TREADING WATER - Chapter Three

Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.

― Ambrose Bierce

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If Danny had to sum up Tuesday, he would use the word "suck", as in "it did". He might have chosen a better word, but his vocabulary was not that large. If there was a word that captured the taste of sour milk as an emotion, he would have picked that one.

No one – among the ninth graders, the only ones who actually cared – knew how to behave toward Danny, nor did Danny know how to behave toward them. That much was clear as soon as he walked through the front doors of Neptune High that morning and most of the students stopped talking to openly stare at him.

His face was not helping matters any; it was practically a neon sign flashing "I was wailed on". Despite the efforts of the frozen peas, his eye had nearly swollen shut, and it was so blue it was almost black. His lip was still swollen and was marred by a cut that kept reopening.

Danny did his best to ignore everyone, thinking of the way they usually ignored him, and walked to his locker. Tucker stuck by his side like a loyal guard dog, eyes peeled for any sign of Dash or Dash's friends, ready to shout for a teacher at the first sign of trouble. They had yet to hear the news.

When Danny reached his locker, he was almost surprised not to see a huge hand print sunk into the door. He opened it and found his backpack inside, which he had never claimed yesterday. The books and binder he had been carrying before Dash attacked him, however, were nowhere to be found.

Mikey – who was even shorter and scrawnier than Danny, if that were possible – appeared at his side. Mikey was one of the only other people that Dash picked on more than Danny; in fact, whenever Danny felt sorry for himself, he would think, 'at least I'm not Mikey'.

"Heya, Danny," Mikey said, then sniffed and pushed his glasses up his nose. "How are you feeling?"

"Like a million bucks," Danny grumbled at his emptier-than-he-had-hoped locker. What, had Dash burned all of his stuff, too?

"Oh, you should be," Mikey continued, apparently oblivious to Danny's sarcasm. "You're, like, a hero!"

"Yeah, I feel really heroic."

"Haven't you heard the news? Dash has been suspended!"

This time, Danny froze and actually looked at the other boy. "What."

Mikey was bouncing on his toes in excitement. "Yeah, for three whole weeks! And that's not all. Get this – he's been permanently banned from the football team. You've dethroned the king, man!"

Danny gaped, and then his blood turned to ice. "I, uh… Look, Mikey. I didn't do anything." He added under his breath, "And apparently in three weeks, I'll be dead for real."

"Sure, sure," said Mikey, winking obviously and elbowing Danny in his, admittedly, very sore ribs. Danny cringed and hopped back a foot.

"Look, just forget about it, okay?" said Danny, nervously. He turned to Tucker, who was in an equal state of shock. "C'mon, Tuck."

They visited Tucker's locker and then headed to Lancer's classroom. Danny looked at his feet on the way, but Tucker made sure to point out the number of people – Dash's friends – who were glaring at him on the way.

Once in the classroom, Danny tried to make a bee-line to his desk, but Lancer stopped him at the front of the room. "Ah, Mr. Fenton."

Danny winced, and then hesitantly turned to look at the balding English teacher. He knew what his face looked like, but Lancer didn't. The older man gasped.

"Oh… how are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," said Danny, shrugging.

"Just a moment," said Lancer, and he went to his desk, shortly returning with a stack of school supplies that Danny immediately recognized.

"My stuff!"

"You were gone by the time I realized you were missing them," said Lancer, handing them over. "I'm guessing you've heard about Mr. Baxter?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Of course," replied Mr. Lancer, more to himself than to his student. "I forget that rumor spreads like wildfire in a high school."

Danny gestured with his books. "Um, thanks. And… for yesterday. Thanks."

The teacher looked at him pityingly. "You're welcome. Though if I had gotten there sooner…"

Danny flushed red, and he rushed to his seat, burying his face – gently – in his arms. If there was one thing he hated more than being wailed on, it was that look. The look that rubbed his nose in the fact that he was weak and couldn't stand up for himself. He ended up feeling more angry than grateful towards Lancer.

