Desiree wasn't leaving her alone. The ghost had showed up a week ago, parking herself at all hours between a billboard advertising "Amity Park's Flea Market," and Dani was furious. Every time she visited a place, she gravitated towards the markets and crowds, no one stopped to question a curious little girl just around to browse; and when their pockets loosened or souvenirs went missing from stalls, no one suspected her.
But Desiree was making enjoying her usual haunt impossible. Apparently the ghost-genie adored markets just as much as Dani did and yet, wasn't letting her steal in peace. Whatever she stole would be gone the next day, and Desiree always looked too pleased with herself.
"It's wrong to steal child," she'd always say.
Dani would swipe a new toy, like an action figure of a popular superhero, or fancy makeup to practice mimicking the girls she saw in magazines – and while she was playing around, Desiree would interrupt her business, turning a fun day weird and unbearable like the kooky step-mother from Cinderella, a women obsessed with chores and bitterness.
Dani was currently squatting in one of Amity's many unsold houses. Since ghosts moved into the city, numerous residents had chosen to move elsewhere, which suited Dani just fine. It left her a new house to explore and to make a new one her own every night if she chose.
But the house she was in at the moment suited her best. It was empty of all furniture, of course, save for a couch she'd stolen once-upon-a-time from Amity's Flea Market just across the street; which is precisely why Desiree was so terrible. The genie's long decorated tail was spread across every inch of the expensive leather couch, with a sour glare settled on Dani as she daintily ate from a bowl of tiny red grapes with long polished nails, her numerous pieces of jewelry obnoxiously clinked together like a cat collar full of bells.
And so Dani was left to stew on the floor.
"Why do you have to take my food? There's a hot dog stall right outside the window!"
Desiree said not a word, humming, examining her fingernails for any flaws, and then ate another handful of grapes.
'Stupid ghost, stealing my grapes,' thought Dani. 'She doesn't even need to eat, dumb bitch.'
Dani was finding herself cussing frequently in her head. It was impossible not too, she was just so so angry, and had no one else to talk to – Desiree didn't count. She just wanted to be alone, to work on her projects in comforting silence, but the ghost just liked breathing down her neck like a touchy freak.
"Perhaps if you made a wish, silly Dani, then I'd go away." Sometimes Desiree would outstretch a hand, to cup Dani's chin or to pinch her cheeks, so the girl reflexively covered her face – but the ghost hadn't moved. Dani licked her teeth, begging to punch something. The frustration building up inside evaporated any sign of wetness on the corner of her eyes - Dani wasn't the type to cry - she wasn't.
'Not a chance.'
She just wanted to be left alone.
To play in peace.
What made Desiree even worse is that the genie had figured out her name – how? She didn't know. It almost made her want a new name, to start over, to flee Amity for a new city, but she had so little already. Dani really really didn't want to start over. She was what, two years old, and had travelled the entire globe?
Safe to say, she was tired, and some stupid ghost wasn't going to take her home of Amity away from her. She adored her couch, and fresh foods like grapes, because she picked all her possessions herself, with no one's help. Not every kid could say that, Dani was sure – the idea of being surrounded by her chosen things made her feel special, light, and happy – complete. Traveling as a nomad didn't allow such luxuries, and she was determined to cultivate a space of her own.
To have a home.
But the idea was taboo, brand-new and foreign. It rattled around in her head like a dirty word.
It was a desire she'd never express out loud; especially when a wish-granting genie insisted on lingering dangerously behind her.
There was always a prickling temptation, building like a precarious stack of crumbling bricks in the back of her mind. Perhaps Desiree would leave if she made a wish? But the girl knew enough from her travels to know it was a fool's errand. People always lied, took advantage when she pretended not to know their language – but the same people turned kind if she spoke the same way - pretended to be a local of the place. It was bitter, cruel, and endlessly frustrating. There was no reason ghosts couldn't be as two-faced as people – ghosts and people were only separated by death, not nature.
Desiree held a proud sweet smile mired in lipstick and color, but had searching eyes like a viper. The girl couldn't trust anyone alive, and especially - dead.
