“Please stay calm, Amelia. Please?” Jenna exhales. She is slipping into the tone her mother uses in court, the forced relaxation of someone who refuses to lose their cool in the face of hysterical clients, husbands, or—in this case—fangirls.

I try to make my voice more level. “Where did you see him?”

This is a betrayal of the highest degree, a purposeful withholding of my greatest desire—to meet the author of the Orman Chronicles—and I can barely hear her through the heat pulsing in my ears.

The Uber guy flicks his eyes to us in the rearview mirror, then away. I bet he’ll tell his partner over dinner about the two insane teenagers whisper-arguing in the backseat.

“You know that rope I was standing next to?” Jenna is picking at the invisible lint again. “I guess it was blocking the way to the refreshment room they had for the authors. I heard a choking sound and thought someone was in trouble. I ignored the NO CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS sign to check and … it was him.”

“Him,” I say bitterly. “Him. How can you say it like that? It wasn’t just a him, it was N. E. Endsley, Jenna.”

“I know, Amelia, but he’s also just a guy, you know?”

Now she sounds sympathetic and motherly, and I know my reaction is unfair, but I can feel my temper rise even higher.

“No, I don’t know that he’s just a guy, because I wasn’t there. Remember?”

Jenna is quiet. A bright yellow sports car comes roaring out of nowhere and jerks around us, the sound of the engine cutting through the silence.

“He was pacing and pulling at his hair,” Jenna says. “And mumbling. A panic attack, I think. I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jenna’s voice is almost a whisper, like she’s afraid to speak too loudly.

When I say nothing, Jenna tries to fill the quiet, her voice pitching higher in exasperation. “He needed help, Amelia. All I could do was try and calm him down. Do you really think I could leave him there? ‘Hey, one sec. Let me go find my friend. She loves your books. Hold that thought and that mental breakdown. Thanks.’”

“You could’ve,” I half shout, hating myself for the slight Texas accent that breaks through and how unreasonable I sound. “You could have come to find me. I could have helped!”

In the span of a second, I think of all the things that make up Jenna—her goodness, her quiet but fierce empathy, her infuriating need to be right—and wish I could shut up. That I could make the aching, disenchanted part of my chest stop hurting long enough to tell Jenna that I understand.

But when Jenna responds, “Oh, Amelia. You’re being unreasonable,” the angry swirling in my brain starts anew and I’m at the mercy of the storm.