Your Witty Quote Here

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The kids were given an hour after lunch to rest up before their swimming lessons. Of course Maple cabin didn't get as much free time since they had to do KP as the Head Ranger had ordered. But with all the kids working together instead of the one or two who usually did KP, the work was done quickly enough. Most of the kids flopped on their bunks to nap but Danny was too restless for sleep. He changed into his swim suit, grabbed a towel from pile on a chair near the door and headed outside.

Outside, though, he became unsure what he wanted to do. He couldn't go down to the lake by himself as he wanted. Each cabin had to go as a group with each boy or girl buddied-up. That was camp policy. He didn't feel like trampling around in the woods surrounding the cabins. What he really wanted to do was talk to Sam but she hadn't emerged from her cabin yet. He didn't have anything specific to talk to her about. It was just comforting to talk to her, friend to friend.

So Danny walked across the clearing to a remote picnic table, climbed on top as if it were a stand of bleachers, and sat down to wait.

He was staring off into the distance when he felt someone unexpected sit down beside him. He looked to the left and jumped, literally jumped, nearly falling off the table. Abigail Farley-Smythe-Hyde was sitting beside in him a pure white bikini so scanty it looked like underwear.

"So, Danny," she asked, "want to be my swim buddy this afternoon?"

Danny's mouth had turned bone dry. He tried to say something but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His eyes bulged till he thought they would pop from their sockets.

"What's the matter?" she teased. "Never saw a girl in a bathing suit before? I know you don't like me wearing white all the time but I thought you might make an exception for this. What do you think?"

He looked towards her, trying to appear nonchalant. He noticed that the heavy freckles on her face continued down to her shoulders but quickly faded away as they reached the rather conspicuous top of her halter.

He was still staring at the freckleless expanse a few moments later when:

"I'm up here!" Abigail said crossly.

Guiltily, Danny look up into a pair a very angry eyes. After a moment and with a visible effort Abigail smiled broadly. "Oh, you boys," she said sweetly, "Put on a little bikini and they get all tongue-tied."

"Why are you doing this?" Danny finally choked out.

"What ever do you mean?" Abigail cooed, then leaned in close to Danny, "Because it pisses off your girlfriend," she whispered. "I've gotten real tired of her and her snotty ways."

"Sam's not snotty,"

"And she's not your girlfriend -- I know, you say that often enough. I bet she's watching us from the cabin this very minute." Abigail laughed. "Watching and doing a slow burn. I wonder what she's do if I gave you a kiss like this..." Abigail leaned over quickly and gave him a kiss -- on the lips -- before he could turn away.

"Leave me alone, will ya. I know you don't really like me, and I don't like the way you always slam my parents," Danny argued. "Go back to chasing that ghost you say can't possibly be haunting the camp."

"But I do like you."

"You have a funny way of showing it."

"You don't like being kissed?"

"If you really liked me you would be nice to my friends as well, instead of playing some weird sort of "Desperate Housewives" game. We're fourteen, for crying out loud. You shouldn't be doing this."

Abigail looked at Danny strangely for a moment, looked down at herself for a moment and seemed to blush. Or maybe flush with anger, Danny couldn't tell which.

"Look, Fenton, I intend to make your little Goth kook cry so you'd better get used to it. Because you're not going to go anywhere today without me shaking my butt in her face!"

Abigail got up and stormed away. Danny couldn't help himself watch her walk away. It was a sight he wouldn't soon forget.

Any other guy in the world would die for a chance to have Abigail hovering around them the way she promised she would to Danny. So why did it have to be him? Had his sister, Jazz, ever acted so weird around boys?

The memory flashed to him of the time a year ago when he'd come downstairs in the middle of the night to make a sandwich. Jazz had been standing in the middle of the open front door kissing some boy. Five minutes later, sandwich in hand, heading back upstairs he noticed that Jazz hadn't moved, hadn't stopped kissing that boy, hadn't noticed him coming and going. And apparently hadn't noticed their father coming downstair some time later, either, although no one had slept through the shouting that followed. At the time he had felt smug that oh-so-perfect Jazz had finally gotten into trouble. Now, he suddenly realized, he was probably doomed to repeat her every mistake.

