For my own emotional well-being it has been suggested that I not Google myself.

There aren’t many people you can trust in this world who aren’t related to you, according to the familial overseers. Better to stay within your own family’s tender bosom till all this blows over.

What I know for certain is: You can always trust a dog.

Boris liked Dash.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals. Dash never hesitated to grab for Boris’s leash when crisis struck. He’s one stand-up (or sat-upon, in the case of the crimson alert mommies) kind of dude, for sure.

Boomer, who’s rather like a dog, also likes Dash.

Dog instincts are always right.

Dash must be very likable.

There are just lots of possibilities in the world, I’ve decided. Dash. Boris. I need to keep my mind open for what could happen and not decide that the world is hopeless if what I want to happen doesn’t happen. Because something else great might happen in between.

The verdict on Boris, therefore, is unequivocal: He’s a keeper.

Boris’s owner, my cousin Mark’s co-worker Marc from the Strand, had been illegally harboring Boris at his own studio apartment, in a no-pets building. He’d been able to get away with it before, because his building was run by an off-site management company with no super or owner living there, but now that Boris is so famous (according to a New York Post online poll, 64 percent of respondents think Boris is a menace to society, 31 percent think he’s an unwitting victim of his own strength, and 5 percent think Boris should meet his maker in an unmentionable way), Marc obviously can’t bring Boris “home.”

That’s okay, because I’ve made the executive decision that my home is now Boris’s home. In the less than twenty-four hours since he’s been under my care, Boris has learned to Sit, to Heel, to Not Beg for Food at the Dinner Table, and to Drop It (meaning Grandpa’s shoes about to be chewed to oblivion). Clearly the problem all along was that Boris’s owner was not giving him the proper attention and guidance he needed to flourish and become an upstanding member of society. Also, according to the Internet, Marc was not a reliable pooper-scooper and only used Boris as a pawn to meet girls. More disturbingly, Marc has texted me several times that he doesn’t mind me keeping Boris as long as I want. That’s one high-maintenance dog. Obviously Marc never deserved Boris to begin with.

Boris and I spent a night at the jailhouse together. We are bonded for eternity. Well, we spent a few hours in an interrogation room at the police precinct together, with an extremely cute boy. Close enough. Boris’s home is with me now, and Mom and Dad and everyone else will just have to get used to that. Family takes care of family, and Boris is family now.

My crisis management team turned out to be Alice Gamble, along with Heather Wong and Nikesha Johnson, two other girls from my soccer team.

As we hung out in my room, Alice said, “So, Lily. Even though we’ve known you for a long time, we’ve never, like, really gotten to know you, know you, right? So since your grandpa invited us over for this slumber party to keep you from going outside—”

“The slumber party was my idea,” I interrupted. “Grandpa just had conveniently hidden my phone before I had a chance to ask you myself.”

“Where’d you find your phone?” Alice asked.

“The cookie jar. So. Obvious. It’s like he wasn’t even trying.”

Alice smiled. “The girls and I, we conjured up something sweet for you, too.” She sat over my laptop and called up a video clip on YouTube. “Since you’re not available to the media to defend yourself, we decided your soccer could do it for you.”

“Huh?” I said.

Nikesha said, “You’re a mad good goalie! And who but a mad good goalie could make a baby catch like that? A goalie catches babies by natural instinct. Not because they’re trying to steal it! They’re trying to save it.”

Heather said, “Behold,” and started the YouTube video.

And there it was. To the tune of “Stop,” by the Spice Girls, my teammates had assembled a series of photos and video clips showing me in soccer goalie motion—running, grunting, kicking, leaping, jumping, soaring.

I had no idea I was that good a player.

I had no idea my teammates had ever noticed, or cared.

Maybe I’d never bothered to think of them as my teammates before. Maybe I myself had been the biggest part of the friendship impasse.

There’s no i in team, as the saying goes.

When the clip ended, the girls wrapped me in a victory huddle in my bedroom such as we’d never shared together on the field. I couldn’t help it. I was crying—not a full-on embarrassing sobfest, but silly yet profound tears of joy and gratitude.

“Wow, guys. Thank you” was all I could blubber to say.

“We chose the ‘Stop’ song because that’s what you do—stop the other team from scoring,” Heather said. “Just like you stopped that baby from hitting the pavement.”

Nikesha said, “And as a Beckham homage, too.”

“Obvs,” Alice and I both said.

Heather said, “If you read the comments—I mean, there are 845 of them so far, so maybe don’t. But I perused them when we first put this up to defend your good name, and, Lily, you totally already have five proposals of marriage in there, at least until I stopped reading. I mean, 95,223 views—no, just jumped to 95,225 as of this second. I could only read so many of the marriage offers and other indecent proposals. There are a few college recruiters who posted that you should try out for their teams, too.”

Boris barked approvingly from his new dog bed at the corner of my room.

