The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

by Laura Creedle

Still, school was super awkward. All my books and papers and homework were shoved into a box inside my closet. I’d decided to move it from my desk so Mom wouldn’t get too suspicious.

  My teachers were surprised. Of course, there are always those guys who arrive at class without so much as a pencil and slouch in their chairs and extend their legs to trip anyone who comes down the aisle without looking, but I’m not passive-aggressive, just honestly forgetful. So it was weird to be in class without anything.

  Mrs. Rogers-Peña was wearing a skirt patterned with Eiffel towers, Arcs de Triomphe, and champagne glasses. And pink Converses. She looked festive and happy. Until she saw me. She made eye contact, and I shrugged and nodded apologetically.

  After class I dug out the bathroom pass from my purse and marched up to her desk. “Here’s your pass. I’m sorry for stealing it.”

  Mrs. Rogers-Peña peered over the edge of her glasses. “If you’re going to leave school, I’d prefer if you didn’t do it on my watch.”

  “Once again, sorry. I plead exigent circumstances.”

  “Exigent, meaning?”

  “Immediate and pressing.”

  “Lily, you frustrate me to no end. It’s hard to remain angry with you when you use SAT words correctly in sentences.” Mrs. Rogers-Peña sighed. “Just don’t do it again.”

  She looked down to her desk. Conversation over. I realized that I might not ever see her again, and this was the last chance to say anything.

  “You’re the best teacher I’ve ever had. You made this place bearable.” I searched for an SAT word to use. “You galvanized me.”

  Mrs. Rogers-Peña looked up from her desk, startled.

  “Why, thank you.”

  I turned to leave.

  “Don’t go anywhere yet. Galvanized you to do what?”

  And now I was caught. I could hardly tell Mrs. Rogers-Peña that her literary lessons on life, love, and becoming fully human had, at least in part, galvanized me to run away with my boyfriend.

  “Well, I’m having surgery, and . . . stuff.” This felt like a horrible lie. I hated telling it.

  Mrs. Rogers-Peña nodded.

  “I get nervous when students use past tense. If you ever need to talk, about anything—”

  “I got it,” I said.

  Suicide watch. It changes how everyone looks at you.

  I met Rosalind for lunch. I’d been dying to tell her all about leaving for New Mexico with Abelard, but it just didn’t seem like the kind of thing you could announce over a text.

  For once, I beat her to our bench. I waited, feeling unaccountably nervous. The sky had grown overcast, and a few fat raindrops fell around me. But then the rain stopped like it couldn’t quite make up its mind. I opened my sack and took a few bites out of a peanut butter and iceberg lettuce sandwich. The peanut butter stuck in my throat, and I balled up the sandwich and tossed it in the trash.

  Rosalind showed up fifteen minutes later, loose hair fighting a light breeze, her eyes bright with excitement.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. Trying not to sound cranky, but my voice came out just like my mother’s. Rosalind didn’t seem to notice. She sat down next to me, leaving her lunchbox untouched.

  “I’ve been with Mr. Turner,” she said. “He thinks I could audition for the Zilker Hillside summer musical. They’re doing—”

  “I’m leaving tonight,” I blurted out.

  “Leaving? Wait—what?” Rosalind blinked.

  “I’m going to New Mexico with Abelard.”

  She didn’t say anything, so I continued.

  “He doesn’t want me to have the surgery either. I can’t stay in the dorm with Abelard, so I will—”

  “When?”

  “Today at six thirty-seven.”

  “Today?”

  I’d expected Rosalind to be happy for me. Instead she had the look she gets when she knows I’m about to skip school or blow off an assignment. Dubious, with a faint whiff of disapproval.

  The wind picked up. An empty plastic pudding cup rattled across the concrete and came to a stop near my feet. A few noisy raindrops hit the ground.

  “You were the one who said I shouldn’t have the surgery.”

  “I don’t want you to have the surgery,” Rosalind said. “But moving to New Mexico with Abelard seems crazy. What will you do for money?”

  “I’ll get a job.”