As Danny continued to watch Abigail walk away he noticed Mrs Doi coming out of the cabin and interception her. There was a brief, but seemingly heated conversation. After a moment the red-headed girl turned and stomped into their cabin. Mrs. Doi followed much slower. Danny had a guess what Mrs. Doi had said, and true enough, Abigail emerged a few minutes later wearing her more modest green bikini.

Danny looked at his watch and wondered when Tucker or Sam were coming out of their cabins. Tucker, he recalled, had said he was giving T'Keisha a cell phone call. Apparently she didn't believe in following the camp's "no cell phones" rule either. Danny was surprised to find that he somewhat resented Tucker having a girlfriend. He had always wanted his friend to have luck meeting girls, something Tucker tried constantly and constantly was shot down. Danny knew how much it meant to Tucker to have a girl - any girl - talk to him. Danny just hadn't realized that Tucker having a girlfriend meant that Tucker didn't have time for his old friends. And with Sam still mad at him about Abigail - and Danny knew, just knew, that Sam had watched from the cabin when Abigail had kissed him - it looked like Danny was out of friends for the rest of the week.

"Hey...uh...Danny...what's up?"

The voice coming from the woods behind him sounded like Sam, and for a moment Danny froze, fearing that she had been reading his mind, but the hesitation in her casual greeting was totally unlike her.

Danny turned. For the second time that morning his mouth went dry. "Sam?" he croaked.

It looked like her. Same black hair tied up in a pony-tail. Same heavily mascaraed eyes. Same black straw hat and black flip-flops. Same habitual angry expression on her face. Only she was wearing a pink two-piece bathing suit instead of her usual jet black maillot. A big yellow daisy was embroidered on the center of her top. The high-cut legs on her bottoms emphasized hips Danny had never noticed before. Her T-shirts were usually crop-tops so he was used to seeing her belly button, he wasn't used to seeing so much else of her.

"Too much, huh," she muttered, turned and run back into the woods. Danny realized he hadn't seen her coming because she had circled the entire clearing in the woods so no one would see her. He took off after her, calling for her to stop. Sam Manson, though, was a better runner than Danny would ever hope to be. There wasn't enough cover for him to risk changing to Danny Phantom; then he could fly rings around her.

He came crashing out of the woods just in time to see Sam sprint into her cabin. Since no good could come to a boy from Maple cabin walking near Hemlock cabin Danny turned around and walked back into the forest, circled around to his own cabin and went inside. Not so much to talk to Tucker as to hide from anyone else who might feel like they had to mess with his head.

The afternoon swim was divided into two parts. First everyone was assessed as to their swimming ability. Those who couldn't swim were taken over to a shallow part of the beach where they practiced confidence skills like floating and basic stokes. Those who could swim a little went to a another part of the beach to practice technique. Advanced swimmer could opt for either diving or water rescue. Since Dash was teaching diving Danny chose water rescue.

The class involved reading up on various tricks for grabbing a flailing person and pulling them to shore without being drowned in the process and then trying them out. As threatened, Abigail made sure to be Danny's partner. When she went out to pose as a drowning swimmer she nearly pulled Danny under because ...she wasn't acting. She wasn't nearly as strong a swimmer as she thought she was and after pretending for a while to be in trouble suddenly realized she couldn't hold her head above water after all and panicked. She was supposed to change roles with Danny and rescue him later but made such a deal about swallowing water and being half-drowned that she was excused. Danny was blamed for her problems and didn't get the credits he expected towards his Life Saving certificate. It was still a couple years before he would be old enough to get a summer job as a Life Guard but he wanted the certificate long before then.

As they sat on the sand watching the others complete their practice Abigail teased Danny about not giving her mouth to mouth after pulling her from the lake, but Danny wasn't paying her any attention. He was watching Sam practice dives from the pontoon float anchored a hundred yards off shore in deeper water. She was wearing her black one-piece again. Each dive she took looked effortless and flawless. He wished he had chosen diving instruction, even though with Dash teaching he was sure to collect a number of bruising and humiliating falls. It would be nice just to be near Sam. Even if she was mad at him.

