Trent and I fell in love at first sight.
Well, that isn't really true. I didn't start falling in love with him until that first motorcycle ride around Cambridge, but I was immediately attracted to him from the get-go, and he was immediately attracted to me.
He's told me that he didn't start falling in love with me until that motorcycle ride, too, so I guess great minds think alike.
I study Child Psychology at Harvard, and I'm about to graduate. I wouldn't say I'm the very top of my class, but I would say that I do well and that I've learned a lot. Trent is a Mechanical Engineer and in my grade. We met because we both took Psych 101 second semester Freshman year, me for a requirement and him because it sounded interesting. We ended up in the same discussion section and that was that. We were hooked on each other.
Trent was from Georgia and he had a slight southern twang to his voice. It wasn't really all that overpowering, very subtle, but enough so that I noticed it and he sounded foreign, which intrigued me. We went on a couple of dates and I thought he was really cute, with his red hair and the brown eyes and the freckles and the tan skin. He had a nice butt, too, which I caught myself checking out a few times during presentations. After we got coffee, one day, he offered to drive me home. I said yes, not thinking anything of it, and he handed me a helmet.
I remember what he said very clearly. "You might want to hang on. My bike is pretty fast."
It might be due to Johnny 13's influence, yes, but there is some part of me, now, that really loves motorcycles. The speed, the wind, being able to clutch on to the man in front of you. I love it. Trent's was red, shiny, and had just a little bit of mud caked on the tires. It was like a dream, hopping on behind him as we sped off.
He took the long way back to my dorm.
We started dating a few weeks after that. We moved slow, because I was a stranger to romance and he was raised a strict Catholic and believed in not having sex until you knew that it was right. He wasn't going so far as to wait for marriage, but it was still important that he feel a lot about me first. Our first kiss was during midterms, when I was crying about thinking I was going to fail and that everyone else was smarter than me, and that normal college breakdown that happens, and he kissed me to distract me. It was a wonderful moment, although I wish now that I hadn't spent most of it with a wet face, and sniffling.
I have clear memories of all of our initial romantic encounters. Trent had an exam a few weeks after midterms and he was stressed out, and kissing him always seemed to calm him down (plus, it was fun) so I planted one on him. He eventually managed to wiggle a hand under my shirt, and I was a little scared, but he was very gentle, even with all of the tension I could feel under his skin, always asking, "Is this okay?" and "Do you want me to stop?"
He didn't feel comfortable with going further than that, so we stalled there for a few weeks. Eventually, though, we got to the next step. I don't remember if there was anything significant going on, or if I just wanted to be close to him.
"Can I take your shirt off?" he asked, hesitating, fingers nervously playing with the hem of my black sweater. I nodded, more than a bit nervous, but he gently pulled the wool over my head and off, and ran his hands along my sides and smiled at me like I was the world. In a moment of bravery, I tugged his shirt up, and he laughed and whipped it off like an expert.
I pulled myself into his chest, and he was so warm and smooth, and we snuggled for a while before he drummed his way down to my hip with his hand and slowly stroked the skin just above the hem of my jeans.
Trent asked me if we wanted to get an apartment together on the day that I showed him what my naked body looked like, and just before the first time we ever had sex, he asked me if I wanted to marry him.
I said yes.
The look on his face was phenomenal as he kissed me, like I had given him the world just by saying one word, and he laughed and ran his hands all over me and told me that I was the best thing that I had ever happened to him.
"I love you, Jasmine," he said, and hearing my name on his lips was like a drug. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you."
Mom and Dad were thrilled when I came home a few weeks later for Danny's birthday, showing them the ring. They thought Trent was a fine young man, and I agreed. Even Danny approved, and that was a feat in itself, given how much he'd disliked all of my other boyfriends.
Our wedding was planned for the summer between Junior and Senior year, just after Danny had graduated from Casper High, so that everyone could come along. It was a moderately sized celebration, with all of Danny's gang coming, a few of the ghosts that he worked with, since I'd been helping him our with trying to get the diplomatic stuff down, and of course our parents, some friends of the family, and assorted relatives I hadn't seen in years.
Trent's family was there, too. His mother, Nicole, was a sweetheart, and his dad, Clay loved me. His two older sisters, Mary and Jessie, were part of the bridal party, along with Sam and Valerie, Sam being my maid of honor. Trent's best friend Ray was our best man, and Danny and Tucker looked great as groomsmen.
