The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  Adam had never even been on my radar before this year. If you’d asked me what classes we’d shared last year, or the year before, I couldn’t tell you. But now my whole day revolves around our shared spaces. It was vague at first—just a general awareness when he was nearby—and I’d hoped I’d come back from break and things would have normalized. But of course they haven’t. If anything, his feelings are even more noticeable. They wash over me—different from the molasses I swim through with the rest of my classmates—and stretch to every corner. Blue, filling up my entire field of vision; my whole brain.

  His emotions are always a shade of blue. But not blue like the sky; blue like the ocean. And they’re warm and soft a lot of the time. Even when he’s sad, it’s warm and soft. Like sinking into a bath. And sometimes that’s nice and sometimes I get pulled under and nearly drown.

  Today, things are not soft and warm. The black sludge and the red anger are taking over a bit. Those are always the same, in every person. I don’t know why. Black and red can be other emotions, depending on the person, but disappointment and anger always feel the same at their core.

  Jeez, save it for therapy, Caleb. Focus on class. Focus. Focus.

  * * *

  I step into the car after practice and get an earful.

  “Good God, Caleb, you could at least put your pads in the trunk. You reek.”

  “Sorry, Mom. Hold on.” I hop out and stuff my gear in the back. I’m not sure it improves the smell though, because she still rolls down all the windows when I get back in.

  “Is there a reason you can’t use the school’s showers? Does your father put up with this every day?” She sounds incredulous. She hasn’t picked me up at school for a while—Dad’s writing has been keeping him at home for the past few months so he’s taken over chauffeur duties.

  “Ha, yeah, he does,” I say, “and I can’t use the showers, it’s way too weird.”

  “Why?” I feel her familiar orange concern wrap around me in a suffocating hug. “You’re not … ashamed of your body, are you?”

  “God, Mom, no,” I scoff. She’s always doing this—inventing more and more reasons to be worried about me. As if me having a pathetic superwhatever isn’t a big enough problem to occupy her brain. “No, no, it’s just…” I can feel my face reddening as I trail off.

  “Just what?” she jabs, her concern like hot, yellow pokers sticking out of her.

  “Guys think about a lot of … stuff in the showers,” I mumble, powering through the humiliation, focusing on minimizing her concern. “And it’s weird to be around that. Even if I’m not thinking about that … that stuff, I can still feel it from the other guys. And those kinds of emotions are not something I need to know about my teammates.”

  I feel the yellow pokers turn into understanding.

  “Oh … right, of course.” She sounds a little embarrassed, but I don’t feel it from her. Only sympathy. My mother is sympathetic to a fault. “I can understand that.”

  She shudders a bit at the thought and looks over at me, a smile beginning to form. There’s a bubbly rush of air that tickles my lungs and we both burst out laughing.

  My smile is threatening to break my face apart and I turn toward the open window, feeling the wind and the sun on my face. It’s in moments like these that I don’t mind my Problem all that much.

  I thought I knew what happiness felt like. That free, high-soaring feeling when you’re laughing with someone, doubled over, abs aching. It would make my body feel light and strong and untouchable—like I’ve floated so high, no one could ever pull me down.

  That feeling doesn’t compare to what it’s like now. If I was in the clouds before, now I’m in space, soaring in a bubble among the brightest stars.

  Whenever that happens, I feel like maybe my Problem is worth it. Worth all the sadness and anger. But then the sadness and anger come around again and I forget what the joy felt like in the first place.

  But right now I’m still smiling and closing my eyes against the sun. I can feel my mom watching me out of the sides of her eyes.

  “What, Mom?” I sigh.

  “Nothing, sweetie. I just like seeing you happy,” she says with a smile. I can feel a bit of sadness drop into her happiness and it ripples outward, extending toward me. I open my eyes and look at her. She still has a smile on her face, but it feels a little strained.

  And just like that, it’s over. The bubble of joy has burst and I come careening back down to Earth. My mom’s not overly sad, just a little bittersweet, so I level out before crashing into the surface. That’s what’s nice about my parents—I usually don’t yo-yo as much around them as I do at school. They’re level-headed grown-ups, so it’s easier to deal with.

  “I’ve made you sad now, haven’t I?” she asks knowingly, seeing the look on my face.

  “Only a little. I’m fine,” I reply truthfully. “I know you’re worried about me.”

  “Oh, Caleb, I’m never worried about you. It’s other people that make me worry.”

  I don’t really know what she means by that, and I don’t ask. Just because I can feel her emotions doesn’t mean I understand them. Adults are so freakin’ weird. Their emotions might be easier to read but then they’re always saying cryptic shit like that.

  We spend the rest of the car ride in a comfortable silence. As we pull up to the house, I can feel my dad and my sister reaching out to me. Not in the sense that they know I’m there. It’s not like their emotions are looking for me. They just … find me. I’ve gotten so used to the way my parents and my sister feel that their emotions are easier to identify.

  My dad is in heavy concentration mode and it makes me itch to sit down and get my homework done. My sister is somewhere in the house daydreaming. There’s a hazy pink fog around all of her emotions and she’s sleepy/happy. It mixes with my dad’s focus and leaves me feeling a little off-balance. Like when you stand up too fast and your vision goes fuzzy for a second.

