Abelard, coming to see me. I worried about him traveling by himself.
“How would you get here?”
“I’ll fly. Someone will drive me to Albuquerque. There’s a direct flight to Austin.”
“You hate airplanes.”
“I have to go,” he said.
“I want to see you, but don’t do anything impulsive.” Me, telling Abelard to be sensible. Strange how things work out.
I waited to see if he’d text anything else. He didn’t.
Chapter 36
Wednesday. I was in English class in the middle of a sleepy conversation about an indifferent short story, holding my phone under my desk on the lowest level of vibrate imaginable.
“Lily?” Abelard texted.
Mrs. Rogers-Peña looked up as though she had X-ray vision and could see my phone through the desk.
I waited until she turned her back, and then texted.
“Yes.” It was all I could get out before she turned around again.
“I’m in Austin. Come to my house.”
I shoved my phone in my pocket, grabbed my backpack, and stood by Mrs. Rogers-Peña’s desk. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
I swung my backpack in her direction as though I expected an imminent tampon catastrophe. Mrs. Rogers-Peña eyed me dubiously before handing me one of the giant plastic hall passes our school uses, because apparently carrying a fluorescent green piece of plastic the size of an iPad cuts down on drug use. In two years, I’d never bailed on one of her classes, and I felt bad. She knew something was up, but she was giving me the benefit of the doubt.
Plus, I had her only bathroom pass.
I moved quickly through the hall, worried that I’d be spotted before I could make my escape.
All of my life I’ve run from things: lengthy homework assignments, arguments with my mother, hours spent in a desk watching pointless PowerPoint presentations. All this disappears in the rush of a run. But I’d never run toward something. I’d never had a destination. And it made all the difference.
I stood outside the Mitchell house and rang the bell. Abelard opened the door—instantly, as though he’d been standing a few feet away. He startled me. Usually his mom answered.
“You came,” he said.
“I left school. How long have you been home?”
“Since last night. Mom said it was too late to call you.”
Everything about him, from his bare feet and sunglasses to the dark hair curling around his ears, was just as I remembered. Better even. We may grow fonder of the picture of the person we love when they are at a great distance, but it’s still just a picture. Abelard was real, and he was here. He shifted in the doorway, and I took it as an invitation to come inside. We stood in the entryway, close enough for me to catch the scent of sandalwood, soap, and warmth.
“How did you get here?” I asked. “You didn’t fly, did you? Tell me you didn’t fly.”
“I didn’t fly. I took the bus. My dorm mentor drove me to the bus station.”
“And that was okay? No one touched you or anything?” Hard to imagine Abelard on a bus for a whole day.
“Lubbock,” he said. “Someone sat next to me at Lubbock, but then they moved. Mom drove out to meet me in San Angelo.”
“Where is your mother?” I realized that she wasn’t there. She was always there.
“She’s at school. When I went to the Isaac Institute, she decided to finish her master’s in child development. She’s working part-time in a learning center.”
I was quite happy that Mrs. Mitchell wasn’t in the house, hovering nearby. But I was also pleased to find that she had a life outside of taking care of Abelard. I’d imagined her as the Miss Havisham of cookies, sitting in her kitchen covered with cobwebs, surrounded by uneaten baked goods she couldn’t stop making for her absent children. Okay—Great Expectations—ninth grade. Visually useful.
“You came to see me,” I said. “You got on a bus. I’ve never been anywhere—on a bus.”
“Yes.”
Abelard frowned at the half table, or the floor, not at me, but I was used to that. I was suffused with an almost unendurable golden happiness at his proximity, and I wanted to lunge at him. I put my hand on that strange little half table that held a wooden bowl for keys, and another for sunglasses. I wondered if the wall held the table up. If I pulled it away from the wall, maybe it would fall over. I gave the edge a slight tug. Bad idea—to break something—just to keep my hands busy.
“You broke up with me,” he said. “I want to kiss you, but I’m still mad.”
