My cell buzzed again.
And again.
Iris snatched the phone off our bedside table.
“Hey, Exene, I’ll call you back, okay?” Iris handed the phone to me. “You need to read this.”
It was Rosalind.
“Check out the picture. Abelard is on!” Rosalind texted, followed by the link.
I clicked on the link. There were now about a million new posts starting with my words: “I am Abelard, medieval French philosopher and time traveler. I have come to the future on a quest for . . .” and replacing my comments about love and beauty with ones suggesting that Abelard had come to the future to get wasted while willing future sluts to perform various and sundry sexual acts upon his person.
Iris was giving the laptop her undivided attention, which meant she was also reading the comments.
“You shouldn’t be reading that,” I said.
“You are,” Iris shot back.
“I’m older,” I said. “Plus, you learn things in norm school that they don’t teach over at LAMEA.”
Iris was uncharacteristically silent.
“Creepy,” I texted. “All the trolls.”
“Scroll down,” Rosalind replied. “Look for ‘Real Abelard.’ That’s got to be him, right?”
Three-quarters of the way down, I found the comment: “I am Abelard, medieval French philosopher and time traveler. I have come to the future on a quest . . . to find a woman of surpassing beauty and purpose among you! She alone would know to email me at the initial of my Christian name, followed by Abelard, initial of my surname, all lowercase @gmail.com for further instructions—Orator of Paraclete.”
I leaned back against the headboard and closed my eyes as a wave of golden happiness overtook me, like a drug strong enough to counteract the late-day letdown of my ADHD meds. Abelard understood my sense of humor. Not only had he understood, but he’d called me a “woman of surpassing beauty and purpose.”
Abelard.
“Well?” Rosalind texted.
And just as quickly, doubt filtered in. This many internet-borne feels could only be the result of a cruel joke. Anyone could have Googled Abelard and come up with Peter Abelard’s history and his nickname, the Orator of Paraclete. Okay, anyone with the patience to read an entire Wikipedia page.
“It’s a prank,” I texted. “Someone Googled Abelard.”
“One way to find out,” Rosalind returned.
Iris turned from her laptop.
“Abelard is looking for you,” she said. “And Christian name is the name they give you at christening. It means his first name, Peter.”
“Yes, Iris, I know.”
I sent an email to the address [email protected]: “Abelard? This is Lily from school.”
“Are you going to talk to Abelard?” Iris said.
“Yes.”
“What’s he like? Is he taller than you? He doesn’t wear skinny jeans, does he? I don’t like tall guys in skinny jeans. By the way, who drew that picture? Don’t tell me it was you because I know you can’t draw that well . . .”
Iris sat on the edge of her bed facing me, her head bobbing happily, her loose brown hair swinging free.
“It’s probably not even him,” I said.
I heard the ping of an incoming email. The note was short. It gave a phone number and the instruction to text at that number.
I tried to be cool and wait. I made it about a minute and a half before I entered the number in my phone and texted.
“Abelard? How do I know this is you?”
“You made quite an impression—on my cheek. We were seven. I never told anyone except my mother.”
“It’s him,” I said. No one else knew about the lunchbox.
“What does he say?” Iris asked.
I ignored Iris.
“What did he say?” Iris grabbed for the phone. I tried to evade her grasp, but in the struggle I lost my grip, and Iris dove for it.
“So say something funny and sexy back,” Iris said.
I paused momentarily to wonder how Iris had learned the nuances of sexy chat repartee, before deciding this was very good advice. It took me forever to complete my text. I’m a slow writer at best, I misspell words, and autocorrect wreaks havoc on what I’m trying to say.
“I’m sorry for exposing your visible to the trolls. They don’t deserve to look upon your face.”
“What did you write?” Iris asked.
I showed her the screen before I hit Send.
“Oh, that’s good,” Iris said. “But visible? What do you mean?”
“I meant to write visage.”
“Stupid autocorrect,” she said.
