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    The next two weeks flew by so quickly that the details of which were lost to Jean. All she could recall was a feeling of being ungrounded. Something had changed, and she didn’t know what, but whatever it was was huge and had unbalanced everything else in her life. She felt as if on the edge of a cliff she couldn’t see, not wanting to know the undiscovered truth that gave her this feeling. Because if she did, where she stood on the edge would be revealed and off she would tumble into the chasm beyond.
    This fear dominated her dreams. They were never nightmares, but she would shoot awake in a cold sweat, irrational fear making her paranoid. However, it was the most excitement so far in those two weeks. School held enough redundancy to keep her occupied; but somehow the routine she had once loved no longer entertained her. Whatever had changed had skewered her view of life as well.
    Jean had a lot of time to mull over this, though, because for the next week she had to ‘rest:’ as a reward for her hard work, according to Aron. He’d said Amelia told him, which probably meant she’d just said it to get more stories for herself.
    It didn’t really matter to Jean. Since Nikko had shown her what fun really meant, she had sort of gotten the hang of it. This free time meant she could now take up her new hobby: drawing. It also gave her more time outside to think and just enjoy the sun and small breezes every now and then.
    It was one of those very times that all the world seemed quiet. It was a peace she usually didn’t stop to enjoy. It was enough to block out, if only for a few hours, the storm raging in Jean’s head. The storm Nikko had set in motion.
    Speaking of Nikko, he’d made no attempt to change his behaviour in the past two weeks. Like he’d said, they were ‘keeping up appearances.’ The journalist didn’t like this very much and kept wanting to question Jean’s reaction to him, but the rest of her was adamant about not disrupting this new peace.
    Closing her eyes, she soaked up her surroundings and let the peace and quiet flow through her, allowing it to dislodge all her worries and relax everything else. Jean didn’t know much about meditation, but this was her brand. It was almost like involuntarily doing paperwork in her mind. File, lock away, repeat. All the underlying terror? Filed away in a locked cabinet. All the confusion surrounding he-who-shall-not-be-named-during-meditation? Filed even deeper. Leave it to Jean as a reporter to meditate by mentally doing office work. But it was soothing. Peace did the work for her. By the time she opened her eyes back up, she was relaxed enough to work on her drawing.
    The act of drawing was peaceful, but the ‘art’ itself turned out...not so peaceful. Jean gazed at it with mild concern. Completely unintentionally she’d drawn an eye. Not a very good one, but that wasn’t the point. It was dilated, eyelids stretched wide in terror. She supposed if it was in colour, she’d be able to see the blue of the iris, the blown capillaries all along the eyeball, and the dark purple bags lining the bottom eyelid. Was this...her? The sketchbook was promptly snapped closed and the concern filed away in a second bout of meditation.

    Jean waited in a spare classroom for the afterschool rush to dissipate. She didn’t want to disturb her peace with the chaos she’d experienced a week ago. It was almost devoid of furniture aside from a stack of chairs to the side and dark because she hadn’t dared to turn the light on. And Nikko… Nikko couldn’t find her in here. Not that she was scared. Not. At. All. She reiterated this to her now-shaking self. Crap. Another round of mental filing? Her exhausted secretary mind solemnly shook its head. Okay, so...what? Why did telling herself she wasn’t scared of Nikko make her start uncontrollably shaking? There, she thought, matter-of-factly, Let’s start at the source. The journalist in her practically cracked her neck and fingers and got to work. Being unbiased -- as a journalist should be -- and completely insensitive -- as most journalists unfortunately are, it spat the answer right away. You’re scared of him. Terrified. He’s haunted you for years and you’re trying to just Zen that away? Not happ’nin’, sweetheart.
    Well… That answered that. But there was still that follow-up Why? that had been haunting her for a while as well. Part of the answer was obvious: of course he scared her; his childish antics were downright creepy. Much like the Chucky movies, honestly. The majority of it, however… There was still so much she hadn’t uncovered about him, and that made the journalist inside her yearn to be around him. That was scary as well, that a part of her was so desperate for answers to put herself in harm’s way and to befriend the one person that terrified her. She needed answers, not just in the journalism way of needing answers. She needed answers period. She needed answers now.
