The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

“Okay,” she murmurs, her face softening as she pushes my curls off my face again. “Go and relax. But I want to hear more about this new friend later!”

  She calls the last bit out to me because the moment I heard “go,” I bolted. I know not to turn down a clear opportunity for escape.

  I rush up the stairs and into my room, flopping down on my bed and burying my face in my pillow. Why did I tell her about Bryce and Caleb? Now she’s going to mention it to Dad and I’m going to get the two-pronged questioning tomorrow.

  Caleb isn’t my friend just because he got in between me and Bryce. His intervention wasn’t even all that nice. Why did I tell her that it was? Is my wishful thinking just running that wild? Am I really so pathetic as to pretend that I made a connection with someone who I’ve had exactly two terribly awkward encounters with?

  I grab my battered headphones off my nightstand, turn on Jónsi, and burrow into my blankets. Maybe if I stay in bed long enough, I’ll just cease to exist.

  15

  CALEB

  The fact that therapy has been the most exciting part of my weekend so far makes me feel really pathetic. Most of the time I just tell Dr. Bright about my week, do some “mindfulness” exercises, and then she gives me some stuff to think about for next time. That’s it. Pretty standard stuff for a pretty nonstandard Problem. But when she asks me how I’m doing today, I find myself cracking and finally telling her about Adam.

  “He just sort of … drowns everything else out.” I shrug, knowing that that barely encapsulates the way his feelings get into every corner of my brain.

  “Isn’t that preferable to feeling what everyone in the class feels?” Dr. Bright asks. “You don’t sound very happy about it.”

  “No, of course I’m not happy about it, that’s literally the point,” I snap. “I can’t be happy, because he’s so miserable.”

  “Do you know why he’s sad?” she asks calmly, and instead of being grateful for her steady emotions today, I’m just annoyed.

  “No, how the fuck would I know that, I’m not a mind reader! Look, I just—I just know that he’s sad.”

  I wince at the tiny drop of pity I feel from her. I don’t know if it’s for me or for Adam, but it makes me grind my teeth. I’m jabbing at her for no reason and I hate myself for it.

  “Does Adam’s sadness have a special color to it?” she asks. “Is he sad over his grades? His family?”

  “Like I said, I’m not a mind reader. But I mean, I don’t know, it’s pretty general. He’s lonely, I guess,” I admit. I think about all the times I’ve noticed Adam over the past few months and how few of those times involved him talking to another person. “Yeah, he feels alone. He doesn’t have a lot of friends, so I guess that makes sense. Actually I don’t think he has, like, any friends … so.”

  “Perhaps that’s why you only feel him when he’s around,” Dr. Bright suggests. “His loneliness isolates you from feeling anything else.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I mean—look, people are sad and lonely all the time, it’s high school. He’s just—he’s just different for some reason,” I finish, really hoping we can move on from this topic. Thinking about it is like poking at a bruise.

  “Earlier you said you made something worse this week,” she reminds me. “Did that have to do with Adam?”

  “Yeah, it did,” I admit softly. The bruise feels like it’s being punched now.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  I tell her about the class presentations and Bryce being a dick and then me being a dick, and through it all she just nods and nods and I just feel worse and worse.

  “Sometimes, people don’t want others to see their sadness,” Dr. Bright says finally. “Adam probably thought he was hiding it well and the fact that you noticed frightened him. It brought into focus just how unhappy he is.”

  She’s right and sitting there all calm and static and it’s making my blood boil. Instead of keeping me calm, her concern feels cloying and too warm and I worry I’m going to suffocate under it if I don’t fight my way out.

  “I knew how he was feeling and instead of fixing it, I made him more unhappy. You’re always talking about this like it’s some sort of stupid gift, that I can help people. But I always just fuck things up,” I bite, wanting to blame something, anything, for the way I feel.

