Behind Blue Eyes
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I don't own Danny Phantom, but man I wish I did.
The second half of chapter nine! This one takes place roughly the same time as 9.1. Read on, readers.
The ride back was just as quiet as the ride there, just a lot less tense. It was a dull, muted quiet rather than the crushing, inescapable quiet from before.
Tucker drove, traveling almost as fast as Jazz had on the way there. He was anxious but focused as his hands clenched and unclenched the steering wheel.
Sam sat beside him with her head back and her eyes closed. She took a deep breath every few minutes as if reestablishing her presence.
Star sat beside Sam. Her eyes wandered, unlike the other two. She looked around the inside of the speeder and outside the window. For what, she wasn't sure. It was just something for her eyes to do to keep her hands and brain occupied.
Mr. and Mrs. Fenton considered the Specter Speeder among one of their greatest inventions in terms of technological capability, Tucker says. It was impressive that it could provide safe passage to humans through the Ghost Zone for extended periods of time; it could fly over the vast nothingness and drive across the ghostly terrain if needed and it was armed to the teeth with weaponry to ward off any investigating specters. Without the speeder, a human would have a hard time navigating and traversing the infinite mass of swirly green.
It was a shame, then, that they hardly ever paid any attention to it. That's what Sam and Tucker said as they gave her a brief overview on most of the Fenton's inventions earlier in the week. For whatever reason, even though the speeder was designed to travel into the Ghost Zone, neither Jack nor Maddie had ever tested it for that. They barely tested it in the human world and were content to perform routine inspections from the outside. It had hardly been driven at all by the Fenton's and they even tended to forget about it since they continuously moved it to different spaces.
The speeder may have been Jack and Maddie's invention, but on the inside, it wasn't theirs. The color scheme screamed Fenton, but all the little touches inside said more. There was a port hooked up to the dashboard always, ready for Tucker to tap into with his PDA with familiar ease. The GPS had destinations only Danny, Sam, Tucker or Jazz would recognize; Skulker's Island, Vlad's Portal, Far Frozen, Clockwork's Tower.
Sam had full control of the glove box, clearly. There were lipsticks inside, both purple and black, and a variety of hair scrunchies. She was the only one prepared for most normal human emergencies too, so there were ChapSticks, mints, tictacs, nail filers and hand sanitizers inside. Along with smaller first aid kits to compliment the larger one in the back.
Jazz had books stashed everywhere, including under the seat of the speeder. In the back was her spare backpack, packed with things she'd need if she needed to run off and find Danny. Or with Danny. Her presence was simultaneously covering the least area but the most felt.
It was like some backwards version of a family car that had all the hallmarks of being broken in. If cars could fly and travel through dimensions. Her eyes wandered across the speeder again before continuing outside.
The doors that they passed by could've led anywhere and anywhen. They could've been home to any number of ghosts leading any number of different afterlives. They were all over. It was incredible to think about how there was an entire world that existed parallel to theirs. There were points when the number of doors Star could see was probably greater than the total population of Amity Park. It made the Ghost Zone feel just as vast as it probably was.
She couldn't help but begin to wonder about other ghosts as they passed by their homes. It reminded her of the same situation she was in just a few weeks ago; mindlessly passing by a world full of inhabitants while paying them no mind. She passed the doors just as she had once passed students in Casper High, though somehow, she felt like she had her eyes opened. She found herself paying closer attention to things than before.
It wasn't just about collecting and retaining information for herself or Paulina. It was in an effort to learn, maybe even understand things. Especially things she previously hadn't thought twice about.
Star was suddenly hit with a concern she felt the need to voice.
"What if Mr. and Mrs. Fenton are in the lab?" She asked. Both Tucker and Sam were startled at the suddenness of her voice.
"It's okay, we don't need to use the Fenton's Ghost Portal." Sam answered without opening her eyes or moving her head.
"Me and Danny made some… modifications to the speeder. If it's got enough energy, it can open its own portals. Since we're in the Zone, we can use it to charge the speeder and make our own portal home. The catch is its harder to make an entry portal, especially without Danny here to give it some juice." Tucker told her. "But Danny's better at aiming than I am, so the closer we are to the Fenton Portal the safer I feel about using it."