Iris backed up the text and rewrote my text three times faster than I could have done it, because she’s not dyslexic. She sees mistakes that I don’t.
We waited together for what seemed to be a full minute before a message returned.
“The internet! I hate this deceitful, faithless world. I think no more of it,” Abelard texted.
Strange and familiar. While we stared at the message, another one came.
“But your picture and words with it intrigued me. I was always vain and presumptive, and I flattered myself already with the most bewitching hopes.”
My breath caught in my throat. Why was this so familiar? Like something Dad read to me a long time ago.
Iris looked at the screen and giggled.
“Does Abelard always talk like this?” she said. “How cool!”
My sluggish end-of-the-day, drug-burnt neurons fired. It was so obvious—and so brilliant. I looked across at the picture of Abelard on the bulletin board and felt a swell of admiration. I’d been thinking of his namesake when I wrote the lines on the top of the picture, but Abelard had gone one step further.
“Iris! It’s from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise! Quick—go get Dad’s copy. It’s on the far bookshelf in the living room.”
Iris bolted out of the room, the first time in recent memory she’d actually done something I asked her to do.
“Your bewitching hopes? What bewitching hopes?” I texted back.
“Haven’t you guessed?” he texted. This was not a quote, this was Abelard, asking me to think. In real time. A peculiar shyness overtook me. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.
“Tell me.”
A minute of dead time. I stared at my last text, wondering if my monosyllabic response had convinced Abelard that I wasn’t the clever girl he imagined me to be. Or maybe he thought I wasn’t interested. A full minute of torturous self-doubt passed before he answered.
“I have wit enough to write a letter and hope that you would permit my absent self to entertain you,” he texted.
“Your absent self has entertained me thus far,” I texted back.
Iris came back with the book. I snatched it out of her hands and scanned the first letter from Heloise to Abelard. There was a full half-page of her going on about his picture. My eyes roamed the text, but I couldn’t focus on individual lines. Even with all the reading I do, I am a slow reader. Because—dyslexia. Iris is faster.
“Read this page and find me a good quote,” I demanded. “Something about writing letters. She has a lot of stuff about writing.”
“What’s he . . . ?” she began.
“Read!” I yelled.
“Good. Because I don’t think I can entertain you in person,” Abelard texted.
A modern contraction. These were Abelard’s own words, not from the book. Abelard, who couldn’t hold a conversation in real time. Abelard, who was twenty seconds behind in actual conversation.
“A letter is enough for me,” I texted.
“Is that true?” he replied.
“How about this?” Iris held the book out, her finger on a line.
I studied the quote. Perfect. Iris would make a great reference librarian someday if she wasn’t huddled in an underground bunker somewhere, growing hydroponic tomatoes.
“Type it in,” I demanded. “Qu
ickly!”
Iris grinned and then handed me the phone.
“If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire?” I pushed Send.
I waited a full minute before Abelard responded.
“We understand each other,” he texted.
“Perfectly,” I shot back.
I waited for a minute and then two, knowing that Abelard was searching for a quote. While I waited, Mom appeared in the doorway.
“Iris, what’s going on?” Mom said. “You ran through the living room like you were on fire.”
“I needed a book for an English project,” Iris replied placidly.
Iris could build a pipe bomb, and as long as it was for a homework project, Mom would be okay with it.
“Anyway, it’s dinnertime,” Mom said.
I ignored her.
“Your wit and beauty would fire the dullest heart and most insensible heart, and your education is equally admirable,” Abelard texted.
“Tell Rosalind you’ll text her after dinner,” Mom said.
“I must go. Fulbert has arrived,” I texted, referring to Heloise’s infamous guardian.
“Then you don’t mind if I text you again?”
“I think I’d mind if you didn’t,” I replied.
“You look happy,” Mom said.
Her face held a familiar note of optimistic wariness. My psychiatrist had told Mom to watch my behavior for euphoria or signs of depression. Basically, any flavor of emotion is a sign that the drugs haven’t completely killed all normal human response, and my dosage might need to be upped. But at this particular juncture, not even annoyance with my mother could bring me down.
