I shook. “You have an accent—” The words died on my lips. “Rosa?” I said. And it was. She looked completely different than she had when she was eight years old, but somehow she looked the same too.

“Hi, Jack,” she said, appearing self-conscious for the first time.

“Surprise!” Elizaveta said.

“My God, Rosa, what are you doing here? In LA, I mean? Do you live here now?”

“Rosa has just started her freshman year at UCLA,” Elizaveta explained. “I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to catch up.”

“Catch up?” I said. “So you organized this? Today…the whole setup?”

“It wasn’t a setup, Jack.”

“Actually,” Rosa said, “I was early. We weren’t supposed to meet for another half hour. But I was too excited to see you, Jack. I didn’t mean to go all Fatal Attraction on you. I just thought you might recognize me.”

I looked at her more closely. Big almond eyes, nutmeg skin, svelte cheeks and chin. She wasn’t attractive; she was beautiful—beautiful and, to be honest, sexy. I didn’t want to think this. She was still eight years old in my mind. But I couldn’t deny it.

She was, as Nitro might have said, a ten.

“Wow,” I said. “This is blowing my mind. You used to be so small, Rosa.”

“That was a long time ago, Jack.”

“Yeah, I know…” I looked at Elizaveta. “How did you guys get in touch?”

“Facebook, Jack. Ever hear of it? Maybe you should get an account.”

“You never told me you and Rosa were Facebook friends.”

“We weren’t. Not until recently anyway.”

“When I found out I was accepted to UCLA,” Rosa explained, “I looked you up on Facebook, Jack. You know there are actually a bunch of other Jack Goffs in the world? I thought it was a one-off name. Anyway, there was a Jack Goff plumber, a Jack Goff accountant, a Jack Goff blogger. But no Jack Goff race car driver.”

“Jack is too famous for Facebook,” Elizaveta said. “He would have too many girls with the hots for him tracking him down.”

“I’ve never said that,” I said truthfully.

“You should see all the pit snakes that try to talk to him at races.”

“Pit lizards.”

“I went to your webpage, Jack,” Rosa said. “But the only contact was for your publicist. She wouldn’t give me your email address, so I searched for Eliza on Facebook. I didn’t know her surname, but Pepper told me—”

“Pepper!” I said. “You still talk to him?”