Again, Star couldn't help but be completely dumbfounded by the level of preparedness.
Nobody spoke again until they had taken a portal back to Earth and Star released a breath, she didn't quite know she was holding as if she were allowed to breathe again.
"We should spit up. Tuck, you should go to Danny's and grab the Ecto-converter. Drop me and Star off at my house and we'll grab some books and supplies." Sam suggested.
Tucker nodded and took a sharp turn towards Sam's house.
"I'll text you when I'm on my way back." Tucker promised quickly as he pulled down Sam's street.
"Don't get stuck talking with Danny's folks." Sam replied as she and Star exited the speeder.
"Don't get caught by yours." Tucker shot back, and then he was off.
Star had been to Sam's house twice in the past week, and Tucker's once. Usually, they preferred to hang out at Danny's, they said, despite the sometimes-looming sense of weapons hanging over their heads. Tucker's parents were more than welcoming, but they both went to sleep super early, and they always felt bad at the chance they disrupted Mr. and Mrs. Foley's sleep.
Sam's parents, though, were another story. Though her house was big enough that they could hide most of their recreational activities, her parents were far stricter than Tucker's or Danny's and much less accommodating of her guests. Sam said they never say eye-to-eye, and that them not liking her friends was simply an expression of that.
Danny and Tucker could've been anyone in the world, and they still wouldn't be allowed to stay later than 8pm.
It was an interesting contrast to Tucker's parents, who welcomed Danny and Sam provided they keep quiet and get permission from their own parents to be out past curfew.
And an even more interesting contrast to Danny's parents who they said teetered between constantly assuming Sam and Tucker were around somewhere and not knowing if anyone was home at all. It depended largely on what they were working on at the time and how devoted they were to it.
She was grateful for her own parents, as she had come to better understand lately. She could say a lot of things about them, but they would notice if she went missing for over a week.
"What are we grabbing?" Star asked as they tried to silently run to Sam's bedroom.
They made it uninterrupted, and Sam shut and locked the door behind them.
"If you could just grab some waters from the fridge and the box of crackers from my nightstand, that'd be good." Sam was busy ducking underneath her bed.
Maybe Star wasn't as grateful for her parents as she could be, she thought somewhat enviously as she opened the mini-fridge in Sam's room. She wished her parents would let her keep a fridge of her own in her bedroom. She didn't say anything, though, and just grabbed four water bottles.
"Oh, throw them in the bag that's on the chair." Sam instructed as she moved over to her closet.
Star dropped the bottles inside the backpack before swiping the crackers as well, tucking them into the front pocket. The backpack wasn't the fuzzy one she brought to school, Star realized. Instead, it was rough material and was navy green. Made for camping, maybe?
Probably yet another type of "go-bag", she thought. It was almost absurd how many stashes of various things they had hidden everywhere or ready to go at a moments notice. Though she supposed they had learned the hard way that it was better to be overprepared than underprepared, probably too often.
As Sam rummaged around in her closet, Star's eyes were drawn to nearly every aspect of the room. The room was very much Sam, the poor girl probably fought for her own space in her own house tooth and nail. The walls were deep purple rather than her more signature lilac, but it looked nice.
Her bedspread looked almost vampiric, though, with a white duvet cover on top of blood red sheets framed by black-stained wood. There was only a few posters scattered about: one of Scream, two of Alien vs. Predator and a signed poster of pop-star Ember McClain.
There were two desks, one for study and one for makeup. One had a computer at the back, the other a vanity. It seemed not even Samantha Manson was safe from the cliché 'girl has pictures of her friends on her mirror', as it was filled wish various snapshots of some combination of her, Danny, Tucker and Jazz. Though her other desk was much more in line with her overall image, down to the purple LED keyboard.
Still, as much as the room was overwhelmingly Sam's, Star was astute enough to pick out bits and pieces of Danny and Tucker scattered about.
Tucker's hat hung off the rolling chair Sam used at her desk, as if he had just stepped out to go to the bathroom rather than showing he hadn't been over for days. There was another adapter plugged into Sam's computer tower, sterling silver; a FentonWorks invention, no doubt. Whether it was Tucker's for the Ghost Files or Danny's for simple homework, she wouldn't pretend to know, but it sat plugged in as if it were being used now. Above it, there were notebooks filled with doodles clearly done by different people, and sticky notes littered the frame of the monitor. Some were keyboard shortcuts and reminders, but others were notes that had been passed or written between the three in class.