    The clatter and blur of obnoxious teenagers was fading to a dull roar outside the door. Did she dare venture out there? Jean had just grabbed the doorknob to inch out into the hall, when she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Fearing it was Nikko, she flipped to press her back against the door before she even knew what she was doing. ...But nothing was there. What? Jean looked around frantically. There it was again! What was that?
    Again, Jean whipped her head back and forth, but whatever was in the corner of her sight disappeared when she looked straight at wherever it happened to be. That was...weird. After a few more tries, she gave up, telling herself she just needed to relax today. Thankfully, it was the weekend and she could do just that. There, that was what she needed. Forget all these questions about Nikko and whatever the heck that was a few seconds ago and just do what Nikko had finally clued her in on: having fun.
    Deep breath, and then she was practically catapulting out the door. Thankfully, not many people were in the hall anymore, so it gave Jean ample opportunity to scamper away and shoot out the pushbar door. Well, more like slowly, painfully heave the heavy pushbar door open; but she wasn’t counting that. Once outside, she surveyed the parking lot far below the concrete patio and got hit with a huge wave of deja vu. Oh, crap, was Nikko going to shoot out of nowhere again? Jean braced herself for it…
    And was slightly disappointed. Wait, what?! Why am I disappointed?! Before she even had a chance to address that, Jean was blindsided by the fact that she had just endured a 100% Nikko-free day. What even…? When was the last time that had happened? What sorcery was this? And between all the mind tricks and meditation sessions, she hadn’t even gotten a chance to enjoy it. In fact, if she thought about it, Jean had been more stressed out today than she even had when Nikko had scared the crap out of her on this very same patio. All she wanted to do was just plop down on her butt and shut off her mind. But… But she couldn’t. She needed to get down those stairs, hop in her truck, and drive like mad toward home, where she could get comfy and get thinking. Jean always did her best thinking in pajamas. A comfy body was a comfy mind.
    The ride home had her even more stressed. Her mind was everywhere and every other driver on the road seemed just as distracted, resulting in numerous close calls. What is going on today?
    By the time Jean got home, she was shaking terribly. Thank goodness her dad was at one of her school’s games -- a game she should be at in order to report about it, but she wasn’t working. He’d probably be back in about an hour or so, but that was long enough for her to calm down. Comfy clothes. NOW. Comfy clothes happened to be an oversized mint sweater (well, it mostly fit her: Grandma Lane had just made the sleeves a bit too long) and an old ratty pair of red basketball shorts and some rainbow toe socks, all of which had to be the most comfortable items of clothing ever made. Wrapped in these, Jean flopped on the loveseat in the family game room, trusty notebook in hand.

    So the shaking had stopped, however Jean had been sitting here at least fifteen minutes and still had a blank page in front of her. That angry white noise was back and growing louder every time she tried to organize her now-wrecked mental corkboard. There was some link she was missing and her own mind wasn’t helping one bit. The shaking may have stopped, but the front of her sweater was practically...pulsing? It took Jean a bit to figure out her heart was hammering so hard at this point it was literally moving her sweater. Whoa.
    Jean immediately dropped her notebook and gulped down as much of her green tea as she could, finishing the mug, no matter how lukewarm and nasty it was by this point. Green tea would help. Green tea was the cure to all ills. And yet, once she finished, all she had was an empty mug and a bad aftertaste in her mouth. What was Nikko doing to her? Or, more to the point, what was she doing to herself?

    Late that night, after her dad raves about the game and laments that Jean wasn’t there and dances around rapping off-rhythm while making pancakes for dinner and slathers them in so much syrup Jean can barely taste the pancake and somehow manages to have a one-sided conversation with Jean without choking and finally realizes Jean isn’t doing so hot and rather than push her says his goodnight and heads to bed early, Jean does something she hasn’t since she was a tiny daredevil. She can’t sleep and she can’t write and she can’t draw and she can’t plan and she can’t even think; so she uses the towering pine tree, that always manages to get sap all over her window and pine needles through it somehow, to heave herself on top of her roof.
    Since she can’t puzzle her way through anything more important, she puzzles why she stopped being such a daredevil. Jean used to be the little kid finding the tallest playground equipment and backflipping off of it, growling in disappointment when she didn’t stick her landing in the pre-planned spot, regardless of whether she’d stuck a landing at all. She’d come home with bruises and gushing knees that had to be kissed and plastered in waterproof Star Wars band-aids, pigtails with all sorts of odds and ends stuck in them, and an ambition that still wasn’t satisfied. What had changed? Well, obviously, that ever-hungry ambition had taken her this far, but what had she lost in the process? Jean laid back on her shingle roof, a bit uncomfortable, but satisfied watching the probably-already-dead stars flicker through thin clouds above her.
