Real Life AV Chapter 14

Another warning for slightly morbid topics.  

…this is a story about a dead teenage boy.  If you weren’t expecting SOME morbidity… I’m not sure where you’ve been living.  But a due and fair warning anyways.

Real Life
A Danny Phantom FanFiction by Cordria

Author’s Notes Version

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Chapter 14

In Which You Can’t Hide Forever

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This was the original chapter 13… it just got lost when I added that dream sequence.  Originally written from Sam’s POV.  I switched it to Tucker – it seems to work much better.

Tucker figured that Mondays were the worst thing ever invented.  He dropped into his seat in math and sighed, rubbing his temples.  With all the ghost stuff and Danny, his weekend had been basically trashed and he felt like he hadn’t gotten a break at all.  On top of that, he’d had to stay up late last night to finish his math assignment.

Mondays stunk.

But, he decided, watching his best friend walk into class with a hopeless and pale look on his face, it could definitely be worse.  When Danny almost collapsed into his desk, his backpack dropping to the floor, Tucker sent him a smile.  He opened his mouth to speak, but Danny’s stomach grumbled loud enough to cut him off and change the words he was about to say.  “No breakfast?”

Danny shook his head and closed his eyes with a sigh.  “Don’t ask.  Please.”

“How was Sunday?”

“Worse than Saturday,” Danny muttered, crossing his arms and burying his head.  

Tucker blinked and his mouth dropped open.  Saturday had been one of Danny’s low points – actually running away from his parents.  He couldn’t imagine a day that would be worse than what Danny’d gone through on Saturday.  “How… what happened?”

When Danny merely shrugged and made a noncommittal sound, Tucker scowled.  “What was all the ‘we’re a team and we work together’ junk on Saturday about if you’re just going to keep secrets again?”

Danny looked up at him, a frustrated look on his face.  “I’m starving.  I’m exhausted.  I’ve only just figured out how to be human again.  Leave me alone.”  Emerald sparks appeared in his eyes, giving his face a menacing look and sending a shiver down Tucker’s back.

Tucker sat back in his chair and closed his mouth, looking away and rubbing his arms to dispel the chill that had invaded his body.  “Fine, man.  Whatever.”  His tone was hurt and angry, but he really didn’t mean it.  He was getting the hang of Danny’s weird emotional swings and he was sure Danny’s next sentence would be an apology.

Danny sighed, right on cue.  “I didn’t mean that, Tucker.  I’m just…”

After a moment, Tucker glanced over at his friend to see why he had trailed off.  Danny was staring blankly forwards, his mouth moving soundlessly, the color drained from his face.  Following his gaze, Tucker arched an eyebrow in surprise.  I seriously need to get a camera phone or a PDA, he complained to himself.  This is one of those picture moments.

It’s coming… the dreaded PDA…  He’ll be the techno-geek, gimme a minute.

Sam was walking down the aisle between the seats, a maniacal grin on her face and a pleased gleam in her eye.  She was wearing a dark mini skirt, a ripped tank top, fishnet gloves and stockings, and high heels… skin tight clothes on a girl that usually wore looser, baggy clothing.  Once you included her dark and overdone makeup, she was the perfect not-at-all-school-appropriate Goth.  “Wow, Sam,” Tucker managed.

Originally, these were the clothes she was wearing in Danny’s nightmare.  Thus the expression on his face.  But I kinda dropped it.

“My mom and I got into another one of those discussions on what I should wear to school today,” she said pleasantly.

“And you thought this was some sort of compromise?” Tucker asked.

“Most definitely,” Sam said, settling into her seat.  “Heels.  Skirt.  Makeup.  Everything my mother wanted me to wear.  Besides, I’ve got my other clothes in my bag for when the school calls me on it.”

Tucker snorted, looking at his pale and speechless best friend with a grin.  “I think you broke Danny’s brain with all your pretty girlishness.”

Danny snapped out of whatever daze he’d been in to glare at him.  “Don’t,” he breathed.

“So,” Sam said, “the world wishes to know how your parents took you ditching them on Saturday.”

“Not so horribly,” Danny answered vaguely with a shrug, turning to stare down at his fingers.  “I told my mom I saw something and she got all emotional and basically let me off the hook.”  

“Not grounded anymore?” Tucker asked.  

