The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  I take a deep breath and walk toward him.

  “Hey, Adam.”

  His head snaps up at me, and oof, instant flood of panic. It feels like I’ve missed a step going down the stairs; my stomach drops and my heart starts pounding; rivers form in the lines on my palms. Adam’s eyes are wide and that light, fluttery feeling swoops into my gut once more. At least this time it feels less invasive—probably because there’s so much other stuff to distract from it.

  Adam is just staring at me with those big eyes, frozen in place. I always thought the expression “deer in the headlights” was a bit of an exaggeration—I mean, who actually looks like that? But taking in Adam now, it feels like running into some strange, unexpected creature in the woods that doesn’t know if you’re going to hunt it or help it. I feel guilty for a second before I remember the “uniformed sociopath” comment and a righteous indignation settles in. Just because I’m on the football team doesn’t mean I’m like Bryce and Justin. Adam assuming that I am is totally unfair. I’ve never done anything to make him suspicious of me—I helped him the other day.

  Okay, well, “help” might be a stretch. He actually seemed to have Bryce handled pretty decently, and I think I probably just drew more unnecessary attention to the whole confrontation.

  I suddenly realize I’ve said his name and nothing else and I am essentially towering over the guy in what’s probably a pretty intimidating way. He’s still got his hands on the book stuck in his locker and I decide to set aside my bruised ego for a moment and help out. I crouch down next to him and he jolts back a bit. The fluttering in my gut intensifies.

  Adam yanks his hands away as I move mine toward the book. I pull at it—a biology textbook that’s seen better days—until it finally comes free. As I hand it over to Adam, we both stand suddenly, staring blankly at one another.

  “Uh, thanks,” Adam says in a low voice, looking down at the book that we’re both holding from either side. I let go of the book like it’s scalding hot and shove my hands into my pockets.

  “Yeah, no problem,” I say, trying to remember why I came over here in the first place. He won’t meet my eyes, so I’m left looking at his eyelashes. The way they flutter as he blinks draws attention to the unsteadiness in my stomach.

  “I liked your presentation on Macbeth,” I say a little too loudly, trying to overcome the not-unpleasant twisting in my gut. “It was really smart. I’m not sure I understood all of it but, yeah, good job and everything.”

  Now I’m the one looking away, too afraid to watch him while I fumble through this, but I sneak a glance at him and see an odd expression on his face. He’s staring at me like I’m the strange creature he’s stumbled upon in the wilderness.

  “Uh, thanks,” he says again, and there’s the tiniest wince on his face, like he knows he’s repeating himself.

  “Do you want to grab lunch later?” I blurt, causing a sharp pinprick of anxiety-fear from Adam.

  “What?” he asks flatly.

  “Uh, we have the same lunch period, right?”

  “Yeah…” he says, a not-quite question.

  “Well, do you want to eat together?” I ask again, feeling more stupid with each second that passes. I want to sink into the floor.

  “Why?” He narrows his eyes at me and something gets jerked back from my torso—like there’s a fishing line between us and he’s just reeled it in. “Are you looking for an English tutor or something?”

  “No,” I respond, a little insulted. I’m not doing that badly. This is not going very well. “I was just thinking it might be cool to eat together. It’s Pizza Wednesday,” I finish weakly, like that will explain this extremely weird, out-of-the-blue conversation.

  “Oh,” he says, and there’s so much in that one little syllable, even if I can’t read every piece of it. The tenuous connection between us grows a little stronger, like maybe he’s thinking about casting his line back into the water, and a small bubble of hope starts to grow in my chest. Does it belong to him? Or am I really that desperate to hang out with someone who doesn’t make me hate my own empathy?

  “So…?” I prompt, after a few seconds have passed with him just looking at me like he’s trying to solve a particularly difficult math problem.

  “Yeah. Okay. Sure,” he says, sounding a little more confident with each word.

  “Cool. Cool.” I nod, faux-casual. “Want to grab food and meet me outside? The bench behind the gym?” That’s my favorite spot to eat lunch because it’s pretty isolated and I can eat in peace.

