Текст книги "Dash & Lily's Book of Dares"
Автор книги: Rachel Caine
Соавторы: David Levithan
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)
maclarenpusher adds: people like this should be shot.
zacephron adds: purvurt
christwearsarmani adds: remind me the di erence between a crimson alert and a fuchsia one? i can never keep them straight!
The photos at ached 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—wel , 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.”
“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.
“How do you propose to work things out?” Langston asked. His face was stil 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 bet er.
“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 Shril y-like tone.
Grandpa turned to me. “You’re not al owed to date for another twenty years, Lily bear. In fact, your mother stil isn’t al owed to date, according
to my recol ection. 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 tel ing 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 Manhat an.
(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.
Practical y speaking, no way would I set le 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. Admit edly, part of me had been hoping Mark’s text would involve a Dash sighting, but a new dog job was adequate
distraction.
Can you come by the store and pick up his keys?
Be there in a few.
The Strand was its usual mix of bustling people and laconic aisle readers. Mark wasn’t at the information desk when I arrived, so I decided to do
a lit le browsing. First I went to the animals section, but I’d read almost every book there, and I could only look at puppy pictures so many times
without needing to pet one instead of just coo at its picture. I wandered and found myself in the basement, where a sign on a bookcase in the
deepest trenches at the back announced SEX & SEXUALITY BEGINS ON LEFT SHELF. The sign made me think of The Joy of Gay Sex (third
edition), which in turn, of course, made me blush, and then think of J. D. Salinger. I returned upstairs to Fiction and there found a most curious
male depositing a familiar red notebook in between Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.
“Boomer?” I said.
“Boomer?” I said.
Startled, and looking guilty, as if he’d been caught shoplifting, Boomer clumsily grabbed the red notebook back from the shelves, causing several
hardcover editions of Nine Stories to noisily tumble to the oor. Boomer clutched the red notebook to his chest as if it were a Bible.
“Lily! I didn’t expect to see you here. I mean, I kinda hoped to, but then I didn’t, so I got used to that, but then here you are, just when I’m
thinking about not seeing you, and—”
I reached my hands out. “Is that notebook for me?” I asked. I wanted to snatch the notebook from Boomer and read it posthaste, but I tried to
sound casual, like, Oh, yeah, that old thing. I’l read it whenever I get to it. It might be a while. I’m super-busy, not thinking about Dash or the
notebook or anything.
“Yes!” Boomer said. But he made no movement to hand it to me.
“Can I have it?” I asked.
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because! You have to discover it on the shelves! When I’m not here!”
I hadn’t realized there was a rule book for the notebook exchange. “So how about if I leave, and you put the notebook back on the shelves and
walk away, and then when you’re gone, I’l return and pick it up?”
“Okay!”
I started to turn around to execute the plan, but Boomer cal ed after me.
“Lily!”
“Yes?”
“Max Brenner is across the street! I forgot about that!”
Boomer referred to a restaurant a block away from the Strand, a Wil y Wonka–esque chocolate-themed eating extravaganza place—a tourist trap
for sure, but of the best kind, not unlike Madame Tussauds.
“Want to split a chocolate pizza?” I asked Boomer.
“Yes!”
“I’l meet you there in ten minutes,” I said, walking away.
“Don’t forget to come back for the notebook when I’m not looking!” Boomer said. It both mysti ed and intrigued me that such a seemingly dour
person as Dash was great friends with an extremely exclamation-pointed person as excitable Boomer. I suspected this spoke wel for Dash, that he
could appreciate this brand of Boomer dude.
“I won’t,” I cal ed back.
I enlisted my cousin Mark to join us at Max Brenner, since bringing along an adult meant Mark would pick up the check, even if he likely would
just bil it back to Grandpa.
Boomer and I ordered the chocolate pizza—a warm, thin pastry shaped like a pizza, with double-melted chocolate as the “sauce,” topped with
melted marshmal ows and candied hazelnut bits, then carved into triangle slices like a real pizza. Mark ordered the chocolate syringe, which was
exactly what it sounded like—a plastic syringe l ed with chocolate that you could shoot straight into your mouth.