  “That’s because you haven’t learned how to control it yet,” she tells me evenly. “You’re so young and you’re dealing with so many of your own emotions that handling others’ is going to be overwhelming. Being a teenager is hard, you know that.” The sickly-sweet pity is mixing with the fire in my gut as she continues, “I’ve said before that I think this ability gets easier as you grow older—”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” I interrupt. “Being a teenager is rough, there are hormones and all that stuff, blah, blah, blah. That doesn’t change the fact that I suck. It’s not an excuse. Someone was sad and then I opened my mouth and now they’re sadder. And I don’t know what he’s going to do or how he’s gonna react, or if he spent the whole weekend thinking about it—and would you stop that!”

  All of a sudden, I’m yelling and I can’t stop.

  “I can feel your fucking pity bleeding out of you and I don’t need it! I’m not some pathetic emotional loser, okay? I’m not like him!”

  I’m tightly coiled on the couch, feeling like I’m going to explode and start breaking things, but Dr. Bright remains cool and expressionless. I let myself sink into her feelings and find the pity gone, light warm concern in its place.

  “Caleb, it’s all right,” she soothes. “I don’t pity you. I’m empathetic to what you are feeling. Surely you of all people can understand that, right?”

  “Yeah.” I exhale, my muscles loosening, fists unclenching. “Yeah. Right. Sure.”

  I take a couple more deep breaths, letting my feelings level out before the heat of embarrassment takes over.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I just—your feelings are normally pretty quiet, so it just surprised me, that’s all.”

  “I see.” Her brow crinkles and there’s a flash of something I don’t recognize before she continues. “I think you are being too hard on yourself. You are not responsible for what other people feel. But, as I was saying earlier, you can choose how to respond to it. You need to get these outbursts under control. Think before you speak. And that will only be possible if you learn to filter the incoming emotions. I think it’s possible you’re not in control of your own feelings because they are being overpowered by others—that’s why you need to learn to balance them.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I sigh. “I just—I don’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s all.”

  Something warm flares, but it’s not pity. There’s sun on my face for a moment before the sharp edge of Dr. Bright’s now familiar curiosity pokes into me.

  “I have an idea,” she says brightly. “I think you’ve been given a unique opportunity.”

  “Awesome, more unique opportunities,” I mumble.

  “If you couldn’t do what you can do, do you think you would have noticed that Adam felt worse after you intervened?”

  “No, I guess not,” I answer. “But, I wouldn’t have gotten involved in the first place if I couldn’t do what I do.”

  “I just mean that you know now that he’s feeling worse. And maybe you can help make that better,” she explains, a spark in her eye. “I think you should talk to him on Monday. Try and become friends.”

  “Why the hell would I do that?” I ask, confused. I’ve literally just told her about how guilty I feel over making Adam feel worse and now she wants me to spend more time with the guy?

  “You said yourself that he’s lonely,” she explains. “He could probably use someone who understands what’s going on with him. And it might help whatever misplaced feeling of guilt you have if you befriend him.”

  “Using my ability to make someone feel a certain way is exactly what I’m trying to avoid,” I argue. “Isn’t that an abuse of power or so
mething?”

  But Dr. Bright won’t be talked out of the idea. She seems to think that the fact I’m feeling Adam’s emotions so strongly is important. That maybe he’s someone I could use in school to focus on and learn how to better balance stuff.

  We do some meditation exercises to practice—I try to feel her feelings and then make them fit alongside mine or tune them out. I’m definitely not good at the second part, but I do okay on identifying her feelings. And I’m pretty pleased with how impressed she feels, until her face turns serious and concern creeps in.

  “Caleb,” she says gently, “you’re making excellent progress—you’re picking up on nuances and layers that you haven’t been able to reach until now—but, given what happened with Adam this week, you need to be careful about blurting things out.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s important that you keep your ability to yourself,” she says, before launching into a new mindfulness exercise that she wanted me to try for that week. I want to keep asking about it but something in my gut tells me she won’t say more.

  * * *

  So here I am, Monday morning, standing in the doorway to English class, bracing for battle. My hands tighten on the backpack strap slung over my shoulder as I take a beat. I’ve got a few minutes before class starts. I can do this.

