The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

by Laura Creedle

“Pretty much. Iris is happy that I’m still here. Do you want half?”

  Rosalind shook her head.

  “So why didn’t you go?” she asked. “Did you break up with Abelard again?”

  “No. It wasn’t about Abelard, it was about me.”

  Rosalind frowned. A group of senior girls arrived back from the nearby Starbucks, laughing loudly, talking about how great it was to be almost done with school. We watched as they sauntered toward the parking lot, and I felt a sudden wave of annoyance. They were done with school; they had plans for the future. Life was golden—for them. The weight of my choice hit me. There were people in the world who went to class, and went to have a vanilla Frappuccino with friends, and never spent any part of the day thinking about what it means to be human. I’d have liked to drink a Frappuccino in the parking lot, blissfully unaware of the inner workings of my brain.

  “So what does that mean?” Rosalind asked. “Are you going to have the surgery?”

  “Yes.” There wasn’t anything else for me to say.

  “I think it’s a mistake, Lily.”

  “I know you do,” I replied. “But I don’t want to go back on drugs, and I don’t see any other options.”

  “And you really trust this doctor that much?”

  “I do. He doesn’t want to change me. He just wants to make me a better version of the person I already am.”

  Rosalind looked down at her feet. I wasn’t going to convince her. In her own way, Rosalind was as stubborn and intractable as I was. Maybe more.

  “But brain surgery, Lily? There’s got to be another choice. Can’t you just go to a different school, like Abelard?”

  “It wouldn’t matter. Even if I went to the perfect school, I’d still end up skipping class. I broke up with Abelard, and I didn’t want to do that. I don’t even know why I did it. It’s like my brain wants to be free, and so I run. I run from everything eventually.”

  “You’ve never run from me,” Rosalind said.

  “No, I never have.” I hadn’t thought about it before, but it was true.

  Usually, when I was on the run, I’d wait until my head stopped spinning in hamster wheel circles and then head for Rosalind’s house. Maybe a best friend is someone you run toward when you are running away from everything else.

  Suddenly I felt afraid. A friendship is a strange and delicate ecosystem. What if my surgery disrupted the balance? I couldn’t stand the thought that an electrode in my brain might be the butterfly wing that caused a gale to rip our friendship apart. If I didn’t run, would she be as important to me?

  Rosalind studied me. I wondered if she knew what I was thinking. Or maybe we were both worried about the same thing.

  “So you really think your surgeon doesn’t want to change you?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Okay. But I’m going to come visit you in the hospital after your surgery. I’m going to come visit you, and if you aren’t the Lily I remember, I’m going to tell them to yank that thing out of your head.”

  “Mostly the same Lily,” I said. “I can’t promise to be exactly the same person.”

  “Fair enough,” she replied.

  By the time I got home on the bus, I was exhausted and discouraged. Iris wasn’t home yet. I flopped on the couch and checked my text messages for about the thousandth time, looking in vain for something from Abelard. And then I noticed that I had a couple of emails. One was from school, but one was from Abelard.

  Lily,

  I was disappointed that you didn’t come with me. I’d spent an hour at the train station, imagining what it would be like to finally be alone with you. But it didn’t happen.

  When you first told me about the surgery, I didn’t want you to do it, but I think I understand. We both have secrets locked deep within our brains. If I could have surgery to unlock the hidden part of my brain, I would. I can’t deny you what I’d want for myself.

  You asked for a solution to your own Kobayashi Maru—the no-win scenario. You wanted to go with me, but you wanted to stay and have the surgery.

  You seemed to think that whatever course you chose, we’d be blown to bits at the edge of the neutral zone. While I admire your fearless rush toward mutual destruction, there is a simpler solution to our problem.

  We continue just as we are.

  Was texting hard? I never thought so. I’ve spent what seems like months looking forward to texting you at night, only to remember that we’d broken up. Broken up. I don’t even like to think those words. I wanted to tell someone how I felt, but I didn’t know who to talk to. Who could understand, except you?

  I won’t lie; I want to be with you. But even if we could never be alone together again, it would be enough. Enough is the wrong word, because if we weren’t ever together again, I would still think every day of the way you felt pressed against me and the weight of your head against my shoulder. I want more. Until then, this is my answer to your Kobayashi Maru scenario. And I will be back for the semester break in August.

  Love, Abelard.

  I’d just started on a reply email to Abelard when Iris arrived home. She dropped her backpack on her bed and began unloading her assignments.

