She falls asleep, and dreams about Emma's hand reaching from the water to grab her wrist and pull her down, under the surface.

Pao, feeling guilty about being mad at her mother, as well as not wanting to eat reheated tamales, lies, saying that she's not hungry and she's going to lie down.

She preheats the oven for forty-five minutes.

Her mother gets up and looks in the freezer, finding a Ziploc bag full of Senora Mata's cheese-and-jalapeno tamales.

Pao reminds her that it's time for dinner.

'When Pao opened the door to apartment C, the smell of incense was overwhelming.' Pao wants to linger on her feelings for a bit longer, but she steels herself and goes inside her apartment.

Before Pao goes up the stairs, Dante tells Pao that he thinks that her passion about algae is actually pretty cool, and blushes, then walks up the stairs.

Pao and Dante continue to walk down the street to their apartment building.

Pao confirms with Emma that she is coming to the river.

Emma gets a phone call, and says she needs to go home for dinner.

They follow him until they're breathless and laughing, and then dump the algae back into the river. Emma comes up with the idea to throw algae at Dante, and both her and Pao do it, but Dante shrieks and races away.

When Emma asks what Pao was thinking about, Pao tells her it's algae.

The trio decide to head home, as it's getting late.

Pao is lost in thought about algae before her friends draw her attention.

Pao, Dante and Emma are at the Gila river.'It was 118 degrees in Silver Springs, Arizona, and the Gila River was thick with Algae.' Pao has always relied on hard science to make sense of the world, but to find her friend she will have to enter the world of her nightmares, which includes unnatural mist, mind-bending monsters, and relentless spirits controlled by a terrifying force that defies both logic and legend. But when Emma never arrives and Pao sees a shadowy figure in the reeds, it seems like maybe her mom was right. Hating her mother's humiliating superstitions and knowing that she and her friends would never venture into the water, Pao organizes a meet-up to test out her new telescope near the Gila, since it's the best stargazing spot.

Pao is embarrassed to admit that she has been told to stay away for even longer than that, because her mother is constantly warning her about La Llorona, the wailing ghost woman who wanders the banks of the Gila at night, looking for young people to drag into its murky depths. It's all they've heard since a schoolmate of theirs drowned a year ago. Space-obsessed 12-year-old Paola Santiago and her two best friends, Emma and Dante, know the rule: Stay away from the river.

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