When Tucker turned a simple jackknife into a belly flop for the second time in a row he turned to Abigail and remarked, "I take it Mrs. Doi didn't think highly of your white bathing suit."

The red-head girl rolled her eyes. "You'd think I wasn't wearing anything at all, the way she went on. Sheesh, Dad lets me wear it all the time."

"To the beach?"

"We have a swimming pool. Olympic size. Big diving board, the works."

"And you never learned to swim?"

"I can swim. I just got a cramp, that's all."

"Where, 'cause you were swinging your arms and legs pretty good."

"OK, I mostly sunbath. You happy? Swimming's nice but I don't do it much. It's a mess trying to comb out my hair afterwards."

"Can't be as bad as T'Keisha's, and she seems to swims all the time." Abigail's bright red hair was very curly but nowhere as kinky as the black girl's. "If all you do is sunbath all the time, how come you still look like a ghost? My sister turns as brown as a nut during summer."

"Lucky bitc-- girl." Abigail amended her comment. "It's my complexion. I don't tan, I burn, and easily. And all I get to show for it are these disgusting freckles. I look like some kind of stupid dalmatian."

"It can't be that bad," Danny said.

"That's because you're a boy."

"Huh?"

"Freckles add characters to boys. Any kind of flaw adds character to a boy. Girls, though, girls got to have flawless skin, straight hair, small feet..."

"Feet?"

"Yeah, feet! I'm fourteen years old and I have bigger feet than my mother's. You can't be delicate with feet like mine!" She waved a foot in Danny's face. Not having looked at a lot of other people's feet in his life he didn't know what to say.

"It doesn't look any bigger than anyone else's."

"What do you know."

"So your life is miserable because you have large feet?"

"And freckles, and ratty hair."

Danny looked at her again. Her face was oval with well proportioned features. The nose was neither too large or two small, the eyes neither too far apart or too close together. Her mouth was wide with somewhat full lips that were very expressive of her emotions. The freckles were there, very evidently so, but mostly of a fine and evenly distributed nature. Her hair was red verging on orange and very frizzy. She'd pulled it back into a ponytail for swimming but most of the time left it loose hanging down her shoulders. It...fit her. She wasn't an exotic beauty like Paulina at his school, whom he had had a crush on since 6th grade but she was pretty, very pretty actually. And knew it, he realized with a start.

Thinking to change the subject, Danny asked, "are you going to be a Man in White like your father when you get out of school?"

"Hel-l-l-o, Man in White. Do I look like a man to you?"

Danny was surprised by her sudden anger. "Uh, no, obviously...I mean...Surely they hire women... I mean it's just a title... They'd be discriminating if they didn't hire woman."

"Oh, they have women employees, all right. But somehow none of them ever get qualified for field operation. It's a little boys club is what it is."

"But surely your father would help you get a field assignment..."

"My father wasn't happy about letting me come to this camp. I picked it to be as far away from home as I could get."

Seeing Danny's confused expression, Abigail quickly added. "Don't get me wrong. I love my father. And he loves me. He'd do anything for me -- except let me go ghost-hunting."

"That sucks. Dad would love for me to join the company as a ghost researcher, but I want to be an astronaut. I want to go out into space and explore the universe."

"And he's happy with that?"

Danny shrugged. "I don't know, Dad can be pretty oblivious at times."

"Still you're a guy, and guys get to do pretty much what they want."

Danny was at a loss what to say. He looked down and saw Abigail's foot resting on the sand near his own foot. With a shock he realized that her foot was bigger than his. He looked back at her. Everything else seemed normally proportioned. "You should talk to my mom."

"I don't plan to marry any crazy men. I don't need tips on how to manage the unmanageable, thank you very much."

