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He should have known it was his first step to freedom when he dropped off the paperwork required to file for a voluntary disappearance at the Amity Park Police Department. As soon as the paper left his fingers, a weight left his shoulders he carried since he got the first rejection from college.
The rejection was clear why he was rejected: because of his parents.
For decades they were the clowns of academia at best, just not taken serious. And at worst? They were considered lunatics, if not an active danger to be around. The college that rejected him – his parent’s alma mater – belonged to the second extreme of the spectrum. They wrote having Fenton’s as alumni one time bad enough, they do not need to repeat it.
At first Danny didn’t think much of it. He didn’t really mean to attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He only did it because his parents annoyed him into it, even after telling them for weeks their alma mater does not offer a program he is into. But if his parents are one thing, it is stubborn.
But the more rejections came, it became clear this was an actual issue.
Then Danny wondered: If I am being rejected for being a Fenton, how in the Ghost Zone did Jazz accepted into Yale?
“Oh, that. As soon as I turned eighteen, I changed my legal surname to Spencer, mom’s maiden name.” Jazz answered when he asked her at their weekly video call (that definitively wasn’t a therapy session, regardless of how often Sam calls it such).
Danny blinked. “Seriously?”
“Well, a bit more.” she admitted, before counting. “I had to make it very clear in my application and motivational essay that I do not agree with our parent’s scientific philosophy. That I want to be a serious doctor of psychology. And I asked Vlad to bribe a few people for me.”
“Jazz!” Danny voiced, sounding as disappointed as Jazz when he did something stupid.
She held her hands up. “To my defense, a name change requires a public announcement of the change. Including a mention in the news letter for record keeping. I just had Vlad pull some strings that the noise around the announcement is on the lower and and that the announcement happens a bit away from Amity Park. Not that I care what Amity Park thinks of it, but I don’t want to deal with our parents when they discover I changed our surname. Even if it is mom’s surname.”
Danny sighed. “I can’t even be mad at you. Even if you asked Vlad. This is genius.”
“So, will you change your name, too?” Jazz wondered, “Vlad won’t say no for you. I had to watch his cat a few times before he agreed. But he constantly falls for when you pretend to bond with him.” She added, “Kinda pathetic.”
Danny admitted, “Maybe. But frankly? I won’t pick mom’s maiden name. I want something without past baggage.”
Jazz nod in agreement. “Something new, a clean slate. Slate. Daniel Slate sounds cool.”
“Makes me sound like a villain.” Danny murmured. “Vale, maybe? This actually sounds like a name.”
His sister just crossed her arms. “Seriously? Vale? Veil?”
“It has more going on than Slate!”
In the end, he set on Slate. Thus the papers he dropped off were sighed Daniel Slate. He ditched his middle name and with it, the baggage of their family. It was also the name on his newly issued SSN card, drivers license – he won’t miss the comments about him being unable to get a drivers license due to being a Fenton, as if he was physically unable to get it – and what not.
He applied to a college in Chicago with it – he didn’t apply anywhere in Chicago due to the rivalry between Chicago and Amity Park – and now he enrolls there as Daniel Slate.
It was the name he used when he got onto his Suzuki motorbike, driving one last time through Amity Park before coming onto the Highway, straight to Chicago. Daniel Slate.
The closer he came to his new home, or the further he got away from a loaded past, the better he felt. The more free he felt. Riding on his bike, without the baggage of Amity Park and his parents’ influence, it felt as if he was flying, dashing through the sky as Phantom.
But it wasn’t Phantom moving through Illinois to freedom, it was Daniel Slate. Just an Astrophysics student at the University of Chicago.