My dad cried when he walked me down the aisle, and he called me his princess and kissed my head as he handed me off. Mom cried the entire time, and Danny looked proud, his eyes shining at me as Trent and I exchanged rings and said our vows.
I've never loved someone as much as I love Trent, and he may not be the perfect guy, but he's perfect for me.
We spent the rest of the summer in Georgia, by the ocean, having saved up our money (and getting a rather large sum from my mother and father) to rent a house on the shore for a few weeks.
The first night of our honeymoon, we fell asleep in each others arms, and I dreamed about him.
Later, I realized that this would be a recurring dream, but we'll get to that.
We were both living in the same house, sharing the four stories with eight other people, and we weren't together. My brain decided that I was dating Johnny 13, even though that was ridiculous, but you know how that stuff works. But Johnny was in the Ghost Zone, far away, and I was in college, doing college things like studying and going to parties and hanging out with my friends. I wasn't happy with Johnny, that was for sure. He tried to call me all the time, and I just didn't want to talk to him anymore. When we saw each other, it was fleeting, and I tried to act like the doting, caring girlfriend I once was. I was surprised that he didn't pick up on my deceptions.
But Trent and I, well, there was something there. Tension, between the two of us. When Johnny wasn't around, he was the main man in my life, and I talked with him, drank with him, laughed with him, played chess with him. We stayed up to all hours, talking about boys, and girls, and me trying my best to get a rise out of him because that was how I had to express myself. In real life, I wasn't the teasing type, but dream me? I guess if you were in a long distance relationship, and had a crush on another man, you would turn into the teasing type.
We'd get into pillow fights and throw candy at each other at two in the morning. We got take-out every week and traded who paid. I liked Chinese and he liked Wings. We'd sit next to each other on the bus (field trips? I think my dream brain wasn't sure about what year this was) and would poke each other, talk about love, call each other names, and get heckled by the rest of our friends.
I woke up confused, wondering where it had all come from. Was I secretly in love with Johnny 13, after all these years? As that second day went by, I decided that I wasn't, with a resounding no, thank you very much. But that second night I dreamed it again.
Everything in this strange dream was telling me that Trent was the right guy. And, dream Me was thinking, if he wasn't, why am I spending so much time thinking about him? Why am I so down after Johnny leaves, if I act so excited when Johnny is there? I love Johnny, don't I? Then why am I being drawn to somebody else?
Maybe it was because Trent was new, and exciting, and attractive. Johnny was attractive, too, but in my dream we had been dating for years and things just got stale. He'd put on a few pounds and having sex with him just wasn't doing it for me anymore (this especially confused me when I woke up). But, dream Me was having vivid sex dreams about Trent that made me wake up confused and panting and desperately needed a shower (my dreams within dreams were always strange) and what was a girl to do? I cared a lot about Johnny, and he was safe, and he loved me, but he was so far away, and I was in school, and I just wasn't sure if I was still in love with him.
Then, one day, it happened. The dream seemed to take a lifetime to play through, and one of the dream nights, I was sitting on Trent's bed, and Trent sat next to me, and I'm not sure what he said. Could have been anything. But, he told me that he'd had a crush on me, in years past, before I dated Johnny, and that he still might. And I told him that I had a crush on him, too, and I still might, and he kissed me.
Maybe it was wrong for dream Me to have done that, but at least it was just a dream, and it wasn't like dreams were going to matter in the long run.
And he kissed me, and kissed me, and I kissed him back. It was wrong, yes, but of course felt perfectly right, because here was the man I was spending the rest of my life with, and my dream seemed to be saying to me, he is here, he is perfect, you have made a good decision, we have no doubt about that. And in my dream it was very satisfying to have finally given in, and even though there was some guilt in the back of my mind, it was buried away underneath the feelings that I was experiencing.
I woke up happy after that night. It was the beginning of day three, and Trent was surprised when I pounced on him, half-asleep.
The next few weeks we explored the shore and played in the ocean, collected seashells like little kids and buried each other in the sand. It was like a vacation from maturity and obligation and they were probably the best weeks of my life, so far. I loved watching the waves, and watching Trent splash around in the surf, yelling at me on the shore, telling me to get in the water before he threw me in himself, and then later making good on his promise when I was stubborn, even though I was laughing the whole time.
We went back to school at the end of it, having been cut off from our friends and family and all of the other obligations. I called my parents and they told me to call Danny, and when I did that he told me that Sam was pregnant, and they were keeping the baby, and the wedding was going to be a few years from now, and please don't freak out.
