The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  “Do you ever get, like, a weird vibe from him?” I must look offended because she rushes to elaborate. “Not bad weird, just … I don’t know, he’s just…”

  The back of my neck is prickling. I think I know what she’s trying to say. But there aren’t even really words for it. The fact that Caitlin is having a hard time explaining the uncanniness of Caleb comforts me a bit, but it also freaks me out. If she’s picked up on something too, then it’s not just me being overly dramatic.

  “Really perceptive?” I offer when it’s clear she’s not going to finish her sentence.

  “Yes!” she shouts, eyes wide. The sound echoes in the abandoned library and we both flinch at the loudness.

  “Sorry,” she whispers, “sorry, I just—yes, that’s exactly it. He’s perceptive. Weirdly perceptive.”

  “Does that bother you?” I ask.

  “No, not really, it just kind of catches me off guard sometimes, you know?” Caitlin’s shoulders relax as she leans back in her chair. “I’ve just never met anyone who knows what’s going through my head like that. After the fight, we walked around the field so he could blow off some steam and he was—he just knew exactly what I was feeling. It was unreal. And also, like, a little embarrassing.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, suddenly very curious. Caitlin’s face is getting red and she’s picking at the corner of her notebook, a nervous habit that seems out of place with her easy confidence.

  “Just…” Her face reddens even more. “Like, we were having an okay time, you know? Just walking around the field and talking. And he’d been so nice the whole night, standing up for me and everything, and I sort of thought…”

  “Oh,” I say, as I realize where she’s going. “Right.”

  I would very much like to evaporate now, please.

  “And he knew,” she continues. “He knew I was thinking about, I don’t know, kissing him or something, and before I had a chance to say anything or do anything, he turned me down.”

  “Oh,” I say again. Caleb turned Caitlin down? Caitlin Park? Oh god, stupid hope, what are you doing here? Go away go away go away—

  “And, I mean, I guess it’s nice to save me the embarrassment,” Caitlin says, the heat starting to leave her face, “but it’s not like I was being obvious about it. At least, I don’t think I was. But he just blurted out that he wanted to just be friends, and the way he said it … I don’t know, it felt like he’d read my mind.”

  “Yeah, he does that.” I shrug, feeling increasingly weird in this conversation. I suddenly want to hear more about what he said—if he gave an explanation for just wanting to be friends—but it’s starting to feel like talking about him behind his back.

  “He does it with you too?” Caitlin asks, looking at me finally, and the awkwardness in the air intensifies.

  “Yeah, a bit. Sometimes.” I pull my notebook closer to me and click my pen. “We should probably get to work, we only have, like, twenty minutes left.”

  “Right, yeah, of course.” She nods and transitions into school mode and a breath of relief collapses out of me.

  * * *

  I drop my bags on the kitchen counter and go digging into the cabinets for coffee. It’s now been two days without talking to Caleb and I’m starting to lose it a little. I hadn’t realized how dependent I’d become on Caleb—on our lunches, our texting, me sending him music and him not understanding half of it. He didn’t make things better, necessarily—he didn’t chase away the clouds when they loomed heavy and dark over me—but he did make it easier to ignore the impending storm. Caleb makes me feel clever. He makes me feel interesting.

  I spent hours tossing and turning in bed last night, picking up my phone to text him before putting it back down. I did that over and over again. I still haven’t texted but neither has he, so I’m not sure what to do.

  I do know that caffeine is desperately needed if I’m going to get all my schoolwork done but, just as I reach up for the nice espresso beans my parents keep for after-dinner coffee when they have friends over, I hear my mom’s voice.

  “Adam, what are you doing?” She sounds amused, probably smiling at the fact that I’ve got my knee on the counter, my other leg dangling in midair as I reach up for the bag like a little kid going for the cookie jar.

  “Nothing.” I hop off the counter and put on my best innocent face.

  “I thought we agreed you’d cut down on the coffee,” she says sternly. “Half a cup in the morning is fine but that’s it.”

