The hand attached to the end of Edgar’s arm decided to get frisky. His eyes never left the screen, but his hand discreetly landed on my thigh, while Edgar’s mouth continued to guffaw over the macabre massacre that was befalling Gramma on the screen as the reindeer’s tusks once again ran her over.

I couldn’t believe the boldness of the maneuver. (Reindeer’s and Edgar’s.) I was all for danger, but we hadn’t even kissed yet. (I mean, me and Edgar, not me and Reindeer. I love animals, but not that much.)

I’ve waited all my life for that first kiss. I wasn’t going to ruin it by allowing whole bases to be skipped.

“Ruff ruff,” I barked at Edgar Thibaud as his hand drew circles over the embroidered poodle on my poodle skirt. I returned his hand to the armrest, the better perch from which I could return to admiring his bicep.

In the backseat of the cab home, I let Edgar unbutton my sweater and take it off me. I pulled my skirt down myself.

I was wearing my soccer shorts and shirt underneath the sweater and skirt in case Grandpa was waiting for me when I got home. I took a water bottle from my purse and wet my face and hair so I’d appear sweaty.

The meter on the cab read $6.50 and 8:55 p.m. as we pulled up to the curb in front of my building.

Edgar leaned into me. I knew it could be about to happen.

I don’t delude myself that the first real kiss I experience will lead to a happily ever after. I don’t believe in any of that Prince Charming nonsense. I also don’t delude myself that I’d wish for it to happen in the backseat of a smelly taxi.

Edgar whispered in my ear, “Do you have money for your half of the fare? I’m kind of broke and won’t have enough for the driver to drop me off after you otherwise.” His index finger quickly brushed across my neck.

I shoved him away, even though I longed for more of his touch. But not in a taxi, for goodness’ sake!

I gave Edgar Thibaud five dollars, and a million silent curses.

Edgar’s mouth moved thisclose to mine. “I’ll get the fare next time,” he murmured. I turned my cheek to him.

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you, Lily?” Edgar Thibaud said.

I ignored his sleek bicep peeking at me from under his snug sweater.

“You did kill my gerbil,” I reminded him.

“I love a hunt, Lily.”

“Good.”

I stepped out of the cab and shut the door.

“Just like that reindeer loved a hunt!” Edgar called out to me from the window as the cab moved toward its next destination.

December 27th

Where ARE you?

It seemed I was destined to commune by notebook with Snarl most frequently while I was lodged in bathrooms.

This day’s bathroom was at an Irish pub on East Eleventh Street in Alphabet City. It was one of those pubs that are more family places during the day and become watering holes at night. I was there during the day, so Grandpa could relax.

I hadn’t wanted to lie to Grandpa again, so I’d told him the truth—that I was meeting my Christmas caroling group for a reunion. We were going to sing “Happy Birthday” to angry Aryn, the vegan riot grrrl, whose twenty-first birthday was December 27.

I didn’t mention the part to Grandpa about how I’d texted Edgar Thibaud to meet me there, too. Grandpa hadn’t asked me whether Edgar Thibaud would be at the birthday party; therefore, I had not lied to him.

Since it was Aryn’s twenty-first birthday, my caroling troupe had taken up drinking songs instead of traditional Christmas hymns to usher in her legal drinking age. The group was on its fourth round of beers by the time I arrived. And Mary McGregor / Well, she was a pretty whore, they sang. Edgar had yet to appear. When I heard the dirty words being sung, I quickly excused myself to the bathroom and opened the familiar red notebook to write a new entry.

But what was there left to say?

I still wore the one boot and one sneaker, just in case Snarl should find me, but if I was going to face danger head-on, I probably had to acknowledge that in forgetting to return the red notebook, I’d blown it with Snarl. I’d have to settle on the brand of danger Edgar Thibaud offered as my most promising consolation prize.

My phone rang, displaying a photo of a certain house in Dyker Heights decked out in celestial orbit Christmas lights. I answered. “Happy two days after Christmas, Uncle Carmine.” I realized I’d taken the notebook back from him on Christmas Day, and yet never asked him for any clues about Snarl. “Did you ever get a look at the boy who returned the red notebook at your house?”

“I might have, Lily bear,” Uncle Carmine said. “But that’s not what I called to talk to you about. I heard your grandpa came back from Florida early and that things didn’t go so well down there. Is this true?”

“True. Now, about that boy …”

“I didn’t get any information about him, sweetheart. Although the kid did do a curious thing. You know the giant nutcracker we place on the lawn, near the fifteen-foot red soldier?”

“Lieutenant Clifford Dog? Sure.”

“Well, when your mystery friend left behind the red notebook, he also deposited something else. The most butt-ugly puppet I’ve ever seen.”

Snarl couldn’t have. Did he?

“Did it look like an early Beatle who’d gotten a makeover for a Muppet movie?”

Uncle Carmine said, “You could say that. A really bad makeover.”

Another call rang on my cell, this time displaying my favorite picture of Mrs. Basil E. sitting in the grand library of her brownstone, legs crossed, drinking from a teacup. What could Great-aunt Ida want to discuss right now? She probably also wanted to talk about Grandpa, when I had much more important things on my mind—like that I’d just learned Snarly Muppet, whom I had personally, lovingly, crafted for Snarl, had been recklessly abandoned by him inside a nutcracker!

