As I was letting myself back into the apartment, the phone rang. Boomer.

“Hey,” he said after I answered. “Do we have plans for today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, we should!”

“Sure. What are you up to?”

“Tracking your celebrity! I’ll send you a link!”

I took off my boots and mittens, unwrapped my scarf, set my hat aside, and headed to my laptop. I opened up Boomer’s email.

“WashingtonSquareMommies?” I asked, picking the phone back up.

“Yeah—click it!”

The site was a mommy blog, and on the front page a headline screamed:

CRIMSON ALERT!
ATTACKER IN PARK
Posted 11:28 am, December 28
by elizabethbennettlives
I am activating the crimson alert because a young man—late teens, early twenties— assaulted a child in the park ten minutes ago. Please study these photos, and if you see him, alert the police immediately. We know he shops at Morton Williams (see bag) and was last seen on Eighth Street. He will not hesitate to use force against your children, so be alert!!!
maclarenpusher adds: people like this should be shot.
zacephron adds: purvurt christwearsarmani adds: remind me the difference between a crimson alert and a fuchsia one? i can never keep them straight!
The photos attached to the posting showed much more of my hat and scarf than anything else.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked Boomer.

“It was a mixture of your clothes, your brand of yogurt, and your piss-poor aim—well, at least until you clobbered that kid.”

“And what were you doing on WashingtonSquareMommies, anyway?”

“I love the way they’re so mean to each other,” Boomer said. “I have it bookmarked.”

“Well, if you don’t mind hanging out with the source of a crimson alert, come on over.”

“I don’t mind. In fact, I find it a little exciting!”

As soon as we were off the phone, I unwrapped the package (brown paper, tied up in string) and found the red Moleskine had come back to me.

I knew Boomer wouldn’t take long to get here, so I dove right back in.

I’m sorry I didn’t return our notebook to you.

That already seemed like so long ago.

You don’t feel like a stranger to me.

I wanted to ask her, What does a stranger feel like? Not to be snarky or sarcastic. Because I really wanted to know if there was a difference, if there was a way to become truly knowable, if there wasn’t always something keeping you a stranger, even to the people you weren’t strange to at all.

I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderella and they rode away in their magnificent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and said, “Could you drop me off down the road, please? Now that I’ve finally escaped my life of horrific abuse, I’d like to see something of the world, you know?”

Maybe the prince would be relieved. Maybe he was tired of being asked who he was going to marry. Maybe all he wanted to do was go back to his library and read a hundred books, only everyone kept interrupting him, telling him he couldn’t ever let himself be alone.

I might have liked to share a dance with you. If I may be so bold to say.

I thought:

But isn’t this a dance? Isn’t all of this a dance? Isn’t that what we do with words? Isn’t that what we do when we talk, when we spar, when we make plans or leave it to chance? Some of it’s choreographed. Some of the steps have been done for ages. And the rest—the rest is spontaneous. The rest has to be decided on the floor, in the moment, before the music ends.

I am trying to embrace danger….

I am not dangerous. Only the stories are dangerous. Only the fictions we create, especially when they become expectations.

I think it’s time to experience life outside the notebook.

But don’t you see—that’s what we were doing.

I’m so sorry.

No need to apologize. No need to say Game over. Your disappointment makes me sad.

Then Mark Strand:

We are reading the story of our lives
As though we were in it,
As though we had written it.

Mark Strand, whose three most famous lines are: In a field
I am the absence
of field

So I took out my fourth postcard and wrote:

Postcard 4: Times Square on New Year’s Eve
In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don’t want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle. “Game over,” you say, and I don’t know which I take more exception to—the fact that you say that it’s over, or the fact that you say it’s a game. It’s only over when one of us keeps the notebook for good. It’s only a game if there is an absence of meaning. And we’ve already gone too far for that.

Only two postcards left.

Postcard 5: The Empire State Building at Sunrise
We ARE the story of our lives. And the red notebook is for our storytelling. Which, in the case of lives, is the same as truth telling. Or as close to it as we can get. I don’t want the notebook or our friendship to end just because we had an ill-advised encounter. Let’s label the incident minor, and move on from it. I don’t think we should ever try to meet again; there’s such freedom in that. Instead, let our words continue to meet. (See next postcard.)

The last postcard I saved for the notebook’s next destination. The doorbell rang—Boomer—and I scribbled down some hasty instructions.

“Are you in there?” Boomer yelled.

“No!” I yelled back, Scotch-taping each postcard onto its own page of the notebook.

“Really—are you in there?” Boomer said, knocking again.

It hadn’t been my intention when I’d asked him over, but already I knew I’d be sending Boomer on another assignment. Because as curious as I was to see Lily’s snowman, I knew that if I started talking to her great-aunt again, or stepped inside that house again, I would likely end up staying for a very long time. Which was exactly what the notebook didn’t need.

“Boomer, my friend,” I said, “would you be willing to be my Apollo?”

