It was a long time since Stacey had slept a whole night's sleep. She'd been stressed, been biting her nails. Her family knew something was wrong – of course it was, with two friends dead to fires – but she'd been determined not to tell them what. That was the skull man's advice, after all. She didn't want to disobey anything the skull man said.

Her family had said lots of children worried about things these days. They'd told her about websites that talked about it, that would help her stop being afraid. But none of them worked, in the end. They had told her the events she was afraid of weren't likely to happen to her, but not what she should do if they actually were. They said that a girl like her would not come to die in a fire. But that wasn't what the skull man said, and it was him who was beside her right now.

"You should keep your worries to yourself," he said. "It's not good for the people you love to go fretting. To know how little time they have left." In the dark of the room the skull looked blank and inhuman— but then a skull is one of the most human things there is. It's all that's left of us, Stacey thought, after everything that makes us people is peeled away. They would find her skull, not long from now. The fact was stuck right into her, just like her skull and bones.

Just like every night, Stacey began to cry.