"She's due in January," he said, sounding sheepish. I could only imagine the look on his face. "We were wondering if you would try to be there when the baby is born."
I said yes, and congratulated him, even though I was a little concerned that they were going to be parents so young, and maybe they had rushed into things, and Trent told me that we couldn't say anything about that, given that I wasn't even 22 yet and I was a married woman.
They said they'd named Valerie the godmother, and Tucker the godfather, and that they were really excited, but scared too. Danny sounded, on the phone, like the whole thing wasn't exactly his idea, but at the same time I could tell that he was happy, if freaked out and nervous and all of the other things that new dads were.
I wasn't able to visit until Thanksgiving, because of all sorts of things coming up. Projects, research, life, grad school, homework, Trent. The dreams came back a few times, still seeming to tell me that I had done the right thing by leaving Johnny and going with Trent. I have to admit, I probably should have wondered more at why I was having them so suddenly and so often, but it didn't seem important at the time.
It was Black Friday, I remember. Mom and Sam and I had all woken up early, we were going to go out shopping, just us girls. I remember Sam looked so huge for only seven months, like she was about ready to pop. She was rubbing her stomach for the entire break, looking lost, scared even.
We had just gotten in the car when she gasped from the backseat, and when we turned around to look at her, all she said was, "My water just broke."
Mom shouted something, I don't quite remember what it was. Something about being premature. I don't know exactly. Sam seemed surprisingly calm, explaining that ghosts had shorter pregnancies so she guessed that she must have been having a halfa. She looked happy, at that.
We raced back inside and shouted for Danny and for my father and there was a flurry of activity. We called Valerie, because she was the designated wing-man, to carry the baby bag and all that stuff. Danny, of course, was losing his mind, phasing through the floor and the ceiling as he was frantically hunting for things that he didn't think he'd have to get packed so soon.
Sam told us to call Neil, because her and Neil had grown close during her pregnancy, and he seemed to be the expert on all things ghost, anyway. He met us at the hospital, looking frazzled. Danny's nerves were worn and they immediately started shouting back and forth at each other, arguing about what to do. It was funny, in retrospect, that Sam rolled her eyes even as she started having contractions.
In related news, birth does NOT look like fun. Especially when you're someone like Sam, who likes to throw things when she's in pain.
Sam was in labor for a very long time. She was up to eighteen hours when Neil started to get worried about the baby. He looked around at us, said that it shouldn't have taken this long. Ghosts have fast births, or so his mother had said.
Mom immediately asked if his mother had been a ghost, and when Neil replied yes, she said, "Maybe it's because Sam's human."
The hush that came over the room was cold and stifling. Neil jumped into action, yelled at us to not go anywhere and call him if it was important, and phased through the floor like he was on fire. Needless to say, it didn't help us feel better.
An hour later, Neil showed up with a ghost woman I recognized from my wedding (I think someone had called her Shiva?) and Gildemeir, that dragon that Danny was in talks with, trying to make a peace treaty. The three of them barreled into the birthing room, and I could hear Danny and Sam yelling at all of them. It caused quite a commotion, let me tell you.
They shut the door, though, and all of a sudden all we could hear were the occasional screams that women having a child let out when they have a particularly bad contraction.
We stared at that door, the whole lot of us, the women worried and the men pretending not to be, as people walked by, more concerned with being trampled at Walmart. It looked like there were lights flashing, and I could sort of make out murmurs, but I have no idea about what.
Around hour twenty six, as most of us were asleep and as I was drinking lukewarm cafeteria coffee, I heard the unmistakable noise of a baby, and once my tired brain had figured out what that meant, I woke everyone else up, celebrating.
It seemed like forever until someone came out. It was Neil, smiling. "We had to phase her out," he said, and then almost like an afterthought, "It's a girl."
She was a little cranky, to be sure, after having such a rough day, but we got to meet little Joanna Marie Fenton a little while later. Her head was a funny shape and her eyes were all screwed shut and she was very small in her little pink blanket and hat, and she was beautiful in her mother's arms, even as dead as Sam looked. Danny's eyes glowed with happiness, and Mom started to cry a little when she picked up her little granddaughter. I've never seen Dad so proud, either, as when he clapped his big hand on Danny's shoulder and smiled at him. There was a little tuft of blonde hair on her head, and when she opened her eyes and looked up at her parents, we all saw that they were purple.
She looks just like you, Danny said to Sam with a smile.
Good, Sam said. Heaven forbid she inherit your hair.
