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Maddie Fenton does not snoop through her kids’ things. She doesn’t. She’s learned well enough from her own studies of psychology that it’s detrimental to children to deprive them of privacy, and so she never did. Her childrens’ doors stayed firmly fixed on their hinges, their texts unread. Jazz left her journal sitting daintily on the edge of her desk for years, and Maddie never once opened it. Jazz has nothing to fear from her—nor anything to hide, with how much she shares unprompted.
But Danny isn’t like Jazz. He’s squirrely lately, more now as his college years drag on than he used to be. He comes home and ducks out the front door so quickly it’s like he was never there in the first place. Often she catches him peering at the ceiling, at nothing in particular, as if he expects to be surveilled from every angle and has something to fear from the possibility.
And so when he leaves his phone unlocked for just a second too long in his rush out the door, Maddie can’t help herself. She picks it up, and she looks.
The camera roll opens to a video: a wide shot of the night sky over Amity Park, from one of its tallest buildings. The focus shakes, and a finger obscures the lens briefly, and then with a click, everything goes still. The stars come into focus, then the edge of the rooftop and the wide expanse of the street below.
“C’mon, Fruit Loop, don’t chicken out on me now.” It’s Danny’s voice behind the camera, lighter than Maddie has heard it in a long time, filled with mirth and perhaps the faintest slur of alcohol. (And what a thing that is to get used to, to her baby being old enough to drink.)
Another voice pipes up, this one slightly more distant. “Daniel, this is dangerous, thrill-seeking foolishness, and I need no part of it,” it says. It’s a low, masculine voice, and Maddie furrows her brow as she takes it in. It’s familiar, and yet she cannot place it, not when the words are so quickly gone, replaced by Danny’s teasing protest.
“Oh, so you’ll dissect yourself, but you won’t do a little cliff-diving,” he says, and Maddie’s chest tightens with the sudden, terrifying sense of what ‘cliff-diving’ might mean.
“The dissection came with scientific benefits,” the voice huffs, sounding affronted.
“So will this.” There’s a pause, a faint smacking sound, and then a laugh. “It’ll prove—scientifically—if you’re a chicken.”
Another indignant huff from the familiar stranger. “Fine. Whoever transforms first—”
“I know what the bet is, Fruit Loop,” Danny says. There’s a playful cockiness in his voice, and that nickname again; Maddie swears she’s heard it before, but like the voice itself, the memory slips just out of her grasp. And then everything goes quiet, for a very long moment, before two figures rush into frame: Danny, and Vlad Masters, the familiar voice behind the camera—Maddie can’t believe she didn’t realize sooner that it was him.
They leap off the edge of the roof together.
Maddie can’t tell if it’s a trick of the video or her eyes, but they seem to hang in the air, breathless, Danny’s laughter echoing from the speakers, before they plunge, but it’s only a second before black rings form around Vlad’s waist, traveling up his body and—
In an instant, Vlad Masters is gone, and in his place is the Wisconsin Ghost, coming to a sudden halt in the air. He floats back up to the rooftop and lowers himself onto it, clutching his chest as he catches his breath, breath his ghostly body does not need but which he takes nevertheless. It falls into pace with Maddie’s own, their chests heaving in unison, his with adrenaline and hers with shock. Vlad Masters. Vlad Masters is the Wisconsin Ghost, and Danny…
Danny, her boy, is laughing, still plummeting, the ground rushing up quickly toward him. He throws his arms out wide as he falls for long, agonizing seconds, until white rings surround him and he, too, is changing. Until it’s Phantom who joins the Wisconsin Ghost on the roof, Phantom who giggles and whispers something in his ear, Phantom who kisses him like he's done it a thousand times before and memorized the shape of his lips.
And it’s Phantom who grins at the camera—when the video ends, the image is frozen on his face.
Still breathing hard, Maddie sets the phone down.