Thunder made my windowsill shiver. It was about 2:00 in the afternoon. My parents wouldn't be back from work for four hours. I had eaten the protein bar as soon as I had gotten home, which was at 11-ish. I was getting hungry.

I took a break from my business of being a hermit to make myself whatever was available, which happened to be ten pizza rolls and a tiny orange. I put my plate on the floor of my bedroom to set up, grabbing the lock box out of my closet, unlocking it with my necklace, and plopping the notebook in it down next to my plate. I also grabbed a pencil, because that kind of thing is needed for what I was doing.

After thoroughly scribbling down what I had done that day, all I could think to do was draw out the bus carving onto a sheet of notebook paper. I grabbed my phone and went to my gallery. Next, I flipped to the next blank page and expertly copied down the carving with a pencil. There was something about this bus. When I drew each detail I noticed that they weren't parts to a bus at all. What was crudely carved into the tree was a train.

I did what I had planned to do. I wrote down three theories of what the clue might mean, choking down a few pizza rolls along the way.

1) It could mean that Ashton is hiding in the abandoned trains

2) It could mean my next clue is on a train, whether active or abandoned

3) It could mean that Ashton took an active train to somewhere

Let me briefly explain the abandoned trains. There is a chain of train-cars that haven't moved in a solid eleven years. They're basically rusty garbage at this point. The tracks that they're on are places where people take walks. Yes, that's technically illegal, but the cops don't care.

It's possible to climb into a train-car, but nobody does it because of how deep they are. I doubt it was #1. Plus, what is drawn is the engine of a train, it looks like. It would have to be #2, or #3. However, I'll have to check out the abandoned trains one of these days, but that requires a different Adventure Story, and not one I'll be having super soon.

My main theory about what Ashton is doing is this: he can't know what order I'll be collecting clues, he only knows that I know where to look. So he'll spread random clues in random places, making me put the pieces together to find him. Therefore, this clue and my theories about it will be stored in the lock box while I go to my pre-planned destinations. Only when I'm finished will I be able to find him.

And that only raises the question of why. Why did he do this? That's all I can possibly think to ask him at this point. I distract myself with food, and then go to sleep.