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her.
    She watched the boy walk down the hill and approach the rock. When he saw the bait, he stopped where he was and looked around. It took a few moments for him to appear satisfied that he was alone. Emma was sure that he hadn’t seen her.
    The boy moved on and stood in front of the rock. A brand new backpack rested upon it. It was black and blue and just about the right size for a boy of eleven.
    Jake stared at the backpack for a moment before he picked up the envelope that Emma had placed on top of it. On the envelope she had written the words, “For Jake.” He turned it this way and that and looked around once again before he opened it and took out the card that was inside it.
    It was a square, blue card and it had a single word written in the middle of it. “Magic,” it said.
    The boy frowned at the card and turned it over and around just as he had done with the envelope. He put the card down on the rock and then climbed on top of it himself. He took out his lunch from his old backpack and started to eat, looking at the new backpack the entire time, seeming to consider it.
    Emma watched and waited.
    When Jake finished his lunch, he emptied the contents of his old backpack. He stuck his hand through the hole and wiggled his fingers before tossing it aside. The boy took one last look around and then put his things into the new backpack.
    Emma imagined a giant box on top of the boy and a big stick holding it up. She pulled the imaginary string and imagined the box falling on him and trapping him.
    “Okay, crazy girl,” Jake said. “You can come out now.”
    “What?” Emma yelled from behind her hiding place. She stepped out from around the tree. “You knew I was here?”
    “I saw you,” Jake said. “Anyway, who else would leave this here?”
    “Yeah, I guess,” Emma said. She made her way back across the creek. Jake watched her hop from rock to rock, holding her arms out to the sides to keep her balance.
    “This isn’t how the plan was supposed to go,” she said.
    “How was it supposed to go?”
    “You weren’t supposed to know it was me,” she said. “You were supposed to think it was from a magic school or something. Wizardry.”
    “That’s completely insane,” he said. “And then what?”
    Emma blinked. “And then… I don’t know. That was as far as I got.”
    “You really are crazy,” he said. “But why?”
    “I want to be your friend,” Emma said.
    “That’s it?”
    She nodded.
    “Okay, but really. Why?”
    “No reason.”
    Jake looked from Emma to the backpack and paused as if he was considering her words. He looked back at her and frowned.
    “Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll be your friend.”
    For the remainder of the lunch period they sat on the big rock together. Emma had a lot of questions for the boy but she tried not to interrogate him. Nevertheless, she found that the boy was eager to talk once his hard exterior had been cracked.
    “Then my dad went missing,” he was saying. “I don’t know anyone and my dad is gone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
    Emma told him about Bill and how he and Joel had come around to their house. She told him about searching in the forest and even about the music that she thought she had heard, the music of the tree.
    “But I think I must have imagined it, right?” she said. “My dad said I have an imagination. Yesterday, I thought I saw a man with horns. Got scared but it was probably just a deer.”
    Jake jumped off the rock and went to the edge of the water. He picked up a few stones and tried to skip them. Most of his throws went straight in and sank to the bottom. After several attempts, he flung the rest of the stones at the falling trickles. He came back to the rock wiping his hands on his jeans.
    “You think you could find that tree again?” Jake said.
    Emma thought about it. She knew the general direction in which they had gone, and she decided that she could probably get close, at least.
    “Maybe,” she said.