“I lost track of time. I had practice and we went to Buck’s dad’s gym and then, I don’t know, we went to Pizzaiola.”

She stopped. “You went with them for pizza?”

“Them. They’re my teammates, Ema. Don’t you get that?”

She just shook her head.

“What now?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” she said.

“They’re my teammates. I don’t have to hate them.”

“I didn’t say you had to.”

“But?”

“But nothing, Mickey. You’re free to do whatever you want.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said.

We reached Spoon’s room. He sat up in bed with that wonderful, dopey smile on his face. “Hey, Mickey, did you tell them?”

“Tell them what?”

“That I’m meant for great things.”

“Wait,” I said, “you heard that?”

“I heard everything.”

“So the whole time Bat Lady was here . . .”

“I was awake, yep.”

Rachel gasped. “She was here? In this room?”

Ema stared daggers at me. Great. Now that I got the basketball team to stop with the stares, Ema had picked up the habit.

“Yep,” Spoon said. “She pretended to be a nurse. She said I was meant for great things.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Rachel. “Impressed?”

I looked at Ema. “I was going to tell you at lunch,” I said to her, “but then Troy came by . . .”

“That’s okay,” Rachel said, though I hadn’t been talking to her. I think that she knew. I think that she was trying to save me. “So what did she say?”

I filled them in on the Bat Lady’s visit. When I finished, Rachel said, “So now we know for certain. We have to find Jared Lowell.”

I nodded. Ema didn’t. She had stopped staring daggers. Now she just looked plain hurt. Part of me understood. Part of me was getting a little annoyed.

“The question is,” Rachel continued, “how?”

Spoon cleared his throat. “That’s where I come in.”

We all turned to him. He clicked a button on his laptop. “I have just sent you all my most recent file on Jared Lowell. I managed to get into his Farnsworth School files. He’s a good student, by the way. Top of his class. But more important, I got both his dorm address and course schedule. You’ll also find a campus map in the attachment.” Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. “With this information, it shouldn’t be hard to find him.”

“The campus is in Connecticut,” Rachel said.

“I know.”

“So how are we going to get up there?”

“Oh,” Spoon said, “Mickey drives.”

“Not legally,” Ema said.

“And I can’t just drive up to Connecticut,” I said. “It’s wrong to do it locally, but it would be way too risky to go that far without a license. Plus my uncle has confiscated all the car keys.”