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Danny Fenton has always been a freak.
He was the kid with the weird ghost-obsessed parents. The one who was too lazy, too eager, too different. Who chattered about space if given the chance and with friends just as freaky as him. Dash’s favorite punching bag.
He had a weak demeanor but somewhat good grades. Still, no one really paid too much attention to him. He was on the bottom of the social ladder for a reason after all.
Then he vanished. Didn’t show up for school day after day.
By the end of the first week some people had noticed and rumors floated about.
He got transferred to another school.
He ended up sick of his weirdo family and ditched.
He died.
He joined a gang.
His parents finally did something to him.
On and on and on. Tons of rumors and theories about why Fenton was missing. But no one was curious enough to actually ask the people who would have the correct information. The teachers, his freaky friends and his busybody of a sister.
Fenton came back one month after he went missing.
He looked the same as he always did. He didn’t seem sick or scarred. He wasn’t suddenly braver or more popular or any different from before. This made the most nosy of the students curious. Why had he been gone then?
Not even Star and Mia could find out what had happened, the self-appointed queens of gossip.
Everyone was silent on the matter.
It would take months for anyone to know what had happened that time Danny Fenton skipped school for a month straight. And by then, it wouldn’t matter. Not really.
Danny Fenton was the same meek freak he’s always been though.
Except he really wasn’t.
He got incredibly clumsy for one. A lot of people learned that every fragile thing he handled was bound to get broken eventually.
He got banned in Science, Art and got kicked out of the Astronomy club.
Sarah swore when asked, the moment Fenton had cried when he somehow broke the only telescope the club had, a freaky chill swept up the room.
No one really took it seriously.
He got even quieter. Only ever speaking up when Dash got into his business.
Mikey said his eyes glowed from time to time if Dash was too rough on Fenton.
It was just a trick of the light his friends told him.
Heightened nerves. Dropping everything in reach, even his clothes. Stress visibly piling up. The sudden, growing, distance between Fenton and his friends.
The little things would pile up in hindsight. Details that together, would’ve let anyone know the truth. If only they had looked closer. Cared a little more.
If only they knew the whole picture.
If only it hadn’t fallen on the wayside when ghosts turned out to be real. Something that used to exist only in fiction had become a threat to their lives.
Students on Casper High became withdrawn and nervous. No one remembered to gossip about Fenton’s weirdness for the longest time as the world changed around them.
Time went on.
The Fentons weren’t openly seen as freaks anymore. They were the only source of means to fight back against the ghosts. Of self defense.
The school implemented ghost drills and did many assemblies about what was ectoplasm, what to do and what not to do in a ghost attack, how to act when confronted with a ghost, etc.
Fenton Wrist Rays became commonplace, just like the lipstick lasers and the translators.
Amidst adapting and surviving, as they tried to maintain their head above the water…
Danny Phantom appeared.
No one knew what to make of another ghost fighting its own kind at first but dead or not, Phantom showed he was one of them. A teen.
Though he was dead, a lot of the students praised him and loved it when he appeared in their school.
They weren’t blind however, how Casper High was the only place that was in favor of Phantom.
That made them all the more determined to help out and fight back against the people who insisted that Phantom was a menace and just as evil and soulless as the rest of the ghosts.
It was when the town finally saw Phantom as the awesome ghost they knew him to be and Phantom’s rep was on the rise…
…that something else was withering away.
Those few that paid close attention would still remember the mystery that was Danny Fenton.
And were witnesses to those last few months until…
It wasn’t as important as before, with the ghosts and all, but Danny Fenton had somehow become a delinquent.
He slowly dropped in grades until everything he was handed was an F, said Jace.
He rarely did his homework and slept in class all the time, said Sasha.
He was alone all the time now, said Mikey. They all became silent for a moment.
Everyone knew how Fenton and his friends had a falling out. Manson had yelled and raged in the hallway one day, while Foley held her back. Fenton hadn’t said a thing the entire time.
No one knew what the yelling was about but they hadn’t been seen talking since.
He was perpetually tired, said Star.
Like there was no life in his eyes.
He seemed to always have bandages, said Kwan the one time he joined in. Probably hiding injuries or something.
Several others confirmed it.
Scars on his arms, his legs, and everywhere visible anytime Fenton got out of P.E
Until Fenton wised up and they never saw him in the showers again, that is.
Just once, Wes had seen blood on Fenton’s clothes. But it had just been ectoplasm the next time he saw Fenton even though Wes swore it was red.
The evidence piled up and all six students wondered what was going on.
Just a week before it happened Dash showed up, having been dragged in by Kwan.
In a rare display of jitters, Dash didn’t look at any of them in the eye as he said.
Danny was always cold to the touch these days. He had reacted less and less to whatever Dash had said that day and never fought back anymore any time Dash forcefully grabbed him.
Danny wasn’t the freak from before high school but he wasn’t the clumsy nervous guy he was after missing a month either.
He was like a shell of himself.
Not a ghost. Not with actual ghosts being seen every day now.
Still…
Just one week later, Danny went missing again.
Only this time, he was never found nor he showed up in school again.
Rarely anyone connected it with Phantom’s disappearance two days later either.
They saw the Fentons and even Danny’s former friends look for him with a frantic energy, and at the same time the truth about the missing month became common knowledge.
Danny had been in an accident. He had gone into his parents’ lab and figured out how to turn on the ghost portal after it seemed like a failure.
How he spent the whole month in the hospital in a coma and with third degree burns all over his body that for some reason healed to be only visible under blacklight.
It was too late for the truth though.
What had happened to Danny Fenton? echoed in the minds of many for years to come.