December 31st

“Benny and I are back together,” Langston announced over lunch. The slumber party girls had all gone home to prepare for their own New Year’s Eve celebrations, and Grandpa was upstairs negotiating on the phone with Mabel to forsake Miami to visit him in New York—in January!—so he wouldn’t have to drive down to Florida again, return to New York again, turn around back to Florida again, then return to New York again, all within a matter of days.

Men just can’t make up their minds about what they want.

“A couple of days apart was just too much for you and Benny?” I asked my brother.

“That, yes. But also, we figured, you know, we started that whole red notebook thing for you. We have kismet together.”

“And you really missed each other! And hopefully decided to just admit that and see each other exclusively?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Langston said. “Let’s just say Benny and I have a behind-closed-doors Skype date for New Year’s Eve tonight while he’s in Puerto Rico. No babysitting you and your hijinks.”

“Gross. And you never babysat me.”

“I know. And believe me, I’ll be blamed for everything that’s happened for the rest of my life.”

“Thanks for doing a terrible job being in charge, Brother. I had a blast.” Something about the red notebook’s origins still bothered me, though. “Langston?” I asked.

“Yes, Lily celebrity-bear? Oh, Celebri-bear! That’s going to be my new name for you.”

I ignored that last bit. “What if it’s really you he likes?”

“Who? What do you mean?”

“Dash. Finding the red notebook. That was your idea. I wrote the first messages in my own handwriting, but the words and ideas were yours. Maybe the person Dash asked out for New Year’s Eve is based on some figment of his imagination that you created?”

“So what if it is? You kept on with the notebook. You continued the adventure. And look what it turned into! I coughed away in my bedroom and mistakenly broke up with my boyfriend. You went out and made your own destiny with that notebook!”

He didn’t get it.

“But, Langston. What if … Dash ends up not really liking me? Me-me, not his idea of me.”

“So what if he doesn’t?”

I’d been expecting my brother to jump to my defense and proclaim his certainty in Dash’s certain liking of me. “What?” I said, offended.

“I mean, if Dash doesn’t like you once he gets to know you, so what?”

“I don’t know if I want to take that risk.” Get hurt. Be rejected. Like Langston once was.

“The reward is in the risk. You can’t stay hidden inside Grandpa’s overprotective cloak forever. You’ve seemed like you needed to grow out of that for a while. Mom and Dad going away, and the red notebook, these things just helped. Now it’s up to you to figure out how Dash figures into the picture. How you fit into this picture. Take the risk.”

I wanted so badly to believe, but the fear felt as great and overwhelming as the desire. “What if this all has been a dream? What if we’re just wasting each other’s time?”

“How can you know if you don’t try?” Langston then quoted the poet he’d been named after, Langston Hughes. “ ‘A dream deferred is a dream denied.’ ”

“Are you over him?” I asked.

We both knew the him I referred to was not Benny, but the him who broke Langston’s heart so devastatingly. Langston’s first love.

“In some ways, I think I’ll never be over him,” Langston said.

“That is such an unsatisfying answer.”

“That’s because you’re interpreting it the wrong way. I don’t mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I meant that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There’s no getting over that.”

My heart undoubtedly wanted to embrace and/or be trampled upon by Dash. That much was sure. The risk would have to discover its own reward.

From under the table, Boris licked at my ankles. I said, “Boris is staying and he has imprinted on my heart and Mom and Dad are just going to have to live with that.”

“Joke’s on you, Celebri-bear. Your big Christmas present on New Year’s Day was going to be Mom and Dad finally giving you permission again to have your own pet.”

“Really? But what if we move to Fiji?”

“The parents will figure it out. If they do decide to go, they’ll keep this apartment, where I’m going to stay living while I’m at NYU. I don’t think Mom and Dad are planning to live in Fiji year-round—just during the school terms. I’ll take care of Boris when you’re away, if you end up going with them and it turns out Boris isn’t allowed past customs in Fiji. How about if that’s my Christmas present to you?”

“Because you were too busy being with Benny to get me something this year?”

“Yep. And how about in return, instead of the sweater you’ve undoubtedly knit me, and the umpteen cookies you’ve undoubtedly baked me for Christmas on New Year’s, if you just tell Grandpa not to blame me for all your hijinks and get him off my case?”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Let the girl call the rules, as it should be.”

“Speaking of rules … what are you doing for New Year’s, Lily? Surely you’ll be let back outside again? Will Monsieur Dashiell be squiring you around our fair town tonight?”

I sighed and shook my head. There was nothing to do but admit it: “He hasn’t called me or emailed me or notebooked me since the police station.”

I abruptly stood up from my chair so I could return to my room and feel terribly sorry for myself and eat way too much chocolate in private.

I supposed I could text or email Dash (even call him—what?!?!?), but those options felt intrusive after all we’d been through. After the red notebook. Dash was a guy that appreciated his privacy and seemed to revel in solitude. I could respect that.