“It’s common knowledge that no good comes to a young lady appearing on the cover of the New York Post!” Grandpa bell owed. He pointed at me. “Grounded!”

“Go to your room, Lily bear,” Mrs. Basil E. whispered in my ear. “I’ll take care of this from here. Take that pony with you.”

“Please don’t tell Grandpa about Dash,” I whispered back.

“Can’t keep a lid on that one,” she said aloud.

The upshot of all the parental and grandparental hysteria was that I did not technically get grounded. Instead, I was told, most a rmatively, to lay low until Mom and Dad got home from Fiji on New Year’s Day. It was recommended that I stay home and chil for the time being.

Not that I wanted to anyway, but I’ve been instructed I’m not allowed to talk to the press, all my trash must go through a shredder, I’m not to plan how I’d look on the cover of People magazine (an exclusive, which could potentially pay for my whole college education in one fell swoop), and if Oprah calls, she talks to my mom rst, and not to me. Quite frankly, the family are all hoping some celebrity dies or is exposed in a tawdry scandal ASAP so the tabloids can move on from Lily Dogwalker.

For my own emotional well-being it has been suggested that I not Google myself.

There aren’t many people you can trust in this world who aren’t related to you, according to the familial overseers. Bet er to stay within your own family’s tender bosom till all this blows over.

your own family’s tender bosom till all this blows over.

What I know for certain is: You can always trust a dog.

Boris liked Dash.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals. Dash never hesitated to grab for Boris’s leash when crisis struck. He’s one stand-up (or sat-upon, in the case of the crimson alert mommies) kind of dude, for sure.

Boomer, who’s rather like a dog, also likes Dash.

Dog instincts are always right.

Dash must be very likable.

There are just lots of possibilities in the world, I’ve decided. Dash. Boris. I need to keep my mind open for what could happen and not decide that the world is hopeless if what I want to happen doesn’t happen. Because something else great might happen in between.

The verdict on Boris, therefore, is unequivocal: He’s a keeper.

Boris’s owner, my cousin Mark’s co-worker Marc from the Strand, had been ill egally harboring Boris at his own studio apartment, in a no-pets building. He’d been able to get away with it before, because his building was run by an o -site management company with no super or owner living there, but now that Boris is so famous (according to a New York Post online poll, 64 percent of respondents think Boris is a menace to society, 31 percent think he’s an unwit ing victim of his own strength, and 5 percent think Boris should meet his maker in an unmentionable way), Marc obviously can’t bring Boris “home.”

That’s okay, because I’ve made the executive decision that my home is now Boris’s home. In the less than twenty-four hours since he’s been under my care, Boris has learned to Sit, to Heel, to Not Beg for Food at the Dinner Table, and to Drop It (meaning Grandpa’s shoes about to be chewed to oblivion). Clearly the problem all along was that Boris’s owner was not giving him the proper at ention and guidance he needed to flourish and become an upstanding member of society. Also, according to the Internet, Marc was not a reliable pooper-scooper and only used Boris as a pawn to meet girls. More disturbingly, Marc has texted me several times that he doesn’t mind me keeping Boris as long as I want. That’s one high-maintenance dog. Obviously Marc never deserved Boris to begin with.

Boris and I spent a night at the jailhouse together. We are bonded for eternity. Well, we spent a few hours in an interrogation room at the police precinct together, with an extremely cute boy. Close enough. Boris’s home is with me now, and Mom and Dad and everyone else will just have to get used to that. Family takes care of family, and Boris is family now.

My crisis management team turned out to be Alice Gamble, along with Heather Wong and Nikesha Johnson, two other girls from my soccer team.

As we hung out in my room, Alice said, “So, Lily. Even though we’ve known you for a long time, we’ve never, like, really got en to know you, know you, right? So since your grandpa invited us over for this slumber party to keep you from going outside—”

“The slumber party was my idea,” I interrupted. “Grandpa just had conveniently hidden my phone before I had a chance to ask you myself.”

“Where’d you find your phone?” Alice asked.

“The cookie jar. So. Obvious. It’s like he wasn’t even trying.”

Alice smiled. “The girls and I, we conjured up something sweet for you, too.” She sat over my laptop and called up a video clip on YouTube. “Since you’re not available to the media to defend yourself, we decided your soccer could do it for you.”

“Huh?” I said.

Nikesha said, “You’re a mad good goalie! And who but a mad good goalie could make a baby catch like that? A goalie catches babies by natural instinct. Not because they’re trying to steal it! They’re trying to save it.” Heather said, “Behold,” and started the YouTube video.

And there it was. To the tune of “Stop,” by the Spice Girls, my teammates had assembled a series of photos and video clips showing me in soccer goalie motion—running, grunting, kicking, leaping, jumping, soaring.