“Why would I? No one knows I’m Angelica Wyatt’s daughter.”

Not even me until I followed her from school last week. In school, Ema was the subject of much speculation. Every school, I’m told, has that one kid who seems to come out of the woods to school every day. No one knows where he or she lives. No one has been to his or her house. Rumors start—as they did about Ema. She lived in a cabin in the woods, some speculated. Her father abused her maybe. He sold drugs. Something.

Ema actually encouraged those rumors to hide the truth: She was the daughter of a world-famous movie star.

“I use my own name in the chat room,” Ema said, “so I can be just another fan.”

“Okay, go on.”

“So anyway, I started chatting with this guy. Then we started e-mailing and texting, that kind of thing.” Her face turned red. “He told me about his life. He told me he used to live in Europe but they had moved to the United States last year. We talked about books and movies and feelings. It . . . it got pretty intimate.”

My face twisted into a grimace.

“Ew, gross,” Ema snapped. “Not that kind of intimate!”

“I didn’t say—”

“Stop, okay? And never play poker, Mickey. You’d be terrible at it. I mean, we talked. We really talked and opened up. At first, okay, I figured that maybe this guy was a fake, you know? Like I was being played.”

“A prank,” I said. “Catfished.”

“Right. I mean, you know me. I don’t trust easily. But as time went on . . .” Ema’s eyes lit up. “It was weird, but we both changed. Especially him. He might have started out playing some kind of game, but he became real. I can’t explain it.”

I nodded, trying to move her along. “So you two got close.”

“Yes.”

“You felt like he was starting to open up to you.”

“Yes. A few days ago, he said that he had something really important to tell me. That he had to confess something. I figured, uh-oh, here we go. He’s really an eleven-year-old girl or he’s married and thirty-eight. Something like that.”

“But that wasn’t it?”

Ema shook her head. “No.”

“So what was his big secret?”

“He ended up saying, forget it, it’s no big deal,” Ema said. She slid a little closer to me. “Don’t you see? He chickened out. I can’t explain this well. I’m summing up hundreds of texts and conversations. It was like something scared him from telling me the truth.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“I am?”

I nodded. “You’re not explaining this well.”

Ema punched me in the arm. “Just listen, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Jared and I finally set up a meet.”

“Jared? His name is Jared?”

“Oh, now you’re going to make fun of his name?”

I held up both hands.