"It's time we got you home."

"Oh no." Boo implored. "Please no."

* * *

My face turned white.

This can't be happening.

Don't make me go home.

* * *

"But you look horrible."

"I'm fine, really, I am. I'll be fine..." Boo trailed off, losing concentration. When she found her path again, she continued to plead. "I'll be fine."

"I really think we need to get you home to a doctor."

Boo protested. "I'm fine! There's nothing wrong with me. I could stay here, with you. I could hide somewhere. I don't have to go back. I could stay here forever. I don't have to leave. I could be your world's Big Foot, your Yeti, your Loch Ness Monster. Please don't make me go back. I don't want to go back."

"You don't?"

"No. I have nothing to go back to."

Sullivan sighed. "Well..."

He didn't want her to go.

He really didn't.

He didn't want to have to say goodbye.

Not again.

"What about the life you're leaving behind? In the human world? Don't you care about that?"

"I couldn't care less. And my world wouldn't care if I dropped off the face of the Earth. I promise you, I leave nothing good behind."

That wasn't entirely true.

I would miss one person.

However, that's not enough to make me return to a life of swirling--

"Please, please let me stay. I'll be so much happier here. With you."

* * *

He frowned as he considered my words. "Well, you are old enough, and capable of making your own decisions. So..."

My heart lifted.

Please say yes. Please say yes.

* * *

She's not a helpless toddler with worried parents to go home to.

She can make her own life choices.

She can stay if she wants to.

She has no one.

And...

And I don't want her to go.

Sullivan was moments from blurting "yes" when Mike noticed something bizarre below Boo's left hand.

Mike's forehead crinkled. "Sulley, take a look at this." He took her wrist, the long sleeve of her pink pajamas falling a couple inches to show the blistering, bleeding skin, and pointed to a small, needle-sharp, coffee-colored horn.

Sullivan's eyes widened. "What?"

Mike flipped Boo's kitten hoody off and rested the back of his hand on her scarlet forehead. "She's burning."

"I'm fine, really." But Boo's voice was strained.

Mike's hand fell back to his side. His single eye drifted from her forehead to her hair. There growing through the mattered, tangly mess were two more horns, similar in look to his own. He would have chuckled if the matter weren't so serious.

"Horn pox," Sullivan breathed.

"I don't want to leave. I'm safe here! I'm safe here, with you." Boo coughed, making Mike and Sullivan flinch.

Her cough sounded like rocks being ground in pasty mucus and blood.

"Sulley, she needs medical attention. Now."

Sullivan furrowed his brows. "All the more reason to get her home."

"No!" Mary clawed her arms in the air like a mummy awakening from the grave in protest, but collapsed back again from drowsiness.

"No Sulley," Mike disagreed. "The humans won't know how to treat her."

"Well then what are we supposed to do?"

Unable to answer, Mike turned his vetting eye to Boo.

She respired laboriously, her chest shakingly rising and falling like the crashing waves of a costal storm.

But she breathed, none the less.

Boo is alive.

Boo is ALIVE!

But only in the moment he could really process this revelation and rejoice was when she was about to be taken away again.

Forever.

Her eyes squinted shut as she panted for air, her entire body shuddering. Sweat glistened on her forehead, drenched the wisps of her hair, and pooled in the indention above her pale blue upper lip. Her cheeks were as red as pomegranates.

"What do we do?" Sullivan's voice shook, helpless to do anything to halt her oncoming death.

Unless...

"Get her help here." Micheal said.

* * *

My eyes bulged, as I spasmed, pushing away at both of them, desperate in my slipping state of mind to make my position on the suggestion clear.

Do not get help. Do not get help.

No help. No help.

* * *

Sullivan took a step back, taking Boo back with him. "Get her help here? Mike, are you crazy?!"

Mike flailed his arms in the air in frustration. "What choice do we have?"

"We can't take her to a hospital here! You saw how everyone reacted to her at the press conference! And she didn't even do anything! They'll hurt her, or, or--"

"Turn her into the government," Mike finished. "Sulley, we need to turn her into the government."

"The government? What are you thinking? They'll take her away! They'll--"

"They'll know what to do. Sulley, we have no other options. The government won't hurt her. They'll help her. They're obligated to. And unlike the public, the government has no irrational fear of children. Not anymore. That's why there is no more CDA, and that's why there hasn't been a basic shut down of the city like there was when she first broke through."

Sullivan sighed, his shoulders falling.

"Sulley, if Boo doesn't get help, she'll die."

"Mary." Boo's eyelids fluttered like the wings of a butterfly. "My name is Mary."

Mike corrected himself, his voice still hushed. "I'm sorry, Mary, but we have to get you help. We don't want to lose you."

Boo said nothing.

"Again."

* * *

Do not get help.

My head lazily rolled up at Sullivan in one last attempt of protest. "Sulley, please--"

"Don't call me Sulley." He smiled grimly. "It's Kitty."