  “Sure.” He draws out the word, narrowing his eyes at me again, and I feel a storm starting to swirl in my stomach, like the pressure you feel right before it downpours. Again, I find myself a little insulted by whatever’s running through his head. Does he think I don’t want to be seen with him or something?

  “No, no, I’m not—” I start, automatically responding to his feelings. He narrows his eyes at me and I course correct fast. “I just find the cafeteria really overwhelming. Where you choose to sit is always such a thing and it’s so stuffy and crowded so, yeah, I just like to eat outside.”

  The clouds of his feelings clear a bit and something dawns on his face.

  “Oh,” he says, a revelation, “that’s why you’re never in the caf.” He’s saying it mostly to himself, nodding, and I take a page from Mr. Collins’s book, quirking an eyebrow at him.

  “What?” I ask. Has he noticed my lunch habits? That’s … I don’t know what that is.

  Adam’s face instantly gets red and I feel the heat of his embarrassment inside and out. Seems like he has been noticing my lunch habits. Huh.

  “So, the bench behind the gym?” he deflects. “I’ll see you there.” He puts the biology textbook in his bag and slams his locker.

  “Okay, yeah, see you there,” I say, feeling off-balance by the whole exchange, but not hating it.

  He rushes away and as I’m watching him walk down the hall, he turns his head slightly over his shoulder, like he’s checking to see that I’m really here. He sees that I’m staring and the smallest smile crosses his mostly confused face. Something in my stomach flutters awake and I don’t know if it’s his feeling or mine but, for once, I don’t really care.

  18

  ADAM

  Did I enter some kind of alternate universe when I walked into school this semester? There’s no way that Caleb Michaels—Caleb Michaels—just asked me to eat lunch with him. That’s something that happens to Daydream Adam. Daydream Adam is the person I think about when I’m walking home or Mr. Collins is lecturing about something I’ve already read five times. Daydream Adam never gets bothered by Bryce, he doesn’t stress about schoolwork, he doesn’t get depressed, he doesn’t hurt himself. Daydream Adam is cool and confident and beat Caitlin to the punch in asking Caleb out. Daydream Adam has his life together.

  Real Adam is hyperventilating in a bathroom stall for the second time in as many weeks. I’m going to be late for class—again—but I can’t really be fussed to care. In less than an hour I will be having lunch with Caleb. Caleb who helped me get my textbook out of my locker’s clutches like some sort of teen-movie heartthrob. Caleb who was awkward and infuriatingly adorable as he talked about Pizza Wednesday.

  Maybe he won’t show up. Maybe this is all some cruel joke. That seems like the most likely explanation, despite the fact that Caleb doesn’t seem cruel.

  But maybe …

  Maybe he meant it. Maybe Caleb really does want to get to know me.

  I honestly don’t know which outcome scares me more.

  19

  CALEB

  “Uh, is right here okay?” I ask, gesturing to the picnic bench table with my cafeteria tray. I don’t know why I’m asking, I told him to meet me out here, but then we ran into each other on our way outside and I’m just trying to fill the silence.

  God, why did I do this? I don’t have lunch with people. I eat with the team on Fridays but the rest of the time I come out here and listen to music. It�
��s the break in my day that makes the rest of school even slightly tolerable, and here I am awkwardly forcing social interaction instead. The day is unseasonably warm and I can’t tell if it’s that or standing next to Adam that’s making me sweat under my jacket.

  This was a bad idea. I’m never listening to Dr. Bright again.

  “Yeah, this is good,” he mutters, setting his tray down and swinging his skinny legs over the bench. The nerves coming off him are like painful sound waves off of a loud speaker—it makes my teeth chatter and my rib cage shake and I really am never listening to Dr. Bright ever again.