Chapter 8
Because I don’t have the most well-developed social life, I spend a lot of Friday nights watching old movies with Rosalind and her parents. According to them, old movies are a fundamental part of Rosalind’s theatrical education.
Rosalind’s house is a mid-century ranch with a flagstone floor and a sunken living room. It’s filled with seventies stuff: Danish furniture and burnt orange pottery. It looks like the kind of place where you’d hold a far-out fondue party—if you ate cheese. Which they don’t.
Rosalind greeted me at the door.
“My mother is frying tofu,” Rosalind said.
Fried tofu is the most indulgent food Rosalind’s parents can imagine. Fried tofu is, surprisingly, pretty damn good, anyway. Most fried things are.
Light bulbs went off. Rosalind’s mom didn’t fry tofu for just any occasion.
“You told them about detention, didn’t you?” I asked.
Rosalind shrugged.
“They found your story touching and surprising. They laughed, they cried.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “What did Abelard say?”
I couldn’t help smiling.
“So very, very much and—”
Rosalind’s dad appeared in the living room, and I stopped talking.
“Fauxmosa?” He offered around a tray of orange-colored drinks in champagne flutes.
“Sure,” I replied, hoping that the drink wasn’t some strange tea or worse yet, kombucha. They drink a lot of kombucha over at Rosalind’s house, which is a definite disadvantage to visiting. Kombucha is a fermented yeast tea that tastes a little better than it sounds. But not much.
Here’s the great thing about Rosalind’s parents: They don’t think there’s anything wrong with me. They think I’m “delightfully madcap.”
I tasted the drink. Fresh orange juice and something fizzy. Not bad.
Rosalind’s mom emerged from the kitchen with an artfully stacked pile of tofu chunks. She set the plate on the table. Rosalind’s mom is an older version of Rosalind—tiny, artistic, doe-eyed.
“Lily,” she said, reaching up to kiss me on the cheek. “So sorry about that spot of bother at school. We’re watching Bringing Up Baby. Guaranteed to dispel the darkest of moods.”
The “spot of bother.” I liked that. School was definitely a “spot of bother.”
“We should be watching You Can’t Take It with You, but Rosalind refuses,” she said.
“Why You Can’t Take It with You?” I asked.
Her mother smirked. Dramatically.
“It’s the spring play, of course. Rosalind got the lead,” Rosalind’s dad said from behind his laptop. “Didn’t she tell you?”
Rosalind blushed. She gets embarrassed when her parents are proud of her like this. It’s a completely alien experience for me. I don’t think Rosalind gets how nice her parents are.
“No, she didn’t.” I poked Rosalind in the arm.
“You’ve been kind of distracted.” She raised an eyebrow to let me know that she expected to hear all about Abelard. Fair enough.
We settled in to eat tofu and watch Bringing Up Baby. The sight of Cary Grant in a frilly dressing gown—pretty hilarious. But what really got me was watching Katharine Hepburn, as Susan, destroy cars, lose important relics, rip off the back of her dress, and unleash a dangerous animal on her unsuspecting neighbors—all while talking a mile a minute and being adorable. Maybe I should have lived in the thirties. Because—madcap.
“Well, what did you think, Lily?” Rosalind’s mom said as the credits rolled.
“Awesome,” I replied.
“Really?” she said. “But did you really enjoy it?”
“Oh my god— You know, whatever I break, at least I will never destroy an entire brontosaurus skeleton. Susan was like ADHD on steroids.”
I can say stuff around Rosalind’s parents because they’ve known me since kindergarten.
“ADHD—classic,” Rosalind’s dad said, looking up from his laptop. “Never thought about that before.”
“Well, next we’re going to watch His Girl Friday,” Rosalind’s mom said. “It stars the actress we named Rosalind after and—”
“Sorry, Mother,” Rosalind interrupted. “Regrettably, we must depart for my room.”