    Flickering. Like earlier. Like that-- No. NO. She was not going to think about that. She had another puzzle to solve. That she actually could solve. Now where was she? Okay, ambition, yes. Ambition had prodded her into attending the first school news club meeting, and before that ambition and curiosity had prodded her into making Journalism her dream. Of course, school news club meant research and research meant interviews and paperwork and long hours at the library. Somewhere, daredevil Jean had withered away under Jean Janis Parker. Maybe… Maybe she had needed Nikko after all…
    At that thought, Jean shivered and shifted uncomfortably. In fact, she was really uncomfortable. Curse bony shoulder blades and Nevada shingles! She flopped onto her side, but that caused a particular shingle to burrow into the small space between two ribs. Ugh! Why wasn’t this as fun as when she was a kid?! Flustered, Jean shot up and whipped her head around to curse the shingle that dare offend her. Only to find all shingles straight and orderly, if a bit chipped, and a small rock with a note wrapped around it. How…?
    She wasn’t even going to question things anymore. Nope. Forget it. She didn’t need to know how this got up here or how she’d missed it or how the messenger got the paper folded around the rock without a rubber band. She didn’t need to know anything else. She didn’t need to solve any of it. At all. She was just going to open up that note, probably hurl the rock at something, find out what was written, and then just forget about it. Simple. It was probably the universe torturing her with yet another puzzle. Jean stopped herself from very nearly flipping off the probably-already-dead stars. She busied her fingers with figuring out how to detach the paper from the rock.
    When she was finally able to pry it off the rock, said rock went flying off the roof and probably down the pine tree. But Jean didn’t care because she was focused on the cryptic note in front of her. It wasn’t cryptic because it really was some ancient puzzle sent from space. It was actually quite simple. What was cryptic was the simplicity.
    Written in hasty script were three lines:
WASHALONE3 AM
     Jean was totally going to forget about it.

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

    The next two weeks flew by so quickly that the details of which were lost to Jean. All she could recall was a feeling of being ungrounded. Something had changed, and she didn’t know what, but whatever it was was huge and had unbalanced everything else in her life. She felt as if on the edge of a cliff she couldn’t see, not wanting to know the undiscovered truth that gave her this feeling. Because if she did, where she stood on the edge would be revealed and off she would tumble into the chasm beyond.
    This fear dominated her dreams. They were never nightmares, but she would shoot awake in a cold sweat, irrational fear making her paranoid. However, it was the most excitement so far in those two weeks. School held enough redundancy to keep her occupied; but somehow the routine she had once loved no longer entertained her. Whatever had changed had skewered her view of life as well.
    Jean had a lot of time to mull over this, though, because for the next week she had to ‘rest:’ as a reward for her hard work, according to Aron. He’d said Amelia told him, which probably meant she’d just said it to get more stories for herself.
    It didn’t really matter to Jean. Since Nikko had shown her what fun really meant, she had sort of gotten the hang of it. This free time meant she could now take up her new hobby: drawing. It also gave her more time outside to think and just enjoy the sun and small breezes every now and then.
    It was one of those very times that all the world seemed quiet. It was a peace she usually didn’t stop to enjoy. It was enough to block out, if only for a few hours, the storm raging in Jean’s head. The storm Nikko had set in motion.
    Speaking of Nikko, he’d made no attempt to change his behaviour in the past two weeks. Like he’d said, they were ‘keeping up appearances.’ The journalist didn’t like this very much and kept wanting to question Jean’s reaction to him, but the rest of her was adamant about not disrupting this new peace.
    Closing her eyes, she soaked up her surroundings and let the peace and quiet flow through her, allowing it to dislodge all her worries and relax everything else. Jean didn’t know much about meditation, but this was her brand. It was almost like involuntarily doing paperwork in her mind. File, lock away, repeat. All the underlying terror? Filed away in a locked cabinet. All the confusion surrounding he-who-shall-not-be-named-during-meditation? Filed even deeper. Leave it to Jean as a reporter to meditate by mentally doing office work. But it was soothing. Peace did the work for her. By the time she opened her eyes back up, she was relaxed enough to work on her drawing.