“No, I’m still grounded.  Just not more-so than I was before.”

“And your Sunday was just horrible.”  Tucker leaned forwards.  “Do tell.”

Danny simply shook his head.  “Later.”

Sam blinked and reached over to touch his arm.  “We’ve got time before-“

“Later,” Danny interrupted fiercely.  “After school.”

“You’re grounded after school,” Tucker reminded him.

Danny sighed loudly.  “Lunch,” he corrected after a moment.  “How was your weekend?”

“Kind of boring,” Tucker said with a shrug, wondering why Danny was so against telling them what had happened.  But he was willing to give his friend a break… for now, anyways.  “I stayed up really late researching...” he broke off, shaking his head.  He hadn’t found any information to back up Sam’s theories on Vlad Masters, so it wasn’t something he was going to mention.  The beat-up and stressed-out look on Danny’s face only reinforced Tucker’s idea that Danny didn’t need anything else on his plate at the moment.  “And Sam and I spent some time at the library on Sunday.”

“I heard,” Danny said.  “Jazz was there.  She said you were looking up stuff on ghosts?”

“You asked for help.”  Tucker grinned, poking his friend’s shoulder.  “Sam and I, as best friends, are obligated to at least attempt to help.  It’s written in some code somewhere, I’m sure.  But I have to inform you that we only worked until lunch – after that, we went to see a movie.”

I had a best friend code growing up.  This was one of the many rules Banana, Meli, and I agreed upon.

A faint smile twitched at the corner of Danny’s mouth.  “Best friend obligation time limit?”

That was a stipulation I had put in.  A four-hour time limit, as well as a caveat for illegal, immoral, or ‘that’s gonna get me grounded’ activities done in the sake of helping out our best friends.

Tucker chuckled and nodded, but his smile faded.  “We didn’t find out too much, unfortunately.  It seems like a lot of the authors that have written about ghosts don’t really know what ghosts are.  They just make guesses and random theories.”

“There was some good stuff,” Sam added.  “Tucker and I came up with some ideas that we need to run past you, see what you think about them.  Maybe they’ll help.”

Warning: science-y type theories.  I hope they’re understandable.  I was condensing a lot.

“Remember how you told us you’re pretty sure ghosts ‘feed’ off human emotions?” Tucker asked.  “Well, there’s this one theory that ghosts aren’t really anything but imprints left behind by our souls.”  He grinned and leaned forwards, his eyes starting to sparkle as he got to rattle off one of his pet theories.  “See, we’ve all got emotions.  Living people let out emotional energy little by little, like the sun or like ripples in a pond.  But when a person dies all that emotional energy is let out at once.  If that burst of energy is strong enough, their soul leaves behind a picture of what it was in the instant of death – like a moving photograph or something.  Thus… a ghost.”

Tucker watched as his friend shivered a little.  “Based on what I’ve been reading,” Tucker continued, “I figure that these soul pictures, these ghosts, are made out of the emotions that were present at the time of their death.  And I’m thinking that particular mix of emotions would be what that ghost would ‘key’ into.  So a ghost that was created out of fear would be attracted to that same kind of fear.  A ghost that was created with large amounts of depression would try to find that same depressed emotion.”

Danny slumped back in his chair, an unsettled look on his face.  Tucker was about to ask why, but the bell rang and the math teacher stood up to start class, effectively silencing their conversation.  Tucker stared at Danny for a moment longer, studying Danny’s blank and pale look, before exchanging a look with Sam.  Sam shrugged.  Stupid school, Tucker thought. This is so much more important than math…

If you’re wondering, Danny was thinking about how he seems to be keyed in on Sam’s fear.  He knows how scared he is lately, how his ghost was created in pain and fear, and is remembering how he loved how scared Sam was in his nightmare.  He’s worried about the fact that he won’t be able to help it…  But I’ll get into that later.

And school does tend to interrupt the important things in life sometimes.

Wrinkling his nose, Tucker dug out his math notebook and opened it.  Danny was safe for now – maybe even until lunch – but as soon as the bell rang he was going to pester Danny until every secret was spilled and dissected.  

A faint grin settled on Tucker’s face as the teacher finished taking attendance and picked up the math book for the daily ritual of reading aloud from the text book.  Danny reacted to what I said.  The theory hit something inside of him.  