  “This is a nice spot,” he says when we’ve settled across from each other. He’s taking in his surroundings (avoiding looking at me, I think) and squinting into the sun in a way that makes me think he doesn’t spend a lot of time outside. Now that I’m looking at him in the daylight instead of the heinous fluorescent lights inside the school, I notice how pale he seems. It’s not the actual hue—his skin is darker than mine—but there’s something that tells me he is seriously lacking vitamin D.

  “Yeah,” I respond automatically, staring at the dark circles under his eyes. “Yeah, I like it out here. It’s quiet.”

  The waves of anxiety pull back a bit and a tingling itchiness reaches under my skin. Curiosity. It doesn’t make me twitch in the way it usually does, but I squirm a bit, wondering what it is that he’s curious about.

  I don’t have to wonder, because his eyes open from their squint and look directly at me (making the squirmy feeling worse) as he says, “I’m surprised you don’t eat with the football team. They definitely seem to have a good time during lunch.”

  The last part comes out a little bitter and I don’t even need to feel the poker of anger from him to know that he’s resentful.

  “They’re not all bad, you know,” I say, trying not to break eye contact even though there’s something about looking directly at him that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff. “Nobody even really likes Bryce all that much. And Justin is an idiot who’ll follow anybody around,” I add for good measure, and because it’s true.

  “If they’re so great, then why aren’t you eating with them?” he asks, a challenge in his voice. He’s baiting me and I don’t get why so I try to push through the curiosity and nerves and find what he’s feeling underneath all of that.

  I hit a wall. Like, a real, physical wall. That’s what it feels like, at least. Behind the nerves is hard, thin steel. Adam’s trying not to feel something but it’s not working all that well.

  “I like being alone,” I blurt out when I realize I haven’t picked up the gauntlet he threw. It’s the wrong thing to say not only because it’s fucking dumb but also because something shutters even further in him, the steel growing thicker.

  “Oh,” he says, a complete sentence. “I can leave if you want…”

  As he trails off, I realize he’s disappointed and then I know what the wall’s about—he doesn’t trust me. He probably thinks I’ve asked him to lunch just to be mean or pull a prank or have something to use against him. But then why did he say yes in the first place?

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” I rush to explain, remembering how he felt when he went all “frightened woodland animal” before and not wanting to give him a reason to run away. “I just meant…”

  Now it’s my turn to trail off. I don’t know what I mean to say—I can’t tell him that I don’t eat with the team because being in crowds is hard because of my Problem. That carrying on a conversation with more than one or two people is nearly impossible, especially when everyone is feeling something completely different.

  “I get it”—he nods, unscrewing the cap on his iced tea—“You can be alone with one person.”

  He says it so matter-of-factly but it sends me reeling. That’s exactly it. With one person, my Problem can be nice—sometimes it’s easier to connect, to get ahead of the conversation, to understand someone. In a group, it becomes noise.

  “Yeah,” I say, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice. “Yeah, um, how did you know that?”

  “You get this look on your face sometimes when you’re in a big group,” he says, staring into his yogurt as he idly swirls it around with a spoon. “Like you’re powering down or something. People will be goofing off around you and you’re just off in your own little world.”

  “What?” I ask blankly, unsure how to take … well, any of that, really. That’s the second time today he’s made it sound like he watches me and, based on the blush that’s creeping up his neck, he definitely has been.

  “Um, no, I didn’t mean—” he starts, wide eyes snapping up from his Yoplait to look at me. The moment our eyes connect, I’m slammed with the hot, face-melting embarrassment that’s running wild through his body.

  “I just—not that I—” he continues, and I don’t know if I should jump in or what. “I’m just observant.” He stops abruptly, like that’s enough of an explanation.

  “Okay,” I say, giving him a pass. He knows I’m not buying it—I can still feel the terror and caught-out feeling from him—but I can’t exactly throw stones about being observant. Maybe if I let him get away with this, he won’t notice my more observant moments.

