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ranger’s cabin along the Chassahowitzka River, where she could do research on manatee populations—that would do her just fine. The gentle mammals were her main interest outside of music. If she could have music and manatees, that was all she needed. Well, music and manatees and a boyfriend who loved those things too. And maybe now she’d found him.
    “Ten minutes to Kyle,” she said, nervous. Would he show? Would he be as interested in her as he’d seemed last time? She grabbed her laptop and settled onto her bed with purple velvet pillows propped behind her, facing the door like she always did—so that no parent could stroll in and read over her shoulder. Not that they
would
stroll in. Not that she ever had anything to hide, in particular…until this week.
    She signed on and scanned her buddy list for Kyle’s screen name: still offline. Suppose he didn’t show? Suppose he found someone he liked better than her?
    Her webpage, where he’d first discovered her, was as appealing as she could make it. She’d fudged a little on the facts, though, including posting photos specially selected to make the case that she was twenty, not a month shy of sixteen. One showed her by the pool, wearing a bikini and holding a highball glass filled with amber liquid meant to look like a cocktail. In reality she didn’t drink at all—she was smarter than that. But success in life was all about presentation, that’s what her dad always said. So her page presented the Savannah she thought would attract the kind of boyfriend she wanted: an older guy whose interests matched hers. Guys her age—the ones she knew, anyway—seemed to care only about sports or money or, like her friend Jonathan, were more into playing video games than having an actual life.
    Her page was her portal to the
real
world. And she hoped—hoped so hard that it made her stomach hurt—that her strategy had worked, that Kyle would become her companion and guide.
    She traded IMs with Rachel about the guy they’d met up with earlier at the library. Some senior from North Marion High. She’d gone to the library as moral support, though Rachel, who’d practically licked the guy’s ear while whispering to him, seemed to not need any kind of support at all. Now Rachel was saying he’d promised to call her, but she’d forgotten to give him her number before her mom arrived. In typical Rachel fashion she wrote,
    OMG!! wat do i do???? i just no i will never c him agn!!!!!!!
    chill
, Savannah wrote. In her opinion, the guy was too skinny, and he hadn’t seemed that into Rachel anyway.
    Savannah kept up her end of the conversation mindlessly, waiting, waiting, her heart seeming to stall, until the chime of Kyle messaging her jump-started it again:
    hi babe, wassup?
    To Rachel she wrote hurriedly,
its him! gtg.
    If what he’d said in their first chat was legitimate, he was twenty-three years old and had a bachelor’s degree in marine biology. He loved music, including some of her favorite bands: No Doubt, Evanescence, Nickel-back, and Carson McKay. He sounded
perfect.
    Everything she’d posted on her page was accurate—well, except for her age: long wavy red-brown hair, 5'8" (too tall, she thought, but what could she do?), green eyes, 127 lb. She hadn’t revealed her whole name, just first and middle, wise to the risks of giving too much information.
Savannah Rae.
If she ever got into professional songwriting or performing in public, that was the name she planned to use.
    i’m studying 4 bio quiz
, she replied. She’d told him that first night that she was a student at the University of Florida—but only after making sure he hadn’t gone there.
    ah, the good old days
, he wrote. He was working on his PhD now, doing some kind of research for a professor at Harvard—fieldwork around the western Everglades, only a few hours south of Gainesville, he’d said. Gainesville, where
she
supposedly lived in an apartment with three girlfriends.
    Kyle’s very first