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wonder if that’s a relative of hers. Maybe we can track him down.”
    Nia snorted. “Tell me you’re joking.”
    Callie shook her head, bewildered at Nia’s mocking her.
    Still wearing her familiar expression of total disdain, Nia continued. “Did you, like, take a course in cultural illiteracy?”
    I was starting to get a bad feeling about this conversation. “Um, guys, I think—”
    Callie waved her hand in a way that indicated she wasn’t interested in my playing sheriff at this showdown. “Don’t start with me, okay, Nia? Whatever ‘crime’ you feel I’ve committed, just give me a break.”
    But either because she was still angry at Louise or Amanda, or because she was just such a big Rudolph Valentino fan that she couldn’t bear the idea that someone somewhere in the world didn’t know who he was, Nia wasn’t about to let Callie’s comment go. “You’ll be happy to know, Callie, that we actually could track him down. In the cemetery where he’s been buried for the past eighty years.”
    There was a pause and I thought for sure Callie was going to lay into Nia. Instead, she cocked her head to the side, like she was considering something. “So you’re saying he’s probably not, like, her dad, aren’t you?”
    I don’t know if it was the averted fight or the tension of the whole day, but suddenly the three of us just cracked up. We laughed so hard I literally fell down, which made Callie and Nia pretty much completely hysterical. Every time I tried to get up, one of them would say the words “Rudolph Valentino” and we’d all start howling all over again. Finally I just gave up trying to get off the floor.
    Eventually Nia took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose, and said, “Okay, guys, we have to focus here.”
    â€œYes.” Callie gave a final giggle and looked at the tickets one last time. Then she shrugged. “Rudolph Valentino. Amando Valentino. Well, Valentino’s a good name anyway.”
    â€œYeah, too bad he wasn’t born with it. His real name was . . .” She squinted with the effort of recalling it, then snapped her fingers. “Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi.”
    â€œThat’s a name?” Callie shook her head. “Sounds more like a class list from a school in Milan.”
    Nia nodded her agreement and went to put the tickets in our “Amanda” pile (as opposed to our “gum-wrapper-loose-change-and-random-homework” pile). “You can see why he made up Valentino.”
    And suddenly it hit me so hard I almost toppled over from my kneeling position. Callie must have noticed me catch myself. “Hal? What’s up?”
    At the sound of Callie’s voice, Nia looked over at me, too.
    I looked at both of them without seeing either. “So did Amanda.”
    â€œWhat?” they asked together.
    I waited a minute, but the feeling didn’t go away. “So did Amanda,” I repeated. And in answer to their increasingly bewildered stares, I explained myself. “She made it up, too. Her last name? It isn’t Valentino.”

Chapter 5
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Nia demanded.
    â€œLook,” I said, and I was about to explain how it’s no big deal but sometimes I just, you know, “see things,” ha ha, nothing strange about that, is there? When I realized I hadn’t told them about the list I’d seen in Thornhill’s office.
    Kind of a big omission.
    I took a deep breath. “Look, you’re just going to have to believe me about her name and put it aside for a second because I have to tell you about something else right now and I need you to pay attention and not be distracted by whether or not I’m crazy.”
    â€œOh, Hal.” Nia put her hand on my shoulder in a mock comforting way. Her voice was pseudo-assuring.