  “It’s just—well, I keep an eye on your friends sometimes,” he says eventually, and I can’t help my eyebrows raising at that. “No, not like, in a weird way. I just keep a lookout, you know? If I can see them coming, I can usually avoid them. And so I’ve … noticed stuff. You’re not like them. Or, at least—I mean, I don’t know you, so—I just mean that you don’t ever seem as into that crowd as everyone else.”

  He’s babbling and fiddling with his watch—a massive, leather-banded thing wrapped around his bony wrist—as he talks. I can feel the impulse in him to get up and bolt, so I decide it’s probably time I let him off the hook.

  “They’re not my friends,” I say. Why did I say that? Why do I keep opening my mouth to say something to this guy only to have something completely different come out?

  “Bryce and Justin, I mean.” I keep going, because why the fuck not, I guess. “Yeah, I hang out with them and everything but you’re right, I guess. It’s not really my scene.”

  Mouth, meet brain. Brain, meet mouth. You guys should get to know each other a little better.

  Adam smiles a tiny bit as he picks his yogurt back up and I feel something uncoil inside of him. He likes being right. Though I could have guessed that from everything about him, it still gives me a warm feeling in my gut. And that’s when the random thought pops into my head of I want to make him smile again.

  I’d been thinking of this lunch as sort of a charity case—therapy homework that would relieve some of my guilt about fucking things up last week. But as I’m sitting here, I realize that I want to impress Adam. That’s why I’m running my mouth about Bryce and why seeing his lips curl around a spoon feels like a victory. I’m not exactly sure where that impulse is coming from, but I want to chase it until Adam starts smiling more than he frowns.

  “Do they bother you a lot?” I ask, because I guess we’re really getting to know each other now.

  “Define ‘a lot,’” he snorts. Adam’s smirking now, in a way that I think could be described as “wry,” and it gives me that edge-of-cliff feeling again.

  “You don’t seem that bothered by it.”

  “I’m not, I guess.” He shrugs, taking a swig from his iced tea. “At least, not most of the time. They’re idiots—no offense—”

  “None taken. Like I said, I’m not exactly best buds with those two.”

  “Right.” He narrows his eyes at me, like he still doesn’t quite buy that. “So anyway, most of the time I’m able to shrug it off. It’s not like some huge deal or anything.”

  Bzzzzzt.

  When I bother to pay attention, my Problem works like a flawless lie detector. There’s a little spike of anti-calm that pops up in people, and nine times out of ten it’s because they’re full of shit.

  Adam is
so full of shit.

  “You’re full of shit,” I say.

  Mouth, brain—what did we just talk about?

  “What?” He jolts, every emotion in his body spiking again, and I want to slam my head into the table. The Great Amazing Feelings Boy totally face-plants. Again.

  20

  ADAM

  “What?”

  Did the golden boy just tell me I was full of shit? Yet more evidence that I’ve fallen into some weird Twilight Zone version of my life.

  “It is a big deal,” Caleb says, his face set with determination. Determination to do what, I don’t know, and that sends a rush up and down my spine. “It sucks that they bother you. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

  “What?” I ask again, mouth hanging open slightly. This lunch has been going surprisingly well so far—just the fact that it’s even going in the first place is a real shock to the system—but I keep feeling like I’m four steps behind in the conversation. That is not a feeling I’m accustomed to and it frustrates me, but also sort of thrills me, if I’m honest.

  “Just—what did you ever do to them, you know? Justin and Bryce, I mean. Have you ever given them a reason to be mean to you?” He says it in a way that’s nonjudgmental, like he actually wants to understand the situation from my perspective. That’s new.

  I finally close my mouth as he says this, put down my yogurt, and start in on my pizza. My stomach is too tied in knots for me to want to eat anything, but I need to focus on something that isn’t his stupid perfect face.

  “I don’t know,” I mumble into my pepperoni. “I don’t think so. I’m just an easy target, I guess.”

  This is mostly true. But Caleb is looking at me like he knows that isn’t the whole story. He’s got that stupidly enticing open expression on his face that says he knows I want to say more; that makes it feel like it might be okay if I said more.