  “David! Alice! We’re home,” my mom shouts as we step inside. “Caleb’s with me!”

  That’s the new warning cry of the Michaels family: “Caleb is here.” Code for: “make sure you’ve got your emotions in check because the super-weird family member is going to make you feel awkward for having them in the first place.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Mom.” I roll my eyes. “Wouldn’t want anyone to be caught off guard by the family weirdo.” I don’t say it with much heat, but I still feel a twinge of annoyance from my mom.

  “Come on, Caleb,” she says, “you know it’s not like that.”

  “Nah, I know,” I agree. “I get it. You guys have to protect yourselves.”

  “Not from you, sweetie.” She turns to me and rubs my arm. “Never from you.”

  The warmth of her hand on my arm spreads through me as the exasperation gives way to those familiar yellow pokers, this time with a softer edge.

  “You don’t feel like you have to hide from us, do you?” she asks, her worry wrapping around me like a blanket.

  “No. No way,” I assure her. “I love being around you guys. It’s … easier.”

  She smiles and the blanket loosens without leaving completely, her ever-constant concern for me creating a warm haven.

  8

  ADAM

  “How’s your AP prep coming along?”

  My parents and I are having the rare weeknight dinner together, and it’s been nonstop questions about school. Eating together is usually reserved for Shabbat, which I’ve never fully understood, as my dad isn’t all that religious and my mom isn’t even Jewish. But that’s how my dad grew up and I guess it’s a good excuse to have a family meal. On Fridays, my parents are capable of shifting out of work mode and having an actual, human conversation. But when they do catch me in the middle of the week, it’s like being interviewed by a college admissions board.

  “It’s fine,” I tell my mom as I shuffle the nondescript pasta dish around my plate. My folks are geniuses but my god, are they ba
d at cooking.

  “Do you need any help? You know that your father and I would be more than happy to—”

  “Yeah, I know, Mom, thanks. I’ve got it covered.”

  “How’s debate club going?” my dad asks. I know that they don’t really care about debate club—they don’t understand why I’m in it in the first place—but it’s nice of him to ask, I guess.

  “Understand”—that’s such an imperfect word. I love imperfect words. My parents do not. And yet they embody the conflict of that one so well. My parents “understand” why I’m in debate, why I like Shakespeare and Shelley, why I hole myself up in my room and listen to Bon Iver; they perceive the meaning. They grasp the concept. But they don’t really understand. Not in the greater, metaphysical sense. They keep putting their big brains together to puzzle out the equation of their son, and—even though they get the math, they know how to do the long division, the addition, the subtraction—they can’t quite comprehend the answer they end up with.

  “It’s good,” I say, knowing I need to at least try to give him something more than that. “Me and Caitlin are going to be on the same team for our first competition.”

  “Caitlin and I,” my father reminds me gently.

  “Right, Caitlin and I,” I mumble, annoyed at myself for being so lazy in my speech. Mom and Dad definitely aren’t going to be happy about me majoring in English in college if I can’t even get basic grammar right.

  “She’s at the top of your class with you, right, sweetie?” my mom asks, a little pride sneaking into her voice at the fact that I’m still doing so well in school despite, well, despite being me.

  “Yeah, she’s really smart. We’re not usually on the same team because it’s—it’s a little unfair to the other kids, I guess,” I say sheepishly, not wanting to come off as arrogant. “But our teacher thought it’d be good to mix things up this semester, so … yeah, it should be pretty interesting.”

  I want to sink into the floor. I hear what I’m saying and how I’m saying it and even I’m bored by it. I’m sluggish and dull and I know they can tell and I want to break out of it—be animated, engaged; the vivacious, charming son they want me to be—but I just can’t.

  Talking to my parents is impossible. Talking to anyone is impossible. It’s exhausting. Everything always sounds better in my head—my brain runs a mile a minute, I’m clever in my head—and then I open my mouth and nothing comes out.

  There’s something not right with me, I know that. I don’t feel my feelings in the right way—this is not a new fact about Adam Hayes. Either I feel everything too much or I feel nothing at all, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which is worse. Right now, I’m inclined to say the latter, because that’s where I’m at in this current moment. I’m like a balloon with all the air let out, and I don’t know how to inflate again.

  I thought I was doing better this year, or at least, I’m appearing better from the outside. My parents look at me with less concern in their eyes, they don’t make me leave the door open all the time, I don’t want to hurt myself anymore. As much. Well, I don’t hurt myself as much anymore. It doesn’t matter what I want. I’m good with not doing/getting/having what I want.

  I’m good at a lot of things. I’m good at biology, at English, at debate, at piano. I’m even good at talking, if it’s in front of a class or an auditorium and not the terrifying one-on-one conversations where you’re expected to have a normal emotional response and give normal social and emotional cues. That I’m not good at. I do not excel at having feelings. Or, really, I don’t excel at having the right feelings. And I wish I had the energy to hate that I’m this way.