I ignored Mrs. Basil E.’s phone call and said to Uncle Carmine, “Yeah. Grandpa. Depressed. Please visit him and tell him to stop asking me where I’m going all the time. And could you return the beautiful puppet to me next time you come into the city?”

“ ‘I love you, yeah yeah yeah,’ ” Uncle Carmine responded.

“I’m very busy,” I told Uncle Carmine.

“ ‘She’s got a ticket to ride,’ ” Uncle Carmine sang. “ ‘But she don’t care!’ ”

“Call Grandpa. He’ll be glad to hear from you. Mwah and goodbye.” I couldn’t help but add one last thing. “ ‘Good day, sunshine,’ ” I sang to Uncle Carmine.

“ ‘I feel good in a special way,’ ” he answered.

And with that, our call ended. I saw that Mrs. Basil E. had left me a voice mail, but I didn’t feel like listening. I needed to mourn the end of the notebook, and of idealizing a Snarl who’d tossed aside my Snarly. Time to move on with my life.

I wrote a final entry in the notebook and closed it, perhaps for good.

I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep.
The party had moved to a garden table outside, at the back of the pub. The late-December day had finally turned appropriately wintry and chilly, and the group huddled now with hot toddies as their drinks of choice.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, they sang. It was an especially nice song to sing—a soft, sweet one that matched the feeling in the air like when snow’s about to fall and the world feels quieter, and lovelier. Content.

Edgar Thibaud had arrived and joined the group while I was in the bathroom. As they sang “White Christmas,” he placed his fist to his mouth and made a beat box of sound with it, rapping in “Go … snow … snow that Mary MacGregor ho,” over the carolers’ song. When he saw me approach the table, Edgar transitioned to join the carolers in their song, improvising, “Just like the Lily-white one I used to know …”

When the song ended, angry Aryn said, “Hey, Lily. Your chauvinist, imperialist friend Edgar Thibaud?”

“Yes?” I asked, about to cover my ears with the red pom-poms on my hat in expectation of an epithet-laden rant from Aryn about one Edgar Thibaud.

“He’s got a decent baritone. For a man.”

Shee’nah, Antwon, Roberta, and Melvin raised their glasses to Edgar Thibaud. “To Edgar!” They clinked.

Aryn raised her glass. “It’s my birthday!”

The group raised glasses again. “To Aryn!”

Edgar Thibaud did the Stevie Wonder version of “Happy Birthday.” As he sang “Happy birthday to you! Happy biiiiiirrrrrrthdayyyy …,” Edgar closed his eyes, nodded aimlessly, and placed his hands on the table to pretend he was a blind guy playing piano.

Aryn was surely wasted by this point, because the political incorrectness of such a performance normally should have made her insane. Instead, she bellowed, “I want my birthday to be a national holiday.” She stood up on her chair and announced to everyone within earshot, “Everybody, I give you the day off today!”

It seemed silly to remind her that most people already had the day off, since it was the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

“What are you drinking?” I asked Aryn.

“A candy cane!” she told me. “Try some!”

Since I was flirting with danger, I took a sip of her drink. It did taste like a candy cane … only better! I could understand why my carolers had made a habit of passing the peppermint schnapps flask when we’d made our rounds in the weeks before Christmas.

Tasty.

I looked over to Edgar. He was taking a picture with his cell phone of my feet: one part majorette boot, one part sneaker. “I’m sending out an all points bulletin to find your other boot,” Edgar said. He hit Send on the picture like he was a regular Gossip Girl.

The carolers laughed. “To Lily’s boot!” Glasses again clinked.

I wanted more Tasty. And Dangerous.

“I want to toast, too,” I said. “Who wants to let me sip their hot toddy?”

As I reached over for Melvin’s glass, the red notebook fell out of my purse, which was still slung over my shoulder.

I left the notebook on the floor.

Why bother?

“Lil-eee! Lil-eee!” the group—and by now, the whole bar—cheered.

I danced on the table and sang out a punkier-than-Beatles line o’ lyric, gesturing a defiant fist in the air: “ ‘It’s! Been! A! Long! Cold! Lonely! Winter!’ ”

“ ‘Here comes the sun,’ ” sang back dozens of bar voices.

All it had taken was three sips of peppermint schnapps, four hot toddy sips, and five sips of Shee’nah’s drink of choice, the Shirley Temple—not!—to turn me into a veritable party girl. I felt changed already.

Since Christmas, so much had happened, all started by the notebook I’d decided to leave discarded on the barroom floor. I was now a girl—no, a woman—transformed.

I had become a liar. A Lily bear who flirted with a gerbil killer. A Mary MacGregor who after only six random sippies unbuttoned the top two pearl buttons on her sweater to allow a glimpse of her cleavage.

But the real Lily—the way-too-tipsy-and-needing-to-nap-and/or-barf sixteen-year-old one—was also way out of her element in this birthday-party-turned-full-on-bash with party girl Lily at its center.

Winter’s early darkness had fallen; it was only six o’clock, but dark outside, and if I didn’t get home soon, Grandpa would come looking for me. But if I did go home, Grandpa would know I was mildly … mildly … inebriated. Even if I hadn’t ordered or been knowingly served alcohol in the pub—I had only taken sips of others’ drinks. Grandpa might also find out about Edgar Thibaud. What to do?

A new group of people arrived in the bar and I knew I had to stop singing and dancing on the table before they, too, joined the party. I was in way over my head already.