It was only on my way back that I encountered the ru ans. I have no knowledge of what I did to provoke them. In fact, I like to believe there was no provocation whatsoever—their target was as arbitrary as their misbehavior was focused.

“The enemy!” one of them cried. I didn’t even have time to shield my bag of yogurts before I was being bombarded by snowballs.

Like dogs and lions, small children can sense fear. The slightest inch, the slightest disinclination, and they will jump atop you and devour you. Snow was pelting my torso, my legs, my groceries. None of the kids looked familiar—there were nine, maybe ten of them, and they were nine, maybe ten years old. “At ack!” they cried. “There he is!” they shouted, even though I’d made no at empt to hide. “Get ’im!” Fine, I thought, bending over to scoop up some snow, even though this left my backside ripe for an of ensive.

It is not easy to hurl snowballs while holding on to a plastic bag of groceries, so my rst few e orts were subpar, missing their mark. The nine maybe ten nine-maybe-ten-year-olds ridiculed me—if I turned to aim at one, four others out anked me and shot from the sides and the back. I was, in the parlance of an ancient day, cruising for a bruising, and while a more disdainful teenager would have walked away, and a more aggressive teenager would have dropped the bag and kicked some major preteen ass, I kept ghting snowbal with snowball, laughing as if Boomer and I were playing a school yard game, flinging my orbs with winter abandon, wishing Sofia were here by my side.…

Until I hit the kid in the eye.

There was no aim involved. I just threw a snowbal at him and—pow!—he went down. The other kids unleashed the last of their snowballs and ran to him to see what had happened.

I walked over, too, asking if he was okay. He didn’t look concussed, and his eye was ne. But now vengeance was spreading across the faces of the nine/tens, and it wasn’t a cute lit le vengeance. Some took out cell phones to take pictures and call their mothers. Others began to reload on snowballs, making sure to create them from patches where the snow mixed with gravel.

I bolted. I ran down Fifth Avenue, skirted onto Eighth Street, hid in an Au Bon Pain until the elementary school mob had passed.

When I got back to my mom’s building, the doorman had a package for me. I thanked him, but decided to wait until I got to the apartment before opening it, because this was the doorman who was notorious for “tithing” the residents by stealing one out of every ten of our magazines and I didn’t want to share any potential goodies.

As I was let ing myself back into the apartment, the phone rang. Boomer.

“Hey,” he said after I answered. “Do we have plans for today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, we should!”

“Sure. What are you up to?”

“Tracking your celebrity! I’ll send you a link!”

I took of my boots and mit ens, unwrapped my scarf, set my hat aside, and headed to my laptop. I opened up Boomer’s email.

“WashingtonSquareMommies?” I asked, picking the phone back up.

“Yeah—click it!”

The site was a mommy blog, and on the front page a headline screamed:

CRIMSON ALERT!

ATTACKER IN PARK

Posted 11:28 am, December 28

by elizabethbennettlives

I am activating the crimson alert because a young man—late teens, early twenties— assaulted a child in the park ten minutes ago. Please study these photos, and if you see him, alert the police immediately. We know he shops at Morton Williams (see bag) and was last seen on Eighth Street. He will not hesitate to use force against your children, so be alert!!!

maclarenpusher adds: people like this should be shot.

zacephron adds: purvurt

christwearsarmani adds: remind me the difference 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—well, 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.”

“I love the way they’re so mean to each other,” Boomer said. “I have it bookmarked.”

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

“I don’t mind. In fact, I find 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 really 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 all.

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 nally escaped my life of horri c abuse, I’d like to see something of the world, you know?”