“But don’t you have to be black to sing there?” was Boomer’s response.

“My messenger. My courier. My proxy.”

“I don’t mind being a messenger. Does this have to do with Lily?”

“Yes, indeed it does.”

Boomer smiled. “Cool. I like her.”

After the contretemps with Thibaud last night, it was refreshing to have one of my male friends beam with niceness.

“You know what, Boomer?”

“What, Dash?”

“You restore my faith in humanity. And lately I’ve been thinking that a guy can do far, far worse than surrounding himself with people who restore his faith in humanity.”

“Like me.”

“Like you. And Sofia. And Yohnny. And Dov. And Lily.”

“Lily!”

“Yes, Lily.”

I was attempting to write the story of my life. It wasn’t so much about plot. It was much more about character.

sixteen

(Lily)

December 29th

Males are the most incomprehensible species.

The Dash fellow never showed up to see his snowman. I would have shown up if someone had built me a snowman, but I am a female. Logical.

Mrs. Basil E. called to tell me the snowman melted. I thought, Sucks to be you, Dash. A girl made a snowman using lebkuchen spice cookies to shape the snowman’s eyes, nose, and mouth, just for you. You don’t even know what you missed. Although, according to Mrs. Basil E., the snowman’s demise should not be a cause for concern. “If the snowman melts,” she said, “you simply build another.” Ladies represent: logical.

Illogical Langston woke up from his flu and promptly broke up with Benny, because Benny left for Puerto Rico to visit his abuelita for two weeks. Langston and Benny decided their relationship was still too new and fragile to survive a two-week absence, so breaking up entirely was their compromise. They did so with the promise that they might get back together when Benny gets back home, but if either of them should meet someone else in that two-week window, they had the green light to pursue. Makes no sense to me whatsoever. With that kind of logic, they deserve each other—or not to have each other, as the case may be. Boys are crazy—so much drama.

The worst male offender? Grandpa. He goes down to Florida for Christmas to propose marriage to Mabel, who turns him down, so he drives all the way back to New York on Christmas Day in a huff, convinced the relationship is over. Four days later, December 29, and he’s driving back down to Florida, with a complete change of heart.

“Gonna work this thing out with Mabel,” Grandpa announced over breakfast to me and Langston. “I’m leaving in a few hours.” Even if I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of Grandpa and Mabel forming a more permanent union, I guessed I could get used to the union, if it made the old fella happy. And from a practical point of view, removing Grandpa from our city would serve the added bonus of preventing him from asking where I was going all the time, just when things were starting to get interesting in the Lilyverse.

“How do you propose to work things out?” Langston asked. His face was still pale, his voice hoarse and nose runny, but my brother was eating his second scrambled egg and had already devoured a stack of toast with jam, clearly feeling much better.

“What was I thinking with that we-have-to-get-married business?” Grandpa said. “Outdated concept. I’m going to propose that Mabel and I just be exclusive to one another. No ring, no wedding, just … partnership. I’d be her only boyfriend.”

“Guess who has a boyfriend, Grandpa?” Langston asked menacingly. “Lily!”

“I do not!” I said, but in a quiet, not Shrilly-like tone.

Grandpa turned to me. “You’re not allowed to date for another twenty years, Lily bear. In fact, your mother still isn’t allowed to date, according to my recollection. But somehow she slipped away anyway.”

At the mention of her name, I realized I missed Mom. Fiercely. I’d been too busy the last week with the notebook and other random misadventures to remember to miss my parents, but suddenly I wanted them home right now. I wanted to hear why they thought moving to Fiji was a good idea, I wanted to see their unfortunately tanned faces, and I wanted to hang out with them telling stories and laughing together. I wanted TO OPEN MY CHRISTMAS PRESENTS ALREADY.

I bet they were starting to miss me just as much. I bet they were feeling truly awful with missing me, and for abandoning me at Christmas, and for possibly making me move to a remote corner at the farthest end of the world when I’ve been perfectly content living right here in the center of the world that is the island of Manhattan.

(But maybe trying a new place could be interesting. Maybe.)

I held the truth to be self-evident: There was no way I wouldn’t be able to mine a puppy out of this situation. So much parental guilt, so much Lily need for a dog. And I believed I could make the case that I’d evolved as a human and as a personal dog owner rather than just walker. I could handle pet ownership this time around.

Merry Christmas, Lily.

Practically speaking, no way would I settle for a bunny.

I barely had time to search dog shelter sites in Fiji for an appropriate adoptable pooch when I received a text from my cousin Mark.

Lily Bear: My co-worker Marc needs to go upstate to tend to his mother, who’s been felled by eggnog poisoning. Do you have room in your client list for his dog, Boris? Needs to be fed and walked twice a day. Just for a day or two.
Sure, I texted back. Admittedly, part of me had been hoping Mark’s text would involve a Dash sighting, but a new dog job was adequate distraction.