"No. I mean Mom is a full partner in the company. She's smart, resourceful, knows a ton of stuff and fights ghost alongside Dad. Always has." Danny reflected that the biggest threat to his existence as Danny Phantom wasn't his major arch-enemies like Vlad Plasmius but his mother's crack marksmanship and instant reflexes. "When she kicks butt, it hurts."

"Spoken like a man who has had his butt kicked a few times.," Abigail cracked. "But what good would talking to your mother do me?"

"You use her lipstick."

Abigail was left confused by that.

"The Fenton Lip Gloss and Ecto-blaster" Danny explained.

"The fact that the Lip Gloss actually matches my complexion is persuasive. But what is this obsession of your family to put ghost fighting equipment in every imaginable household object?"

We're...practical? What I mean is, Mom could tell you lots of stuff about how to be a successful woman."

"I'll think about it. That she married your Dad, though, that's wasn't smart so I don't know."

With a shake of his head Danny turned to see what Sam was doing on the diving platform. It looked like everyone was getting ready to come to shore.

"I think she's watching us," Abigail murmured. "Quick, kiss me!"

"What? No!"

"Don't you want to make her a little jealous?"

"No."

"Well, I do."

Abigail suddenly grabbed at Danny, Her lunge knocked them both over. For a moment she was sprawled on top of Danny, trying to reach his face, lips puckered up like a fish. After some awkward struggling, Danny pushed her away.

"Look, Sam's my friend. I want you to leave her alone, OK?"

"You keep pushing girls away like that people are going to think your gay," Abigail snapped, sitting up and brushing her hair out of her face. "You ought to take a clue from your other friend, the black kid, Tucker. He's got his hands all over that girl. If he's not careful he's going to get in trouble."

"What do you mean by that?" Danny squirted out at the diving platform. Tucker and T'Keisha were standing arm in arm under the diving platform tower. Danny couldn't make out what they were doing in the shadows. "They're not doing anything." he asserted.

"Oh, come on, Danny, even you can't be that clueless! Those two are so hot for each other this lake is the only thing that keeps them from bursting into fire right now."

"You're nuts!" Danny got up and walked along the shore a little ways. He saw that the water rescue group was bringing in their gear and went over to help. He glanced back and saw Abigail glaring at him with angry, dangerous eyes.

A motorboat brought the diving class back from the float. Danny tried to catch up with Sam as she got off but she grabbed up an armload of life-jackets and marched off with them to the storage locker. Danny followed. When she didn't immediately come out of the shed he went in. He found her hanging up the wet life-preservers on some rows of clothesline strung along the ceiling.

"You really looked good diving," he began.

"Thanks," Sam answered without looking at him. "Dash is really a pretty good instructor when he puts his mind to it. You should have come out."

"You know Dash has it in for me."

"What could he do with half the camp watching him?" Sam wondered.

"He'd find a way."

"I think you just wanted to spend time on the beach with little Miss Hotpants."

'No, she can't swim."

"Then why did you make her your partner? I thought you wanted to get your Life Guard certificate?"

"I do. But I didn't pick her. She grabbed me."

"You didn't seem to make much of a fuss."

"I would have if you hadn't already said you were going diving."

"So it's my fault that that little nymphomaniac nearly drowned you?"

"You were watching?"

"Everybody was watching. If you had been videotaped, they'd show you every year as an example of how not to rescue a person."

"This sucks. This is turning out to be the worst summer camp ever. You're pissed at me, Tucker's too busy with his girlfriend, I've got this stupid Girl in White wannabe ghost-hunter who seems better able to spot me than the ghost that is haunting this camp. It wasn't like this last year when we came to camp."

"Last year you weren't a ghost, and you came by yourself."

"I thought we were going to have so much fun, the three of us together."

"We would be having fun if you weren't so wrapped up in that red-head with her itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny white bikini."

"You were watching us this afternoon!"

"What are you talking about."

"That pink bathing suit! You were trying to compete with Abigail, weren't you!"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Why, you looked pretty."

"No, I was hideous. I could see it in your eyes."

"I was speechless, Sam. I can't remember the last time I saw you not wearing black."