  “Aren’t you supposed to cook tonight?” she asked.

  “Can you cook for me? I’ll cook tomorrow,” I said without looking up.

  “Just because you almost ran away from home doesn’t mean that suddenly all the rules have changed to accommodate you.” She nudged her backpack and laptop aside, and sat on the bed. “What are you doing, anyway?”

  “Abelard sent me an email. I’m writing him back.”

  Iris sat on the edge of her bed for a moment longer. Then she got up and went to the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open, the click of a knife against a cutting board. By the time she came back twenty minutes later with a glass of sweet tea with lemon, I’d finished my letter.

  Dear Abelard,

  I know that in an alternate universe somewhere, there is a less destructive version of me who doesn’t break things and, consequently, never ends up in detention with that universe’s Abelard. In a less chaotic universe, we never would’ve happened.

  Shudder. What if I’d never loved you? What if you’d never loved me?

  But in this chaotic universe, I broke a wall, and I got—you. Oh, lucky destruction!

  That day in the office when you said you felt rust on the gears in the wall, I was fascinated. I’d never met anyone who felt the same compulsion to fix things that I had for breaking them. And then when we talked, you made me realize that breaking is just inept fixing, inspired by the same curiosity about how things work in the world. And I want to fix things instead of breaking them. It’s one of the reasons why I want to have the surgery. I want to be more like you.

  I admired your intense look of focus when you worked on your robots. Also, your broad shoulders, your sable dark hair, your wrists. Your bare feet when I came to your house. The little scar on your cheek that I gave you. The way you only wore the softest shirts and how, when you held me, my brain stopped whirling around in tight circles, and I felt calm.

  I think about you all the time.

  But when you break things like I do, you have to live with the consequences. When you break things, you have to assume that everything in the world is fragile and impermanent—like the blown glass pitcher I shattered on your kitchen counter.

  I knew that we would end eventually. It was only a matter of time.

  So when you finally got the invitation to go to the Isaac Institute, I was sure our moment of destruction had arrived. I thought it was over between us, and nothing could convince me otherwise.

  I didn’t consider the possibility of a long-distance relationship. I loved you, but I thought love was a perfect snowflake you held in your hand until it melted against the heat of your skin and vanished. I loved you so much that I thought I would destroy you. Turns out, you are not so easy to break.

  I love you, Abelard. And I need you. I need to you to remind m
e on a regular basis that the world is not simply entropy, chaos, and loss. I need you because you are miraculous and unbreakable. I think we could remake the world together, with love and novels and robots.

  “Do we understand each other?”

  I sent the email and waited for his response. It didn’t take long.

  “Perfectly,” he texted.

  Postscript

  The night before my surgery, Abelard texts me at five o’clock, our new time. Time is important, so I make sure I am there by five. His dinner call is at six thirty, and he was having a hard time making it back to his room by seven to text me.

  I don’t know where I got the idea that he had a new girl who looked like Emma Stone and adored him. 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.

  I have to change that.

  Dr. Brainguy tells me that there will be rough days ahead, but after that, sunshine and unicorns. Freedom from the tyranny of too many new ideas. I must learn to expect—nay, demand—a happy turn.

  And so, I tell Abelard everything. All my fears and hopes for the surgery.

  “Can I text you tomorrow night after surgery?” he asks.

  I feel the overwhelming urge to say no. To pull back. Because—fear.

  “I may be strange and groggy.”

  “I don’t mind,” he texts. “I like that you’re strange.”

  I close my eyes and try to formulate what to say next. It’s important.

  “Abelard. What if the surgery trims the odd angles off my brain? What if suddenly I am more of a salt crystal than a broken snowflake?”

  I wait for his answer. It takes a long time.

  “I will love you whatever happens. You will still be Lily.”

  In Frankenstein, the monster follows Victor Frankenstein to his Swiss mountain home in a quest for a mate because he mistakenly believes that it is love that makes you human. But love doesn’t make you human. Being able to feel pain deeply, or even being able to feel the pain of others, doesn’t make you human.

  What makes you human is the ability to tolerate paperwork. To fill out the right form because that’s what everyone else has to do in the craptacular adult world of Coach Neuwirth. To read every bit of the rubric.

  It wouldn’t have mattered if Frankenstein created a bride for the monster who shared in his triumph and his sorrows, who felt the pain of isolation and brokenness as deeply as he did. One bad trip to the DMV and a license renewal gone wrong, and the monster would have been ripping the arms off random strangers. All it takes is one petty bureaucrat or stupid form to send the monster rampaging again. I know. The monster is always there, just below the surface.

