Keith's laughter eventually subsides. It takes a while. Jane stands in her room holding a hammer she has now committed to emotionally, listening to him wheeze on the other end of the line.

Jane crosses the room to the window and peers down at the front of the house. The driveway is empty. The mailbox sits at the end of the path like a small, indifferent rectangle.

He does not sound sure. Jane doesn't push it because at that moment a car pulls into the driveway — her mom's car, back early from the workshop, presumably carrying more cake.

The call ends. Jane stands at the window for a moment, phone in hand, watching her mother step out of the car carrying what appears to be a cake the size of a small child. She does not process this. She turns back to the room instead.

Jane lies on her bed and stares at the ceiling. From somewhere — the radio on the shelf, maybe, or possibly just the universe being dramatic — the opening piano notes of Welcome to the Black Parade drift into the room and refuse to leave.

She stares at the ceiling. The ceiling stares back. Neither of them blink.

Then her computer makes a noise. A message notification, bright and cheerful, with zero concept of the mood it is interrupting.

Jane sits up. Crosses the room. Sits in the computer chair with the posture of someone who has been sitting in computer chairs for so long they've given up on having a spine.

The message is from COLBY PARKER.

A note on Colby Parker: he is, to all available evidence, the only person on earth who communicates in a dialect that sits precisely between a Victorian butler and a sleep-deprived Discord moderator. The effect is deeply confusing and somehow charming, which everyone who knows him finds personally offensive.

Jane leans back in her chair. Stares at the ceiling again, briefly. Then she gets up with the energy of someone who has received a mission and fully intends to procrastinate on it for another four minutes first.

She goes to the trunk. One more time. For supplies.

She heads downstairs.

The staircase is quiet. The house smells like it always does when her mom has been home for more than ten minutes — hair product and something floral that Jane has never been able to identify and no longer tries to.

She passes the shelf in the hallway. On it sits her older brother's Tamagotchi collection, lined up in a row, each one dead and gray-screened. Eight years of dust on all of them.

She shakes her head and keeps walking.

The living room smells strongly of her mom's presence. Jane grimaces and breathes through her mouth out of habit.

Then she sees it: a gift box on the table, near the TV. Ribbon. Bow. Note attached.

She picks it up with the suspicion she applies to all unexpected things. Reads the note.

Jane's expression does something complicated. Something soft and involuntary, like a door opening that she usually keeps locked.

She opens the box.

A life-sized Vaporeon plushie explodes out of it.

There is a beat of silence in which nothing exists but Jane and the Vaporeon and the soft sound of a worldview crumbling.

The Vaporeon smiles at her. Innocently. Earnestly. As if it has no idea what it represents.

The Vaporeon continues to smile. It has no concept of what it has done.

Jane physically shakes herself. Like a dog. Like someone trying to exit their own body briefly and return with more composure.

She sets the Vaporeon down. It continues smiling. She does not look back.

She walks to the front door.

She puts her hand on the doorknob.

The phone rings.

Jane screams. In her startled jump, her elbow connects with a shelf. On the shelf sits an urn. The urn tips. The lid comes off. Grandpa goes everywhere.

The hallway is gray for a moment, and then the dust settles, and Jane is standing in the middle of it, covered in a thin layer of deceased grandfather, hand still outstretched toward where the doorknob was.

The phone keeps ringing.

She answers it.