  “Where? Doing what?” Rosalind pursed her lips. “And what will you do for money before you get paid?”

  “Abelard has some money. He said he’d help me . . .”

  The sky opened up, pouring down sheets of rain, and we ran for the door alongside everyone else in the courtyard. We piled into the hallway, shaking off water, talking all at once.

  “I’ll text you when I’m on the train, okay?” I yelled, not caring who overheard my plans to bail on school and everything.

  I caught a glimpse of Rosalind being swallowed up in a crowd of tall people. And then the bell rang.

  It was the longest day ever, and the shortest. Interminable, and then just when it seemed to have started, it ended. I screamed out of my last class, worried that I’d miss the bus home. I paused briefly in the atrium to give my school a last look. My school, although it never had really felt like my school. I’d never belonged here.

  New Mexico would be completely different. I racked my brains for everything I knew about New Mexico—green chiles, mountains. It didn’t matter. Abelard and I belonged together.

   Chapter 39

  School ended at 4:17, and my bus usually made it home by five. Iris came home and made a big show of ignoring me. She went to our room without saying anything, but I could hear her talking about me in a loud voice to Exene. Annoying.

  Five thirty came and went. By 5:40, when Mom got home, I was frantic.

  “Where have you been? The train leaves soon.”

  “We’ll get there, don’t worry. I’m going to run to the bathroom,” she said. “Go put your things in the car.”

  I piled my backpack and my suitcase in the trunk while she was in the bathroom. Mom didn’t see, and I was glad, because I didn’t want to tell her I was leaving until I got to the train station. But it was strange that Mom had told me to get my things. Something was off about that. You don’t need anything to say goodbye.

  Iris stood on the stoop, watching me, her arms folded across her chest.

  I closed the trunk and leaned against the car.

  “Did you tell Mom that I’m leaving with Abelard?” I asked.

  “You said she already knew.” Iris spit out her words in an angry, gleeful rush of accusation—like she’d just found out I was planning on skipping school and couldn’t wait to tell Mom. “I knew it! Mom would never let you—”

  Mom burst through the door and nearly knocked into Iris. I expected Iris to tell her about my plans, but she didn’t. Her silence made it all the worse. She stood barefoot in the driveway watching us go, an oddly forlorn figure in jeans and an unfortunate electric green Model UN spring conference T-shirt. At my school, you’d be crucified for mistaking a school event shirt as a badge of cool—and a Model UN T-shirt at that. I’d told Iris not to wear the shirt at school, but she didn’t care, which was sort of the best thing about her. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, and who knew when I would see Iris again.

  Mom sped away, but we had to stop on Lamar for construction by the Alamo Drafthouse South. I couldn’t stop twitching. Five forty-nine. I’d never watched a clock like this before.

  “This sucks, Mom. Abelard hates it when I’m late.”

  “Doesn’t Abelard know you struggle with time management?” she asked softly.

  “Yes,” I spat back. I hated her gentle tone of voice, her infinite maternal patience. “You don’t understand. Abelard has issues with time too. He has anxiety attacks when people are late.”

  “You don’t choose to be late. Abelard will have to learn that.”

  We reached the lane closure and had to merge into the o
ther lane. Five fifty-five. I imagined Abelard on a train platform in an ornate cavernous building, nervously pacing back and forth in the billowing steam. Anxious Abelard like a character from one of Rosalind’s old movies, scanning a black-and-white crowd for me.

  “I won’t be late anymore.”

  “You can’t change who you are,” Mom said. “Not to make someone else happy.”

  I laughed bitterly. Everyone wanted me to change, to be someone else, to make a different decision. And Mom was the one who wanted me to change the most. I thought of Dad saying that she would never give up on me, no matter how miserable I made her.

  “All I ever do is try to make other people happy,” I said.

  “Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about what other people want,” Mom said. “What do you want, Lily?”

