Billie thinks about going over to ask for an autograph. Pretending to be a fan. Could you pop that bubble with a ballpoint pen? This is the kind of thought Conrad Linthor goes around thinking, she’s pretty sure.

Billie catches her bus. And that’s the end of the story, Paul Zell. Dear Paul Zell.

Except for the ring. Here’s the thing about the ring. Billie wrapped it in tissue paper and sealed it up in a hotel envelope. She wrote “Ernesto in the kitchen” on the outside of the envelope. She wrote a note. The note said: “This ring belongs to Paul Zell. If he comes looking for it, maybe he’ll give you a reward. A couple hundred bucks seems fair. Tell him I’ll pay him back. But if he doesn’t get in touch, you should keep the ring. Or sell it. I’m sorry about Hellalujah and Mandroid and The Shambler. I didn’t know what Conrad Linthor was going to do.”

So Paul Zell. That’s the whole story. Except for the part where I got home and found the e-mail from you, the one where you explained what had happened to you. That you had an emergency appendectomy and never made it to New York at all, and what happened to me? Did I make it to the hotel? Did I wonder where you were? You say you can’t imagine how worried and/or angry I must have been. Etc.

I’ll be honest with you, Paul Zell. I read your e-mail and part of me thought, I’m saved. We’ll both pretend none of this ever happened. I’ll go on being Melinda and Melinda will go on being the Enchantress Magic EightBall and Paul Zell, whoever Paul Zell is, will go on being the Master Thief Boggle.

But that would be crazy. I would be a fifteen-year-old liar, and you would be some weird guy who’s so pathetic and lonely that he’s willing to settle for me. Not even for me. To settle for the person I was pretending to be. But you’re better than that, Paul Zell. You have to be better than that. So I wrote you this letter.

If you read this letter the whole way through, now you know what happened to your ring, and a lot of other things, too. I still have your conditioner. If you give Ernesto the reward, let me know and I’ll sell Constant Bliss and the Enchantress Magic EightBall. So I can pay you back. It’s not a big deal. I can go be someone else, right?

Or else, I guess, you could ignore this letter. We could pretend I never sent it. That I never came to New York to meet Paul Zell. That Paul Zell wasn’t going to give me a ring.

We could pretend that you never discovered my secret identity. We could meet up a couple times a week in FarAway and play chess. We could go on a quest. Save the world. We could chat. Flirt. I could tell you about Melinda’s week and we could pretend that maybe someday we’re going to be brave enough to meet face-to-face.