The pictures were strown around the mirror, very few had neither of her friends and somehow even less had someone else. There were a few with Sam alone, but only two with her parents. By her nightstand was a single framed photo, where Danny and Tucker stood with Sam and her parents on the day she received a reward from Habitat for Humanity.
She looked at the bed where Sam had dropped some objects to reach what she was looking for. In the pile of clothes, she could see garments of Danny and Tucker mixed in. A hoodie so obnoxiously yellow it had to be Tucker's, and two pairs of jeans that were so faded she doubted anyone but Danny could've gotten the color to wear off like that.
They were all so deeply intertwined in each other's lives. The thought almost made Star ache, like she was missing something that was never there. Her and Paulina had been close, nearly 'up each other's ass' close, but it was surface level. They spent a lot of time together, but they didn't leave things at each other's houses. They weren't prepared to share nearly anything other than school supplies and sometimes lipstick and tampons, let alone share closet space.
Even her more genuine connection with Kwan, their relationship was more about what it meant to the group than what they meant to each other. They got almost no alone time, no chance to let each other in to the degree that a real couple- that real friends should.
Danny, Sam and Tucker were friends, best friends. But they were each other's home as well.
Sam kicked her own closet door shut roughly, clearly annoyed, before she winced and remembered they were supposed to be quiet.
"Sorry, I was looking for this thing." She gestured with her hands full. "I knew we still had it somewhere, I think we'll need it."
In her hands was a small portable heater. It was grey rather than silver, so it was not a FentonWorks invention. Just an old portable heater that was small enough to throw into the backpack. Sam did just that, moving around the water bottles slightly, before dumping some books in as well from off the top of her desk.
"It's from a while ago, when Danny first got his powers. Before we knew what was going on and everything, his ghost sense would go off and he would get so cold he couldn't stand up. We used the heater a lot for the first few weeks, even though it was August." Sam reminisced out loud as she adjusted the items inside the bag. "Brought it back when his ice powers started developing and the same thing happened; he was walking around shivering for days before they manifested properly."
Star couldn't help but wonder how many things in here had so many small stories and memories attached.
"I'm gonna call my parents and tell them I'm sleeping out tonight." Star said.
She wouldn't say where; her family had no knowledge of anything that's happened the past few weeks. They were completely unaware of her changed social circle, and she couldn't risk having an entire conversation about it before she disappeared back into the Ghost Zone for however long.
God, what was she even doing?
Before she could think too hard about it, her mom answered the phone and Star put on her best excited voice to tell her about the sleepover. It wasn't Friday, so there was still school tomorrow, but Star reminded her mom that she had the car and could make it still.
Sam snorted in the background. Clearly, she had given up on the idea of school for the rest of the week hours ago.
As she'd hoped, her mother assumed she was with Paulina and told Star to say hello to her. It was easier this way for Star and felt less like she was lying.
"You didn't have to do that, y'know." Sam said after she hung up. "I know your worried, and we're glad you're here, but…" She trailed off just a bit. "You don't have to turn your whole life around, is all."
"It's okay. I don't think I liked where it was going anyway." Star gave her a sigh with a small smile.
Sam's phone beeped. Neither of them needed to look at it to find out that it was Tucker, and that the message said that he was now on his way back to Sam's.
Maybe, just maybe, Star was starting to build a home with them too.
Happy New Year guys! Back again with another installment of 'Star: Budding Psychologist'!
This one was a fun one to write, I wanted it done sooner but- no lie- I had to revise the entire idea of this several times. At first I wanted to break down more than just Sam's room, but I also don't want to write just 8k words describing Danny and Tucker's rooms too. I mean, I would LOVE it, but I thought it might get old for you guys, especially considering we're kind of in a hurry to get back to Frostbite.
Officially, this is what I'm calling Chapter 10. The last two, both being called Pain, are two parts of the same chapter, essentially. I'm telling you guys this because I believe the story will be over in just two or three more chapters! WOOO!
So, we will soon get the answers that we seek! Enjoy for now, and I'll see you next time!