  We crossed the bridge and got stuck in late-day traffic. Up ahead, under the trestle, was the memorial for Ivan Garth Johnson, a red heart crawling with vines. Ivan Garth Johnson was a teenager killed by a drunk driver. His mother put up the graffiti. The image had been periodically painted over or defaced and had reappeared for as long as I could remember. If Ivan Garth Johnson had lived, he’d have been over forty years old. His mother had committed to repainting the pillar every year until other people started doing it for her. Someone’s mother who never gave up, no matter what.

  Dad was right—Mom would never give up on me. Whatever I did, whatever happened with me, she would always feel like it was her fault. I couldn’t leave my mother here mourning the lost possibility of surgery and a bright future.

  But it was more than that. I thought of Dr. Brainguy and his plan to release me from the tyranny of too many new ideas. Abelard would be in school building robots and taking calculus and reading books, and I’d be working? Unless I got tired of one job and went to the next. And then something else. Love doesn’t make the endless hamster wheel of new ideas stop spinning. What if I spun away from Abelard?

  What did I want? I wasn’t sure. When what you want is always wrong, you train yourself not to want anything. I’d spent so much time thinking about what everyone else wanted that I’d forgotten the excitement I’d felt when Dr. Brainguy suggested I could go to college. Rosalind’s room was scattered with brochures from small tree-lined liberal arts colleges everywhere. Since I’d agreed to the surgery, I’d pored over all of her letters and invitations and allowed myself to imagine going to college. It wouldn’t happen if I went to New Mexico.

  It wouldn’t happen without the surgery.

  Traffic began moving. We circled under Lamar to the Amtrak station.

  The train was already at the station, only a few railroad cars, long, sleek, and silver, steps away from the parking lot. Abelard stood by the train, and I felt a sick thrill of fear and love and relief at the sight of him. I couldn’t help it.

  I jumped out of the car as soon as Mom pulled into a parking spot and ran to Abelard. I stood before him, breathing hard, and almost lost my nerve. He was wearing all black, a tall silhouette against the skyline full of cranes and silver buildings, black sunglasses glinting in the afternoon sun. I wanted to be alone with him in our own private room with strange, key-operated beds and everything sleek except the Texas scrub rolling by outside our window.

  What did I want?

  I wanted everything. It was impossible.

  “I can’t go with you,” I said.

  Abelard shook his head in slow motion. I was beginning to read everything in his tiniest gesture. Slow-moving pain.

  “Are you breaking up with me again?”

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no. More than anything in the world, I want to go with you to New Mexico. But I also want to stay here and have the surgery and maybe go to college and actually take actual math, which I can’t right now because—homework. And I didn’t even think I was any good at math, but Dr. Brainguy says I have high conceptual mathematical ability. I can’t access it, now, but the surgery will change all that. Does this make any sense to you?”

  Babbling. I was babbling at the worst possible moment.

  Abelard didn’t say anything. Mrs. Mitchell emerged from the station house, her hair glowing white-hot in the sun. She wore a necklace of inch-long shards of silver that threw off blinding stabs of light.

  “Honey, say goodbye to Lily,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “You need to get on the train now.”

  Mom tapped Mrs. Mitchell on the shoulder.

  “Helen, we need to give them a minute.”

  Mrs. Mitchell turned, a confused look on her face. Mom led her away to the awning by the station.

  She knew. Mom had known that I was planning on leaving with Abelard, and still she drove me to the station.

  The train hissed impatiently. No time left.

  I turned back to Abelard.

  “So, I want to go more than anything in the world, I want to stay more than anything in the world, but these two things are antithetical,” I said. “What I need is a Kobayashi Maru.”

  “Kobayashi Maru,” Abelard repeated.

  “Like on Star Trek, when Captain Kirk has to take the unwinnable challenge because both answers are wrong, so he cheats and combines the answers to win the Kobayashi Maru. I want to cheat. I want surgery, I want to go to college, and I want to be with you. Is that even possible?”

  A conductor stepped off the train and yelled, “All aboard!” Just like in the movies. It’s surprising how many things are just like in the movies.

  “Abelard, you have to get on that train,” Mrs. Mitchell called from under the awning.