Instead of math, Tucker found himself jotting down notes about ghosts and his own pet theories, organizing his thoughts for when he could pin Danny in place like a hapless frog in a biology classroom.

“Mr. Falluca, may I be excused?”

Tucker glanced up at Danny and blinked in surprise.  

“Class just started,” the math teacher said blandly.

“But I forgot my calculator in my locker,” Danny argued back.  Tucker watched Danny slip a hand forwards to cover his calculator from the teacher’s sight, tapping it nervously with his finger.  Tucker’s forehead furrowed as he tried to figure out what was up with his friend.  Danny hardly ever lied to his teachers… he was just too open and honest.

The teacher sighed.  “It is your duty as a high school student to remember to bring all of your materials to class, Mr. Fenton.  It is against class policy to allow you to get what you forgot once class has started.”

“It’s just the once, Mr. Falluca,” Danny said.  “Please?”

“Fine.  Go.”  Mr. Falluca waved his hand and looked back down to his math book.  “Now, back to where we were…”

Tucker ignored the teacher droning in the front of the room, instead watching Danny walk quickly towards the front of the room and vanish into the hallway.  He shot a look over to Sam, but she was staring at the door with the same confused look he probably had on his face.

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Morbid stuff here.  Totally just pampering my own morbid curiosity about something in the show.  XD  I mean, they show it all the time and nobody (ANYBODY – in canon or fanon) has ever mentioned it.  EVER!

Do you guys not even WONDER about this?  Or am I just weird enough to think it up and you were living in comfort without the thought crossing your mind?  Have I ruined this for you now?

“Damn it,” Danny hissed as he walked down the hallway as quickly as he could, holding one of his hands safely behind his back.  He smiled thinly at a passing teacher, edging along the wall so that she wouldn’t be able to see his hand.  The teacher arched an eyebrow, but simply shook her head, rolled her eyes, and seemed to ignore him.

Making it to the safety of the bathroom, Danny picked one of the stalls and quickly locked himself inside before bring his hand out from behind his back to study it in dismay.  His hand was drained of color, looking almost like he’d stuck his arm into a black and white film, and it was tingling madly.  He clenched his fist, feeling the movement but not the sensation of his fingers touching each other.

He dropped onto the toilet and held his hand in front of him, sighing in frustration.  On a whim, he ran his hand straight through the walls of the bathroom stall.  He didn’t feel it at all; it was almost like the wall was nothing but an illusion.  Shaking his hand fiercely, he tried to dispel the strange sensation of being intangible.

Nothing.  His hand stayed wonderfully out of phase, just like it had during math class.

“This is fun,” he muttered darkly, staring at his fingers and trying to figure out what to do next.  “I wonder what’s going to happen next.”

He closed his eyes and ran his other hand through his hair, letting it rest at the back of his neck for a moment.  “I can do this.”  He let his eyes open again to gaze at his hands.  “I just need to fix this, than I can go back to class.”  Snorting, an unconscious grin appeared on his face.  “Yeah, that’s a huge motivator.  I get to go back to math class.”

His smile didn’t last very long.  The sad truth was that he’d much rather be sitting in math class than sitting right here with his hand doing something human hands weren’t designed to be able to do.  To be completely honest, he’d rather be doing anything – including waiting for Dash to pummel him into dust – than be sitting here right now.

The colorlessness extended up past his wrist, almost half-way to his elbow before it faded back into its normal color.  Danny reached over and poked the skin that still looked normal, feeling the pressure of his finger against his skin.  Eyebrows furrowing, he reached over and poked his colorless hand.  His finger went straight through.  Beyond a distant feeling of coldness surrounding his poking hand, neither hand felt it.

“I have two hands in the same spot,” he murmured, his hands literally going through each other.  The thought made his stomach churn for a moment and he separated his hands, studying both hands for any sort of damage before he was able to get rid of the disquieting feeling that he’d just done something incredibly wrong.  

He went back to studying the place where his tangible arm and his intangible arm met.  The transition was smooth and steady rather than abrupt.  “I wonder…”  He placed his finger by his elbow and started to drag it towards his hand, curious as to when his finger would fall through his arm, wondering what that transition area would feel like.  

