The writing titled “The Value of X,” written by Amanda Lee, talks about love, loss, and longing.  This innocent love story can apply to most any young person and left me personally feeling a strange sense of bittersweet sadness.  The unlikely locking of eyes in math class has happened countless times to a plethora of different people and resulted in various degrees of friendship and love.  However, what made this story unique was the connection made between the two kids in this particular corner of the world.  Lee writes, “what was first selfish curiosity melted into abashed cure.”  By saying this, she showcases a universally relatable instance in which a young girl wants to know the secrets of her classmate’s life, more for entertainment and personal satisfaction than to help him in any way.  This simple statement portrays so many aspects of the relationship that fell just right to create a wondrous relationship that molded the lives of the two involved.  Lee’s own admittance that at first she only listened to the boy out of “selfish curiosity” is an honest and refreshing statement that took courage to make.  The boy’s blind trust and boldness to approach Lee was another rare and beautiful act that made the trust and love among the two possible.  The author is proven to be not only a young girl with a unique experience but also a skilled writer when she uses advanced vocabulary that goes far beyond the knowledge of most teenagers.  She also creates a very rare tie in using the statement made by the boy in the beginning of the story that x “[is] the solution to every unknown in the world” and creatively numbering her paragraphs with roman numerals and limiting her story to 10 so the last paragraph is numbered x.