A small stretch of real estate at Priest River High School, right where two Coke machines and two vending machines sat next to the front office door. It was the unofficial meeting place for everyone at the high school, older than a freshman.

I was the new kid. Well, newish. I had been attending the high school for the last month and had already found a girl, Heather, who wanted to be my girlfriend. I also managed to make friends with the one Mormon kid. Michael, the epitome of white culture: blonde hair, blue eyes, and a smile that makes teachers immediately trust him. His white teeth accented the eyes and hair, a perfect combination. He wore the standard uniform that most Mormon kids or Jehovah’s Witness kids wore to high school. A multi-colored button-down shirt with a button-down collar, khakis paired with a white canvas belt, the ones that looked like they were made out of recycled cardboard. I know. I had two myself. His shoes were the penny loafers with real shiny pennies wedged in the slots. I thought that was the whole point of the shoe. Maybe I missed something.

“Wait,” I said, watching Michael plop two quarters into the Coke machine. “You can’t have caffeine, right? That’s what I was always told about Mormons.”

He put his finger to his lips and winked at me. “Not supposed to,” he said, cracking open the New Coke. “Coffee. Tea. It’s a whole Word of Wisdom thing.” He put his finger to his lips and made a shh sound, then took a long gulp.

“People make a big deal about that one, arguing over something that’s not that big of a deal.” He shrugged with a look like a guy who had heard the argument a hundred times or so. He wasn’t supposed to be drinking caffeine, and yet, here he was, leaning against the Coke machine, drinking the awful product, one that no teenager asked for because no one in their right mind likes New Coke. But we both hated Pepsi more, so we gave in to the horrible Coca-Cola product, Michael, because he was supporting the Church, in theory, and me? Because I wasn’t going to be caught dead drinking a Pepsi.

Computers were new to our classrooms, and seriously limited in Northern Idaho. That meant anything you learned came from either hallway gossip or you found a book or out-of-date material in an encyclopedia.

Michael and I were discussing the intricacies of Priest River High School, who to avoid, who to befriend, when Heather came down to me, a smile on her face. She carried a blue three-ring binder, the kind that was incredibly difficult to write on because of its construction. But somehow, she covered the whole thing with hearts, every inch! And a German phrase, ich liebe dich written in three different colored inks. Did she learn that in a class? Did she take German as a sophomore? Or was her heritage German? I never did figure that one out.

Heather kissed me on the cheek, Michael taking another sip of his 16-ounce New Coke. “Write me a note, honey,” she said, handing me the standard high school text message: a tightly folded piece of college-ruled notebook paper with hearts and the same Germanic phrase written on the outside. She gave me another tender kiss.

“I do write you notes,” I protested.

“No, silly. A real one. A love note.” She tapped the heart-covered binder, looking at me with ‘I will marry you’ eyes. “Longer than three short sentences. You always stop after three.”

“I see you in between each class, and nothing happens that’s all that exciting in class. So, what do you want it to say?”

The buzzer sounded, and kids scrambled to get to their classes. We had roughly five minutes to make it. “I don’t care, Joe. Just make it long.” She smiled at me like that settled it, which it did, at least in her mind. “Make a page. Or just surprise me.” She winked, blew me a kiss, and skipped off to class, satisfied that I would comply.

So I did. Fifth period. Mr. Patterson was somewhere up front explaining why a bunch of farmers got furious about a tax on whiskey, and I had a blank sheet of college-ruled paper and one job: fill a page. I should tell you now that it did not stay on one page. Nor did I finish it in one day. Here is exactly what I wrote.

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Dear Heather,

You said you wanted a note longer than a few sentences, which is itself a fascinating request when you think about it, and I have been thinking about it, mostly during the part where Mr. Patterson explained how farmers got mad about a tax on whiskey, which honestly seems like a reasonable thing to get mad about, but that is not the point, the point is the Sense in Nonsense, which is a theory I just invented exactly four minutes ago and which I am now going to explain to you in a way that will make complete sense right up until the moment it does not.