His finger tickled down his arm, but when he reached the boundary of the colorless area a sharp pain ratcheted up his arm.  Gasping in surprised pain, he jerked away, but his finger came back to carefully prod that one area of his arm.  It stung, preventing him from doing much more than skimming his finger over the skin.  

When his finger reached the intangible part of his arm and the sensation of his finger vanished, a morbid thought crossed his mind.  Even as his face was screwing into an expression of disgust, he took his finger and reached inside the intangible part of his arm, trying to determine what that boundary on his arm would feel like on the inside of his arm.  Would he be able to feel his bone sticking out?  Or his muscles twitch?  What happened to his blood… would his finger come out bloody?

I seriously wonder what it looks like when his hand goes invisible.  What does his wrist look like?  Can you see his bone?  Blood?  Muscles?  *morbid thoughts*  I’m just wondering.

It hurt even worse to prod the inside of his arm than the outside, but Danny gritted his teeth a bit and felt around, determining that the solid part of his arm formed a dome-shape and that no, he couldn’t feel anything in particular other than pain.  He couldn’t press in hard enough to figure out if he was pressing on bone or muscle.  Pulling his normal hand back out of his arm, he blinked at the flecks of red blood on his fingers.  

“Huh.”  He wiped the specks of blood off on his jeans and went back to staring steadily at his hand.  None of this had helped him figure out how to get his hand back to normal – and there was no way he was going back to class with a hand like this.  People were already looking at him strangely, he didn’t need them noticing that things passed right through his hand.  “The incredible holographic hand boy,” he muttered after a moment.  “I could always try to pass myself off as a lame superhero.”

A few minutes passed as Danny stared quietly at his hand, unable to come up with anything more helpful.  This was completely out of Danny’s realm of understanding.  How does one turn one’s hand solid?  He had nowhere to start from and it was completely throwing him for a loop.

The tingling feeling was starting to drive him nuts.  It was actually starting to itch, and he’d caught himself more than once stupidly trying to scratch at his intangible arm.  He flexed his fist a few times, never feeling anything more than the movement of his fingers, but it didn’t dispel the maddening feeling.  And the itch was growing worse and worse by the moment.

It did have one positive point, though, as it gave him an idea to try.  “Maybe that feeling has something to do with it,” he murmured, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the tingling feeling.  The insane itchiness of it was mostly covering up the feeling, but he desperately ignored it.  This was his only idea – it had to work.

He found the feeling and tried to coax it forwards in his arm, wondering if he could turn more of his arm intangible.  It didn’t move, causing Danny to scowl faintly, squeezing his eyes together more firmly and concentrating harder.  Come on, come on, come on…  Come here.

Nothing.  His nose wrinkled in annoyance and, in a fit of frustration that made him forget that his hand was going to go straight through anything, struck the wall with his hand.  He had his fingers back in front of him and was focusing back on solving his problem before he realized that he had actually hit the wall with his intangible hand.

His eyes jerked open and he stared at his hand.  The colorlessness was simply gone, along with the tingling feeling.  He absently scratched at his hand, soothing the itch, trying to figure out what in the world he’d done to get his hand back to normal.  “I hit the wall.”

He gazed at the stall’s partition for a moment, confused.  “I wanted to hit the wall.”  His eyes flicked back to his hand.  “I wanted to hit the wall, so I did.  And… if I wanted my hand to go through…”

Placing his hand on the wall, Danny willed his hand intangible.  He frowned and focused, trying to call that feeling back to his hand.  Nothing.

Finally he gave up, letting his hand fall back to his side.  “Well, that didn’t work,” he said with a shrug and a faintly disappointed feeling in his heart.  I was so close…

*laughs*  It’s not so easy, boy.  Not in my stories.

Letting himself out of the toilet stall, Danny walked up to the mirror and washed his hands.  His eyes flicked up to his reflection for a moment, wincing at the strung-out look to his face.  The stress of this life, combined with the lack of sleep and food, was getting to him.

“I wonder how long I’ve been in here,” he muttered as he dried his hands on his jeans and headed back to class.  He’d completely lost track of time, but it had felt like quite a period of time.  Fifteen minutes… maybe twenty.  Mr. Falluca was going to give him detention for vanishing for that long.

When he quietly let himself back into the room, the math teacher already had a detention slip ready for him.  Danny took it, his stomach dropping and a nauseous feeling crawling up his throat.  “A half-hour and still couldn’t find your calculator, Mr. Fenton?” the teacher droned from his spot behind his desk.

