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 nally giving you permission again to have your own pet.”
“Really? But what if we move to Fiji?”
“The parents will gure 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 of 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 Dashiel 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.”
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.
He should be the one to contact me.
Right?
What did it say about me that he hadn’t?
That he couldn’t possibly like me as much as I’d started to like him. That I would never be as pret y and interesting as that So a girl, while Dash’s handsome face would continue to appear in my daydreams.
Unrequited.
It wasn’t fair that I sort of missed him. Not his presence so much—I barely knew him—but having that red notebook link to him. Knowing he was out there thinking or doing something that would be communicated to me in some surprising way.
I lay on my bed, daydreaming about Dash, and reached down to receive a reassuring lick from Boris, but he was not there. He was out on his walk.
Our apartment doorbel buzzed loudly and I jumped up and ran into the hallway to answer it. “hello?” I said from the other side of the door.
“It’s your favorite great-aunt. I left my key inside the apartment when I came to walk Boris.” Boris!
The twenty minutes since he’d been gone had nearly destroyed me. Boris never ignored me like that Dash guy.
I opened the door to let Mrs. Basil E. and Boris back inside.
I looked down at Boris, pawing at my ankles to get my at ention.
Boris’s mouth held not a doggy bone or a postman’s jacket. From between his teeth, Boris slobberingly o ered me a red-ribbon-wrapped red notebook.
nineteen
–Dash–
December 30th
We retreated to my mother’s apartment after I was released from jail. The adrenaline in all of us was amazing—we alternated between bouncing and floating, as if the excitement of escape had turned the world into a giant trampoline.
As soon as we were in the door, Yohnny and Dov at empted to raid the refrigerator and were unsatisfied with what they found.
“Noodle pudding?” Yohnny asked.
“Yeah, my mom made it,” I told them. “I always save it for last.”
While Priya went to the loo and Boomer checked his email on his phone, So a stepped into my bedroom. Not for any lascivious reason—
just to check it out.
“It hasn’t changed much,” she observed, staring at the quotes I’d thumbtacked to my walls.
“Lit le things have,” I said. “There are some new quotes on the wall. Some new books on the shelves. Some of the pencils have lost their erasers. The sheets are changed every week.”
“So even though it doesn’t seem like anything’s changed—”
“—things change all the time, mostly in lit le ways. That’s how it goes, I guess.” Sofia nodded. “Funny how we say it goes. That’s the way life goes.”
“That’s the way life comes just sounds so awkward.”
“Well, sometimes you can see the future come, no? Sometimes it even, say, catches a baby.” I studied her face for any hint of sarcasm or meanness. And sadness—I was also looking for sadness, or regret. But all I found was amusement.
I sat down on my bed and held my head in my hands. Then, realizing this was way too dramatic, I looked up at her.
“I truly don’t understand any of this,” I confessed.
She stayed standing, facing me.
“I wish I could help you there,” she told me. “But I can’t.”
So there we were. Once upon a time, during the storybook version of dating we’d gone through, I’d pretended that it was possible to love her when I only mildly liked her. Now I had no desire to pretend we’d ever be in love, and I liked her madly.