  I give myself a moment to adjust to the feelings swirling around the classroom. There are only a few people here, with more filing past me as I stand next to the door, so I’m able to cut through all the noise pretty quickly to find what I’m looking for.

  Adam is sitting at his desk, earbuds in, writing in his notebook. The vast, empty vortex isn’t there today, thank god—in its place is a calm, blue pool. It’s not tranquil and nice, like the kind of placid peace I find when I meditate in therapy. It’s an ocean that’s deep and mysterious in that way that’s scary but also sort of comforting. I’m letting it wash over me and I feel settled in my body one second and like I’m too big for my skin in the next.

  After a moment adjusting to the back-and-forth tide of his feelings, I decide it’s safe to approach.

  He either senses my movement or feels me staring (which I guess I have been doing for, like, a minute) because Adam looks up and my feet falter for a second. But the Michaels don’t back down, so I keep walking toward him and the deep blue clears away as something warm and pulsing rises up. It gets caught somewhere in my rib cage and the nerves hit me all at once. I’m scared to talk to him now but I can’t look away and my feet keep carrying me toward him. I’m about to blurt something out when suddenly Caitlin appears in my field of vision.

  “Hey, Caleb.” She smiles, flipping her hair casually over her shoulder.

  “Oh, uh, hi, Caitlin,” I stammer, totally wrong-footed. God, she just popped out of nowhere, how did she do that? The warm pulse in my rib cage stutters out like a dying star and splatters across my insides, leaving a dripping ooze in its place.

  “Do you have a second?” she asks in that way that she does, where she already knows the answer or at least expects you to give her the answer she wants.

  “Uh, sure,” I say, feeling sluggish.

  “So there’s that Sadie Hawkins dance coming up,” she says, a slight shake entering her voice. My eyes finally zero in on her face, and as she comes into focus, I’m pulled into her feelings. I feel hot all at once, like I’ve gotten a sunburn over my whole body, and the bees of stress take up residence again in my stomach. Except, wait, no, it’s not bees. It’s something else. Something writhing and light and not totally unpleasant.

  I’m adjusting to the feeling when I notice that she hasn’t said anything for a few seconds and is looking at me expectantly. Am I supposed to say something?

  “Yeah?” I say vaguely, just to be safe.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go with me,” she says, a pretty blush appearing on her cheeks. She is pretty, I think, but I’m too distracted by the squirming and the heat and the dripping ooze on my ribs to appreciate it. So distracted that I’ve completely lost track of what she’s talking about.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me,” Caitlin repeats slowly, like I’m being a bit stupid. Which I guess I am. I can tell from the look on her face that she’s sort of already regretting asking me. And then I realize I haven’t given her my answer yet.

  “Oh, uh, yeah, sure, Caitlin,” I say, even though going to a school dance is absolutely the last thing I ever want to do.

  “Great,” she says with a smile. I smile back automatically, infected by her happiness. It swoops in and clears out the ooze, but leaves the squirming heat behind. “Do you want to—”

  “All right, everyone, take a seat,” Mr. Collins calls from the front of the room, interrupting whatever terrifying question Caitlin was about to ask.

  “We’ll talk later,” Caitlin whispers, like we share a secret, and I smile back, filled with a momentary warmth. Caitlin’s easy familiarity with me is like putting on an old, comfy sweatshirt that I’d forgotten I have.

  As I sit down, I think about how Caitlin and I used to be pretty good friends. Maybe even best friends. She lived down the block from us and we’d play kickball in the street and hide-and-go-seek on rainy days. Her mom would make us grilled cheeses and Caitlin would lend me her favorite Boxcar Children books. It was easy and nice.

  And then that thing happened where boys and girls get awkward and weird around each other and we stopped hanging out for a few years. I joined football and she went into every advanced class and we just didn’t see each other. In sophomore year, our groups started converging and there was a time when I thought maybe we could be best friends again. But then my Problem started up and there was something about Caitlin’s feelings that scared me. Even now that I’m more comfortable with the whole empath thing, there’s a sureness and subtlety to her emotions that I just do not get.

