Danny Fenton was short, shy, scrawny, and unpopular.

Therefore, Danny Fenton hated middle school.

Danny knew for a fact that if he was a jock, tall, funny, and a cool kid, middle school would be like walking on sunshine. He'd at the least be able to be Paulina Sanchez's friend and not one of her many fan boys that she didn't give a rat's ass about, be able to walk by Dash Baxter and not have to pray that he won't throw a football at the back of his head, and he would get the pleasure of knowing that he was one of the untouchable, god-like cool kids of Greenway Middle School. Yes, if Danny Fenton was a cool kid, he would be set for life.

If only…

But, no. Sadly for Danny, he would have to settle for being the laughing stock and official punching bag of Greenway, no matter how humiliating or painful the job may be. So when he felt a spit ball hit the right side of his head during his third period math with Mr. Julian in the 6th grade building, it was normal and all he could do was glare at Dash for a minute, wishing that he could shoot lasers from his eyes, and wipe the spit ball off his cheek before placing his head back in his hand and looking down at his doodles in his math notebook.

God, he would kill to be a cool kid…

Mr. Julian, the short yet built man that seemed to be full of himself because he got his masters in math and that was the first thing he told you when you first met him, had placed Danny in the second seat In the middle row, right next to the teachers secondary desk that held his laptop, projector, and text books. He thought that putting Danny closer to him would help the black haired boy raise his 'D' in the class to at least a 'C' when all the move really did was put him in perfect range for Dash's daily spit ball ambush. If anything, he had a harder time concentrating with flying wads of spit coming at him.

And Danny almost laughed every time he looked back up to Mr. Julian and found the teacher completely oblivious to the whole one-sided war that was going on right in front of him.

Teachers fail at life…

Danny looked behind him to his left and found his best friend, Tucker Foley, staring at the board with a lost look in his eyes, his glasses having a glare in them from the way-too-bright lights in the ceiling and a pencil in between his pointer and middle finger that he was flicking back and forth rapidly. Danny didn't know how the geek did it but he always managed to get 'B's on the weekly tests, nothing less and nothing more. Tucker got frustrated with how he was stuck with 'B's on his math tests, nothing but 'B's. Danny didn't understand why his friend wouldn't be happy with his grades, considering that Danny was lucky to get a 'C', but he would sit and listen to his friend whine and moan about his 'B', hoping that the subject of what Danny got on the test wouldn't come up.

Danny was awoken from his thoughts when the door opened and being the 11 year olds they were, everyone just had to look up and see who it was, hoping that one of the 8th grade office assistants had brought a summons for them.

But when Danny looked up, there was no office assistant there but a girl who obviously liked dark colors. She was wearing a flimsy black skirt that reached a little longer than her mid thigh and some black tights were on under that, showing her chicken legs. Plain black Converse were on her small, narrow feet and a thin, purple zip up jacket was open to reveal a skin tight navy green shirt with a blood splattered black heart in the middle. The skinny, dark girl had fingerless black gloves and a black Jansport back pack was tight on her back, not allowing any air space. Her long black hair was up in a high ponytail and she had perfectly cut bangs across her forehead, ending in a straight line right above her eyes.

Danny watched as she handed a small piece of yellow paper to Mr. Julian and she looked around the room with a blank expression in her unique violet eyes. He squinted to see if her eyes really were violet and was surprised when they really were.

"Very well, Ms. Manson," mumbled Mr. Julian as he signed the note and returned it to the girl, extending his hand out to her which she looked at before shaking. "I'm Mr. Julian and welcome to Greenway. Class, this is Samantha Manson and she's a new student from out of state. Anything we need to know about you Samantha before we carry on?"

"I don't like to be called Samantha. I prefer Sam," she said in a high pitched yet clear voice, not seeming to make eye contact with anyone in the room.

"Alright, Sam, you can take the empty seat in front of Danny right here," he pointed to said seat and she looked at Danny quickly before shuffling over to her seat and sitting down carefully, slipping off her back pack before looking through it. He thought she was kind of cute but a little too dark for him. Her pale skin and extremely thin body somehow didn't give her a sickly look but like if the two details were anything else, she wouldn't be herself. Danny furrowed his eyebrows at the way her hair moved, how unlike other girls who used a straightening iron to make their hair as stiff as a board, Sam's hair seemed to flow in what reminded Danny of a Pocahontas way, the way each hair was individual and slowly and gracefully fell down over her shoulder.

Mr. Julian had somehow made his way over to Danny's desk without him knowing and smacked said student's desk with his bendable blue ruler.

"Mr. Fenton, would you please study what I have put up on the board rather than the back of Ms. Manson's head. You can do that on your free time," Mr. Julian said in a snooty tone.

I hate that fucking ruler…

"Yes Mr. Julian," Danny mumbled as the rest of the class snickered. The bell rang over head and the class started packing there things hurriedly and leaving the room as they finished. Danny picked up his things just as slow as usual before strapping his grey Jansport backpack to his back and heading out the door, Tucker already waiting for him outside.

"Dude, Mr. J has it out for you," snickered Tucker as they walked to their fourth period.

