I don’t think we should ever try to meet again; there’s such freedom in that.

And now, for his nal trick, Dash had insulted me.

Postcard 6: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

met past and past part of MEET meet\mēt\1 a : to come into the presence of: FIND b : to come together with esp. at a particular time or place c :

to come into contact or conjunction with : JOIN d : to appear to the perception of …

“Are you okay, Lily?” a voice at the bathroom sink next to me asked as I read through Dash’s latest inexplicable (to make no sense; see: BOYS)

message.

I shut the red notebook and looked up. In the mirror, I saw Alice Gamble, a girl from my school who was also on my soccer squad.

“Oh, hey, Alice,” I said. “What are you doing here?” I half expected her to turn around and leave me standing there since I was not part of the

“cool crowd” at school. Maybe because it was the holidays, she didn’t.

“I live around the corner,” Alice said. “My younger twin sisters love this place, so I get dragged here anytime the grandparents are in town.”

“Boys make no sense,” I told her.

“For sure!” Alice said, looking happy to have a topic on hand more interesting than younger siblings and grandparents. She glanced at the red

notebook curiously. “Do you have any particular boy in mind?”

“I have no idea!” And I real y didn’t. I couldn’t understand from his last message whether Dash was saying we should meet again or we should

just correspond through the notebook. I couldn’t understand why I even cared. Especial y if there was some other girl named So a in the picture.

“Do you want to go get co ee or something tomorrow and discuss and analyze the situation at length?” Alice asked.

“Are your grandparents real y that bad?” I couldn’t imagine Alice wanting to hang out and do girl stu with me like talk about boys endlessly

unless she was real y desperate.

Alice said, “My grandparents are pret y cool. But our apartment is smal , and cramped with too many people visiting for the holidays. I need to

get out of the house. And it would be fun to, you know, nal y get to know you.”

“Real y?” I asked. I wondered if these kinds of invitations had always been available to me and I just hadn’t noticed before, too shrouded in

Shril y fear?

“Real y!” Alice said.

“You too!” I said.

We made a co ee date for the next day.

Who needed Dash?

Not me, for sure.

When I returned to our table, my cousin Mark was shooting up his chocolate directly into his mouth from the large plastic syringe. “Fantastic!” he

slurpily exclaimed.

“This is probably not fair-trade chocolate here, though!” Boomer explained.

“Did I ask your opinion?” Mark asked.

“No!” Boomer said. “But I don’t mind that you didn’t!”

There was a mat er on which I wanted Boomer’s opinion. “Did Dash like the Snarly Muppet I made him?”

“Not real y! He said it looked like the spawn of if Miss Piggy and Animal had sex.”

“My eyes!” Mark said. No, he hadn’t shot chocolate into his eyes by mistake. “What a disgusting thought. You teenagers have such perverted

ideas.” Mark set down his chocolate syringe. “You’ve made me lose my appetite, Boomer.”

“My mom tel s me that al the time!” Boomer said. He turned to me. “Your family must be just like mine!”

“Doubt that,” Mark said.

My poor Snarly. I silently vowed to rescue my lit le felt darling and provide it the loving home that Dash never would.

“This Dash kid,” Mark continued. “Sorry, Lily. I just don’t like him.”

“Do you even know him?” Boomer asked.

“I know enough about him to pass judgment,” Mark said.

“Dash is a good guy, real y,” Boomer said. “I think the word his mom uses to describe him is nicky, which is kinda true, but trust me, he’s good

people. The best! Especial y when you consider that his parents had a real y nasty divorce and don’t even talk to each other at al anymore. How

weird is that? He probably wouldn’t like me tel ing you this, but Dash got dragged through a terrible custody bat le when he was a kid, with his

dad trying to get ful custody just to spite his mom, and Dash having to go in to have al these talks with lawyers and judges and social workers. It

was awful. If you got caught in the middle of that, would you manage to be a super-friendly person after? Dash is the kind of guy who’s always

had to gure out everything for himself. But you know what’s so cool about him? He always does! He’s total y the most loyal friend a person could

ever have. Takes a lot to earn his trust, but once you do, there’s nothing he won’t do for you. Nothing you can’t depend on him for. He can sometimes act a bit loner-ish, but I think that’s not because he’s some serial kil er waiting to happen; he’s just his own best company sometimes.

And he’s comfortable with that. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I admit I was moved by Boomer’s heartfelt defense of Dash, even if I was stil mad about Snarly, but Mark shrugged. “Pshaw,” he said.

I asked my cousin, “Do you not like Dash because you genuinely think he’s unlikable or because there’s a bit of Grandpa in you, who doesn’t

want me to have new friends who are boys?”

“I’m your new friend who’s a boy, Lily,” Boomer stated. “You like me, don’t you, Mark?”

“Pshaw,” Mark repeated. The answer was clear: Mark liked Dash just ne, so long as Dash wasn’t someone I could potential y be interested in.

Boomer too.

Boris the dog who needed walking turned out to be more like a pony who needed sprinting. He was a bul masti who came up to my waist, a

young buck with tons of energy who literal y tried to drag me through Washington Square Park. Boris barely gave me time to tape the sign I’d

created to the tree. The sign had the crimson alert photo in the middle with a message that said: WANTED—this teenage boy, not a pervert, not a

hoodlum, simply a boy who likes yogurt. WANTED—this boy to explain himself.

I need not have posted the sign, however.

Because ve minutes after I posted it, Boris started loudly barking at a teenage boy who approached me as I scooped up the biggest piece of dog

dung I’d ever seen.

“Lily?”

“Lily?”

I looked up from my plastic bag l ed with giant poo.

Of course.

It was Dash.

Who else would nd me at just this moment? First he found me drunk, now he found me cleaning up poo from a barking pony who was about

to go into at ack mode.

Perfect.

No wonder I’d never had a boyfriend.

“Hi,” I said, trying to sound super-casual, but aware that my voice was coming out super-high-pitched and, indeed, somewhat Shril y.

“What are you doing here?” Dash asked, stepping back a few feet farther from me and Boris. “And why do you have so many keys?” He pointed

to the huge key ring clasped to my purse, which had the keys for al my dog-walking clients at ached to it. “Are you a building super or

something?”

“I WALK DOGS!” I shouted over Boris’s barking.

“CLEARLY!” Dash shouted back. “But it looks like he’s walking you!”

Boris leapt back into action, dragging me behind him, with Dash running to our side—far to our side, as if not quite sure he wanted to

participate in this spectacle.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Dash.

“I ran out of yogurt,” Dash said. “Went out to get more.”

“And to defend your good name?”

“Oh, dear. You heard about the crimson alert?”

“Who didn’t?” I said.

He must not have seen my posted sign yet. Could I take it down before he reached that tree?

I tugged on Boris’s leash to turn us in the opposite direction, away from the Washington Square arch and toward downtown. For some unknown

reason, the direction change calmed Boris down, and he switched from his ful -on gal op to a mild trot.