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In a small-ish town like Amity Park, and an even smaller school like Casper High, word got around that year, carried in undertones, about The Time That Fenton Kid Ran Away.
If it was going to be anybody, the mutters said, it was going to be him. His parents are absolutely insane. Did you see them in that souped-up RV? Screaming their heads off?
Jazz loses her mind a little more than her parents that week, and that’s saying a lot, because her parents were all-out about it. They were sure he hadn’t run away, but had, instead, been kidnapped by ghosts. (Oh, if only they knew.) Her parents’ methods are a real source of friction, what with the infuriating fixation on ghosts (even though yes fine, they’re real).
But not Jazz. She knew Danny had left on his own. She’d seen the signs; his decreasing grades and spotty attendance. The limps. The painkillers making a slowly but steady disappearing act every time she opened the medicine cabinet.
And she should have done more when she saw those cries for help. More than asking him leading questions and sighing at the half-hearted answers. She should have done more. So even though it’s too little too late, she does more. The practical things; reporting him missing, putting up fliers, speaking to every single one of his teachers at Casper, desperately trying to track down a friend, one friend, any friend, who he might’ve told what he was doing. Where he was going. Why.
But there’s no one.
She’s the one who eventually finds him, or so she says; really, he brought himself home. She just noticed the light on again under his bedroom door and nudged it open to see him there, hair wild, the circles underlining his eyes so boldly you could practically see his skull, and a fading bruise across his jaw like it had been slapped there. But whole. He’d startled like a rabbit and she’d frozen like a deer. He’d winced when she wrapped him a crushing hug worthy of a badge from their dad. He’d smelled smokey and sweaty, the worst of the scent trapped in his unkempt hair. Jazz hadn’t cared.
He didn’t tell her anything. He didn’t tell their parents anything. He told the police the bare minimum.
Why did you run away? Where did you go? Who did you go with?
Shrug. Shrug. Shrug.
But he looked miserable, and mostly, like he wanted the whole thing to be forgotten.
A year and some change later, it’s not been forgotten. People still murmur about The Time That Fenton Kid Ran Away, and Sam Manson tells him he’s got gourds of steel for actually doing it.
The number of times I’ve thought about just leaving, she sighs, making a dramatic slump across Tucker, who accepts this behaviour for what it is. Just up and do it. Sometimes I still wish I could.
But Danny doesn’t, smiling, feet and ankles tangled with theirs and a braincandy movie bright in the background.
He may be a ghost, but he’s got friends worth staying for.