“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.
“He lives in Connecticut. About two hours from here. So we agreed to meet at the Kasselton Mall. Jared had just gotten his license and could drive down. He said that he had to tell me something really important, something he could only tell me in person. He said that once we met, I’d understand everything.”
“Understand everything about what?”
“About him. About us.”
I was lost, but I just said, “Okay. So then what?”
“Then . . .” Ema stopped, shrugged. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“What do you think I mean?” she snapped. “That’s it. I went to the Kasselton Mall. I waited exactly where we said we’d meet—in that back corner of Ruby Tuesday’s. But he never showed. I waited one hour. Then two. Then . . . all day, okay? I sat there all day.”
“Jared never showed?”
“You got it.”
“So what did you do then?” I asked.
“I texted him. But he didn’t answer. I e-mailed him. Same thing. I went into our chat room, but he didn’t come back. I even checked his Facebook page, but there was nothing there. It was like he had suddenly vanished into thin air.”
Ema typed something onto her laptop and then turned it to me. It was a Facebook profile for a boy named Jared Lowell. I took one look at his profile picture and without thinking said, “You were catfished.”
“What?”
The guy in the profile picture was ridiculously good-looking. I don’t mean everyday-high-school-quarterback good-looking. I mean TV-hunk, fronting-a-hot-boy-band good-looking.
“Forget it,” I said.
Ema was angry now. “Why did you say that?”
“Forget it, okay?”
“No, why did you say that I was catfished when you saw his picture? It’s because he’s cute, right?”
“What? No.” But my words sounded weak even in my own ears.
“You don’t think a guy who looks like that could ever go for a girl who looks like me, right?”
“That’s not it at all,” I sorta-lied.
“If I were Rachel Caldwell, you’d have no trouble believing it—”
“It isn’t that, Ema. But, I mean, look at him. Come on. If I told you I was having an online relationship with a girl I met in a chat room and, when you saw her picture, she looked like a famous swimsuit model, what would you think?”
“I’d believe you,” she said. But now it was her voice that sounded weak.
“Right,” I said. “Sure. And then when I was supposed to meet Miss Swimsuit Model in person, she suddenly vanished—would you still believe it?”
“Yes,” she said a little too firmly.
I put my hands on her shoulders. “You’re my best friend, Ema. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
She looked down, her face reddening in embarrassment.
“I could lie to you and tell you that this all sounds on the up-and-up,” I said. “But what kind of friend does that? I’m not saying your relationship with Jared isn’t real. But if I don’t have the courage to tell you how it looks, who will?”
That stopped her. Ema kept her face down. “So you think, what, it’s a prank?”
“Maybe,” I said. “That’s all. Maybe it’s just a joke.”
She looked up at me. “A joke?”
“A cruel one, but yeah, maybe.”
“Well, ha-ha.” Ema shook her head. “Mickey, think about it. Let’s say it was a prank. Let’s say it was the mean kids in school. Like Troy or Buck, right? Let’s say they set this whole thing up.”
I waited.
Ema spread her arms. “Where’s the payoff?”
I had no answer to that.
“They would have let me know, right? They would have mocked me. They would have rubbed it in my face or put the intimate conversations online. They’d let the world know what a fool I was, wouldn’t they?”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“Why would Jared the prankster just vanish without having the last word?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Mickey?”
“What?”
“It is easy to make fun of these relationships. I used to do it too. But think about it. When it is just in writing like this, when it is just texts or e-mails, just your words and nothing else, it is actually more real. It doesn’t matter what you look like or what table you sit at during lunch. It doesn’t matter if you play quarterback or head up the chess club. All of that becomes irrelevant. It is just the two of you and your intelligence and your feelings. Do you see?”
“I guess,” I admitted.
“Listen to me, Mickey. Look at my eyes and really listen.”
I did. I looked into those eyes, and for a moment, I felt happily lost. I trusted those eyes. I believed in them.
“I know,” Ema said. “Don’t ask me how. But I know. We have to do this—even if you think I’m crazy.”