  The monster will out. And so—surgery. It’s the right thing to do. I know that now.

  Abelard says he will love whoever I become, and I trust him. In spite of our misfortunes, we have always been what we pleased in our letters. When we are together, we become even more than what we please. We become ourselves.

  But I worry. Because it is the monster who makes us love. It is the monster who stares through the chinks in the wall at a blind man with a starving family and feels real pain. It is the monster who kills a deer in the forest to feed them.

  It was the monster in me who broke the sliding door to see who was on the other side. It was the monster in me who looked at Abelard and saw the delicate and complex gears turning, and thirsted to know more. The monster demands the greater truths of life. I told Dr. Brainguy, my own personal Dr. Frankenstein, that the thing I feared most about the surgery was the loss of ideas, but that wasn’t true.

  I fear the loss of the monster.

  It was the monster in me who cried out in despair to a dead, uncaring universe, looking for someone to love. Someone special and broken and perfect. And the universe answered with Abelard. More than I’d asked for, and certainly more than I deserved. Lucky me.

  So what happens if Dr. Brainguy kills the monster? If suddenly paperwork and schedules and rubrics make sense to me? If I become—fully human?

  Will I still love Abelard? Will Abelard still love me?

  I hope so.

  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

  The END

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my editor, Margaret Raymo, for believing in my story. Thanks to my agent, Jim McCarthy, for seeing the subtleties in family life I missed. Best revision notes—ever. Thanks to Ana Deboo for a great copyedit.

  I owe so much to my mentor Marty Mayberry, who plucked me out of the Pitchwars slush pile and taught me how to write romance. Thanks to Brenda Drake for Pitchwars.

  Brenda Marie Smith has been my writing partner and line editor extraordinaire from the beginning. Thanks to her and the other members of my home group, George Leake and Aden Polydoros.

  Thanks to Alex Cabal for Scribophile.

  I wouldn’t have been able to finish this novel without Jerry Quinn, head of the Ubergroup on Scribophile. Jerry gave me the harshest critique I’ve ever received—and one I desperately needed. Thanks for his leadership and his unflinching honesty.

  I wish I had the space to individually thank all the Ubergroup members who read and critiqued my novel, many of them multiple times. I’ve learned so much about neurodifference, education, and writing from all of them. Thanks to Dannie Morin, Lucy Ledger, Allison Castle, Erin Merrill, Sydney Oliver, Gabrielle Reid, Jennifer Todhunter, Susan Boesger, Sera Flynn, Sarah Overland, Maria Dascalu, Maggie Giles, Lisa Price, Dustin Fife, Ashley Dunnett Grace, C. C. O’Hugh, Marisa Urgo, Brenda Baker, Maggie Stough, Sam Emerson, Derek Cummings, Valerie Godown, Jefferson Hunt, Eleanor Konik, and Lindsay Diamond.

  Thanks to Russell Rowland, kick-ass writing teacher and author.

  Thanks to Carol Freeman Athey for telling me that there is more than one way to be a hero in your own life.

  Thanks to Morgan McLauren Guidry, Pat Littledog, and Denise Dee for starting me on the writing path.

  Thanks to Bob Bechtol. He knows why.

  My sister-in-law, Kristen Clifford Creedle, has given me great advice and encouragement. My siblings, George Creedle, Will Creedle, and Dory Grandia, are always willing to discuss writing and neurodifference—and to listen to me moan when things are hard. I rely on them all so much.

  Thanks to Isabel Grandia for her thoughts on love and romance.

  And thanks to Ethan Brem for his thoughts on love and letter writing.

  Thanks to Courtney Cater for the inspiration and encouragement.

  Thanks to James Fason, Blair Creedle Reynolds, and Callier Creedle Reynolds for their warmth and humor, and for allowing me to steal bits of their childhoods for my writing. Special thanks to Blair for committing to read this almost as many times as I have.

  And finally, thanks to my husband, Henry D. Reynolds. He is the most faithful and fundamentally generous person I’ve ever known, and he’s never wavered in his belief that I would get this done. I am so lucky.

  About the Author

  © 2017 by John Foxworth

  LAURA CREEDLE lives in Austin, Texas, and writes about her experiences as an ADHD writer at lauracreedle.com. The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily is her debut novel.

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