Danny shook his head, ready to hide in his chair.

“Maybe you should check the top of your desk better next time,” the teacher added with a sour note to his voice.  “Those pesky calculators are so hard to see.  They blend in with the tabletops.”

Danny tried to hide his wince as he hurried to the back of the room and dropped into his seat, copying the assignment off the board and steadfastly ignoring the looks from Sam and Tucker.  His eyes were burning as he focused on the blank sheet of paper in front of him, trying to ignore the detention slip being crushed in his hand.

He’d never had detention before.  He’d barely even gotten in trouble before and now he had detention.  It’s totally unfair, he argued in his mind, biting his lip and blinking to prevent tears from building up in his eyes.  He glanced up once at the teacher, who wasn’t paying any attention to him, and sighed.  It’s not fair.  I couldn’t help it.

A hand touched his shoulder and he flinched.  “You okay?” Sam whispered.

Danny nodded his head, shrugging off her hand and picking up his pencil.  “It’s just detention,” he lied softly.  “No big deal.”  

“Danny…”

“Mrs. Manson,” the teacher snapped.  “Get back to work.”

I’m learning to hate Falluca.  But he taught math, so he already had two strikes against him.

Watching her out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw her glare at the teacher for a moment before shaking her head.  She glanced over at him and caught his eyes.  Danny instantly dropped his gaze to the floor and sighed, turning to his own work.  

“Oh, and Mr. Fenton – can I get your homework?” Mr. Falluca asked.

Danny flinched a little as he pulled out the worksheet he hadn’t even attempted to do with all of the insanity over the weekend.  The blank page swirled in front of him for a moment as Danny stared at it, feeling like he was drowning in everything that was being piled on top of him.  “No sleep, no breakfast, no homework,” Danny muttered to himself.  “Ghosts, dead things, portals…”

“Mr. Fenton, now please.”

Poor Danny.  I wonder how much more I can pile on him.  How far can I push him before he snaps?  *evil laugh*  I can’t want to find out!  Oh, and that’s when the ghosts are going to invade.  Right as he snaps.  *falls on floor, laughing*

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“Two days of detention?” Sam said sympathetically, walking next to Danny as they headed towards their next class.  She studied the way he was walking, his hands stuffed into his pockets, his head hanging low, his feet shuffling on the tile.  His eyes were still a little red and Sam knew that he was more troubled about getting detention than he was letting on.  “That seems harsh.”

“I hate math,” Danny muttered.  “I hate Mondays.”

“Maybe you can go to Lancer and fight it,” Tucker suggested, “especially if you had a good reason to leave class.  Why’d you vanish anyways?”

Danny hesitated for a moment in the hallway, his friends getting a step ahead of him.  “My hand disappeared,” he finally said, “and it wouldn’t come back.”

“Oh.”  Sam couldn’t help but glance down at his hands.  “You okay?”  He bobbed his head in agreement, but Sam arched an eyebrow in disbelief.  “I didn’t mean about your hand.  You – are you okay?”

“I hate this.”  The words that came out of Danny’s mouth were spoken with a vehemence that Sam had never heard before.  Her mouth dropped open in surprise, but Danny wasn’t finished.  “I didn’t get any sleep last night because of nightmares, I didn’t get any breakfast this morning because there was a dead and rotting dog sitting on my kitchen table,” he took a breath, his body visibly tensing, “I didn’t get my homework done because it’s so far down on my list of things to worry about that it’s not even on the list any more, I can’t keep myself from falling through things, I lose control of my own body and I can’t stop it, I have no idea what’s happening to me, my parents don’t even believe me when I asked them to help, and now I’ve got detention and my parents are going to ground me until I’m thirty.”  

I was going to have him fall through the floor right now, but that seemed to be too much.  I don’t want him to break.  Yet.

He raised his eyes and met hers, sparkles of emerald light shimmering in his blue irises.  “I hate this,” he said harshly, “like you can’t even imagine, Sam.”  He swallowed heavily and dropped his gaze back to the floor.  “And you’re asking if I’m okay,” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, awkwardly standing in the hallway and not knowing what to say.  She glanced at Tucker, who seemed to be equally off-kilter.  “We’ll figure it out.”

Danny snorted and started moving again, heading towards his second period class.