  “Can I kiss you goodbye?” I said.

  Abelard nodded his head ever so slightly. Maybe I imagined it.

  I reached up and pressed my lips against his. We stood there for a moment, enclosed in a perfect bubble of warmth in the late-afternoon sunlight, while the train behind us huffed delicately. His arms slipped around me if only for a brief moment before they went slack at his sides.

  “Kobayashi Maru,” he said finally.

  And then he turned and was gone.

  The train pulled away. I probably would have run down the track waving frantically, but his compartment was on the other side of the train. I couldn’t see Abelard.

  The train crossed the trestle over Lamar. It made the right-angle turn toward the bridge over the river, glinting in the sunlight. And I wept. Behind me, Mom and Mrs. Mitchell murmured a discreet conversation. Eventually Mrs. Mitchell left.

  When I finally turned around, ours was the only car in the parking lot. Mom stood in the shade of the train station awning, waiting.

  We were almost home before either of us spoke.

  At a stoplight, Mom took her hands off the wheel and slumped forward a little. “That was rough,” she said.

  I didn’t know whether she was referring to my letting Abelard go, or her awkward half an hour making pleasantries with Mrs. Mitchell while I wept, or the crazy last day and a half when I decided to leave and she knew about it but kept it to herself. Probably a little bit of everything.

  “You knew. You knew I was planning on leaving with Abelard, and you drove me to the station anyway.” I leaned my head against the window. “Why?”

  “Something your dad said to me.”

  I looked at Mom. “Are you planning to share?”

  “It might make you mad.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t think I could find anger underneath everything else I was feeling.

  “Fine. He said that if I didn’t trust you to make a couple of bad decisions, you wouldn’t know a good decision when it hit you in the face.”

  “Sounds like Dad.” I laughed mirthlessly.

  I closed my eyes, and the enormity of what I’d done hit me. I was the queen of yes—no—yes—no. I’d promised to leave with Abelard, and I’d changed my mind—again.

  “Letting go of Abelard doesn’t feel like a good decision.”

  “I know,” Mom said.

  I expected her to say more, to talk of Tennyson and relationships. But she didn’t.
Thank god.

  When we returned from the train station, Iris was slumped, red-eyed, on the couch. She leapt up when she saw me, and I braced myself for a barrage of questions. Instead, she hugged me.

   Chapter 40

  I went back to school the next day, which was really strange. I felt like I’d said goodbye to everyone and everything, but of course, from the perspective of the rest of the world, nothing had changed. I went to English expecting Mrs. Rogers-Peña to treat me as though I’d returned from the dead. I thought she’d be at least moderately surprised to see me, considering that I’d given her such a stirring goodbye she’d expressed concern for my state of mind.

  But she hardly noticed me. With thirty students, why would she? She hadn’t known I’d planned to leave.

  I checked my phone every five minutes looking for a text message from Abelard. Nothing.

  At lunchtime I went to look for Rosalind at our usual spot under the live oaks. I didn’t really expect her to be there. Since I told her I’d be gone, I’d imagined she’d be eating lunch in the art room or the theater with Richard. The two of them in the near gloom of the empty theater, Rosalind expressing a mixture of frustration and concern, Richard listening.

  “Lily has done some crazy things before but nothing as crazy as this . . .”

  I didn’t expect to find her on the deck. But there Rosalind sat, with her feet together in red velvet ballet slippers, her hair in a matching velvet headband. I remembered what she’d said about me demanding to try on her shoes in kindergarten. I still wanted to wear her shoes.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Rosalind looked up, a flicker of surprise in her eyes. “You’re here.”

  “I decided not to go,” I replied.

  I settled on the bench beside her and opened my lunch. Iris had carefully packed a veggie sandwich on toasted whole wheat with avocado, shredded carrots, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Mayonnaise. Someday I would break down and tell Iris that mayonnaise wasn’t vegan. Not any time soon, though.

  “That looks delicious,” she said. “You and Iris must be on good terms.”