  My parents’ voices drift in and out of my head and it sounds like I’m listening from underwater. I’m sinking further and further and can’t be bothered to swim up.

  * * *

  By the time the water clears from my ears and my brain resurfaces, I’m standing at the sink doing dishes. The repetitive motion is calming me, bringing me back to my body in a way that I’d been missing during dinner. As I come out of my daze, I notice the faint sounds of my parents in the dining room. It sounds like they’re arguing, which is … unusual. My heart rate picks up a bit as I turn off the faucet and move to the closed swinging door between the kitchen and dining room.

  “… Sanchez wants to publish,” I hear my mom say.

  “What? Why now?” my dad asks.

  “He thinks the project was mishandled.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have abandoned it,” my dad says sharply. So they’re arguing, but not with each other. That’s a bit of a relief, I guess.

  “You know he was never really on board as the rest,” my mom sighs.

  “Are there even any subjects left to back him up?” my dad asks wearily.

  “Just the one.”

  “That doesn’t mean that he—”

  “It still works.” My mom sounds a bit awed when she says this, and I can imagine the expression that’s on her face. It’s how she sounds when she explains a concept to me that she finds particularly interesting. It’s her geek-out voice.

  What the hell are they talking about?

  “You mean—the subject can still—?”

  “Yes.” I can practically hear my mother nodding excitedly. “Well, not exactly—not as strongly or cohesively as before. But there are residual effects. Heightened perception—”

  Her voice gets quieter and I lean toward the door.

  “But not the same that we see in atypical—”

  I lean a little too much in my eagerness, and the door jumps a bit, swinging slightly on its hinges. My parents stop speaking and I rush back to the sink, turning the faucet back on and loudly continuing the dishes.

  Atypical what? The cloud that’s been hovering over me today is lifted as my curiosity burns inside of me and dries up all the dampness in my bones. My parents’ work has always been a bit of a mystery—they work for a hospital and sometimes consult for outside projects that are usually pretty confidential—but this … this is something else.

  The door swings open and I try not to tense up as I hear someone walking up to me. I turn my head slightly as my dad puts some more dishes in the sink.

  “I can do the rest of these, boychik,” he says a little too cheerfully. “You go upstairs and finish your schoolwork.”

  “I already did all my homework,” I say.

  “Of course you did.” He’s smiling at me like I’m the best son in the world, and for a moment I forget about the weird argument and bask in it. “Then go read or something. You do enough around here.”

  “Okay, Dad.” I give in, trying not to be too suspicious. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine, Adam,” he assures me as he picks up the sponge and starts scrubbing away at the pasta pot.

  “I thought I heard you and Mom arguing about something.” I shrug, trying to act casual.

  “It’s nothing. Just a little work drama.” He smiles, his eyes going big like, Aren’t adults silly. Normally I’d agree, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that makes me question the levity.

  “Dad,” I say flatly, showing him that I’m not buying it. He sighs.

  “Scientific innovation is hard, Adam.” Oh god, am I gonna get some sort of inspirational science talk? I did not sign up for that. “It’s hard and imperfect and there’s not always a right answer. There’s so much left to discover about the way the brain works, and there’s no perfect way to go about it.”

  “Okay…” I can’t tell where this is going. He sighs again, puts down the sponge, and leans against the kitchen counter. I guess we’re really getting into this, then.

  “Your mom and I worked on a project a few years ago that was pretty out there but ended up yielding some great results,” he explains. “We were able to gather a lot of really important new data.”

  “What kind of project?” I breathe, more awake than I’ve been all day.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” he says w
ith a sad smile. And yeah, I do know. This is something that never quite made sense to me—how could my parents expect me to want to follow in their footsteps if they can barely tell me about what they do?

  “Did something go wrong?” I ask, still not understanding why they both seemed so freaked out only a few minutes ago.

  “No, no, not at all. Not with the project itself, anyway.” He takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes.

  “Yeah, that’s not cryptic at all, Dad.”

  He huffs a laugh. “Sorry, sorry. I wish I could explain the whole thing, but the long and short of it is that there was someone else on the project who didn’t think what we were trying to do was possible. They wanted us to stop trying.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, we didn’t. That person left, we kept going, and it worked. Now they’re wanting to talk about the project, try and debunk our discoveries—”

  “But I thought it was totally confidential.”

  “It is,” he says, matter-of-fact. “They probably won’t end up publishing, but it’s just adding a little stress to things.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “It could jeopardize funding for future projects if people think we’re exaggerating our findings,” he explains.

  “But you’re not,” I say, not even a question. There’s no way my parents would ever give anything but the facts.

  “No, we’re not. But sometimes people have a hard time believing things that are…” He trails off, and I see his brain working to come up with a way to explain this to me without actually telling me anything. “Well, some of our work deals with the more unusual aspects of the brain. It can be a stretch for some people to understand.”

  “Like what?” My curiosity is raging now. Seriously, if they had wanted me to take a bigger interest in science growing up, they should have started with “unusual aspects of the brain.”

  “Ah, I can’t tell you that.” My dad grimaces a bit, before deflecting. “At least not yet. Someday we’ll have a long conversation about the wonders of the human brain.”