We all laughed, and the extended family and friends meandered out of the room to let the little family bond and coo over the new life.
I guess I should have paid more attention to Trent, but at that point I was far too happy with the whole situation. I was an aunt, and I wanted the world to know it, and I now very much wanted a child of my own (I mentioned this off-hand to Mom. Her immediate response was NO). I was chatting with everyone when Rose asked where he'd gone.
"He was just here," I said, right as we heard the bang.
A black and green blur zoomed out of the door – no, through the door – wailing painfully. It was too fast for all of us to follow, but the black and white and very angry Danny that shot after him let us know that it had to be a ghost. He was quickly followed by a roaring dragon and an icy blue bur. I couldn't catch who the culprit was, but I immediately knew what had happened, because Sam was screaming and every halfa in the room had gone ghost and bolted through the wall after them.
Mom and Dad burst into action, pulling ectoguns out from nowhere (only in my family would they bring weapons to see a baby) and running down the stairs, yelling and already making plans, and that only left me and Crystal to burst into Sam's hospital room. She was trying desperately to get up and get out of bed and get her clothes on, and, just as we all already knew, Joanna was gone. Tears were running down Sam's face as she fumbled with her hospital gown, and she looked about ready to kill someone, glaring especially at me.
"Who?" Crystal asked.
"Trent," Sam spat, her voice breaking.
I think I passed out. I don't remember what happened. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, and Crystal was shaking me to get up because we had to go.
I felt like someone had put me in a block of ice. Trent? It couldn't be Trent. I loved Trent, and he loved me, and more importantly, Trent was not a ghost. Danny would have known if Trent were a ghost.
"You have to tell me exactly what happened," I demanded as soon as I came to.
Sam, who had apparently collapsed on the bed while I was unconscious, launched into a tearful explanation. Trent hadn't walked out with the rest of them, but stayed. It was like he'd been possessed, she said. He had glared at Danny, and his eyes turned green, and he started to glow, and then he'd grabbed the baby from out of Danny's arms and took off with her.
It couldn't have been him. I knew that immediately. It had to be one of Danny's enemies, just choosing to take Trent over so that he'd have some sort of a body. Luckily, Crystal agreed, and Sam was angry enough to accept our proposal without a fight.
Crystal managed to find a wheelchair and we loaded Sam into it, speeding off down the hallway. Sam's car was in the hospital parking garage and we sped off in the direction the ghosts had left. They were pretty easy to find, anyway, because the early morning sky was lit up with red and green and purple and blue ectoplasm, and all we really had to do was get close to it.
I was driving and Sam was leaning out the window with an ectogun from under the seat, and Crystal carried her guitar everywhere and even though it didn't work quite as well as it used to, she could still stand out the sunroof and shoot things when we got there.
I drove like a madman downtown, and we finally pulled up by the park, where our seven were fighting off someone who looked very much like a possessed Trent. The baby was nowhere in sight – no, wait, there she was, crying her little eyes out in a floating cage of ectoplasm.
Sam saw her, and screamed, and unsurprisingly started shooting at Trent-that-wasn't with her gun. Crystal, bless her heart, jumped into the fray too and started blasting all sorts of things.
I have no idea how five halfas, four ghost hunters, two ghosts, and two pissed off women did not manage to take down their enemy, but whatever was possessing Trent managed to avoid all of the hits and deal a lot of damage back.
"Get the shadow, get the shadow!" I heard Rose shout over the din, and I looked closer, as I ran forward with a net shooter. Wait...yeah, Trent wasn't throwing a shadow, even with all of the lights and energy flashing around in the air. And there was an inky black presence floating around and splitting off into different pieces and wrapping around everyone...
Things made sense.
Johnny 13.
Fuck, how long had he been inside Trent, waiting? Was Trent Johnny 13, who just married me to get revenge? No, couldn't be. Danny would have known. Someone would have known. Two and a half years is a long time to lay in wait just for an opportunity.
Thinking was a bad thing to do in the middle of a fight, but luckily, Danny knocked me out of the way of a blast. We rolled behind a tree as he screamed at me that I was going to get myself killed and a lot of rather hurtful things that I would forgive him for later, given that his newborn daughter was in the hands of a villain.
I was safe behind the tree, at least temporarily. Think. Johnny 13 was after Danny and Sam's baby. Why? He probably wanted revenge. Maybe Kitty wanted a child of their own and was impatient. Maybe someone was paying him off? He'd gotten into Trent's body...when?