    The act of drawing was peaceful, but the ‘art’ itself turned out...not so peaceful. Jean gazed at it with mild concern. Completely unintentionally she’d drawn an eye. Not a very good one, but that wasn’t the point. It was dilated, eyelids stretched wide in terror. She supposed if it was in colour, she’d be able to see the blue of the iris, the blown capillaries all along the eyeball, and the dark purple bags lining the bottom eyelid. Was this...her? The sketchbook was promptly snapped closed and the concern filed away in a second bout of meditation.

    Jean waited in a spare classroom for the afterschool rush to dissipate. She didn’t want to disturb her peace with the chaos she’d experienced a week ago. It was almost devoid of furniture aside from a stack of chairs to the side and dark because she hadn’t dared to turn the light on. And Nikko… Nikko couldn’t find her in here. Not that she was scared. Not. At. All. She reiterated this to her now-shaking self. Crap. Another round of mental filing? Her exhausted secretary mind solemnly shook its head. Okay, so...what? Why did telling herself she wasn’t scared of Nikko make her start uncontrollably shaking? There, she thought, matter-of-factly, Let’s start at the source. The journalist in her practically cracked her neck and fingers and got to work. Being unbiased -- as a journalist should be -- and completely insensitive -- as most journalists unfortunately are, it spat the answer right away. You’re scared of him. Terrified. He’s haunted you for years and you’re trying to just Zen that away? Not happ’nin’, sweetheart.
    Well… That answered that. But there was still that follow-up Why? that had been haunting her for a while as well. Part of the answer was obvious: of course he scared her; his childish antics were downright creepy. Much like the Chucky movies, honestly. The majority of it, however… There was still so much she hadn’t uncovered about him, and that made the journalist inside her yearn to be around him. That was scary as well, that a part of her was so desperate for answers to put herself in harm’s way and to befriend the one person that terrified her. She needed answers, not just in the journalism way of needing answers. She needed answers period. She needed answers now.
    The clatter and blur of obnoxious teenagers was fading to a dull roar outside the door. Did she dare venture out there? Jean had just grabbed the doorknob to inch out into the hall, when she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. Fearing it was Nikko, she flipped to press her back against the door before she even knew what she was doing. ...But nothing was there. What? Jean looked around frantically. There it was again! What was that?
    Again, Jean whipped her head back and forth, but whatever was in the corner of her sight disappeared when she looked straight at wherever it happened to be. That was...weird. After a few more tries, she gave up, telling herself she just needed to relax today. Thankfully, it was the weekend and she could do just that. There, that was what she needed. Forget all these questions about Nikko and whatever the heck that was a few seconds ago and just do what Nikko had finally clued her in on: having fun.
    Deep breath, and then she was practically catapulting out the door. Thankfully, not many people were in the hall anymore, so it gave Jean ample opportunity to scamper away and shoot out the pushbar door. Well, more like slowly, painfully heave the heavy pushbar door open; but she wasn’t counting that. Once outside, she surveyed the parking lot far below the concrete patio and got hit with a huge wave of deja vu. Oh, crap, was Nikko going to shoot out of nowhere again? Jean braced herself for it…
    And was slightly disappointed. Wait, what?! Why am I disappointed?! Before she even had a chance to address that, Jean was blindsided by the fact that she had just endured a 100% Nikko-free day. What even…? When was the last time that had happened? What sorcery was this? And between all the mind tricks and meditation sessions, she hadn’t even gotten a chance to enjoy it. In fact, if she thought about it, Jean had been more stressed out today than she even had when Nikko had scared the crap out of her on this very same patio. All she wanted to do was just plop down on her butt and shut off her mind. But… But she couldn’t. She needed to get down those stairs, hop in her truck, and drive like mad toward home, where she could get comfy and get thinking. Jean always did her best thinking in pajamas. A comfy body was a comfy mind.
    The ride home had her even more stressed. Her mind was everywhere and every other driver on the road seemed just as distracted, resulting in numerous close calls. What is going on today?