Dani's back was to Desiree and the distinctly empty room, trying to distract herself from her unwelcomed guest by carefully curating the innards of a dollhouse – one of the few things the genie hadn't taken away. If anyone was to ask her what she was doing, Dani would tell you she was "setting up a domestic diorama," and not "playing house," with a family of dolls she'd say was one of her most favored possessions, ever.
The dolls were made of corn husks, decorated with dried flowers and glitter – taken from a tourist stall down in Central America at the start of her long journey and she'd never let them go since – one of the few consistencies in her life. The family was a typical one, with four members: a father, mother, sister, and brother.
She loved them all, but only played with three. The brother was tucked away in her travel bag, aggressively forgotten, while the rest of the family lounged in each of their luxury rooms of the house. The brother was too painful to play with, he reminded Dani too much of the brothers she'd lost, so he couldn't be thrown away - the idea felt wrong, yet there was no guilt - she never knew her brothers as anything more than rivals.
But that was wrong.
But there was no guilt.
Dani moved her dolls to and fro as gently as she could.
The Mother had a sauna, and a cooler stuffed full of mushrooms and booze, because she was unhinged and cool like a biker she met at a bar once, and taught Summer school and lectured at a community college about " famous ethics and politics," whenever she felt like it. The father in comparison, Dani liked to think, was much more down to earth and reserved. Perhaps her actual father and creator "Vlad Masters," had left too strongly an impression on her, and so she reluctantly played with the figure in the manner Vlad typically behaved in the short amount of time she knew him; the corn-husk man thankfully resembled little of the actual "Vlad Masters," the eyes a kind, warm cocoa brown, his outfit a poncho with a bedazzled, feathered hoodie covered in glitter. The real Vlad would've hated, been offended at the mere comparison, and that knowledge made Dani delight in playing as the Father the most. While the Mother slept in her sauna, drunk on mushroom-wine, the Father would read books, run experiments involving paint chips and smelly lint, and the man would obsessively bird watch, from every single window, as if he was expecting a guest; but Dani had no other dolls to offer as company.
Then there was the little girl, who eerily resembled a bit too much like Dani, she had long black hair, shiny from playing in the rain. At first it had felt taboo to play with her, as if the little doll would secretly become a voodoo doll and Dani would be forced to do its own bidding…somehow, by her own hand – an instrument to inspire her to danger, to explore thoughts her intuition told her she shouldn't.
Dani's fears weren't always rational; she felt silly once, when she fitted the doll with a purple-yellow dress, only to replace it days later with a boring green skirt made of tied grass, because she was jealous the girl wore her favorite colors and Dani did not – she was stuck with a plain baby blue hoodie and red beanie.
The doll's dress had been buried in the ground, so no one could have it.
But despite her jealously, Dani didn't dare steal a purple-yellow dress, even when the opportunity struck her.
To do so would make her desire for "new clothes" real, and long ago she'd learned to squash those annoying little mental quirks deep down beneath her ribs.
Dani liked to stay lowkey, hidden, and unrecognizable. She was too scared to wear what she wanted, bright things that sparkled, glittered, and with lots of ribbons, and instead reasoned that such desire didn't matter anyhow – she traveled most places as a ghost, a white and black silver-blur against either a sunny or midnight sky.
Her clothes didn't matter. She always lived as a ghost. It didn't matter. So many things just didn't matter – as a ghost.
Her favorite pastime was rationalizing things away, if only to have something besides "wants, needs, and desires," spooling like endless threads, clouding her head.
And so to have a conversation which had an end, she cut off her heart from her head – as best as a little girl could, to cull the conflicting feelings infecting her.
It was safer to feel nothing at all, to have a hollowness that could be held and filled with anything in the world she imagined. It was safer to NOT have her heart drowned by confusing joy, terror, loss, and dangerous desire for every new thing she saw on her travels – to leave her heart OPEN to the wonders she saw was paramount to suicide. It was too much to learn at once – it was a madness that would only drown her.
