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room door. I had seen it in an old picture of hippies from the sixties. I had even seen the image of that butterfly in an old photograph of the famous Lizzy Sobek, the young girl who led children to safety during the Holocaust. I saw it atop my father’s “maybe” grave, on the back of a photograph in Bat Lady’s basement, even in a tattoo parlor.
    “You told me about that,” I said.
    “I know. But I went back to have it redone. You know. Have Agent make it bright or change it. The tattoos usually wear off after a few weeks.”
    I felt a small chill ripple across my back. “But?”
    “But he couldn’t.”
    I knew the answer but I asked anyway. “Why?”
    “It’s permanent,” Ema said. “Agent said he doesn’t know how that happened. But the butterfly is there. For good.”
    I said nothing.
    “What’s going on, Mickey?”
    “I don’t know.”
    We sat there in silence. I finally broke it. “Tell me about your missing boyfriend.”
    For a second or two, she didn’t move. She swallowed, blinked a few times, and then stared at the floor. “
Boyfriend
may be putting it a little too strongly.”
    I waited.
    “Mickey?”
    “What?”
    Ema started twisting the skull ring on her right hand. “You have to promise me something.”
    Her body language was all wrong. Ema was about confidence. She was big and confident and didn’t care who noticed. She was comfortable in her own skin. Now, all of a sudden, that confidence was gone.
    “Okay,” I said.
    “You have to promise you won’t make fun of me.”
    “Are you serious?”
    She just looked at me.
    “Okay, okay, I promise. It’s odd, that’s all.”
    “What’s odd?” she asked.
    “This promise. I thought you didn’t care what people think of you.”
    “I don’t,” Ema said. “I care what
you
think of me.”
    A second passed. Then another. Then I said, “Oh,” because I’m really, really good with words. It was, of course, a dumb comment on my part—the stuff about her not caring. Everyone cares what people think. Some just hide it better.
    “So tell me,” I said.
    “I met a guy in a chat room,” Ema said.
    I blinked once. Then I said, “You hang out in chat rooms?”
    “You promised.”
    “I’m not making fun.”
    “You’re judging,” she said. “That’s just as bad.”
    “I’m not. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
    “It’s not like you think,” Ema said. “See, I’ve been helping my mom with her social networking. She’s clueless. So is her manager and her agent and her personal assistant—whatever. So I set some promotional stuff up for her—Twitter, Facebook, you know the deal. And now I watch it for her.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Anyway, in this chat room, I met this guy.”
    I just looked at her.
    “What?” she said.
    “Nothing.”
    “You’re judging again.”
    “I’m just sitting here,” I said, spreading my hands. “If you see something more on my face, that’s more about you than me.”
    “Right, sure.”
    “I’m just surprised, okay? What kind of chat room was this anyway?”
    “It’s for Angelica Wyatt fans.”
    I tried sooo hard to keep my face expressionless.
    “There you go again!” she shouted.
    “Stop looking at my face and tell me what happened. You’re in an Angelica Wyatt chat room. You start talking to a guy. Am I right so far?”
    Ema looked sheepish. “Yeah.”
    “Are you using an alias?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Why would I? No one knows I’m Angelica Wyatt’s daughter.”
    Not even me until I followed her from school last week. In school, Ema was the subject of much speculation. Every school, I’m told, has that one kid who seems to come out of the woods to school every day. No one knows where he or she lives. No one has been to his or her house. Rumors start—as they did about Ema. She lived in a cabin in the woods, some speculated. Her father abused her maybe. He sold drugs. Something.
    Ema actually encouraged those rumors to hide the truth: She was the