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Ever since the accident, Danny's been weird.
Of course, Sam knows that the phasing and invisibility and flying are not normal, but that's not what she means.
No, she means the complete silence of his footsteps, the way he sometimes just stops breathing. She means his eyes that sometimes glow green and the chill that follows him everywhere.
God, those eyes .
The green, so unnatural it should never be near any human. The way it overpowers the blue of his iris, the pupil and the sclera, until they're just pools of strange, abnormal green.
He'd gotten angry, once, more than usual. His eyes had become pits of emerald, and his hair had started floating, the colour slowly bleeding out until it was a glowing ethereal white.
And a part of Sam had recoiled, even as she grabbed his hand to calm him down. A part of her wanted to hide, even as Tucker came in with some snacks and passed one to Danny as if everything was normal. But Sam could see the tightness of his shoulders, the strain in his smile.
It wasn't fair, Sam knew it. Danny was still their friend, no matter how Other he was now. He was still their friend, despite the aura of death he occasionally radiated.
And that was the other thing. Danny had died. They didn't talk about it, but they knew . Danny had entered that portal alive, and he had come out something else .
He'd come out with white hair and green eyes and ever since he had been in what Sam thought to be a sort of limbo, because Danny had died and then came back to life fundamentally different.
They knew, but they didn't talk about it.
—
Tucker and Danny had been friends for as long as they could remember.
(But that wasn't really true now, not really, because one day Danny had woken up and told them he remembered seeing the creation of the sun and its whole life until its inevitable supernova. Danny had seemed disturbed but amazed, and Tucker had just known he was telling the truth.)
Tucker and Danny had been friends for as long as Tucker could remember.
It was a simple fact of the universe. Grass is green, the sky is blue, and Danny and Tucker are friends.
They would do everything together, from playing video games to giving the other the cold because they would not stay apart. They played in the playground when they were little, tried new food that got added to Nasty Burger's menu, played new video games, or just stood in silence doing nothing because even that was a good time.
In short, they did everything together.
Or they used to, until Danny walked into the portal and came out a living, breathing walking contradiction.
Died , Tucker's brain said. Danny died .
They'd heard his scream, down in the basement, the moment the green portal had turned on. They'd heard as it rose and rose in volume before tapering off, and then as it started again. They'd frozen on the spot, staring with horror at the portal. They'd stared as slowly, Danny crawled out, now wearing a differently coloured hazmat suit. They'd watched, frozen, as he crawled out with green eyes and floating white hair.
And then Danny collapsed, unmoving, and whatever had been keeping them frozen to the spot broke like a spell.
They'd rushed to him, tried to wake him up, but he wouldn't even twitch. He just laid there, limp and unmoving, and Tucker had feared the worst.
And then, with a jolt and a gasp, Danny had shot up, eyes blazing.
Ever since then, everything has been different.
Now, Danny can transform from a human to a ghost at will. Now, Danny fights ghosts who come through to destroy, and they help him. Now, Tucker has to watch as his best friend is thrown into walls and shot at by his own parents . Now, Tucker and Sam patch him up and pretend the blood is red instead of green. They had to learn about all kinds of wounds, learn how to do stitches with the help of the internet and any books they could get their hands on.
Now, Tucker and Sam have seen more bleeding, gaping wounds than they have ever wanted to.
If Danny didn't have insane self-healing, he would have been fully dead by now, because no human could survive a hole in their ribcage like Danny had.
(It had been horrific, hearing the bones creak and shift as they went back into place, seeing the skin slowly grow back to cover the hole that was too big for them to stitch back together. They had sat and flinched at every pop of bone as Danny bled green all over Sam's bathtub.)
But no matter how much had changed, Danny was still their friend. They still played Doom together, Tucker and him still got each other sick, and if Tucker had to stitch him back together every other day to keep him some semblance of alive?
Then he would do it, as many times as he needed to.
—
There is something wrong with Danny Fenton.
