I.

The first time he fell in love, Lineo was 13. Abbey, russet-haired and something of a tomboy, was, at the time he met her, dating his friend, Gregory. She wasn’t exactly beautiful—not in the conventional way, anyway—but she had a pretty face, and she laughed easily, and that was enough.

Having been raised on a steady diet of Disney movies and fairy tales, Lineo had, from an early age, been brought up to believe that a person’s “true beauty” lay on the inside. By falling in love with Abigail Stintson, he was able to live convince himself that he was a moral and good. And that, like all of the heroes in his stories, he was able to find the diamond in the rough.

A second reason that Lineo may have fallen for Abigail, and not say, Mildred Johnson, who was equally as kind and even homelier than Abigail, is simply that, unlike Mildred Johnson, he could actually talk to Abbey. It shouldn’t be interpreted that Lineo was particularly shy around girls, but he definitely wasn’t outgoing. After elementary school, when the class divided itself into the social haves and have-nots, Lineo found his friends among the computer game players and Monty Python fans. Naturally, there was a female contingent that held the same social status as Lineo and his friends, but, for one reason or another, the two groups didn’t begin to integrate until high school. For this reason, although he had several female acquaintances at school, Lineo had never held an extended conversation with a female (not including his family) until Gregory started dating Abbey.

It should also be noted that part of the appeal of Abigail Stintson was simply the fact that she was Gregory’s girl. She had already proven herself to be of great value to his friend, and therefore she was of great value to him. Another theme that he had unknowingly pulled from the stories of his childhood was that the heroes always got the best girls. Sure, there were always pudgy sisters and devoted handmaidens for the heroes’ trusty sidekicks, but the true gem, without question, went to the heroes. And like every young man, Lineo wanted to be the hero, and being the hero meant getting the girl. Lineo was able to keep this motivation hidden from his subconscious most of the time, so as not to interfere with his carefully constructed heroic self-image, but nevertheless, he did derive a subtle satisfaction from stealing the girl from his friend, thereby proving that he was, in some way, better than Gregory.

But he did love her. That much cannot be argued. He loved her in a way more pure and more radiant than he ever loved again. He loved her with the purity of youth and the curiosity of puberty. Love, for Lineo, was exciting and new. It was no longer just a word people sometimes said, it was now a feeling. He loved her because she was she. And he would love her forever.

Because that is how people love.

514.