One night I couldn’t sleep and I fell down an internet rabbit hole, reading comments from people who’ve run into Endsley in New York City, where he lives. One girl saw him at the public library and approached to ask for an autograph of the second book, which she happened to have with her. Endsley refused. But as he walked away, a different boy approached her. He apologized for Endsley’s behavior and asked for the girl’s address, promising to send her a signed copy, before apologizing again for Endsley’s rudeness and disappearing into the crowd.

In an updated post, the girl claimed to have received the book.

Who knows if it’s true. Maybe I’ll be better able to judge for myself when I see him face-to-face.

“What about the ‘Just Enough Cooks in the Kitchen’ panel?” Jenna asks, interrupting my daydreaming. “June Turner and some of the authors from that anthology about feminism in high school are speaking. You know, the book I gave you to read last week that you never did?”

“How do you know I didn’t read it?” I ask.

“Because you gave it back to me without a page out of place, that’s how. There wasn’t so much as a smudge on it.”

“Are you suggesting I’m a book destroyer?”

Jenna gives me the same look I’ve seen Mrs. Williams level at Mr. Williams on weekly grocery runs, when he sneaks extra boxes of prepackaged muffins into the shopping cart, which he claims are “for his girls.” It’s a look of exasperation, but full of so much love it makes my insides burst.

I laugh. “Fine, I’m not a neat freak. Sue me. And you’re right about me not reading it, but only because I was—”

“Rereading the Endsley books,” Jenna interrupts. “I know.”

I link my arm through hers, dragging her once more into the river of people.

“Feminism panel it is, JenJen. We better get moving if we want seats up front. I know that’s where you’ll want to sit.”

Jenna is obviously resisting the urge to roll her eyes at me again as I stubbornly keep my arm linked through hers. It’s difficult to walk side by side with so many people around us. She doesn’t drop her arm, though. It’s her job to make the big and not-so-big choices in this friendship. It’s my job to make whatever she chooses fun, no matter how many faces she makes.

Both of us have an easy task today, because though she won’t say it aloud, I know that Jenna’s heart is beating just as eagerly as mine, marking time until we are closer to Orman and its creator than we’ve ever been before.