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Danny Fenton has been irreversibly damaged. At least, that’s what it felt like when he lay in his bed at night and took in the silence of his sleeping home. Had the accident that had taken his life taken more from him? What more could be taken than his life? What was missing from his half torn heart that he felt the absence so deeply? As he lay in his bed pondering these questions he gained no relief of an answer, just the quiet of a home he no longer felt a part of fully. In these times he’s not even sure he’s really here, his family will see him when they wake- won’t they? They will look on him and see Danny, certainly. But is that who he is anymore? This thing in his chest that tells him he has been changed too deeply tells him in insidious whispers that he is no longer their son. When the sun rises and they get up to prepare breakfast, they look for their little boy. Their little human boy. But you don’t think that’s what you are anymore.
You think these thoughts might be made clearer in your ghost form, the stark difference between the two made all the clearer by direct comparison. And so in a flash of light you pray won’t wake your family suddenly there is a ghost. As you slide between human and other, that thing you have lost is felt more deeply. Ghosts, you are realizing, are creatures of melancholy. You die with regrets and you become this, a manifestation of mourning. You float a little over the bed as you think of what it is that you could be missing? You died very young, perhaps it is the wasted opportunities you could have had. But, your human half ages and you are going through that part of your life with all the changes a regular human body would get and so you throw that hypothesis away. But this longing you feel hasn’t gone away ever since poor little Daniel James Fenton died. Perhaps, what you are missing is something simpler than wasted opportunity.
Before you can ponder too deeply, you hear rustling downstairs and change back before they can realize what you’ve become. The transformation from ghost to human eases the strain of this inexplicable emotion, but does not erase it completely. You go through the motions, getting ready for school and brushing your teeth. You head down the stairs and are greeted by your mother drinking coffee at the kitchen table. She barely looks up as you pass to the front door and the wretched heart in your traitorous chest wants nothing more than for her to look up and see. It wants her to look at you and know that you have died. As the ache sets in, you realize that what you're missing is recognition. Recognition that you have changed and that you don’t think you can ever be the same again. This is what sits on your heart so deeply as to crush you under the weight. The idea that your mother never looked at you hard enough to discern that you were not her child anymore, but something other that was haunting his life. As you head out the door, you think that this will never change.