  You’d think that knowing what people feel all the time would make you closer to them. But it doesn’t work like that. Instead, sometimes I feel this canyon between me and everyone else and I worry that, no matter what I do, I’ll never be able to reach across it.

  As Mr. Collins drones on about The Aeneid, the tether of Caitlin’s feelings slowly dissolves and I have a moment to myself. I’m already regretting saying yes to the Sadie Hawkins thing. I’ve avoided all optional school events like the plague since the beginning of the year and I’m pretty sure that a dance will be a minefield of emotion. People being excited, disappointed, nervous, crushing on one another, drunk. There’s always that one group that shows up drunk, and I’m dreading it. I went to a football party a few weeks ago and a couple of the guys were drinking. It makes my Problem so much worse.

  My personal time to wallow about this is apparently over, because I’m reassaulted by the dripping ooze between my ribs. It’s slimy and hot-cold and is simultaneously giving me nausea and heartburn. It reminds me of the sludge, but it’s not just disappointment—there’s an edge to it that I’m not used to. Though I’ve never felt this from him before—whatever “this” is—I know it belongs to Adam. Like always, it slots right into place alongside my own feelings, but this time, it weighs me down. I’m suddenly glad I didn’t try to talk to him.

  Adam is definitely one of the quieter kids in our year. He keeps to himself, doesn’t participate in a lot of school stuff. Yeah, he can be a bit of a smartass sometimes, but he’s not loud. Unless he’s arguing with someone in class or giving a presentation, he doesn’t make himself known.

  So why do his feelings keep making themselves known to me? There’s no canyon between us—I don’t have to reach. His feelings swell up like a wave, crashing onto my shore, pushing me deeper into the sand.

  Before I know it, the bell is ringing and another class has gone by without me writing a single thing down. Crap. Hopefully I can borrow Caitlin’s notes. That might be a good perk of going out with her. Is that what we’re doing now? Does saying yes to a dance mea
n we’re dating? I have no idea how this works and there’s no way I’m talking to the team about it, so I guess I’ll just have to wing it. The thought makes me want to run away and hide somewhere.

  “Mr. Michaels.” Mr. Collins’s voice calls me over as I walk toward the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asks, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  “Um.” I rack my brain for what the hell he could be talking about. “Have a good day?” I try.

  “Your Macbeth essay,” he offers, understanding that I’m not trying to be fresh, I genuinely don’t know what he’s talking about. “I gave you the weekend, but you need to turn it in.”

  “Oh, right.” I exhale, reaching into my bag. “I totally blanked. Here you go.”

  I hand him the essay, self-conscious that it’s a few pages thinner than it should be, despite the fact that he gave me an extension. He takes it from me, but the eyebrows don’t lower. Uh-oh, orange pulse of concern is back.

  “Is everything all right, Mr. Michaels?” he asks. Jeez, he sounds so sincere. This guy cares way too much. It’s nice but it’s also a lot.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” I shrug.

  “It’s just that you seemed a little distracted in class today.” He frowns, leaning back against his desk and folding his arms across his chest. The pulse grows stronger and reaches out to me like a hug. But like a hug from your distant, maybe not-even-really-related elderly aunt who hugs you too long and too tight and asks you too many, too personal questions.

  “Did I?” I ask unconvincingly.

  “Well, can you tell me the main themes we’ll be looking for in The Aeneid?” he asks, raising his eyebrows even further as he gives me a skeptical look. Those things are going to disappear fully into his hair any second now.

  “Um…” I stall, rubbing the back of my neck and looking toward the door, hoping I’ll spot a fire in the hallway or something. “… the hero’s journey?”

  “Nice guess,” he allows, the concern momentarily distracted by amusement, “but that’s not what we were talking about and we both know it. What’s going on, Caleb?”