"Hey, birthday boy!"

Danny turned from his locker, "Sam, my birthday was three weeks ago. Remember? We went to the bowling alley? The one at your house."

"Of course I remember that. I meant your other birthday."

"Other?"

"Yeah, the one that was a year ago today."

Danny just blinked, his face blank as his mind.

Sam rolled her eyes, "Seriously? Fine, I'll put it another way, it's Phantom's birthday."

"That's today? Wow, I guess it really has been a year hasn't it."

"So did you wanna celebrate? I was thinking movie marathon at my place. We could watch all the Ghostbusters movies and laugh at what they got wrong."

Danny chuckled, "Sure sounds great." Then Danny remembered, "oh wait I'm supposed to help my Dad with something in the lab today."

"That's okay, just come over after."

"You sure?"

"Of course. Tucker and I can entertain ourselves." Then she smirked devilishly, "and if you take too long, we can just summon you with a Ouija board."

"Sam!"

"I'm kidding!" She waved him off, then paused. "Unless?"

After it had been pointed out, Danny felt pretty clueless for not noticing it before. He'd been feeling jittery and on edge all morning but hadn't been able to connect the dots.

Or at least he hoped that's why he was feeling that way.

Sitting in the back of Biology he couldn't keep his leg from bouncing with nervous energy. He tried to focus his attention on something else, anything else. Since he failed this class last semester, he couldn't just chat with his friends. They had passed just fine.

In the front of the room, the teacher had one of those cheesy plasma balls. It was on today, which meant Mr. Harrison was in a good mood.

Danny stared at the ball. Watching as the arcs of electricity danced wildly. Of course it was green. Why did it have to be green?

"Danny?"

Despite the softness of the voice Danny nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Oh geez, I'm sorry."

He turned to see an apologetic Valerie before relaxing enough to release his death grip on his desk.

"I was going to ask if you were okay." She said as she slid into the seat next to him.

"Was?"

"Clearly you aren't. See you already got the jimmy leg going again." She pointed to his bouncing right leg.

"What?" He haplessly tried to push it back down, "No, I'm fine."

"Danny you're a terrible liar."

He sighed, how could he still be so bad? He's had this huge secret for a year now and somehow he'd been lucky enough not to out himself. He slumped in his seat. "Alright fine."

"Did you wanna talk about it?"

"I-" he hesitated, eyes flicking back to the front of the room, "I wouldn't want to ruin Mr. Harrison's good mood." He finished quickly just as the teacher addressed the room.

A few minutes into class a note bounced onto Danny's desk. Careful to not draw attention to himself he opened it.

'That wasn't an answer,' was all the note said.

Danny looked over to Valerie, guessing she had sent it. He sent her a questioning look.

She just looked at the note more intently, silently egging him on.

Danny caved and picked up his pencil. 'It's just some nervous energy.' He replied then folded the note and passed it back under the guise of a stretch.

She quickly opened it, then frowned. She scribbled her message and slipped it back to him. 'That much was obvious. But why?'

'Idk.' Then he scribbled that out and wrote a better, truer answer. 'It's the anniversary of my lab accident.' He looked over his reply and steeled himself as he passed it off.

He didn't look to see her reaction.

The note slipped back into view with a simple 'you ok?'

He thought about that for a moment, hopefully not a moment too long, 'I will be.'

He passed it back one final time with a silent 'thanks'.

The rest of the school day passed without much incident.

Although there was one odd encounter with the Box Ghost. It was between passing periods, so Danny was able to slip into the supply room where he was.

Danny didn't even bother transforming once he saw who he was up against. "Boxy? I thought we agreed you wouldn't come during school hours?"

"I am the Box Ghost and I-!" He started out with his normal bravado but stopped short. "I was just looking." The ghost fidgeted then took an empty box before flying off.

Danny shrugged it off and went to his next class.

Ever since he stopped taking his aggression out on poor Boxy it was really easy to set boundaries. For his good behavior, Danny had given all the empty boxes from his birthday. Of course he still had slip-ups like today, but it was better.

Once he was home, he dropped his bag by the door hoping that whatever his Dad wanted to do wouldn't take too long.

As he descended the stairs, he was surprised by how quiet the lab was.

"Dad?" He called, suddenly very wary.

"Hey there son, how was school?" His father cheerfully greeted.

It was then that Danny saw why it was so quiet. The usual constant hum of the portal was silenced. The blast doors were open, yet the green light was absent. "Why is the portal off?"

"Well, your mother and I just finished our research paper on this old beauty and realized that we still needed to run a second trial."

"Oh?" Danny stopped about halfway into the room, he ran his fingers along the hem of his shirt to keep from rubbing the back of his neck. "So what do you need me here for?"

"I was hoping you could be a second pair of eyes. I reset everything to how it was based on the photos we took and the calculations in our notes, but I need to be sure."

Danny took a few tentative steps forward, he had no idea what all the dials and sensors had been set to. He honestly never looked at any of that, even when the thing was working. There was only one thing that really needed to be checked by him.

The button inside the machine.

He found himself standing in the archway, feeling like he was on the edge of a cliff. He squinted into the dark tunnel. The button was still pressed in, his Dad must not have gone inside. "Looks good from here."

"Alright, then let's do this thing!" Jack exclaimed proudly holding each end of the power cords.

Danny quickly scrambled back and used his Dad's body as a shield seeing as he was the only one wearing protective gear.

He gave Danny a quick wink before jamming the two ends together.

A bright flash of electricity burst inside the portal followed by a horrid shrieking howl. Then the familiar green swirl filled the borders of the portal. The hum of the portal reverberated throughout the room and Danny exhaled.

He wasn't sure how long he had been holding his breath, but he was glad it was over.