At the word kiss, a thrill passed through me. I’d had the suspicion that Abelard had only come back on a pity mission, because—electrodes in my brain. Not true. He wanted to kiss me.
“I guess you have every right to be angry with me,” I said. “I had my reasons for breaking up with you, which in retrospect, were probably bad reasons, but if you could hold two contradictory thoughts in your brain, I’d like it if you kissed me. But only if you felt like—”
Abelard kissed me. Midsentence. This was getting to be a habit. I closed my eyes as words fell out of my brain and the hamster wheel of thoughts stopped turning.
Abelard wrapped his arms around me. We leaned together against the weird little half table with the keys and the sunglasses as though we were both trying to melt into the wall. My face nestled into the side of his neck while his hands searched beneath my shirt and found bare skin at the back of my waist.
“This table thing has only three legs,” I whispered. “Are we going to break it?”
I didn’t want to break anything else in Abelard’s house. I’d pretty much met my household destruction limit with the unfortunate lemonade incident.
“The lower shelf adds structural integrity,” he said. “It’s stronger than it looks.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Because—happiness.
“Is that funny?” He tightened his arms around my waist and frowned.
“Yes. You and I are always talking about breaking things. Most people don’t think about structural integrity this much.”
Abelard turned his head away. Thinking. “Do you want me to stop talking about structural integrity?”
“Please—don’t stop. If you stopped talking about structural integrity, then I would have to think about it by myself, and I don’t ever want to be that alone in the world of breakable objects again.”
“Can I kiss you again?” he asked.
“You don’t have to ask every time,” I said.
But I knew he would.
He kissed me again, and my thoughts turned to his room, miles of soft bed and warm light. We were alone in the house. Would we ever be this alone again?
“I don’t want you to have brain surgery,” he said.
“Okay.” My too-happy brain, not forming complete thoughts.
“Brain surgery,” he repeated.
“What would I do if didn’t have the surgery?”
“Come to New Mexico with me.”
“Really? How would I do that?”
“I have money,” Abelard said. “We’ll take the train.”
It was all so simple.
I was tired of Dr. Golden and all the tests, the thought of having my head shaved and a scar over my ear. I didn’t want to think about how I’d be seeing one of Dr. Brainguy’s students every two weeks for the next three years, and probably for a long time after that, maybe forever, because you don’t just shove an electrode in someone’s brain and then say, “Later, dude!”
I didn’t want the surgery. I didn’t want to go to school. All I wanted was to be with Abelard.
“Maybe we should go to your room,” I said.
There was a sound of a key sliding into the lock. Mrs. Mitchell opened the door and nearly ran into us both.
“Oh!”
She stood with her keys in her hand, frozen in place. She wore an oversize lilac linen shirt, amethyst beads the size of kumquats.
My shirt was up
in the back, and my skirt had ridden up high on my thighs. I didn’t quite know how it got there. I pulled my skirt down, and the bowl full of sunglasses clattered to the floor. And still Mrs. Mitchell didn’t move. She stared at Abelard as if she’d just discovered bones of all the missing neighborhood dogs in the backyard.
“Abelard, what are you doing?” she asked finally.
“Lily is my girlfriend,” he said after a long pause.
I thought about confirming this, but Abelard and his mom were locked in some kind of subterranean battle of will, and anything I said would make it worse. I knew this. Plus, Mrs. Mitchell sometimes threw things. We stood in a hall the size of a walk-in closet. I couldn’t stop twitching.
“Abelard says you’re going back to graduate school.” My voice boomed in the small space of the hall. Abelard flinched.
It was as though my voice broke a spell. Mrs. Mitchell moved into the main room, and we followed her.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m not taking classes yet, but I’m working in the learning lab with preschoolers. I’ll be a full-time student in the fall for the first time in—”
“Lily is coming to the train station with me,” Abelard said.
