I don’t mind being the odd girl out; it’s kind of a relief, maybe. In the language of soccer, however, I am highly fluent. That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.

Do you like sports? I don’t imagine you being the sporty type. I KNOW! Your name is Beckham, isn’t it?

I’m not sure you will get this notebook back tonight. I’m not sure I can accept your latest mission. It’s only because my parents are away that I can even consider it. I’ve never been to a late-night music club before. And going out by myself in the middle of the night, in the middle of Manhattan? Wow. You must have a lot of faith in me. Which I appreciate. Even if I’m not sure I share it.

I stopped writing so I could take a nap. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to accept Snarl’s task, but if I did, I’d need to rest first.

I dreamt about Snarl. In my dream, Snarl’s face was Eminem’s, and he was singing “My name is …” over and over while holding up the red notebook to reveal a new page displaying different names.

My name is … Ypsilanti.

My name is … Ezekiel.

My name is … Mandela.

My name is … Yao Ming.

At one in the morning, my alarm went off.

Snarl had infiltrated my subconscious. The dream was obviously a sign: he was too enticing too resist.

I checked in with Langston (passed out cold), then put on my best Christmas party frock, a gold-colored crushed velvet mini-dress. I was surprised to discover I’d developed more boobage and hippage since I wore the dress the previous Christmas, but decided not to care how snug it was. The club would probably be dark. Who’d notice me? I completed the outfit with red tights and Mrs. Basil E.’s majorette boots with the gold-tinseled tassels. I put my red knit hat with the poms-poms dangling from the ears on my head but pulled out some strands of blond hair from the front to cover one of my eyes so I could look a little mysterious for once. I whistled to hail a cab.

Snarl must have had me under some kind of spell because sneaking out in the middle of the night, on Christmas night no less, to a dive club on the Lower East Side was about the last dare that pre-notebook Lily ever would have taken on. But somehow, knowing the Moleskine was tucked away in my bag, containing our thoughts and clues, our imprints to each other, somehow that made me feel safe, like I could have this adventure and not get lost and not call my brother to save me. I could do this on my own, and not freak out that I had no idea what waited for me on the other side of this night.

“Merry Christmas. Tell me something that’s a drag.”

The bouncer she-man’s request at the door to the club would have confused me before Thanksgiving, but because of meeting Shee’nah through my caroling group a few weeks ago, I understood the system.

Shee’nah, who is a proud member of this “new now next wave of fabulosity” in the downtown club scene, had explained the drag-on ladies as being “not quite drag queens, not quite dragons, there for you to drag your woes to.”

And so, to a very large, very gold-lamé-dress-wearing club bouncer who had a dragon’s mask on her head, I whined, “I didn’t get any presents for Christmas.”

“Sister, this is a Hanukkah show. Who cares about your Christmas presents? Come on, do me better. What’s your drag?”

“There may or may not be a person of unknowable name and face inside that club who may or may not be looking for me.”

“Bored.”

The door did not budge open.

I leaned into the drag-on lady and whispered, “I’ve never been kissed. In that certain way.”

Drag-on lady’s eyes widened. “Seriously? With those boobs?”

Gosh! Ex-squeamish me?

I covered my chest with my hands, ready to bolt.

“You are serious!” the drag-on lady said, finally opening the door to me. “Get in there already! And mazel tov!”

I kept my arms covering my chest as I entered the club. Inside, all I could see was screaming-thrashing-moshing crazy people. It smelled like beer and puke. It was as close an approximation to hell as I could imagine. Immediately I wished to return outside and pass the night chatting with the drag-on lady, and hearing everyone else’s tales of woe at the door.

Was Snarl playing some kind of cosmic joke on me, sending me to such a dump?

I was scared, frankly.

If I’d ever been intimidated trying to make conversation with a posse of lip-glossed sixteen-year-old girls at school, they were child’s play in comparison to the formidable group of club folks.

Meet [dramatic drumroll, please] the punky hipsters.

I was easily the youngest person there, and the only person there by herself, so far as I could tell. And for a Hanukkah party, no one was dressed appropriately. I seemed to be the only person there dressed festively. Everyone else was in skinny jeans and crappy T-shirts. Like teenage girls, the hipsters congregated in cooler-than-you packs, wearing bored expressions on their faces, but unlike the teenage girls I knew, I didn’t think any of them wanted to ask to copy my math homework or play soccer. The hipsters’ sneers in my direction immediately dismissed me as Not One of Them. I can’t say I wasn’t grateful about that.

I wanted to go home to the safety of my bed and to my stuffed animals and to my people I’d known my whole life. I had nothing to say to anybody, and fervently prayed that no one there would have anything to say to me. I was starting to hate Snarl for throwing me into this lion’s den. The worst punch I’d swung him was Madame Tussauds. But wax people don’t pass judgment and say to each other “What is that girl wearing? Are there taps on her boots?” when I walk by. I don’t think.

Ah, but … the music. When the band of young Hasidic punk boys took the stage—a guitar player, a bass player, some horns, some violins, and, strangely, no drummer—and let loose their explosion of sounds, then I understood Snarl’s master plan.