He heard a girl chuckling on his left side. He turned his head and looked at Samantha, partly in curiosity and partly in annoyance. To his further surprise, she was not looking at him. He followed her gaze to… Paulina.

The Latina girl was talking to the A-listers around her, casting Danny a look every few seconds that could have peeled paint. And Samantha was laughing.

"I haven't seen Paulina this pissed in a long time," said Samantha, grinning. It took Danny a moment to realize that she was talking to him. "You should have heard her this morning. She's furious because Dash isn't going to be 'star quarterback', and so they can't be the perfect couple anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if she breaks up with him soon."

"Sorry," Danny murmured into his arms.

"What are you sorry for? It's not like they don't deserve it."

Danny frowned confusedly at Samantha, looking at her more closely. "Aren't you friends with her?"

The girl's eyes widened, and then she turned away, looking out the window. "Right. Yeah."

Danny's mood soured further. Suddenly, it seemed like ages ago that he was excited to be sitting next to this girl. But these were the type of people who were popular – people who laughed at their own friends' misfortune. He buried his face again, muttering, "Some friend you are". He was too tired to care if she heard him or not.

Tuesday passed, and soon the rest of the week did, too. To Danny's surprise, none of Dash's friends did anything more to him than glare; same for Paulina. By Wednesday, the swelling had gone out of his face, and by Thursday, everyone had stopped paying any attention to him. He did his best to ignore Samantha in every class he had with her, and as far as he could tell, she was paying him the same courtesy. High school life was starting to feel normal. There was even homework.

Then the week ended, and it was Saturday.

Tucker's beach plan was still in place.

Danny, very reluctantly, met him that afternoon outside of the "Nasty Shack", as the Nasty Burger's on-beach location was called. Danny was wearing a pair of red swimming trunks, some flip-flops, and a white tank top, which despite Tucker's scheme would be staying safely on Danny's shoulders. He still had a big, foot-shaped bruise across his ribs, which his already pale skin only helped to stand out. That certainly did not need to see the light of day. Besides, he would not be going anywhere near the water.

Danny's face had healed only partially, and so he hid his eye behind a pair of dark sunglasses. He had also applied sunscreen – liberally.

Tucker arrived, looking every bit as out-of-place as Danny felt, only in a blunderingly confident sort of way.

The public beach was in the southern part of Amity Beach, several miles down from Fentonworks. In the summer, it was packed with people every day. There was still another month of beach-going weather in the future, and the residents of Amity Beach were going to take advantage of every minute of it. From the sky, Danny imagined the sand would not be visible for all the towels and umbrellas, and the water would be teeming like it was filled with fish. It was so crowded today, Danny wondered if the whole town had shown up.

He eyed all of this dubiously and said, "Somehow I don't think 'well-tenderized dork' is going to attract many girls, Tuck. Are you sure I need to be here?" Danny figured he would try one last time to escape.

"Are you kidding?" said Tucker, slapping Danny on the back. "You're popular! You're who everyone has been talking about."

"You might be confusing 'popular' with 'notorious'."

"Notorious? Nice one."

"Yeah? It was my word of the day."

Danny felt like he owed Mr. Lancer something after the teacher had basically saved his life, so he had decided to learn a new word from the dictionary every day. Maybe it would help him get good grades in English this year, and help him seem less pathetic.

"But seriously, Danny. You're my wing man. I need you."

"Can I be your wing man from the safety of the Nasty Shack? In the shade? With a cold milkshake?"

"Dude, you're killing me."

After quite a bit of nagging and some puppy dog eyes, Tucker managed to wrangle Danny into wingmanship. They set up shop on the sand, half-way between the waterline and Nasty Shack, conspicuously close to the towels of several A-list girls, including Paulina and Valerie. So maybe they'd had to move some other people's stuff to get such a prime location. No one needed to know that.

Danny spread his towel, and his eyes could not help but flick to Valerie every few seconds. In a yellow bathing suit, shiny with tanning oil, basking in the August sun – she was beauty in curvy, female form.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all. As long as he didn't have to talk to her, of course.