“But we could share our pizza with you!” Boomer told Mark after Mark ordered the syringe. “It’s more fun when the sugar infusion is a truly
communal experience.”
“Thanks, kid, but I’m trying to reduce my carbs,” Mark said. “I’l stick with shooting up straight chocolate. No need to add more dough to my
waistline.” The waitress left us and Mark turned to Boomer in al seriousness. “Now, tel us everything about your lit le punk friend Dash.”
“He’s not a punk! He’s pret y square, actual y!”
“No criminal record?” Mark said.
“Not unless you count the crimson alert!”
“The what?” Mark and I both said.
Boomer took out his phone and displayed a website cal ed WashingtonSquareMommies.
Mark and I read through the crimson alert posting, inspecting the evidence on the site.
“He eats yogurt?” Mark asked. “What kind of teenage boy is he?”
“Lactose tolerant!” Boomer said. “Dash loves yogurt, and anything with cream in it, and he especial y likes Spanish cheeses.”
Mark turned to me consolingly. “Lily. Sweetie. You realize this Dash may not be straight?”
“Dash is for sure straight!” Boomer announced. “He has a super-pret y ex-girlfriend named So a, who I think he stil has a thing for, and also, in
seventh grade, there was a game of spin the bot le and it was my turn and I spun and it landed at Dash, but he wouldn’t let me kiss him.”
“Proves nothing,” Mark mut ered.
So a? So a?
I needed a bathroom break.
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 meetmēt1 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.
Logical y, based on what I knew of boys general y and speci cal y of Dash, I would have expected Dash to bolt in the opposite direction at this
point.
Instead, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I come with?”
Seriously?
I said, “That’d be awesome. Where do you think we should go?”
“Let’s just wander and see what happens,” Dash said.
seventeen
–Dash–
December 29th
It was rather awkward, insofar as we were both teetering between the possibility of something and the possibility of nothing.
“So which way should we go?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know—which way do you want to go?”
“Either way.”
“You sure?”
She was de nitely more at ractive sober, as most people are. She had a winsome quality now—but smartly winsome, not vacuously winsome.
“We could go to the High Line,” I said.
“Not with Boris.”
Ah, Boris. He seemed to be losing patience with us.
“Is there a certain dog-walking route you take?” I asked.
“Yes. But we don’t have to take it.”
Stasis. Total stasis. Her sneaking peeks at me. Me sneaking peeks at her. Teeter teeter teeter.
Final y, one of us was decisive.
And it wasn’t me or Lily.
It was as if a dog-whistle orchestra had suddenly struck up the 1812 Overture. Or a parade of squirrels had marched into the other side of
Washington Square Park and started to rub themselves with oil. Whatever the provocation, Boris was o like a shot. Lily was caught o balance,
dragged onto a sleety patch, and knocked from her footing entirely. The bag of poop went ying in the air. Much to my deep delight, as Lily fel ,
she let out a raucous “MOTHERSUCKER!”—a curse I had not heretofore heard.
She landed gracelessly, but without injury. The bag of poop narrowly missed popping her on the temple. Meanwhile, she had let go of Boris’s
leash, which I foolishly grabbed for and caught. Now I was the one who had the sensation of water-ski ng over pavement.
“Stop him!” Lily yel ed, as if there were some but on I could press that would shut the dog down. Instead, I simply added worthless bal ast as he
charged forth.
It was clear he had a target in mind. He was storming toward a group of mothers, strol ers, and kids. With horror, I saw he’d zeroed in on the
most vulnerable prey around—a kid wearing an eye patch, chomping on an oat bar.
“No, Boris. No!” I cried.
But Boris was going to go his own way, whether I was on board or not. The kid saw him coming and unleashed a shriek that was, frankly, more
appropriate to a girl half his age. Before his mother could whisk him out of harm’s way, Boris had barreled into him and knocked him down,
pul ing me in his wake.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I tried to pul Boris to a stop. It was like playing tug-of-war with a garden party of NFL linebackers.