“Oh, that’s nice, Lily.” Mrs. Mitchell set her bookbag down on a long table against the wall by the kitchen. “You’ll have to be at the station by tomorrow at six, or Abelard will already be on the train. You know where the station is, don’t you?”
Clearly, she thought I was going to the station to say goodbye to Abelard. I glanced at Abelard. I didn’t think he understood, but I couldn’t tell.
“Um, by Town Lake, right?” I felt like I should say something about the plan, but I didn’t quite know what to say.
“That’s right, behind the YMCA. You turn on Blagersfield and go under . . . realized that Abelard would be . . . making a visit . . . I called his doctor and . . . .”
Mrs. Mitchell stumbled over the words “making a visit,” and I had the feeling she had a less ladylike term for Abelard’s cross-country adventure. Traveling was hard. Soon I’d be traveling with Abelard. I’d have to give him a lot of space and not touch him randomly. I could go online and read up about this, but maybe things would be easier for us—because trains. Abelard loved trains. I’d never been on a train, but I was prepared to love trains just as much, if it meant we could be alone together in our own little compartment. Hours and hours in a tiny room with him while the stars rolled by our window and—
“Lily?” Mrs. Mitchell was standing by the open door. “We need to go. When I found out Abelard was coming home, I asked the neurologist to squeeze us in, but he only has a few minutes. We can’t miss our appointment. Can I drop you somewhere?”
“Appointment?” I realized Mrs. Mitchell was asking me to leave. “No, I can take the bus.”
I walked out the front door and it shut behind me. I was out blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight. I’d thought Abelard had come home to tell me not to have the surgery. Instead, he’d given me another option, a way forward, like he’d opened the door to my cage. We loved each other, and that was all that mattered. Everything else we could figure out. I had to go home and pack. I did have a future. With Abelard.
Chapter 37
Mom owns exactly two pieces of luggage. One is a small black carry-on bag she bought for a medical convention three years ago. The other is a gigantic, ancient brown and yellow suitcase she and Dad bought for a trip they took to France the year before I was born. Mom wanted to go to Paris, and Paris was just as close as Berlin to Bingen am Rhein, the place where Hildegard had her monastery and where Dad did a big chunk of his graduate research. Mom and Dad spent three days wandering around Paris before taking the train to Germany.
I would have liked to take the big suitcase, the one that had been to Paris with my parents, but I wasn’t ready to confess to my mom that I was leaving. I took the small bag, hoping I could hide it until tomorrow. I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid she’d try to talk me out of going. All that stuff about not relying on another person for your happiness. I guessed that was fine if you were Iris and you found your happiness in making straight A’s and embodying the hope for a bright and shiny future. But that wasn’t me. I’d never found true happiness anywhere but with Abelard.
I’d have to tell her at the train station. It would be hard on her. I felt bad, but I couldn’t see any way around it. I hoped Mom would come to understand eventually. She’d always been in denial about how miserable I was at school. Like every time I got put on suicide watch, she’d scramble around looking for someone to “fix” my broken brain.
Why couldn’t she understand that the obvious cure for misery was happiness?
Abelard texted at three.
“Lily?”
“Abelard.”
“Our train leaves at 6:37 tomorrow night. Meet you at the 5th Street station at six.”
“I’ll be there. Did you tell your mother?”
“Yes.”
Mom came home early. I continued peeling carrots for dinner, trying to look like carrots were hard work and at least I was being responsible at home.
“You skipped school today.” Mom stood at the door, clutching her sad purse to her chest. Apparently the strap had broken—again. “I got the robocall.”
Robocall—like a heavily armed cyborg from a 1980s sci-fi horror movie. No one can escape Robocall’s path of destruction. I briefly contemplated lying. Nothing came to mind.
“Abelard is back in Austin. I went to his house.”
She strode to the dining room table and gently laid her purse down. “So I heard.”
I looked up, startled.
“You heard?”
