Jeff had still been watching Jillian over the next two weeks, though she did not know that he was. She assumed he finally lost interest in her. This was completely wrong. Jeff's interest actually increased while watching her at night.
She had this book that she apparently wrote in. Jeff had not gotten a chance to look in it yet, but he planned it. She pulled it out occasionally before turning the light off in her room and going to sleep. She took it out of her dresser drawer where it was hidden under a mess of T-shirts, wrote in it with black pen, and then put it back. He decided one night that he was going to look in it while she was at school during the day.
Jeff hid in the shadow and foliage of the tree in front of Jillian's bedroom window. He waited until she grabbed her backpack and then closed the door behind her. Jeff took even more caution by waiting until he saw her walking from the front door to her bus stop. Then, Jeff waited until her parents had gone to work. He snuck in through the window as he had done several times before and looked around her room.
He looked around at the light blue walls of the room. She kept it really neat, though there were some papers from school scattered on her desk. Jeff walked around the perimeter of the room and kept looking around. It seemed so empty without her there. Jeff's memory flashed to when he went to school, which led to him thinking about the original fight with Randy and his crew. Jeff quickly squashed the memory and opened the top drawer of Jillian's dresser and began rummaging through the clothes. After a few moments, his pale hand found a hard cover of a book. He grabbed it and looked at the dark blue and plain cover of the text. Then, he sat down at the edge of her bed and opened the book. He began reading, and was generally surprised at the short sentences that were written from the beginning to over half way through the little book.
Jeff wanted to know more about it, so he decided that she would be back at Jillian's house before she got home. He figured he would pass the time with a kill since he needed to satisfy the feeling anyways.
A few hours later, Jillian walked into her room and gasped when she saw Jeff sitting on her bed. He laughed. "Thought I forgot about you?"
"Yes…actually." Jillian responded. She looked at the book that was sitting beside him. "Did you go through my journal?"
"Yes. It's quite depressing."
"I'm aware. I did write it."
"How is it a journal if it only has random sentences written in it?" Jeff asked.
"They're thoughts. I just write down what I'm thinking." Jeff went to open his mouth again, but Jillian cut him off. "Why is it that you seem to always be allowed to ask me questions, but I'm never able to ask you any?"
"I choose not to answer your questions." Jeff responded and smirked triumphantly. "Why is this thing so depressing?"
"I don't have to answer your questions." Jillian smiled back, not trying to hide the attitude. "Look Jeff, how about you answer some of my questions, and then I'll answer yours." Jeff simply muttered something under his breath as a response. "I'm assuming that is a yes. Why do you keep coming back to me?"
Jeff knew that that would be her first question. "You…interest me."
"Explain what you mean by interest."
"I mean that I'm fucking interested in you. You're not exactly fucking normal, in case you haven't noticed."
Jillian laughed. "That's a terrible explanation. Why do you sometimes seem more human than…murderer?"
"I'm not the only person that goes back and forth on that, sweetheart. You seemed to forget that I was a killer at some point while you were wearing my clothes. And the only reason I do that is because I was human."
Then, Jillian thought for a moment. "Do you think I'm pretty?"
"Do you think I'm pretty?" Jeff challenged back, giving her the creepiest smile he could and widening his burnt eyes.
"Yes. I like your face." They both stood in silence until Jeff responded to her.
"My turn." He began quickly. "What's with all the dying shit in this thing?" He tossed the book to her feet. "You go through a suicidal stage or some shit like that?"
"I guess you could call it that." Jillian picked up the book and sat on the bed next to Jeff. "I don't talk about it much." Jeff just looked at her and waited for him to tell her anyways. "I beat myself up a lot, especially when people give me the opportunity to do so. That's the same reason I don't make an effort to have friends anymore. I just kept causing problems." She flipped through the book. "Sometimes I wished I could just cut my tongue out. That way I wouldn't be able to tell anyone anything and I wouldn't cause a problem. I kinda just am a problem though. I always ended up making my friends hate me. I never tried to though. I wasn't trying to start stuff or anything. I just guess I was designed to make people hate me. Anyways, most of the time I ever said anything, a bunch of people just ended up hating me. I guess I got just to the point where I felt like life for them would be better if I disappeared."
"So…typical high school shit?" Jeff asked.
"I don't know. I guess after feeling like that over and over again, you just give up on talking to people. That's about all I did. At least then the only person causing my hatred for myself was me. I mean, I don't think anyone knew what was going on in my head. They didn't do it on purpose or anything like that." She paused and thought. "I mean, when it feels like everyone hates your guts, that they would not care if you were gone, and that they would be better off with you gone, it becomes your reality. It's stupid, I know. But, I get into habits like that easily."
Jeff was actually generally interested with all this, but when talking about death, he felt the feeling grow stronger. "So why didn't you do it? Why didn't you make everyone else's lives easier by destroying your own?"
"Several reasons. I don't have the mental ability to kill myself. I don't have the resources. I also know that my parents would be the ones to find my body. I couldn't do that to them, not after the perfect life they've given me, even if they can be a little distant sometimes." She turned to Jeff. "Why do you care?"
"You interest me." There was silence again. Jeff looked up at her. "You're….kind of pretty."
Jillian looked up at Jeff. "What?"
"You heard me!" He inadvertently yelled due to his embarrassment. "I…I think you're kind of pretty."
"Oh."
They both sat in silence yet again as their cheeks flushed red.
