Young Writers Society

She believes in science. Science and logic-those are her two tools, her life’s rules, her words to live by. Without science, and without reasoning, you have nothing.

In high school, she learned about syllogistic reasoning in her science class. She doesn’t remember which one-maybe her AP biology or physics or chemistry. She likes science-it is often so strait forward and logical, and she likes logical.

She uses syllogistic reasoning to map out her life, to make conclusions and to come to decisions. Like love. She knows that to be in love must mean that you are also miserable. It is simple:

Her mother loved her father.

Her father beat her mother.

Her mother was miserable.

If you are in love, you must be miserable.

So it is natural that she loves her boss. She needs only to extend her thoughts on love to make this conclusion:

Her mother loved her father.

Her father beat her mother.

Her mother was miserable.

If you are in love, you must be miserable.

Her boss makes her miserable.

She must be in love with her boss.

She doesn’t really know why this must be the case-but she knows that her life is supposed to be complicated, and that it is supposed to be tragic. She did something bad long ago-she knows she must have:

Her life is bad.

Bad things happen to bad people.

She must have been bad.

Simple.

She likes simple logic, because her life is complicated. And then it isn’t complicated at all in some way, and in all ways. Her life is complicated to the point of simplicity. She can predict the complexity of her life. She knows she makes things more complicated than they need be, but that is how her life should be.

Complicated and miserable.

It is how her life always has been, and how her mother’s was. She takes after her mother.

Her mother was smart.

Her mother had a hard life.

Her mother drank.

Her mother loved a man who made her sad.

She is like her mother.

She will make all the mistakes her mother made.

She wonders if her mother ever had a man like Him in her life. Her mother probably did. She probably had the perfect man in her life, but like her Amy, she knew that he would make her happy, and like Amy, maybe she knew she couldn’t allow herself happiness.

At least that is how Amy justifies never allowing herself to be with Him:

He is sweet, handsome, smart, and everything she wants.

He is her perfect man.

He makes her happy.

You can’t be in love and be happy.

She can’t love Him.

Sometimes she wonders if she is all wrong in her way of thinking. Sometimes she wonders if perhaps she can break this chain of misery that she knows has plagued her family for ages. She thinks about it, lying in bed with her boss, her lover. She sleeps with him because she has to do so to make him happy, and because she hates doing so. And so that means she must do it because it makes her unhappy.

She knows that making love to Him would make her happy.

So she never tries to think about it.

Except, she does. Because there are exceptions in science. Sometimes things do not make sense, and allowances must be made. In genetics, experiments following linked genes on chromosomes don’t follow Mendel’s principle of independent assortment. It is a difference.

There are a lot of exceptions in science.

She bases her life on science.

There may be exceptions in her life.

So this is why she stands on the doorstep of His home:

She bases her life of logical science.

Logical science says she should be miserable.

Logical science has exceptions.

She is an exception.

She may not have to be miserable.

He doesn’t know what to say when he opens the door and finds her standing there. He does, however, think that it is awfully warm outside, and that she should really come in so that she isn’t so hot. Then he thinks that his boss wouldn’t like that he was thinking of letting her in.

Then she whispers: “I don’t want to be miserable.”

He knows exactly what she means.

To follow the science, by following logic, they have both made themselves miserable.

And then when she kisses him, he wraps his arms around her and pulls her in.

Because maybe they are the scientific exception.

Maybe they are the genetic mutation.

Maybe they are allowed to be happy after all.

Comment are loved. Please, feel free to be harsh