"Don't have to tell me twice. The guy notices when I'm not looking up at the damn white board but he doesn't even suspect that Dash is attacking me with fricken spit balls," Danny complained, sticking his hands in his jean pockets.

"Sorry man; can't help you there," Tucker said before a wicked smirk spread over his face. "But you were so checking out the new girl…"

"What? No I wasn't," Danny blushed and looked down towards the dirtied floor.

"Even Mr. Julian noticed it, dude," Tucker snickered and Danny glared at him as they walked into Mrs. Gilchrist's science room. As Tucker took his appropriate seat in the front of the room, Danny walked over towards the back of the class to sit at the last desk in the middle row. Science was the only 'B' he was able to get because they were actually studying the planet and were learning a little astronomy as well. So Danny was slightly intrigued with the class and wouldn't admit it to anyone but actually liked doing science work to learn new things about the planet and stars. The outcome of his grade was that he didn't have to be stuck in the very first row or closest to the teacher but instead having a nice and easy go at it in the back of the room. Plus he didn't have a desk partner, so he could have the whole desk to himself and wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble for talking, not like he talked with the desk partners he actually had though.

He noticed Sam talking to Mrs. Gilchrist at the teacher's desk and quickly looked away before anyone saw that he was staring at the black haired girl. The last thing he needed was to be teased for 'checking out' the new girl from anyone other than Tucker because anyone other than Tucker would no doubt have a more rotten and annoying way at teasing him than his best friend. The bell rang and all the students went to their seats and quieted down.

"All right class. For those of you who don't know, this is Ms. Samantha Manson-"

"I prefer Sam…"

"-and I want you all to be nice to her and maybe show her around," Mrs. Gilchrist walked behind Sam and placed her hands on her petite shoulders. The class all replied with a drawn out 'yes Mrs. Gilchrist' and the teacher smiled widely. "Alright, Sam, you can take the seat next to Danny in the back," the teacher took her hands off Sam's shoulders and pointed to the empty seat next to Danny.

Why me? The seat next to Emily is empty too…

He stiffened and froze looking at Sam and then over to Tucker, seeing the African American boy smirk and give a thumbs up, before looking back at Sam again, said girl walking towards him. He gulped and took his back pack off the seat next to him so that she could sit down.

"Thanks," she muttered before sitting down in the two person desk.

"No problem," he mumbled back and took out his pencil and science binder.

"All right class, we're going to continue our partner packets today so would Kwan and Nelson please pass out the packets from the tray so we can get started," she smiled as the class broke out in talking, only liking the packets because they were free to talk during their work time. "Danny, you will know be working with Sam and can you please explain to her what we are doing this week."

"Ok," he said as Kwan tossed the packet carelessly on the raven haired kids' desk. "Well, we're studying the layers of Earth and, uh, the different types of land faults there are," he said, opening the packet to the page he was working on last, only being the second page out of five.

"Ok," Sam said in that high pitched voice, studying Danny's work as she scooted her chair closer to him. "Do you like science?"

"Yea, I guess so."

"So you're not like my last partner who didn't want to do any work, what so ever," she said.

"Uh, no?" he said, looking at her face. She had a freckle or mole on her lip but her skin was clear of all other blemishes.

"Good, because that was hell to deal with," she rolled her eyes before looking down at his previous work. "So, were you looking at me in math class?"

"What? Um, no. I-I was just looking at your, um, hair for a minute," he stuttered and jotted down the answer for question #6 so that he could be doing something.

"…ok." She smiled and looked away for a minute to try and hide the blush that crossed over her features. "You always live here?" she asked after a moment to ease the tension.

"Uh, yea. Where did you live before you came to Amity?"

"We lived in New York but had to move down here once grampa died to take care of gramma," she said nonchalantly, looking down at his writing. "You have some sloppy writing," she laughed.

"Thanks for noticing," he grumbled. Sam laughed again. She sounded like Cameron Diaz when she laughed.

…What?

"Don't get all defensive about it," she giggled.

"Well let's see your writing then," he said and handed her the pencil. She shrugged with a smile and turned to the first page, writing her name over Danny's. Her writing reminded him of when ladies had to wear big, fancy ball gowns with their hair all big and curled perfectly and when the men had to wear white wigs and neat coats and carried around golden pocket watches. She wrote in a curvy, elegant cursive, many loops and fluid motions.

"You write like a teacher."

"That's what everyone says," she snorted with a smile.

"Well it's true," he mumbled. Sam turned back to the page they were working on and began answering the next question.

"What's your first period?"

"English with Mrs. Atcherson."

"Second?"

"History with Mrs. Snook."

"I have first period Snook and second Atcherson," she said, finishing the answer and handing the pencil over to Danny. He looked at her answer and decided it was right.

"What and when's your elective?"

"Art with Mr. Brown," she said. Danny thought it was kind of weird how easily he was talking with Sam, how he wasn't stumbling over his words or saying anything stupid. The only people he could really talk with were Tucker, Jazz, his parents, and teachers.

He had one more to add to the list.