That's something Casper High seems to agree on. The kid is just plain creepy.
He'd been just some weirdo, last year, a weird kid from a weirder family, but that had been it.
Now, though…
Since the second month of the school year, Danny Fenton had been the talk of the student body.
It all started with Rachel Brown, who had been paired with him for that chemistry class.
"I swear, he didn't let go of that beaker when it fell," she whispered to her friend.
"Come on, Rachel," Star laughed. "It couldn't have fallen if he was still holding it."
"Yeah, but you weren't there! I saw it , clear as day! It just… slipped through his hand. He didn't even loosen his grip!"
Star had laughed and brushed it off, but gossip was gossip and soon enough most of the students knew about the Fenton kid and the beaker that slipped right through his hand.
Usually, this kind of gossip, small and unimportant, would have died within two days. It would've, if it weren't for Danny Fenton's continued accidents with beakers.
He never dropped a beaker once last year, a student who shared chemistry class with the Fenton kid in middle school said.
He was super careful, knew exactly how to handle the equipment, another shared.
Still, Danny Fenton's mysterious new clumsiness could only be interesting for so long. So, the rumours died down again, and no one thought about him.
Until, that is, the school had a blackout a couple days later.
Because after the blackout, every student in Mr. Lancer's freshman English class was convinced that, for just a moment, Danny Fenton's eyes had glowed green.
And this wasn't a rumour started by just one girl. This time, not only was the whole class convinced, some of those students were a couple of the most popular kids in the school.
The only people who denied this occurrence were Tucker Foley and Sam Manson. Fenton's best friends.
They're hiding something , a girl whispered to her cousin.
Just his best friends, huh? Definitely covering up something, a boy muttered to his friend in the changing rooms.
Aren’t his parents mad scientists or something? Star asked Paulina, and suddenly the rumours became even bigger.
Tests, experiments, accidents, chemicals, the words floated through the halls, assumptions upon assumptions, trying to dig up a story with minimal knowledge.
The rumours grew and grew, snaking their way through the building, taking root in the windows and tiles. They grew with every strange thing that happened around Danny Fenton. They grew with his excessive requests to go to the bathroom, with every nap he took in class, with every time he would, for just a second, flicker out of everyone’s eyesight. It was weird, creepy, and the only interesting thing happening in this school. Danny Fenton was the mystery that kept on giving, and Casper High’s student body was perfectly willing to speculate on it.
And then-
And then, everybody found out that ghosts were real, and the Fenton parents maybe weren't so crazy after all.
—
Have you noticed? A girl asked her friends.
Fenton always excuses himself right before a ghost attack, a freshman shared with the higher classes.
People talk and talk and talk. They whisper and the whispers sprout in the hallways, they gossip and the gossip spreads like wildfire, they assume and assumptions take root in their minds.
They talk and talk and talk until-
Do you remember when-
he would sometimes disappear for just a moment-
his eyes would glow green-
things would slip through his fingers-
just-
like-
a ghost.
—
The ghost boy, with white hair and green eyes, is named Phantom.
The ghost boy, a lanky teenager in a hazmat suit, is called Phantom.
Do you see it? Someone asks
His name, his appearance, someone points out
How has no one else realised it yet?
The Fenton boy leaves, and Phantom comes. The Fenton boy is constantly tired, and Phantom is often seen fighting off ghosts at night. Fenton and Phantom, messy hair and lanky limbs and green, green, eyes.
Rumours bloom around the school, about soundless footsteps and a flickering appearance. Guesses about what and how and why become saplings in door frames and lockers.
But, though the student body of Casper High is always eager to speculate, they see Phantom flee from the Fenton parents, they see Phantom resist capture from the GIW, and they let this knowledge stay in gossip, their realisations hidden in the whispers that float through their halls.
And when they walk past an alleyway, only to see a flash of light and Danny Fenton stumble out? Then that will be just another whisper to join the ones in the walls.