Rosalind bolted toward the hall, and I followed.
I sprawled on the queen-size bed next to Rosalind in her room that she does not share with another living being.
“So what did Abelard say? I’m dying to know.”
I found the text conversation and handed Rosalind the phone. I felt a little strange sharing my texts from Abelard with another person, but then again, Iris had already seen them, and there wasn’t anything deeply personal in our messages.
I watched impatiently as Rosalind scrolled.
“Wow,” she said finally. “‘Your wit and beauty would fire the dullest and most insensible heart, and your education is equally admirable.’ Super old-school romantic! Does Abelard really talk like that?”
“Not really,” I replied. “It’s a quote from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.”
“How do you know? It doesn’t say that anywhere.”
“I figured it out.”
She handed my phone back.
“You’re so smart.” Rosalind picked up her phone. She pulled up the picture of Abelard and studied it. “So what do you think about this? You and Abelard?”
I struggled to find the right words. But more than that, I struggled to find the right feeling. I remembered the exhilaration of the moment, but now it was like my whole text exchange with Abelard had been shoved into a book and pressed like a dried flower.
“I’m happy, I guess.”
“You guess you’re happy?” Rosalind looked up from her phone. “If someone wrote these words to me, I’d be ecstatic. Are you sure you’re okay being back on medi—”
“I’m ecstatic,” I said quickly.
Rosalind shrugged and went back to staring at her phone. Fine with me. I didn’t feel like discussing my drug-induced lack of feels with Rosalind.
“So Iris? Did she give you the picture back?”
“Yes. Can you believe this? She stole it for a homework assignment. So typical.”
Rosalind laughed. Rosalind has a greater toleranc
e for Iris’s academic obsession than I do, because Rosalind and Iris are a lot alike. If not for our school’s kick-ass drama department, Rosalind would probably have gone to LAMEA.
“Can I see the picture of Abelard?”
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t have it with me, though.”
Rosalind leaned back into a pile of red-and-plum-colored velvet throw pillows and sighed. Rosalind had dozens of useless pillows and pointless, diaphanous drapes at the head of her bed. Her room was decorated in a style I liked to think of as theatrical Victorian harem. She had an actual chaise longue. Jealous.
“So, the artist who drew this is Richard Hernandez. You know him, right?”
It was easy to see where this was heading. Rosalind had fallen in love with the picture of Abelard—not the subject, the artist. Rosalind’s crushes are like this—talent-based, improbable. Sight unseen. She hasn’t had a real boyfriend yet, because it’s hard to date an abstraction. Not that I’ve had a real boyfriend before either.
“Richard? I know him. He’s taking Algebra I for the second time. We’re in the same class.”
Rosalind frowned. I knew what she was thinking. She’s kind of an academic snob.
“Hey, I’m in that class,” I said. “It’s not like I’m stupid.”
“I didn’t mean to imply anything. So what is Richard like?”
“He’s about my height. Broad shoulders. Close-set, intense eyes. Great eyelashes.”
“I meant as a person,” she said with a deep, theatrical sigh. I could see right through her. Everyone likes long eyelashes. Everyone.
I thought about Richard. I didn’t know him that well.
“Dyslexic,” I said. “He can’t read.”
“That’s terrible,” she said. “No wonder he’s failing classes.”
She didn’t sound any less intrigued with Richard because of his dyslexia. If anything, more so. I’d have to introduce her to Richard, eventually. Not that Rosalind would talk to him. But I had a plan for that.
Chapter 9
So—the story of Abelard and Heloise. Heloise d’Argenteuil lived in twelfth-century France. She was super smart and completely bored with the normal women’s activities of the day—sewing stuff and hanging around inside doing needlepoint. Her uncle Fulbert took pity on her and decided to hire the most educated man in all of Europe to tutor her in philosophy. The most educated man in all of Europe was, of course, Peter Abelard. He was also one of the hottest men on the continent.
The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily Page 5