She was only two years of age, but she felt eighty, ancient and sour, a forgotten observer of old when she watched people of all shapes and sizes live their lives; blissfully unaware of the envy they instilled in a lonely little girl.
Dani still liked purple and yellow, the absence of feeling didn't make the truth unknown, forgotten. Still, green was boring in comparison, reminding her of the stale, endless landscapes of grass and trees she'd have to look at throughout her travels. Perhaps on foot, a forest and meadow were delightful, from the air, the green was painfully shallow. Too many times she'd been tempted…to start a fire.
Just a small one, just one tree, just one bush and a pile of twigs.
Anything to see something other than a great green, to see a tree disintegrate, die, cracking into a thousand stinging shards of charcoal.
Was that how it felt, to take a life?
Just a small change, was what Dani needed.
The smell of smoke.
The taste of cinders.
A tree dying beneath her fingertips, to scratch a desperate difference into the landscape, upon the Earth to make it her's.
But there was nothing green to burn in her house, save for the doll of the girl Dani coveted, cradled in her trembling, white gloved hands.
"What's that you carry, Dani?" Desiree was leafing through a beauty magazine, not looking up when she talked. "You seem to love it a lot."
Dani clenched her hands together. Now would be the time she'd cry, silently as her feelings would always inevitably overwhelmed her.
But she wasn't alone to cry privately, and was too prideful, strong , to dare cry in front of an enemy – her unwelcomed guest, Desiree.
To "never show weakness," was a lesson she'd never forgotten from her estranged-father, Vlad.
She watched numbly as her beloved doll sparked into a calm fire from its hideously green grass-skirt, strangled mercilessly in the hotplate of her hands. Dani was too overwhelmed to talk, her throat tight with sick, choking down the regret she'd always deny. Hopefully, Desiree saw that she'd been mistaken in her observations.
Today, she was looking at dolls, in a toy shop located in the expensive, touristy part of town. Dani never lingered long, her tired senses lulled too strongly by the siren's call of freshly ground coffee. There was a cafe right next door and Dani felt drool puddle in her mouth. When was the last time she'd eaten?
She'd love nothing more than a latte to start the day, but a coffee drink was decisively harder to steal than toys. It involved a good deal of energy, as Dani would have to posses the unfortunate barista making drinks, and to make her desired coffee herself – and she wasn't any good at making anything fancy from the menu. Sometimes she stole the drinks before a customer picked it up, but always felt guilty consuming a drink not made specifically for her…it was a silly thing, she thought, but the coffee she stole always tasted wrong.
Dani looked forlornly at the aisle of toys, unsatisfied with what was on offer, as it was the same products littering every other store in Amity.
Tacky green "ghost-souvenirs," stole every section of space on the selves, and if she didn't already know she hated the color green, she would've known then. She ceased her browsing when she noticed "Danny Phantom," merchandise flooding a corner, knickknacks of all kinds resembled the black and white of her cousin's specter, and it made her sick to see him.
Danny had always been kind to her, true, but she didn't like him – didn't trust him.
Was that wrong?
He was family.
But so was Vlad.
And she openly hated him.
But with Danny the "hate," was more delicate, tempered, and Dani was scared to let it surface.
Danny could never know…
He would destroy her.
Dani looked over at photo prints being sold by Amity News: Phantom was depicted in various ways beating back his infamous enemies, the most notable one to catch Dani's eye being a rockstar ghost named Ember getting her face smashed through with her own guitar as Danny looked down with a triumphant grin.
There was no empathy for Ember's ecto-bloodied teeth, her face an agonized expression as she looked over the shattered remains of her beloved guitar – Danny's eyes were cold, malicious and calculating, not heroic like the store advertised.
It was just paranoia, she told herself, that she was feeling – but that knowledge didn't stop her from imagining that she could end up like Ember, bleeding green onto asphalt, facing down Danny's stoic rage with no one's help.
It was terrible.
It was terrible how close it felt to reality.
How Danny could actually do that to her, if he wanted.
Like he did with her brothers.
Like he had done.
They were gone.
And she could be too, if she got on Danny's bad side.
Dani didn't feel like stealing a toy that day.