"Eh, I don't do art. Who's your gym teacher?"

"Mr. Price," she said.

"Cool, me too," he gave a goofy lopsided grin and she found herself smiling too. They took turns answering questions in the packet silently for awhile before Sam spoke up again.

"The kid you were talking to earlier…Tucker, right?"

Danny briefly wondered how she knew his best friend's name before responding.

"Yea?"

"You hang out with him a lot?"

"Yea, he's cool. A bit of a geek but otherwise pretty cool to hang out with," Danny shrugged, briefly looking over at his best friend and smirking. Tucker was doing the whole packet while his desk partner, Will, was turned around in his seat to talk to the table behind them.

Shit out of luck, sucker…

"Yea, that green hiking backpack and glasses totally screwed him on the geek part," Sam snickered as Danny laughed.

"Definitely," he smiled, turning to the next page in the packet.

She's cool, I guess…

Lunch had gone by as normal as ever. There never really was anything exciting happening during lunch except for the occasional stupid fight about someone talking trash behind some one's back or when there was a noon time event out in the grass field but those rarely happened, considering that Amity Park had brutally hot summers and freezing cold winters. The weather was rarely perfect on the days of the events so nobody really wanted to stand in the cold or heat to watch some relay race or something equally as boring.

Danny saw Sam three times; once at her locker, once at Mr. Brook's door, and once in the lunch line. Tucker had been bothering him about making eyes at the new girl but that was typical Tucker. His world revolved around technology, meat, and girls but he was kind of fucked on the last one because he was right next to Danny in the dating game.

Nearly dead last.

So whenever Danny seemed to like a girl, Tucker was all over him, making kissy faces, stupid one-liners flying out of his mouth, pushing Danny into the girl as they walked by her. Danny had grown to get used to it but it was still irritating as hell. Trying to apologize to the girl after being pushed into her by Tucker was always a pain in the ass because he always got tongue twisted in front of cute girls.

And then he trudged to his 5th period drama because there were only two elective choices for 6th graders and that was art and drama. Everyone knew the art teachers were hippies and that would have been fine if they weren't always trying to shove their 'beliefs and ways' down their student's throats. But Danny hated drama just as much so he didn't think it made a difference at which he chose. He could always just be a stage hand in drama and that's what he did.

He never acted.

And then he finally walked into his 6th period gym, right into the locker room which reeked of sweat, grass, and a mixture of Old Spice and Axe. There were only three gym teachers, Mr. Price, Mr. Russo, and Ms. Lindley and Danny found himself liking Mr. Price the best. He was funny whenever he was scolding a student and his whole face got red when he was yelling, the pink even going down to his neck. The class would giggle every time he yelled and that would make him yell even louder until he was as red as a tomato.

Danny found the whole ordeal to be pretty entertaining.

So he went out in his white gym shirt and red basketball shorts uniform (Casper High colors), a white or red school logo on each article of clothing, and onto the blacktop. And wouldn't you know it, he ran right smack into Sam Manson.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, picking up her fallen paper and looked up at Danny and smiled. "Oh, hey Danny."

"Hey Sam. Where you going?" He asked, straightening himself.

"I was going to go to the PE office to ask where to meet the teacher but I guess I can just follow you now," she said. Danny nodded once with a slight smile and led the way towards Mr. Price's meeting area. "So anything important I need to know about gym before we start?"

"Well, for some really stupid reason, we can't bring our backpacks to gym. You'll be fine though cause this is your first day. And that's really it for gym. We don't do much except for run and do sports, really," he shrugged.

"Sounds easy enough," she said as they came to the corner where the rest of the class was.

"Easy? My class better not be easy!"

Both black haired kids jumped and gasped in surprise when the booming voice of their PE teacher sounded behind them, neither one of the 6th graders noticing the middle aged mans presence till then.

"Oh, uh, Mr. Price! No, your class isn't easy-" Danny stuttered before being cut off by the teacher's laugh.

"Save your breath, Fenton. Who's your friend?" he asked, pointing to Sam.

"I'm Sam Manson, the new student here," she said, handing him the same yellow piece of paper that she gave to all the other teachers. Mr. Price took it and scanned the note quickly before signing it off on his clipboard and handing it back to Sam.

"Well, welcome to Greenway, Sam. Do you already have your PE uniform or do you need to still buy one from the student store?"

"I still need to buy one."

"Well do you have 12 dollars that you can spend now?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. Fenton here can escort you to the student store so you can get your uniform." The teacher said, handing Danny the paper pass. "Timmy! Climb down from that tree right now or you'll be running all week!"

Danny smirked when he saw that the teacher's face was already starting to redden.

And as Danny listened to Sam tell him about how she was liking the change from big and busy New York to quiet and humble Amity Park, he was beaming on the inside, knowing that he found a new friend that wasn't a nerd or unpopular or anything like that. Because Danny really, really wanted someone normal to hang out with, and even if she was a little dark, he liked her and that was all that really counted, right?

He just hoped that she wouldn't freak when she found out his parents were ghost hunters that believed in a parallel dimension where all of the paranormal lived…