“Danny.”  Sam took a few quick steps and grabbed his arm.  “It’s going to be okay.  It can okay get better, right?”

He shook off her hand and stalked off, leaving Sam and Tucker behind in the hallway.  “Was that some form of Gothic optimism?” Tucker said softly, staring at the corner where Danny had disappeared.

Sam shot him a look.  “What are we going to do, Tucker?  He gets worse every time we see him.”

Shrugging, Tucker stuck his hands in his pockets.  “I don’t know, Sam.”  Tucker opened his mouth to say more, but another voice boomed through the hallway.

“Mrs. Manson!”

Sam flinched as the vice principal stalked down the hallway towards her, interrupting their conversation.  “Yes, Mr. Lancer?”

“Those clothes are completely inappropriate.  I expected better from you.”

“I know, Mr. Lancer.  I forgot to change.”  Sam flushed a little, glancing down at the skimpy tank top and short mini skirt she’d worn to annoy her mother.  

“Detention,” the balding man said, scribbling on the little book he carried around before handing her a slip of paper.  “And you’ll have to change before you can go to your next period.”

Sam nodded and quietly took the paper.  “Yeah.”  But as the vice principal walked away, Sam shrugged and allowed herself a small smile.  “Well, now Danny won’t be lonely.”

Tucker snorted before turning to leave.  “We’ll figure it out, Sam,” he called over his shoulder.  “I’ll see you at lunch.”

Tucking her detention slip into her notebook, Sam headed for the closest bathroom to change into her normal clothes.  I wonder how my mother’s going to take me getting detention again, she thought with a small sigh.  I’m going to be grounded too at this rate…

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“Look at Fenturd.”

Valerie Grey glanced in the direction of the trio of losers, arching a curious eyebrow.  The boy in question was simply sitting in his chair at the cafeteria, looking as pale and sick like he had been the entire previous week.  His two friends were seated on either side of him – almost like some sort of guard – and were apparently keeping up a lively conversation without any input from their sick-looking friend.  Val wrinkled her nose, hoping that the boy wasn’t about to throw up in the cafeteria.  “What about him?”

“Watch for a second,” Dash muttered, his malicious grin evident in his voice.

Val glanced back at Dash, then back over her shoulder.  Fenton was poking dismally at the cheeseburger on his tray, obviously not wanting to eat it.  Val couldn’t quite blame him – the food was barely edible on a good day and, looking as sick as he did, Fenton probably had a weaker stomach than most at the moment.  She watched him poke it a few times before she sat up a little straighter.

“You saw it?” Dash said.

“Yeah,” Val said.  She looked up into the football player’s blue eyes, curious.  “But how did you?”

Dash looked offended.  Brushing a hand through his close-cut blonde hair, Dash grinned.  “It’s my job to find weaknesses in losers.  And when they’re going to be obvious about it, they’re just asking for it.”

Val rolled her eyes, looking back to Fenton with an amused smile on her face.  The loser reached out to poke his cheeseburger, then jumped and rubbed his hand, almost like he’d been stung.  He really was asking for it acting so freaky.  “I wonder why he’s doing that.”

“I don’t really care.  All I know is I can’t pass up this golden opportunity,” Dash said happily.  “Paulina, I’ll be right back.”

The Hispanic girl sitting on Dash’s other side looked up at the mention of her name, watching Dash stand up.  “Huh?”

“I’m going to go have some fun with Fentasia.”

Paulina wrinkled her nose in disgust.  “But what if he’s contagious?”

When Dash hesitated, glancing back his soon-to-be target, Val hid her grin.  She knew that the last thing Dash wanted was to catch whatever the loser had, but she figured that he wouldn’t be able to pass up the opportunity to pester his favorite freak.  “I won’t touch him,” he replied after a moment.

“If you touch him, don’t bother coming back,” Paulina said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and turning back to her conversation with one of her friends.  “I’m not going to risk getting sick this close to subsection semifinals.”

Dash shrugged and turned around, leaving his normal table full of jocks and A-list popular friends.  Val watched him go and, for the first time since Danny stepped into the portal almost a week earlier, really focused her ghost-seeing eyes on the boy named Danny Fenton.

Dum, dum, dum…  Wonder what she’s going to see, huh?

In real life, you can’t hide forever.