We stayed a step behind the three boys. Every once in a while they would turn around and look at us, wondering, I guess, why we were following them. Sometimes they stared openly at Ema. There may have been derision in their eyes, I couldn’t say for sure. Ema was decked out in her customary black—black clothes, black hair, black nail polish, black lipstick. Tattoos ran up and down her arms and across her neck.

I could almost feel her growing uncomfortable next to me, so I decided to break the tension by speaking: “Hey, guys.”

They all turned now and squinted at us.

“Do you know Jared Lowell?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure,” one of them said. The kid had a big mop of blond hair. “Why, you guys friends?”

I looked at Ema. She looked at me. Man, I hadn’t thought this through. “Uh, sort of.”

Under her breath Ema muttered, “Smooth.”

Blond Mop said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

But now Blond Mop looked at me with suspicion. We passed a place called Wilke’s Deli. A bunch of students were lined up to get lunch.

“Uh, I’m his cousin,” I said lamely.

Ema looked on in horror.

“You are?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess height runs in the family, then.”

“I guess.”

“If you’re his cousin,” Blond Mop said, “why did you say ‘sort of’ when I asked if you knew him?”

Ema folded her arms. She wanted to hear this too.

“Did I?” I fumbled. “Oh, I thought you asked if we were friends. We’re cousins. That’s ‘sort of’ friends. You know what I mean?” I smiled like the local TV anchorman. Up ahead I saw a tall white steeple that I recognized from the Farnsworth School website. We were getting close to campus. “Hey, nice meeting you.”

We quickly veered right. Out of the side of her mouth, Ema said, “Wow, you’re good.”

“Thanks.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She stopped. “Mickey?”

“What?”

“How do I look?”

“Great.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not.”

Ema started to bite a nail.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I really care about this guy, okay? I know you want to dismiss it because it was online. But I have feelings for him. I miss him. We shared in a way that . . .”

I felt a small pang. I waited for her to continue. Then I said, “In a way that what?”

She shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

On the website, the campus looked beautiful; in person, it looked even better. The perfectly aged brick buildings lined the perimeter of an expansive circle of pure golf-tournament-green grass. The grass has been cut in perfect strips. The circle was big enough to house two soccer fields and a baseball diamond. The fields were all empty now, the entire campus still. I checked the clock on my phone and then I looked at the class schedule.