Thank you to those who reviewed! I've edited the summary to address that this is, in fact, a boy x boy fanfiction. Rose is indeed male. I know, I know, he has a girl name. However, he was originally going to be transgender before I decided that I didn't know enough about transgenders to write him as one without offending anyone. Then he was going to be female, but I liked the idea of him being male. The name is all that's left of those two ideas. There was your fun fact for the day, guys 3

That's how things were until the middle of the school year. Getting stuffed into lockers by Dash, fighting ghosts with Danny, sharing my homework and notes with Sam, Tucker, and Danny. Sometimes when Danny and I had finished fighting, we would be forced to answer questions about ourselves and about other things. Other times, we would have to run from Danny's parents. I never again did fight Dash, though; the jock stopped trying to pick a fight with me and instead spent his time trying to shove me into lockers or trying to take his bad grades out of me or Danny.

Until the middle of the school year, that is.

That was when Mrs. Tetslaf switched us over to Health class in place of Gym, and that was also when Danny was switched into my class. Sam and I were particularly pleased about that; now we got to share our Health notes with him because he was in our level. Mrs. Tetslaf went over what we would be covering over the course of Health. Pregnancy, hormones, adolescence, an egg baby project...

Wait, project?! We would have to take care of one or two eggs for an entire week, and our grade would be based on if the eggs stayed safe. If one or both of the eggs cracked, we would have to fill out an "egg-baby accident report" which basically meant a piece of paper explaining what happened. She explained that we wouldn't be doing this project for a few more weeks, and that we would not be allowed to pick our own partners. Just about everyone groaned, but Danny, Sam, and I weren't worried. Whoever we got paired up with would have to deal with it.

Okay, I was worried a little bit. I barely knew anyone besides Danny, Sam, and Tucker and I did not want to be paired up with Dash. I'd rather be paired up with snooty, shallow, miss perfect (aka Paulina) than be paired up with Dash. Mrs. Tetslaf made sure that we all knew that some of the pairings would be with the same gender because there were more boys in this class than girls. A few of the boys poked fun at each other, snorting about how a boy might get paired up with another boy, but personally I didn't mind that.

Throughout the school year, I had slowly figured out that no, my crush on Danny had not gone away since I hadn't seen him in a long time. I still wasn't sure if the feelings were platonic or romantic, though. I did see Danny as a bit of an older brother, him being older than me by five months. But at the same time, I saw Danny as someone to love romantically. It was confusing, so I decided to put my feelings off to the side for the sake of our friendship. If Danny found out that I had a crush on him, I wasn't sure how he would take it. It was better to play it safe than sorry.

Sam knew, though. She was the one who had figured out that my crush had not gone away. I'd told her about the crush when she had decided to stay over my house for dinner while her parents argued since she really had nothing better to do. She had suggested that the crush had gotten stronger, but I hadn't really believed it until I found myself blushing whenever Danny called me to tell me that he couldn't sleep. Since then, we had tried to figure out together if my feelings were platonic or not. Sam was leaning towards "not platonic" while I was trying to find out how far my feelings went for him.

The bell rung, and the three of us got up from our desks and walked out. Sam was making jokes about getting paired up with Dash, who was afraid of catching "the goth disease" when my ghost sense went off. Next to me, Danny released his own puff of blue mist. Before we could hide, the Box Ghost appeared and proclaimed himself a threat.

"Oh, it's just you," I sighed. "You scared me, don't do that. I thought something dangerous was after us."

"I am dangerous!" he shouted. "I am the Box Ghost, and you will face the wrath of my dangerous boxes of cardboard!"

"Yeah, yeah," Danny snorted. He opened up his thermos and sucked the Box Ghost in, the Box Ghost saying that he would get his revenge. Once he was in the thermos, Danny sighed. "Alright, let's get to class. Tuck's probably wondering where we are." The raven-haired boy smiled and set off, forcing me and Sam to run after him. He really was getting tall; he was already two inches taller than he was at the beginning of the school year. I'd gotten a little taller as well, just an inch. At the rate we were growing, Danny would end up being so much taller than me.