“It’s him!” the boy squealed. “IT’S THE ATTACKER!”
“Are you sure?” a woman I could only assume was his mother asked.
The boy lifted his eye patch, revealing a perfectly good eye.
“It’s him. I swear,” he said.
Another woman came over with what looked like a wanted poster with my face on it.
“CRIMSON ALERT!” she yel ed into the air. “WE ARE UPGRADING FROM MANGO!”
Another mother, about to take her baby out of its strol er, let go in order to blow a whistle—four short bursts, which I had to imagine
corresponded to crimson.
The whistle blowing was not a wise idea. Boris heard it, turned, and charged.
The woman jumped out of the way. The strol er could not. I ung myself to the ground, trying to make myself as heavy as possible. Boris,
confused, crashed right into the strol er, dislodging the baby inside. In slow motion, I saw it y up, a shocked expression on its docile face.
I wanted to close my eyes. There was no way I could get to the baby in time. We were al paralyzed. Even Boris stopped to watch.
In the corner of my eye: movement. A cry. Then the most magni cent sight: Lily ying through the air. Hair streaming. Arms outstretched.
Entirely unaware of how she looked, only aware of what she was doing. A ying leap. An honest, bona de ying leap. There wasn’t any panic on
her face. Only determination. She got herself under that baby, and she caught it. As soon as it landed in her arms, it started to wail.
“My God,” I murmured. I had never seen anything so trans xing.
I thought the crowd would break into applause. But then Lily, recovering from her ying leap, took a few extra steps, and a mother behind me
yel ed, “Child stealer! Stop her!”
Mothers and other bystanders al had their cel phones out. Some in the mommy circle were arguing over who would send out the crimson alert
and who would cal the police. Lily, meanwhile, was stil in her golden moment, unaware of the fuss. She was holding on to the baby, trying to
calm it down after its traumatic ight.
I tried to get up from the ground, but suddenly there was a formidable weight on my back.
“You’re not going anywhere,” one of the mothers said, sit ing on me rmly. “Consider this a citizen’s arrest.”
Two more mothers and the eye-patched kid piled on. I almost let go of the leash. Luckily, Boris seemed to have had enough excitement for the
day, and was now barking out orders to no one in particular.
day, and was now barking out orders to no one in particular.
“The police are coming!” someone yel ed.
The baby’s mother ran over to Lily, who had no idea that it was the baby’s mother. I saw her say, “One sec,” as she tried to get the baby to stop
crying. I think the mother was thanking her—but then a few other mothers descended and boxed Lily in.
“I saw this on Dateline,” one of the louder mothers was saying. “They create a diversion, then steal the baby. In broad daylight!”
“This is absurd!” I yel ed. The kid started bouncing up and down on my tailbone.
Two police o cers arrived and were immediately besieged with versions of the story. The truth went vastly underrepresented. Lily looked
confused as she handed the baby over—hadn’t she done the right thing? The police asked her if she knew me, and she said of course she did.
“You see!” one mother crowed. “An accomplice!”
The ground was cold and slushy, and the weight of the mothers was starting to rupture some of my choicer internal organs. I might have
confessed to a crime I hadn’t commit ed in order to get out of there.
It was unclear whether we were being arrested or not.
“I think you should come with us,” one of the o cers said. It didn’t seem like Actual y, I’d rather not was an appropriate answer to give.
They didn’t cu us, but they did march us to the squad car and make us sit in the back with Boris. It wasn’t until we were back there, with some
mommies cal ing for vengeance and the ying baby’s mother concentrating on making sure her baby was okay, that I got a chance to actual y say
something to Lily.
“Nice catch,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said. She was in shock, staring out the window.
“It was beautiful. Real y. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”
She looked at me for what felt like the rst time. We held like that for a few heartbeats. The squad car pul ed away from the park. They didn’t
bother with the sirens.
“I guess we know where we’re going now,” she said.
