When Alex's friends teased her about her relationship with her mother, calling her "Mommy's girl" and "Rousseau's baby girl," she just laughed at them and said her mom was the best and they were just jealous. What she didn't tell them, or anyone, was about what she called the flashes. Mostly they were just feelings, but they were always disturbing and terrifying. She would wake up in the night shaking and crying and convinced that someone had killed her mom. She would see her mom across the school parking lot and feel an unreasoning terror that someday someone was going to take her away from her. That was what made her catapult herself across the parking lot and hug her hard at the end of the school day, or what made her get up and rush out into the kitchen and burrow into her arms in the morning. Just the idea of what might be taken away made her appreciate what she had.