The theory goes like this: everything that makes sense only makes sense because we agreed it does, and we agreed it does because somebody before us made sense of it, and that somebody learned it from somebody else, which means that sense is really just nonsense that got passed around long enough that everyone forgot it was nonsense, the way a word stops sounding like a word if you say it too many times, like “spoon,” which you should try saying eleven times, because by the eighth spoon you will understand the entire theory.

There. One full page, exactly like you asked.

Love, Joe

Tuesday. Fifth period again. I have been thinking about it.

So if sense is just old nonsense, then nonsense must be new sense that hasn’t been agreed on yet, which means this note, which you will probably say makes no sense, actually makes the most sense of anything ever written, because it has not yet been ruined by agreement, and the more complicated I make it the more sense it accumulates, like a snowball that is rolling downhill and getting bigger except the snowball is made of logic and the hill is Mr. Patterson’s classroom and I am the snowball and also somehow the hill, and I know I already signed off but I had to come back, because I figured out more.

Wednesday. I didn’t see you at the machines. Michael says hi.

And speaking of things that nobody agreed to, consider New Coke, which is proof of the entire theory, because somebody in an office decided the old sense was wrong and replaced it with a new sense that nobody wanted, and now there are two Cokes, an old one and a new one, and the old one had to come back and call itself Classic, which means it had to admit it was the nonsense and the new one was supposed to be the sense, except everyone hated the sense and wanted the nonsense back, which is exactly what I have been trying to tell you, and which is also why Michael and I were standing at that machine on Monday drinking the worst soda ever invented like two people who had given up on the whole idea of choosing.

Thursday. Still going. I think this might be the best thing I have ever written.

And here is where it gets good, because you wanted length, and length is just width that decided to go a different direction, and a note is just talking that decided to stop moving, and talking is just thinking that escaped, which means thinking is just a note you haven’t written yet, which means I have technically been writing you this note since the day I was born, and I am only just now getting to the part where I tell you that the reason nonsense feels like nonsense is that it is sense wearing a disguise, and the reason sense feels like sense is that it gave up on the disguise and now everyone is bored of it, and boredom, Heather, is the highest form of understanding, which is why this class is so educational.

Friday. Last page. I promise.

Therefore, by the logic established above, the longer and more confusing this note becomes, the more deeply it means I like you, which was the only thing I was ever trying to say, and which I started saying on Monday on one page like you asked, and have now said across five days and five pages, both sides, because once I started I genuinely could not figure out how to stop.

Love, Joe

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And then you found me in the hall by the two Coke machines, holding all five pages, hearts on your binder and German in the margins, and you read the last line, and you looked up at me, and you said, “Joe, this doesn’t make any sense.”

You were right. It didn’t. The theory I wrote ended up being five complete pages of college-ruled paper, written on both sides, about a theory that ate its own tail, circling back to nothing, handed to you between fifth and sixth period in its infantile inception, as if it was something. You didn’t keep it; you chose to give it back to me. Why would you keep it? With ich liebe dich on a binder you may not be able to read aloud, and a page full of words from me you definitely couldn’t? We were even.

I didn’t have the sense to see at sixteen, standing there by a machine that only sold a soda nobody wanted, the not-making-sense — that it actually was the whole point. I’d told you so, right there in the middle of the third page, and then watched you prove it to my face, and missed it completely.

It’s your note I keep coming back to ever since. I wrote it for a blog nobody reads at two in the morning. Or to agents who don’t write back. And to a manuscript that keeps circling the one thing it’s trying to say. Then, somewhere in every honest reader, lives a fifteen-year-old girl like you, a binder full of hearts, looking up to tell me it doesn’t make any sense.

They’re right. So are you. It usually doesn’t.

It doesn’t change anything. I keep going anyway. That’s the sense in the nonsense.

That was always the sense in the nonsense.

Joe