The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

Yes,” Abelard said finally. “You are a fractured snowflake, a pattern repeated in infinite detail in a world full of salt crystals. You’re not broken—you’re perfect.” Perfect. Some tight, hard shell around my heart cracked open. I hadn’t even known I’d walled my heart away from this terrible world.

I couldn't stop thinking about him. He was an attractive nuisance, a shiny object.

My high numbers were test scores, the low numbers and zeros: homework. Because my brain stores random unimportant bits of information like the stellar news that the capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo, but it doesn’t seem to have room for the knowledge of what homework assignment is due. The brain wants what it wants.

It was killing me to think that there was a right and a wrong thing to do. Right for Abelard was wrong for me, and wrong for Abelard was right for me. And nothing made sense except that love is sacrifice and pain.

You're not going to work at McDonald's." Abelard resumed shaking his head from side to side. A tic--or maybe a world of no. I didn't know.

You never should have failed this project,"she whispered. "Total bullshit." Mom never swears unless she's really angry. Guess she was that angry. She picked up my Populations in Peril project and my paper and left. I watched her go, wondering why she wasn't this much of a badass all the time.

Abelard had on Wayfarer sunglasses, a dark blue windbreaker over a blue striped shirt, like he was on his way to a casual day of yachting. He looked cool and collected. The very opposite of me.

Anytime I got too happy, I could just assume something fragile and lovely was lying in wait, ready to shower my world in glass fragments and sticky lemon slices.

I love it when you speak computationally," I texted. "It makes me want to slap on a lab coat and get to work." Abelard didn't text me back. "Abelard?" "I'm sorry," he texted. "I was distracted by the thought of you only wearing a white lab coat. I believe it is possible that you are the best girlfriend in the history of girlfriends." "I do my best." My best. It's not often that I get to say these words.

I'd spent my entire life as a teacup with a jagged crack running down the side, an imperfect vessel threatening to spill my contents onto the table at any random moment. Tolerated but not adored. It didn't seem like it would be even possible to love me. Probabilistically unlikely at best. But for Abelard, the jagged crack was the interesting thing about me.

I was tired of concealing the truth from everyone. I was tired of keeping the loneliness and sadness inside my head.

Love is about being broken beyond repair in the eyes of the world and finding someone who thinks you're just fine, that you are special and precious because you understand how it feels to be broken and you have a real human heart.

Happy. It's the stupidest word in the English language. It's a sprinkles-on-your-ice-cream, My-Little-Pony kind of a word, and yet we are all expected to be happy about everything, including that which makes us miserable, like school.

Maybe a best friend is someone you run toward when you are running away from everything else.

I'm learning that my brain will invent catastrophic scenarios that bear absolutely no relationship to reality because, like Heloise, I am too much accustomed to misfortune to expect any happy turn.