***line break***

After school, Tucker came with Danny and Sam to my house. He didn't normally do that, as I'd started keeping cats and he was allergic to them. He liked the kittens that one of the female cats had had a month or two ago, though; They were short-hair, didn't shed when the climbed all over him, and he had no allergy issues with them. He'd tried to convince his mother to let him have one of them, but his mother did not approve of having pets.

Instead, whenever he was feeling up to it, he came to my house despite all the allergy risks and spent time with them there. There were three; a little black and white she-cat, a big bulky smokey grey tabby tom, and a tiny white she-cat who didn't spend much time outside of the box her mother slept in. I kept trying to coax her out but she only played for a little while before she slept again. I was sure she was sick, but I wasn't sure if I was old enough to schedule a vet appointment like I scheduled my doctor's appointments. I scheduled one for the kitten anyway and just lied about my age; I said I was 16, not 15. The appointment was in a few days.

Speaking of doctor's appointments...

"Oh no, guys!" I gasped. "I've got a doctor's appointment - I've gotta run! I totally forgot... You guys can let yourselves into my house, I should be back in an hour or so!"

"We're coming with you!" Sam shouted, running after me. Together, all four of us ran to the doctor's clinic and I signed myself in 10 minutes before my appointment at 3. Victorious, I sighed in relief and slumped down in the waiting room, the running having completely tired me out.

"So, what's the doctor appointment for?" Danny whispered to me, as Tucker had a fear of hospitals. I was surprised he had even come with us, but I supposed that he didn't feel like going home or waiting for us to come back.

"My eye," I responded quietly; since I was normally quiet, Danny had to make me repeat what I said so that he could hear it. "You know, since it's perpetually open they want to make sure it doesn't get infected, even though this happened years ago and the wound has dried out by now."

Danny nodded thoughtfully, and he looked like he wanted to follow me in when the doctor called my name. I let him do his examination, answering his questions in short, clipped answers.

"Any pain around the area?"

"No."

"Have you gotten sick recently?"

"No." I didn't count coughing up ectoplasm as "sick".

"Does it hurt when I rub the burn?"

"No."

I let the man peer at my eye socket, I let him wipe a swab around inside of it to check for infection. I let him do everything he needed to do with no fuss, just a surly look that I didn't often have. I might not have feared the hospital, but I sure as hell hated the place.

"Well, then," the doctor said cheerfully, finding nothing wrong with me, "if you start feeling sick or if the socket starts to hurt, come back and we'll look you over again. Otherwise, you should come back sometime in August."

"Okay." I left his office, scheduled another appointment with the receptionist for August 2nd at 12:30 PM, and left. I never once mentioned what went on in that doctor's office, and my friends were smart enough not to ask.

***line break***

I couldn't sleep. Something just didn't feel right in the pit of my stomach. I rolled out of bed, groaning with pain, and promptly threw up ectoplasm out the window. I was cold, despite my space heater.

"Ugh," I groaned, coughing up yet more ectoplasm. However, this time there was blood mixed in. I knew now what was wrong; I had the ecto-flu. I'd had this a few times before, but never this bad. I could barely get up and stumble back to my bed, and I had no way of checking my temperature. If I were to guess, though, I'd expect it to be somewhere in the 110's. I fumbled with my phone and called Sam, taking a drink of water while I waited for her to pick up.

"Rose?" her sleepy voice answered, and I nearly sighed in relief. I shouldn't have doubted that she'd answer.

"Sam," I coughed, "I've got the ecto-flu. I won't be at school tomorrow; do you think you could..."

"Get your papers for you and drop them off?" she finished for me. "Yeah. Is it contagious to humans?" She was a little more awake now, alerted that I was sick.

"No, it's not contagious to humans... only to those who have ghost essence..." I coughed and leaned out of my window again, blood dripping from my mouth.

"Alright. See you around 3," she whispered, and then she hung up. I sighed in pain as my stomach churned, refusing to let me sleep. Instead, for the rest of the night I stayed near my window so that I wouldn't get my room messy. I finally fell asleep around 8 am, Sam sending me a text telling me she'd told Mr. Lancer why I wasn't in. I sent her a quick text of thanks before I felt my stomach give another heave. The ecto-flu would be gone by tomorrow; I'd have to clean my entire house after this so that I didn't get sick right afterwards again...

I coughed up more blood and dragged myself back to my bed. Today was going to last forever...