Author's Note: I don't own Danny Phantom or any of its characters.
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Daniel Fenton took a deep breath and straightened his tie in the mirror. The face that looked back at him carried an uneven smile and a clear-skinned, baby-blue-eyed face that looked much younger than his 23 years. The face that was going to get him eaten alive by those kids.
He cleared his throat and stepped from the teachers lounge into the hallway. He looked both ways, instinctively trying to avoid Lancer. Even though the man had turned out to be not such a bad guy, and actually something of a mentor, being back in the halls of Casper High brought back old habits. Sure enough, Lancer appeared from a doorway a few yards down.
"Mr. Fenton!" Lancer bellowed out in the loud voice he usually reserved for reprimanding unruly students, then laughed at his own semi-joke. "Seems like yesterday I was chasing after you down this hall." Daniel nodded, looked at his feet then back up again, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. "And now, here you are, first day on the job." He clapped Daniel on the back, just a touch too hard. "Better make a move. The longer they're in there alone, the worse it'll be." Daniel turned to walk toward the science room, hearing Lancer call over his shoulder. "And Mr. Fenton. Good luck!"
As he walked by a familiar bank of lockers, it felt like a horde of ghosts was watching him. Oh, not the usual green, slime-dripping kind. Just shadowy figures from the past. Tucker. Sam. Valerie, Paulina, Dash and Kwan. Gossip, chatter, locker-stuffing, hiding, secrets, friendships. He shook his head, opened the door marked "Room 107, Science Lab" and stepped in.
It was like walking into the wild animal enclosure at the zoo. At least that's how it seemed to a very young teacher on his first day on the job. Erasers flew through the air. The howl and chatter of 20 voices, some unbelievably shrill, filled the air. A window was open and two teenagers were leaning a good distance out of it, shouting. The noise of a glass beaker shattering rose above all of it.
He cleared his throat. Nothing. He called out in a loud voice. Still nothing. Finally he reached out, opened the door, then slammed it again so hard the blackboard shook. This did the trick. Twenty pairs of eyes turned on him. "What on earth was I thinking," he asked himself as he cleared his throat again, fought to keep his face from turning red and pushed his dark hair from his eyes. "I must be crazy!"
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It hadn't been all that bad, he supposed. He reviewed the day in his mind as he walked from the building. After all, it hadn't been his first day in the classroom. He'd been a student teacher at nearby Summit Park High during his final year of college. But there had always been another adult there with him. Adult. Now that was funny. He laughed to himself, catching the attention of a group of students hanging out on the front steps of the school.
Even being as oblivious as he could sometimes be, he couldn't help but notice the way a couple of the girls stared at him. This was a role he could never see himself in: the teacher all the female students had a crush on. And yet, during his student teaching stint he'd been teased mercilessly about it by the faculty at Summit Park. He looked at the ground and kept walking.
"Mr. Fenton," he thought. Wearing a shirt and tie almost exactly like the ones Lancer had worn for probably a hundred years. "Teachers can't afford expensive clothes, Daniel," Lancer had told him when he'd hired him for the job, looking up and down at Daniel's charcoal grey suit. "A shirt and tie is fine. Especially in the lab. You of all people should remember the kind of things that go on in there."
Broken beakers, stink bombs, acid burns. They'd all been a part of a Casper High science education for Danny Fenton. Still, science had been fun for him, unlike so many of the classes he'd struggled in. He'd wanted to be an astronaut. He laughed again, the sound harsh and just a little bitter. He slid behind the wheel of his compact car but didn't feel the urge to turn the key.
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"You're going to have to be realistic, Danny," she said, sitting next to him on the sofa in his family's rather oddly-decorated living room. "Even if your C.A.T. scores were through the roof..."
"Which they're not," he interjected dryly, still holding the paper in his hand.
"Which they're not," she responded, gently tugging the paper from his hands, "It's down to a choice that most kids don't have to make. Leave here, go to the right college, then...what? Join the Air Force? And what about...you know...?"
He'd know all along, in the very small part of his 15-year old mind that thought logically, that it was true. How could he turn his back on Amity Park and let the ghosts run riot over his friends and family? And how could he hope to live anything like the fantastic life he'd always dreamed for himself if he was always having to dash behind a fire hydrant and change into a ghost? He'd been fooling himself, thinking he could still hang on to all the dreams he'd always had, and his best friend Sam was making him face it in the most gentle way possible.
He looked down at the paper again, then up into her lilac eyes, forcing a grin. "I guess the world can do without Danny Fenton, Astronaut."
She didn't say a word, just reached down and squeezed his hand. And then he blushed. And she blushed. And then she yanked her hand away, yelling "Last one to the Frosty Freeze is a hard-boiled egg!" and running for the front door. He watched her go, realizing that being an astronaut was probably not the only dream he'd have to give up, and that growing up sucked. A lot.