Coraline hadn't been in many average teenage boys' bedrooms, but if she'd had to imagine one, this would be it. She didn't recognise the bands in most of the posters that dotted the walls (although she thought her friend Lydia had mentioned liking Morbid Antisocial Youth), but the NASA posters were easier to place. Three model rockets, painstakingly painted, dangled from the ceiling, and a laptop sat open on the (surprisingly, neatly made) bed, displaying a digital landscape. Coraline guessed she really had interrupted a game.
Danny sat down at the desk, where another computer was set up. "How did you end up looking for ghosts, anyway? Most people in this town wouldn't believe in ghosts if one dragged them through a wall."
"I'm not going to tell anybody, if that's what you're worried about," Coraline said quickly. "It was bad enough being the weird kid who believes in monsters in Ashland, I don't want to repeat it here."
"What kind of -" Danny was abruptly cut off by the shrill ring of a telephone.
"Are you gonna get that?" Tucker asked, and Danny shook his head.
"Jazz thinks she's a responsible adult. Let her deal with the adult responsibilities." He grinned, and turned back to Coraline. "So what did you –"
"Danny!" Jazz' voice really carried, Coraline noticed. "It's for you!"
Danny sighed exaggeratedly, before picking up the phone on the desk beside him. "Hello? What? No, Mrs. Manson, she isn't here," he said into the phone, rolling his eyes. He listened for a moment, then turned to Tucker with a puzzled look on his face. "Grounded? She said she was going to this goth poetry slam -" A pause. "Well, if that's why you grounded her, then that's probably where she is."
"Sam?" Tucker asked, and Danny nodded. Coraline's mouth suddenly felt painfully dry.
"Yeah, I'll let you know if we hear anything from her." Danny hung up the phone and turned to Tucker. "Her mom thinks Sam snuck out. So of course she just assumes it's my fault. Why do her parents always blame this stuff on me?" Seeing the smirk on his best friend's face, he added, "And why don't they ever blame you?"
"I don't know, dude. Maybe because I'm not a juvenile delinquent? You do kinda have a record."
"Does Sam sneak out a lot?"Coraline asked, and Danny and Tucker both laughed.
"She practically has an elevator from her bedroom window to her backyard," Tucker answered. "And with that kind of cash, she could probably buy one if she felt like it."
"Her parents are always trying to keep her from doing stuff with us, or anything they think is a 'bad influence'. It's never stopped her." Danny smiled, and Coraline noticed that it looked a little more wistful than usual. "She's probably at the Skulk and Lurk right now."
"Are you sure, though?" Coraline persisted, feeling kind of stupid. These guys had known Sam since forever. They ought to know what she was like. If they said she'd snuck out, she'd probably snuck out. But Coraline couldn't help but remember how she'd waited for her parents to come home until she could barely keep her eyes open, making excuses for where they were until she couldn't deny it anymore. And this time, she wasn't taking any chances.
"No, I'm not sure," Danny answered, giving Coraline a look that felt uncomfortably like the one she'd gotten from Wybie when he'd decided she'd gone completely off her nut. "Why?"
"Does she have a cell phone, or something we could get ahold of her with?"
"Yeah, but if she snuck out she'll have it turned off, so her parents can't call." Now Tucker was starting to look worried. "What, did she tell you something?"
"Not exactly," Coraline mumbled, feeling nothing short of miserable.
"Then what – is Sam in trouble?"
"Maybe." Coraline sighed. And suddenly, it all came tumbling out. "I don't know for sure, but... You know I said the stone with a hole in it was a gift? Well, they gave it to me because the tea leaves said I was in danger, but I beat the other mother back in Ashland and I thought it was over, but then I found her doll in Sam's room, but I didn't know for sure and I didn't think anybody would believe me -"
"Whoa, what?" Danny held up both hands in the universal gesture for 'slow down'. "Try starting from the beginning."
Coraline took a deep breath, and forced herself to talk a little more slowly. "Back in our apartment in Ashland, I found this little door in the wall that went to this...other world. Like real life, only everything was so much better. But it was all a trap, and I had to beat my – the other mother to get away and get my real parents back. I didn't kill her, though, and now I think she's back and she's going after Sam. She spies on people with these dolls that look like them -"
"Sam does?"
"No! The other mother. But there was a doll like that in Sam's room when we went over to watch movies, and...well, I don't think the other mother's forgotten that I beat her. And she loves games. And she's a sore loser." Coraline stared forward defiantly, challenging them to laugh. "I know it's a crazy story -"
"She says to the half-ghost kid," Tucker deadpanned.
"Then Sam is in trouble." Danny got to his feet, and a ring of brilliant white light appeared around his waist, splitting into two and sweeping over him. Once Coraline managed to blink away the afterimages, Danny had changed.
"I'll go check out the Skulk and Lurk. You two stay here in case she comes by." The echo in his voice, along with the faint glow that outlined him, made more of a difference than the hair and the eyes or even the jumpsuit, Coraline decided. She wasn't sure that, if she'd seen him on the street, she'd have recognised him as Danny. There was something fundamentally unremarkable about Danny Fenton, and there was nothing unremarkable at all about the ghost in front of her.
"Why do we have to stay here?" Tucker complained. "It's your house."
"Yeah, but can you fly at a hundred and fourteen miles an hour?"
Tucker crossed his arms. "Fine. Just get back fast. I don't know how long I can cover for you if your sister starts asking questions."
"Gotcha." And without any warning, Danny shot straight up into the air and through the ceiling.
Coraline realised her mouth was hanging open, and carefully shut it.
Tucker finally looked over at her. "Hey, you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that," Coraline answered, with what was probably a very weak smile. It was one thing to have somebody tell you they were half-ghost, and another thing to see it for yourself.
"But seriously. You're not too freaked, are you?"
"He says to the girl who fights monsters," Coraline retorted, earning a smile from Tucker. And then, before she really had time to think about it and make herself too nervous, she asked, "Do you really think I'm cute?"
Tucker looked like he'd just been caught with his hands in the cookie jar. "What?"
"You said you didn't spend time talking to cute girls about Danny. You...weren't talking about me, were you." Coraline was sure she was blushing.
"No! I mean yes! I mean – wait, you want me to think you're cute?" By the way his eyes widened, Coraline could tell it wasn't intended as a jab at her.
Coraline was very glad there wasn't a mirror anywhere nearby, because she knew she had to be as red as her mother's least-favourite sweater. "No! Well, maybe." She couldn't explain why she was so flustered, but she was sure she didn't want to be. Why did boys have to make everything complicated? "Ugh, forget it."
"No way!" Tucker was grinning like a really good metaphor. "You want me to think that you're cute! So...d'you wanna go to a movie sometime?"
"Don't you think we have bigger things to worry about right now?"
"Well, it doesn't have to be a movie. We could grab a coffee."
"You drink coffee?"
"Oh, sure! I drink like five cups a day." Coraline raised an eyebrow, and Tucker deflated slightly. "Okay, not really. But the ladies like a sophisticated man."
"Uh, which ladies are these?"
Tucker straightened up. "You can laugh, but I've done my research. I pay attention to what girls like. So. You. Me. Movie?"
Coraline couldn't think of anything to say to that, so she settled for a kind of one-shoulder shrug. "Stranger things have happened. So…you and Valerie Grey?" she asked, hoping to change the subject. "I thought she stood you up for that dance."
Tucker glanced longingly over at his computer, as if wishing he could escape into the virtual world, and then suddenly spun back to Coraline with a megawatt smile. "Hey, I just had a great idea. Do you play Doomed?"