"I know what I saw."

"No, you don't. You ran away before I could say anything."

"Hey, you lovebirds done in there, I want to lock up." Booger was standing in the doorway holding the last couple life-jackets. Sheepishly Sam and Danny grabbed them, clothespinned them to the line, then walked out.

They were greeted by a wolf-whistle from Dash. About half the kids were watching.

"We're dead," Danny whispered.

Just as suddenly Abigail rushed up and grabbed his hand. "Come on," she ordered, "we're pairing up to play 'Pile-on' and I need you to carry me!" She started pulling him towards the lake.

"No," Danny shook off her hand. "Find someone else, I've had enough of swimming today. I'm going back to the cabin."

"Oh, go ahead," Danny was surprised to hear Sam urge. "Have your fun. You know you want to. I feel like I've caught a little too much sun. I'm going back to lie down."

"I'll go with you," Danny said.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Booger interrupted. "No one's going back to their cabin alone, and certainly not you two together! If you don't feel well, sit down by Mrs. Doi, otherwise -- get in the lake!"

Feeling like the condemned man mounting the gallows Danny allowed Abigail to pull him away.

"Pile-on" was a straightforward game. Girls climbed on the shoulders of their partners and together would try to pull or push everyone else down. Last pair still on their feet won. Tucker and T'Keisha didn't last long. T'Keisha great height made them top-heavy and easy to knock down. Danny and Abigail were doing pretty well until a fat kid -- Ryan? -- and a brown-haired girl Danny didn't know, grabbed hold of them. The fat kid instantly stepped back in a well practiced move. The momentum of his move nearly pulled Danny over instantly. Danny dug in his feet and tried to pull back. For a moment it seemed to be working. At least he was still on his feet but then there was an "oops" from Abigail as she lost hold of the brown-haired girl. With nothing to pull against Danny and Abigail promptly went over. Danny came up sputtering and looked around for the red-head. She came up a moment later, coughing a bit, then with a laugh threw herself on Danny and gave him a kiss. "That was fun," she said.

Danny was embarrassed because it had been fun, even the kiss part, but now Sam had another thing to hold against him. "I gotta go," he told the girl.

"Oh, come on." she argued. "They're going to have another round of 'Pile-on' and this time I'm sure we can win."

"I gotta see Sam."

"You're like old married people. You can't spend five minutes apart without worrying what the other is up to."

"That's not true," Danny growled as he waded to shore.

"Of course it is, that's why it hurts," Abigail called after him.

Danny found Sam sitting in a lounge chair near Mrs. Doi. Sam was wrapped in several towels and actually didn't look too well. He dropped into the chair next to hers.

"Didja win?" she asked.

"Close. Some fat kid beat us. He was like a mountain, couldn't move him."

"mmm" Sam replied. "So, was your partner trying to drown you or give you mouth-to-mouth?"

"She's just trying to make you mad."

"Mmmmm"

They sat silently for a while, watching the other kids splashing around in the lake.

"About earlier this afternoon," Danny began.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I know... I just want to ask one question."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I know. Just answer me this one question and we'll never speak of it again, OK?"

"Geez,. OK. What?"

"That bikini, the pink one. Was that yours or did you borrow it from someone?"

"Oh, God," Sam groaned. "Every time I go somewhere my mother always tries to slip in some of the clothes she thinks I should be wearing. OK? So I've got a yellow blouse, an orange T-shirt, some white pants and that, that..."

"Pink bikini?"

"Right. None of which is going to follow me home."

"Ok, see, that was the part that confused me. I couldn't imagine you owning anything pink."

They sat quietly for a little bit more.

"You know, " Danny said, "now that I've had a little time to get over the shock I kind of think you looked cute in it."

"Oh, please,"

"Seriously. Except for that daisy on your chest. That didn't work. It was something I'd expect on a little girl's bathing suit."

"A very angry little girl's bathing suit," Sam added.

"But beyond that you looked very pretty in..."

"Don't say it."

"What? Oh, geez, that movie, right."