My Heartbeat

My Heartbeat
Garret Freymann-Weyr

Ellen has been in love with James since the seventh grade. She loves her brother Link (James’s best friend) just as much. The three of them have a close-knit relationship, the boys sharing a special bond Ellen accepts she isn’t part of. Ellen has just started ninth grade at the school James and Link are about to graduate from. One of her new friends casually mentions that she thinks James and Link are a couple.

So Ellen wonders. Finally, she asks them, but still she doesn’t get a clear answer—because neither of them is sure.

My Heartbeat cover

As they each begin to understand further, an interesting point is brought up. James tells Ellen that she was their insurance. So long as she was around, they were safe—nothing that shouldn’t be happening would end up happening.

My Heartbeat is a story of fear and expectations, and what it means to really know someone. There are unwritten social laws yet to be understood, and a mind with a heartbeat yet to be formed. It’s a love triangle that you don’t even realize is there until you take a step back and stop to think. It’s a love triangle where each one truly loves the other two, and that, I think is something to be admired.

Together and apart, they deal with their own issues. From all sorts of rebellion, to music, to advanced math, running seven miles every morning, searching for happy endings, sketching strangers, and learning to see—to really see, the three of them develop subtly but beautifully.

James has experienced much more than either of the siblings, in terms of sex and life in general, and speaks with wisdom that he doesn’t acknowledge. Ellen and Link are both under the guidance of a pair of loving parents: a mother with the ability to understand what is unsaid, and a father who wants nothing more than for his children to develop their own minds (so long as they conform to certain boundaries).

There is no lack of love in this story.

In the words of one of the characters, a good book is a reflection of some kind of truth. This was a good book.

The Realm of Possibility

The Realm of Possibility
David Levithan

From the very beginning, The Realm of Possibility is not your ordinary book. It’s shrink-wrapped in clingy plastic and set on one of the bookstore’s shelves, and you pick it up, scan through the back cover, and buy it.

The Realm of Possibility cover

You’re waiting a tale of teenage love and intertwined lives to be spun in beautiful lines like those you copied onto your planner because you didn’t want to forget (maybe for this book, you’ll write, this will linger). Because that’s what the back cover tells you.

You pinch off a hardened corner of the plastic wrapper, slide your finger along the sealed line, and proceed to peel off the rest. You’ve seen the two hands and the crowned heart on the cover before, but this time you take a second glance. Then you leaf through the first few pages until you make it to a gray page that has the heading “one,” followed by a list of four names.

Then you find that the book has been written in free verse, and you think, really, should you have paid all that money for a book with pages almost bare save for a few three-word liners?

But soon enough, you realize, yes, it was worth it.

You read through some stories, excited to figure out how each one connects to the first, so you cheat a little and look through the four other chapter dividers and you’re surprised to find your own name on one. But you don’t want to spoil it for yourself, so you quickly return to where you stopped.

Levithan isn’t telling the story this time. He lets the twenty teenagers write for themselves, each one with their own distinct style, and distinct mind.

Whereas other stories are limited by their one or two main characters, this one has twenty, a completely heterogeneous group in terms of sexuality, beliefs, culture, and experiences. Through these twenty, we see a full spectrum.

Leviathan understands, and lets us understand, there will always be different people with different interests. Here, in this realm of possibility, some of them intersect.

The Claddagh ring says, “With my two hands I give you my heart, and crown it with my love.”