Nestled among the A-listers' towels was a purple umbrella with white stripes. It so obscured the person under it that Danny didn't realize for several minutes that Samantha Manson was also at the beach that day. Reclined in the shade on one arm, she lay there reading a book, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

"I don't get it," Danny remarked to Tucker.

Tucker slurped loudly from his milkshake – that was the one part of Danny's counterplan that he had agreed with. "Don't get what?"

"She obviously doesn't like them. They act like she doesn't exist. Why does she hang out with them?"

The techno-geek followed Danny's gaze. "Still hung up on Samantha Manson, huh? If I didn't know any better…"

Danny narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, but I think you do. She's a first-class pain." Regardless, he continued to stare her way. "Still… why not just ditch them?"

"She's rich and mean, they're rich and mean." Tucker shrugged. "They have a lot in common." He laid a hand on Danny's shoulder. "The ways of the upper class are not for us disgruntled peasants to understand."

"Something else I don't understand is why we still like them."

Danny and Tucker in tandem gazed longingly at the pretty girls and sighed.

"We totally still like them."

The tech-nerd suddenly jumped to his feet and pretended to roll up his nonexistent sleeves. "I didn't come here to look and not touch!

"… Okay, that sounded a lot worse than what I meant."

Danny rolled his eyes. "I'll say."

"What I meant was this – I'm tired of not being on the radar. I want in on this. And when a Foley wants something, nothing can stand in his way!"

"And when a Fenton wants something, he usually says something totally embarrassing and scars everyone around him for life. Tuck, seriously, I'll cheer you on from here. Okay?"

Tucker huffed, obviously annoyed. "Fine. Be like that. I'll come back when I've found a girlfriend."

Danny watched his friend walk away, stepping clumsily through the sand. He blinked. "Guess I'll be waiting here a while."

It wasn't long before he heard nearby, "That's TF, as in 'Too Fine'", followed by several "Ugh"s. Danny laughed. That was one thing to be said for his best friend: nothing kept him down for long.

Danny spent a few minutes watching Tucker, then simply people-watching, before he lay back on his towel. He stared up at the swath of blue overhead, dusted here and there with thin clouds. The sun was hot on his skin, but he hardly noticed it. His mind was drifting up into the atmosphere, thinking about how quickly Earth was spinning, the path of the International Space Station in its orbit, which zodiac constellation the sun was currently passing through – Leo. When he looked at the sky, he felt so small. Even Earth felt small. From up there, the oceans became nothing more than blue and white smeared over the surface of the planet, like a bright little marble.

Someday, he'd look down on them from up there.

At some point, the ocean had come to represent for Danny all of the problems in his life. Some people loved the ocean, found it beautiful or majestic or some other nonsense. He couldn't think about it without all of its negative associations surfacing. When he had nearly drowned – his inherent weakness. The trips out on the Boat – how his parents were so far from normal and isolated their whole family from the other residents of this town. The beach – a big collection of all the people he'd never been able to get along with.

But someday, he'd be above it all. That was his lifeline.

He sat up again, resting his arms on his knees. Tucker was now some ways off, being loomed over by a muscular boyfriend. Danny looked back to the A-list girls, and he was shocked to see Samantha Manson looking right back at him. When his eyes met her violet ones, she scowled, shut her book, and stormed out from under her tent.

Danny's eyes followed her all the way to the water, where she waded in and finally ducked under and out of sight.

He glared at the spot where she'd disappeared, feeling at once supremely annoyed and agitated. And frankly, he had to go to the bathroom.

Frown stuck on his face, Danny slipped his feet into his flip-flops and picked his way through the crowd to the bathrooms – narrow, one-person stalls walled by wooden planks. He did his business, and when he came back out, was grabbed by two pairs of very strong hands.

"Hello, Fentwerp," said one voice, which Danny immediately recognized as belonging to Kwan.

And the second said, "You're coming with us."