“Helen called me.”
Helen? Who knew Mrs. Mitchell’s name was Helen? Or that Mom was on a first-name basis with Mrs. Mitchell? The whole thing was—odd.
“What did she say?”
A whole host of possibilities crossed my mind. Mrs. Mitchell had caught us in the clinch. Maybe she’d called my mom to tell her that Abelard and I were engaging in dreaded physical contact. I expected to receive another lecture on birth control and “making good choices.”
Mom turned to face me. “She was very nice. Apologetic, really. She said that Abelard refuses to get on a train unless you come down to the station to see him off. She’s worried about him getting thrown out of his program. She asked if I could bring you to the train station tomorrow.”
“Um—okay.” Stranger still. I tried to imagine Mom and Mrs. Mitchell talking about Abelard and his school, but I couldn’t. “What did you say?”
“I told her I’d bring you down. I imagined you’d want to say goodbye to Abelard in person.” Mom had a soft, almost wistful look around the eyes. “I hope that’s all right?”
“Of course. Thanks, Mom.”
I felt a tightness in my chest. Mom was being so nice. She hadn’t even said that much about me skipping school. It was as though she understood how important Abelard was to me, and not only that, she wanted to help me. I had a sudden urge to confess the truth—that I planned to leave with him.
Because I couldn’t bring myself to start a ginormous fight, I didn’t say anything.
Dinner was miserable. My secret was a giant lump in my throat.
After dinner, I retreated to my room to pack. I filled the black bag with jeans and T-shirts and bras and underwear and my swimsuit, and makeup. I emptied my backpack. I’d taken books from the shelf—Daniel Deronda, Mary Barton, graphic novels—which I shoved into it. I hid my abandoned textbooks under a pile of dirty clothes before Iris came in to do homework.
I didn’t tell her I was leaving, but Iris is no dope. She spotted the black carry-on bag under the desk, from her perch on her bed.
“You’re leaving,” Iris said.
“Yes.” I went back to playing a game on my phone.
“Where?”
“New Mexico, to be with Abelard.”
“What?” Iris looked up from her laptop. Closed the lid
, even. Exceedingly rare that Iris abandons her homework entirely. “That’s crazy!”
“You’re right, Iris. I’m crazy and impulsive.” Why fight it?
“What will you do for money? How will you live? What does Mom think about this?”
“Abelard has money. But I’m not going to be dependent on him. I’ll get a job,” I said.
“So that’s it?” Iris said. There were tears in her eyes because—thirteen. You weep over everything when you’re thirteen. “You’re just going to leave, and I’ll probably never see you again.”
“I’ll be back. It’s not like I’m going to the end of the world or anything.”
“That’s what Dad said.”
“To be fair, Dad did come back.” I couldn’t believe I was defending Dad’s ridiculously long absence to Iris. Five years was practically never.
“I should tell Mom.”
“Go ahead.” I yawned and pretended to be absorbed in rereading my text from Abelard. “She’s driving me to the train station tomorrow.”
Iris frowned, baffled. I hope Iris never plays poker. She’s super easy to bluff.
“When I get settled into a place, you can come visit me. New Mexico is not that far away.”
“Really?” she said.
“Really.”
That was enough, apparently, to get Iris to go back to work. Just the promise that she could come stay with me in New Mexico. Iris had the whole world in front of her. Everyone was always falling over themselves to point out how she would probably rule the world one day, and even her teachers at LAMEA occasionally looked up from their klezmer orchestras and Burning Man robotics projects to mention that Iris was amazing. And yet Iris just wanted to be with me. I loved my sister even though she annoyed me sometimes. I would miss her.
Chapter 38
I went to school. You’d think the day you leave high school forever, the last thing you’d want to do was go to geography. It wasn’t that I was looking forward to geography, but I didn’t want to sit at home alone all day and wait for six o’clock to come. Waiting is horrible.
The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily Page 21
