Of Breakable Things by A. Lynden Rolland

now?”
    “Of course not,” Ellington said gently. “But it will be your job, yours and mine, to figure it out.” He tapped Alex’s head with his pen. “But I have a feeling the trajectory of your path is a road less traveled.”

 

     
    In the ninth grade, Chase’s first English assignment was to create a poem following the template of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Well, he thought iambic pentameter was a pain the ass. He hated counting syllables and using the alphabet to find a way to rhyme his words. Shakespeare must have been on drugs to write entire plays in such gibberish, but Chase could at least appreciate the attention to detail. Their English teacher said the poem could be about anything, but she winked and added that usually they were about love. Honestly, it seemed to Chase that Shakespeare ridiculed love, but this teacher seemed like a bit of a sap, so he didn’t share his cynicism with the class. Besides, if he read into it too much, his teacher might bump him up to honors English, and he wanted to stay in the same classes with Alex.
    “What’s wrong?” Alex said.
    “Why do you think something is wrong?”
    “Your face is doing that thing again.” She touched his clenched jaw.
    His anxiety spiked, and he wiped a sweaty palm against his jeans and recited the first two stanzas of his sonnet in his head:
    Oh may I fine’ly ask you to be mine?
    It’s been so long I’ve waited to say it
    I’ve thought these words to you time after time
    I’m scared to think them ev’n as here I sit
     
    May I hold you close and whisper your name?
    Will my heart be truly safe in your hand?
    Deep down I believe you do feel the same
    But here I am, in complete fear I stand.
    Was he seriously about to do this? He’d spent hours creating it, making sure it was perfect, ten syllables per line, four lines per stanza. Before he could talk himself out of it, he slipped his masterpiece into Alex’s copy of Romeo and Juliet . He’d signed it with his name, a heart, and a question mark. Dramatic? Sure, but if he was going to put the time into creating one of these absurd poems, he should use it to his advantage. This was going to be special. Alex deserved that. She deserved the best of everything.
    “Well, this is me,” Alex said with a smile, stopping outside the English classroom. Chase didn’t have Ms. Holden’s class until tomorrow. It was the first time in their lives they didn’t have the same schedule.
    “See ya in a bit,” he said, trying to ignore the crack in his voice.
    This felt like the defining moment of his life. All their time together, his racing heartbeat, the butterflies in his stomach, the warmth he felt when she smiled at him—he was about to find out if she felt it, too. If she always had. It seemed like destiny, just like Shakespeare said. It seemed to be written in the stars somewhere that he and Alex were fated to be together. Hopefully their story was not meant to be a tragedy. But this was real life, not some old play written by a rhyming lunatic, so their ending had to be happy.
    Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to be so clever. But Shakespeare didn’t title his sonnets, and so neither did Chase. Maybe if he had entitled it “Alex” there wouldn’t have been the confusion. Maybe then Alex would have received the note instead of the girl who picked it up by accident. So when he made his way frantically down the hallway after class, it was certainly not Alex who came sprinting down the hallway in his direction.
    Clutched tightly in Becca Blackman’s fist was his poem, entitled “Sonnet 14” for the fourteen years he’d been in love with Alex. It was Becca who jumped into his arms and pressed her overly glossed lips against his while her friends giggled and clapped.
    Where was Alex? What would she think of this? Oh, God.
    Finally, he found Alex’s face in the crowd. Her expression wasn’t one of hurt or anger or jealousy. She smiled . Like she was proud of him or something. He