“
Dear Russell,
Please don’t fall in love with Mrs. Smith’s niece. I—
Caleb’s dash crossed the entire page. Then he filled up the rest of the sheet with doodles, drawing stars and spirals and little tic-tac-toe boards.
I love you, he wrote at the bottom, in tiny letters. I want to be with you. I want you to wait for me till I’m ready, and I can’t ask because for all I know you’d be waiting till doomsday, because I don’t know how to accept
He wrote a series of dashes. He scribbled some more stars. He flipped over the page, and wrote on the back:
that you might leave me. That it might not last. And also that it might last, it might be real, it might be something I have to tell my parents about one day, I might have to choose you over the entire rest of the world.
That I might choose you over the entire rest of the world, and you might change your mind.
He could not look at it anymore. He flipped the paper back over, and wrote one more sentence among the scattered stars.
But I am going to try.
”
”