She didn't need one.
Amity's most popular coffee shop never disappointed her - but she had yet to steal a drink that would truly satisfy her, despite visiting everyday since she arrived to Amity a few months ago.
A crispy and fluffy marshmallow ghost grew sticky beneath her hands, the rich pastry impossible to eat without a drink and Dani regretted stealing it, but she had to finish it. She wasn't about to let food go to waste, even if it was bad for her teeth.
Currently invisible, she watched from the ceiling how the crowded cafe endlessly flowed with morning patrons desperate for their daily caffeine ration; so imagine her surprise when a women looked up, staring right through her and into her eyes, as if she could see her…
No.
Impossible.
But the women had a crooked and knowing smile as she waved her hand, gesturing with a flick of her wrist for Dani to come down.
Choking on the last bit of marshmallow, Dani couldn't help but indulge her curiosity.
Was this women a witch? Knew magic to see her? Who was she?
Dani had to know. Only a fleeting part of her was worried about it being a trap, having grown too jaded from her wealth of travels to care beyond her immediate needs besides food and water. The women seemed to be "privy to her thoughts," and sat at a table, offering a wink as she pulled a chair besides her.
A moment later, and Dani was by her side, looking for all accounts a normal, living and breathing little girl dressed in a red beanie and blue hoodie.
"Who are you?" she asked.
The women laughed and held out a hand, showing off a glittering ring on each finger.
'Wait a minute…those look familiar,' and then she made a startling conclusion.
"Desiree!" Dani sprung off from her seat as if burned. She took a fighting stance, her footing kept sturdy, her fists and arms braced for impact – Desiree merely smiled. "No need to make a scene child."
Then Dani noticed the cafe patrons had stopped in their coffee consumption and conversations. The sticky remnants of marshmallow tingled on her skin, and while it was impossible for the cafe staff to realize she'd been the one burglarizing all of their pastries, the chance was never zero. Slowly, Dani sat down and the cafe resumed activity. Desiree smiled dangerously, and Dani concluded that the women was not above "ratting her out," and then she'd lose one of the few places in the city she adored.
"What are you doing here?" She hissed.
"I could ask the same to you, child."
Dani, though well-traveled, had experienced people only through observation and rarely conversation. The same went with ghosts and Dani was out of her element and she squirmed in her seat.
"I've watched you for weeks, yet you've traveled not much further past the market-stalls and this splendid, tasteful establishment." Desiree paused, taking a sip of thick foam from a huge ceramic bowl, a savory cookie was dunked and clenched between her teeth.
Dani just noticed that the ghost had somehow acquired a massive cup of coffee. She didn't know the cafe sold coffee in such huge quantities and she leaned forward, overcome with envy.
"Dani, would you like to join me for coffee?"
Dani scoffed, turning around to look at the cafe counter, the line of patrons deliciously long.
"I don't have any money."
"I invited you child, of course I am to pay. I'll get you your heart's desire."
Crossing her arms, she rolled her eyes. "How dumb do you think I am Desiree? I'm not going to wi-" Dani cut off her words midsentence, not trusting herself to talk.
'I'm not dumb enough to wish for a cup of coffee.' The word "wish," was mentally said like a dirty word.
Wordlessly, Desiree slid a crisp fifty dollar bill across the table. Dani gingerly picked it up, turning it over, not believing it was real and it'd be just like Desiree to give her a counterfeit bill to get her in trouble. She held it up to the light, and the money looked normal.
"What's the catch?"
Desiree smiled, taking another sip of coffee. "I simply ask for your company dear, that you stay to keep me company and we talk." She gestured discreetly to the other tables, "People enjoy coffee best with others, correct?" Dani looked at the other tables, reluctantly admitting the ghost was right. Not one person was drinking coffee alone.
"And while you are up there, please get me another latte, extra foam. Then use the rest of the money as you see fit."
"Alright, I will."
Dani got in line, looking at Desiree from the corner of her eye. It would take a while to order, with the line so long, but she smiled as that meant she had extra time to think of what to get – something with whipped cream for sure.