    By the time Jean got home, she was shaking terribly. Thank goodness her dad was at one of her school’s games -- a game she should be at in order to report about it, but she wasn’t working. He’d probably be back in about an hour or so, but that was long enough for her to calm down. Comfy clothes. NOW. Comfy clothes happened to be an oversized mint sweater (well, it mostly fit her: Grandma Lane had just made the sleeves a bit too long) and an old ratty pair of red basketball shorts and some rainbow toe socks, all of which had to be the most comfortable items of clothing ever made. Wrapped in these, Jean flopped on the loveseat in the family game room, trusty notebook in hand.

    So the shaking had stopped, however Jean had been sitting here at least fifteen minutes and still had a blank page in front of her. That angry white noise was back and growing louder every time she tried to organize her now-wrecked mental corkboard. There was some link she was missing and her own mind wasn’t helping one bit. The shaking may have stopped, but the front of her sweater was practically...pulsing? It took Jean a bit to figure out her heart was hammering so hard at this point it was literally moving her sweater. Whoa.
    Jean immediately dropped her notebook and gulped down as much of her green tea as she could, finishing the mug, no matter how lukewarm and nasty it was by this point. Green tea would help. Green tea was the cure to all ills. And yet, once she finished, all she had was an empty mug and a bad aftertaste in her mouth. What was Nikko doing to her? Or, more to the point, what was she doing to herself?

    Late that night, after her dad raves about the game and laments that Jean wasn’t there and dances around rapping off-rhythm while making pancakes for dinner and slathers them in so much syrup Jean can barely taste the pancake and somehow manages to have a one-sided conversation with Jean without choking and finally realizes Jean isn’t doing so hot and rather than push her says his goodnight and heads to bed early, Jean does something she hasn’t since she was a tiny daredevil. She can’t sleep and she can’t write and she can’t draw and she can’t plan and she can’t even think; so she uses the towering pine tree, that always manages to get sap all over her window and pine needles through it somehow, to heave herself on top of her roof.
    Since she can’t puzzle her way through anything more important, she puzzles why she stopped being such a daredevil. Jean used to be the little kid finding the tallest playground equipment and backflipping off of it, growling in disappointment when she didn’t stick her landing in the pre-planned spot, regardless of whether she’d stuck a landing at all. She’d come home with bruises and gushing knees that had to be kissed and plastered in waterproof Star Wars band-aids, pigtails with all sorts of odds and ends stuck in them, and an ambition that still wasn’t satisfied. What had changed? Well, obviously, that ever-hungry ambition had taken her this far, but what had she lost in the process? Jean laid back on her shingle roof, a bit uncomfortable, but satisfied watching the probably-already-dead stars flicker through thin clouds above her.
    Flickering. Like earlier. Like that-- No. NO. She was not going to think about that. She had another puzzle to solve. That she actually could solve. Now where was she? Okay, ambition, yes. Ambition had prodded her into attending the first school news club meeting, and before that ambition and curiosity had prodded her into making Journalism her dream. Of course, school news club meant research and research meant interviews and paperwork and long hours at the library. Somewhere, daredevil Jean had withered away under Jean Janis Parker. Maybe… Maybe she had needed Nikko after all…
    At that thought, Jean shivered and shifted uncomfortably. In fact, she was really uncomfortable. Curse bony shoulder blades and Nevada shingles! She flopped onto her side, but that caused a particular shingle to burrow into the small space between two ribs. Ugh! Why wasn’t this as fun as when she was a kid?! Flustered, Jean shot up and whipped her head around to curse the shingle that dare offend her. Only to find all shingles straight and orderly, if a bit chipped, and a small rock with a note wrapped around it. How…?
    She wasn’t even going to question things anymore. Nope. Forget it. She didn’t need to know how this got up here or how she’d missed it or how the messenger got the paper folded around the rock without a rubber band. She didn’t need to know anything else. She didn’t need to solve any of it. At all. She was just going to open up that note, probably hurl the rock at something, find out what was written, and then just forget about it. Simple. It was probably the universe torturing her with yet another puzzle. Jean stopped herself from very nearly flipping off the probably-already-dead stars. She busied her fingers with figuring out how to detach the paper from the rock.
    When she was finally able to pry it off the rock, said rock went flying off the roof and probably down the pine tree. But Jean didn’t care because she was focused on the cryptic note in front of her. It wasn’t cryptic because it really was some ancient puzzle sent from space. It was actually quite simple. What was cryptic was the simplicity.
    Written in hasty script were three lines:
WASHALONE3 AM
     Jean was totally going to forget about it.