after school," Kara shook her head wishing that had never happened.

"I didn't even like them that much, but I had never really been invited out before and, like I said, I had been feeling depressed. My therapist had been telling me to get out more. Once I go out, he said, it'll take my mind off of what I'm feeling and I'll feel better. And he was right."

"Going out with them, even if they talked my ear off, was nice because it got me out of the house. Eventually I thought that my depression was going away until I realized that once the excitement of actually getting out of the house wore off, I still felt disconnected from the girls I was with. I wasn't actually friends with them. I just tagged along when I needed a pick me up. And I started to spiral again."

"When that happened, I figured, why not become a person that we all admire? That'd get them to like me more and I'll get to change myself. The girls were behind me 100% because they thought it was cool that I wanted to emulate Lindsay Lohan. They helped me copy her clothes from movies and figure out her makeup. I knew I was only doing it, so they would keep liking me and allow me to live in the illusion that I actually had friends. It made me feel good to be wanted, even if it was all superficial."

"Then the disasteroid was gonna hit. The girls figured, we're all gonna die so might as well live it up. During that week, classes were cancelled, work was cancelled. Everything stopped. People threw end of the world parties and the girls had invited me to a couple of them. I always said no."

"I was nervous to say yes because they kept insinuating that I should sleep with someone. After all, who'd wanna die a virgin, right? But I was so desperate to get them to like me that I was scared about what they could convince me to do. I avoided them that whole week."

"Once you saved us, the girls tried again and called me inviting me to the party that I died at. I figured, hey, I missed my chance to live it up like it was the end of the world, so I might as well live it up since we just got saved. I wasn't ready to have sex, but since we survived the impossible, I told the girls that I would drink. They were ecstatic, especially since I had never drank before, but I had only planned on maybe having one cup of beer… but peer pressure, ya know?"

"I wanted them to like me and to keep being my friend after I ignored them the whole week even though I didn't even like them. It was stupid. At the party I drank whenever they told me to. If they told me to take a shot, I did. When they wanted to play multiple rounds of beer pong, I played. Even when I started not feeling well, they encouraged me to keep drinking…and I did. And look where it got me," Kara said.

She wiped some tears from her cheek. She hadn't even realized that she had started crying.

"I don't want you to end up dead, Danny. You have so much ahead of you," Kara sniffled. "I know you feel alone and that no one gets what you're going through, but the truth is that no one ever will unless you tell them. I thought you invited me here to talk about it but if you don't wanna talk then I should go. It's obvious you don't want me here," Kara said, ignoring the little voice in her head that told her that Danny obviously did want her there. He may have shut her out, but he wasn't telling her to leave.

Stupid depression, Kara thought. It always fucking ruined everything.

Kara made a move to stand up but was stopped by a hand holding her wrist. She looked over at Danny who was still facing away from her despite his tight grip.

"Please stay," Danny said, his voice barely above a whisper. His voice sounded like he had been crying. And maybe he had been. Maybe it was cause of Kara's story or maybe it was cause he realized that she did understand in some capacity what he was feeling. Either way, the small voice in Kara's head was right. He wanted her there.

Danny let go of her wrist and scooted a little closer to the edge of the bed. He reached behind him and patted the spot next to him. Kara slowly moved to sit next to him properly, moving her legs onto the bed. She rested her head against the headboard and closed her eyes.