“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.”

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

“I don’t mind. In fact, I nd it a lit le exciting!”

As soon as we were o 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 real y wanted to know if there was a di erence, 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

al .

I always hoped that after the prince found Cinderel a and they rode away in their magni cent carriage, after a few miles she turned to him and

said, “Could you drop me o down the road, please? Now that I’ve nal y escaped my life of horri c 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 al he wanted to do was go back to

his library and read a hundred books, only everyone kept interrupting him, tel ing 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 al 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 oor, in the moment, before the music ends.

I am trying to embrace danger….

I am not dangerous. Only the stories are dangerous. Only the ctions we create, especial y 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 writ en it.

Mark Strand, whose three most famous lines are:

In a eld

I am the absence

of eld

So I took out my fourth postcard and wrote:

Postcard 4: Times Square on New Year’s Eve

In a eld, I am the absence of eld. 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 storytel ing. Which, in the case of lives, is the same as truth tel ing. Or as close to it

We ARE the story of our lives. And the red notebook is for our storytel ing. Which, in the case of lives, is the same as truth tel ing. 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 il -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 doorbel rang—Boomer—and I scribbled down some hasty instructions.

“Are you in there?” Boomer yel ed.

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

“Real y—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 wil ing to be my Apol o?”

“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 So a. And Yohnny. And Dov. And Lily.”

“Lily!”

“Yes, Lily.”

I was at empting 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 fel ow 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. cal ed to tel 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.

Il ogical Langston woke up from his u 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 stil 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 o ender? Grandpa. He goes down to Florida for Christmas to propose marriage to Mabel, who turns him down, so he drives al

the way back to New York on Christmas Day in a hu , 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

thril ed 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 fel a

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 al the time, just when things were starting to get interesting in the Lilyverse.