Depths

8. Virtually Proved

This chapter has been edited.

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It's been two weeks since Danny's gone missing. In those weeks, things have been not only bleak but hard to get through. Danny's absence took its toll on everyone, not just the Fenton family and Danny's friends. Everyone at school, even the people who often bullied the kid were at a loss of what to do about the disappearance of someone almost everyone knew on a personal level. They, of course, didn't know the full story, only what Mr. Lancer had told him in his brief but respectful speech about the reported disappearance of 'such a bright child.' 

Word had gotten around quickly throughout the school, there wasn't a student in Casper High that wasn't aware of the school geeks sudden absents. Due to not being given any more information other than the fact that Danny went missing, and is still missing two weeks later, everyone started to draw their own conclusion. Some of them thought he was dead, others insisted that he was kidnapped by human traffickers, a few people were suspicious that Danny's nutty parents had something to do with the crime.

The top high school bullies like Dash, Quan, and Paulina often tried to harass Sam and Tucker by their lockers in a desperate attempt to get more gossip fuel off the two about Danny being gone, but neither of Danny's friends satisfied their curiosity with any more than an insistent, "We don't know where he is." Though that didn't stop them from cornering them for information. After all, Tucker and Sam were Danny's best friends, if anyone knew what had happened to the boy, it was them.

The school offered the two teens counseling whenever they felt like talking about their childhood best friends predicament, and though the teens appreciated the offered help, neither of them had the balls to go in the office and risk blurting private information.

They often stayed over at the Fenton works, ignoring their parent's protests and lectures on how it would be detrimental to their already unstable mental health to sleep in the room of their kidnapped friend, who they keep throwing in the young one's faces, that may never come back. Tucker and Sam always got defensive when their parents even implied that Danny may never be found, and would often storm out of the house in a fit of rebellious rage, which leads to them both spending more nights at either each other or Danny house.

Maddie and Jack didn't spend much time together, but they did their best to hide their problems from their daughter. The only interaction that they had was when they were actively searching for Danny, they didn't even sleep in the same room together. Jack Fenton did everything he could to both keep from having to sleep in their shared bedroom and keep from rising suspicion from their very smart and observant daughter. He made excuses daily to spend the night in the lab working on equipment to help the search for Danny, coming up with something to work on in nights that Jazz didn't go to bed first.

Maddie sometimes left the house at night and went somewhere, she didn't tell Jazz where she was going and wouldn't come home until very early in the morning. Though, it didn't take a genius for Jazz to smell the alcohol and put the pieces together on where she was going. She knew that Danny's absence was stressing her mom out, but she wished she would turn to the comfort of her family instead of the false comfort security brought.

Jazz would spend her time doing homework when she wasn't helping her parents look for Danny under the sea. She was lucky enough to have been able to transfer her classes to online courses, such a thing was almost impossible to do in the middle of the semester, but when she sent in the police reports on her brother's absence, the school took pity on her. However, she couldn't change the fact that eventually, she would have to fly back to her campus and complete the mandatory exams and labs. Those were coming up in a few weeks and she was just hoping they at least got some sort of lead to where Danny might have gone before then.