The band played a style I’d heard before, when one of my cousins married a Jewish musician. At their wedding reception, a klezmer band played, which Langston told me was like a kind of Jewish punk-jazz fusion. The music at this club was like if you mixed the horah dance with Green Day playing a Mardi Gras parade? The guitar and bass provided the sound’s foundation, while the horns riffed with the violins, and the band members’ voices laughed and wept and sang all at once.

It was clown insane. I loved it. My arms removed themselves from protecting my chest. I needed to move! I danced my tuchus off, not caring what anyone thought. I twirled in the middle of the mosh, thrashed my hair around, and jumped like I was on a pogo stick. I tapped my boot taps on the floor like I was part of the music, too, not caring what anyone thought.

Apparently, the wildly dancing hipsters thought the same as me about the music, dancing around me like we were in a punk horah dance. Maybe klezmer music was a universal language, like soccer. I couldn’t believe how much I enjoyed myself.

I realized that Snarl had given me what I asked for as a Christmas present. Hope and belief. I’d always hoped but never believed that I could have such an adventure on my own. That I could own it. And love it. But it had happened. The notebook had made it so.

I was sad when the band’s set ended, but also glad. My heart rate needed to come down. And it needed to find its next message.

While the opening band left the stage, I went to the bathroom, as instructed.

May I just say, if I ever have to return to that bathroom in my lifetime, I’m bringing a bottle of Clorox.

I took a paper towel from the sink and placed it on the toilet to sit down on; no way would I use that toilet. There was writing all over the stall wall—trails of graffiti and quotes, messages to lovers and friends, to exes and enemies. It was almost like a wailing wall—the punked-out place to puke out your heart. If it wasn’t so filthy and smelly, it could almost have doubled as a museum art installation—so many words and feelings, so many diverse styles of scribbling, with messages written in Magic Marker, different-colored pens, eyeliner, nail polish, glitter pens, and Sharpies.

I related most to this scrawled line:

BECAUSE I’M SO UNCOOL AND SO AFRAID

I thought, Good for you, Uncool and So Afraid. You made it here anyway. Maybe that’s half the battle?

I wondered what happened to that person. I wondered if I could leave him or her a red notebook to find out.

My favorite scrawl was written in black Magic Marker. It said:

The Cure. For the Exes. I’m sorry, Nick. Will you kiss me again?
Because suddenly, on the night-(horah-)mare after Christmas, as I sat on a filthy toilet in a stinky bathroom, dripping in sweat from dancing, I really really wanted that certain someone to kiss. In a way I’d never wished for in my life. It wasn’t about the fantasy. That was now replaced with hope and belief that it could happen, for real.

(I’ve never kissed anyone for real, in a romantic way, before. I hadn’t lied to the drag-on lady. I don’t think my pillow counts.

(Should I confess this to Snarl in the notebook? Full disclosure, so he had a fair chance to run?

(Nah.)

There were so many messages on the bathroom wall that I might never have found his, except I recognized his handwriting. The message was a few lines down from the Cure kiss message. He’d painted a strip of white paint as background, then alternated the words in blue and black Magic Marker—a nice Hanukkah-themed message, I guessed. So Snarl was secretly a sentimentalist. Or maybe part Jewish?

The message said:

Please return the notebook to the handsome gumshoe wearing the fedora hat.
Well, just dreidel me verklempt.

Was Snarl here?

Or was I going to meet a kid named Boomer again?

I stepped back out into the club. In all the black jeans and black T-shirts and bad lighting, I finally identified two men in a corner by the bar wearing fedora hats, although one had a yarmulke pinned over it. Both guys wore sunglasses. I noticed the one not wearing the yarmulke lean down and scrape a piece of gum from his shoe with a paper clip. (I think he used a paper clip. Gosh, I hope he didn’t use his fingernail—gross.)

In the club’s darkness, it was impossible to make out their faces.

I pulled out the notebook, then changed my mind and put it in my purse for safekeeping, in case I had the wrong guys. If they were the right guys, shouldn’t they be saying something to me like, Hey, we’re here for the notebook?

They shot me their glazed, punky hipster glares instead.

I was struck mute, panic-afflicted.

I ran out of the club as fast as I could.

Mortifyingly, I ran right out of one of my boots. Really. I’d neglected to wear socks over my tights so the too-big boots would fit properly, and like a Shrilly Cinderella at the indie-gayjewfire ball, I slipped right out of one of my boots.

No way was I going back for it.

Only when the cab dropped me off at home and I took out my wallet to pay the driver did I realize:

I’d left the gumshoe a boot and no notebook.

The notebook was still in my purse.

I’d given Snarl no clues how to find me back.

nine

–Dash–

December 26th

I was woken up at eight in the morning by a banging on the door. I stumbled into the front hallway, squinted into the peephole, and found Dov and Yohnny peering back at me, fedoras askew.

“Hey, guys,” I said after I opened the door. “Isn’t it a little early for you?”

“Haven’t gone to sleep yet!” Dov said. “We’re all Red Bullish and Diet Coked–up, if you know what I mean.”

“Can we crash here?” Yohnny asked. “I mean, soon. Like, in two minutes.”

“How could I turn you away?” I asked. “How was the show?”