It clicked.
The dreams.
I slapped myself in the forehead with my net shooter. Stupid, stupid. You've been having dreams about Trent and Johnny for almost a year, now. Since the honeymoon (oh God, that was a horrifying thought). It might make sense, if he'd manage to worm his way into Trent a few times. Maybe you knew that, that's why the dreams were happening, Jazz. And Danny was never around when you were having them, except for just now, at the hospital. And everyone could have been too on edge to notice and...
I was suddenly very, very angry.
I think really clearly when I'm angry.
I had a net shooter. Johnny was probably not expecting me to have that, instead of a gun, because the logical choice would be a gun. I had to get close enough to aim it at him. It would take Trent down long enough for someone to get a Thermos out. That would suck Johnny out of Trent's body. If that didn't work, Fenton Dream Catcher. Someone would have to catch the baby.
I looked around the tree. All right. Mom, Sam, and Rose were over by the cage trying to get the baby out. All of the men and Valerie were attacking Trent/Johnny. Chaiya, Shiva, and Crystal were handling the Shadow. I could hear Gildemeir shouting orders and making strategies. All right. I know for a fact that Danny had a Thermos – he always had a Thermos. He SLEPT with one. And I have a net.
Around the tree I went, a few hundred feet from the fight. I was probably only going to get one chance to aim and fire, and I had to try not to get another of the boys in underneath the net. Johnny was facing away from me. I had about five seconds before he turned around, Neil was coming up on his left. Four, the gun was up, three, Neil slammed Trent into the ground, two, Danny and Jack both came roaring down on him.
I fired.
Mom and Dad would have been proud of how well it worked, if they'd been paying attention. The net landed square on the four of them, brawling, and they all shouted in confusion and terror. After all, it was supposed to suppress their powers. All of them shouted, except Danny. Danny did not stop brawling. He kept right on punching and clawing and brutalizing Trent/Johnny, and there was blood, and all I could think about was, that's my husband and my brother, and oh god, he might actually kill him.
"Stop, stop!" I shouted, and Neil and Jack both had to pull Danny off. I've never seen him so mad as he was then. Shaking, and his eyes had actually flashed red with rage, and he was throwing off so much energy that the net wasn't sucking away all of it fast enough.
I'm not sure how, but the girls had managed to tie the Shadow around a tree, and off in the distance the cage had disintegrated, Sam holding little Joanna and crying as the little girl screamed her little lungs out. Mom and Dad wandered over, and, bless Mom's heart, she pulled out her own heavy duty Thermos and aimed right at Trent.
It was Johnny, all right, screaming in rage as he left Trent's body, vowing revenge and cursing. The Thermos didn't fully muffle his sounds.
I threw the net off of him and the other three. The good news was that he didn't look to be too hurt. There were bruises and Danny had given him a black eye and the tips of his fingers looked burnt from all of the energy, and there was rope-burn from the net, and his wrist was hanging funny and he was unconscious. But he was breathing okay, and he wasn't bleeding except a little bit from a cut on his face, and Danny was now glaring at the Thermos rather than him, so that was good.
We went back to the hospital around 10 AM, two hours after the whole event had started. Sam refused to let Joanna go when the doctors tried to take her and check her over, but she relented enough to let them do some tests from her arms. Danny stayed glued to their sides and pointedly avoided looking at me. Rattled though they were, the doctors let Joanna go home later that day, saying that as far as they could tell, she was a perfectly healthy baby.
They put Trent in a hospital bed nearby. He woke up in the late afternoon and had no memory of the day's events. The last thing he knew, he said, he was getting woken up to go to the hospital on Black Friday, and everything after that was completely gone. They put his wrist in a cast and the cut on his face needed a few stitches, and once we explained what had happened everything was fine and dandy. We went home and I made sure to ghost-proof our apartment. I would rather have Danny and company not be able to phase in and keep out the ghosts we don't want.
I don't know what happened to Johnny, but I assume that Danny was involved. He had a paranoid look to him for weeks, and didn't trust anyone around Sam or Joanna except me, our parents, and Tucker. He was always watching Trent, too, which I didn't like, but who could blame him?
Danny visited one day with a dead, cold look in his eyes, like he'd done something terrible. He refused to talk about it, but the next time I saw Johnny 13, he was in a wheelchair. No one talked about it, and honestly people seem to try and pretend that it never happened. But I know it was Danny that hurt him.
I try not to think about what Danny did. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Maybe someday when I have kids, I'll understand.