  “I just didn’t sleep all that well last night and I have a lot of work to do,” I explain, like that will actually convince her. She reaches around me to shut the cabinet before opening another and pulling out a box of tea.

  “How about a nice cup of Darjeeling,” she says, not asks, already pulling the kettle from the stove and moving to the sink to fill it with water. I sag against the counter and nod.

  “Did you have a good day at school, sweetheart?” she asks, her back to me as she turns on the burner.

  “Eh, it was all right.” I pick an apple up from the counter and start absently passing it back and forth between my hands. “How was yours?”

  She doesn’t answer right away, which causes me to look toward the stove. Her shoulders are tense and there are a few curls poking out from her usually perfectly coiffed updo. When she turns around to grab mugs from the shelf, I notice the bags under her eyes like bruises on her dark skin.

  “Mom?” I’m instantly alert. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, darling.” She shakes her head like it will cast off whatever’s haunting her. “Just a—a tough day at work.”

  “What happened?” I try not to sound too curious but I’m sure I fail—though I don’t take as much interest in the sciences as my parents would like, that hushed conversation in the dining room still looms large in my mind. Not to mention, I haven’t seen my mom look this burnt out in a while.

  “We just received some bad news about one of our projects, that’s all.” She smiles weakly at me.

  “Does this have to do with the guy you worked with that was going to try and debunk your research?” I ask, desperate to get more of that story.

  My mom looks surprised at the question, like she didn’t expect me to have that information.

  “Did your father tell you about that?” she asks. Whoops, guess Dad never filled her in on our conversation. She doesn’t look angry or upset though. Just intrigued.

  “Yeah,” I admit, looking back down at the apple still in my hands, “a little. He didn’t tell me all that much, just that you guys were frustrated with this person.”

  “Yes.” She nods. “We certainly were. That’s all resolved, thankfully.”

  “So then what’s the bad news?” I press. Her mouth is a thin line as she puts the tea bags in the mugs.

  “Adam,” she starts, voice in Serious Talk mode, “what your father and I do, it’s very complicated.”

  “Okay…” I draw out the word, hoping she’ll give me more than that.

  “And it’s also very secret—”

  “Yeah, I know.” I roll my eyes, really tired of this speech. “You guys sometimes do research outside of the hospital for, like, the government and stuff. But, come on, you’re brain surgeons, not spies. I don’t get why everything has to be so top secret.”

  “Brains can be top secret depending on whose brain it is,” she says, matter-of-fact.

  “Well, that’s a fucking creepy thing to say,” I blurt.

  “Adam,” she gasps, “language!”

  “Mom,” I say, laughing humorlessly, “you’re talking about top-secret brains, I think I can swear.”

  “It was a joke,” she deadpans.

  “Sure,” I say skeptically. A slow snake of steam hisses out of the kettle, bolstering the tense silence that’s descended over the kitchen.

  She turns off the burner and slouches onto the counter next to me in a gesture so casual that I’m reminded my mom is actually a human being and
not just the lady who runs my life and takes care of me. When did my parents become people?

  “Someday,” she sighs, “I’d love to tell you everything about our research. I know you never like coming to the hospital and that you don’t have a love for science like we do—”

  “Despite your best efforts,” I mutter under my breath.

  “But”—she ignores me and moves to take the kettle off the heat—“I think you’d find some of our research interesting. And some of it is important for you to know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s things about the world that you don’t know,” she says.

  I turn to look at her, to find a completely blank expression—her professional mask pulled down. God, I hate that face. I’m used to seeing it directed at patients at the hospital or other doctors, but never at me. Seeing it now makes me feel small.

  “Then just tell me,” I plead, wanting her face to soften and for her to be my mom again. The professional mask hardens into a faraway look that makes her seem ten years older before she tilts her head to look at me. All the smoothness fades as her expression crinkles, eyes warming. There she is.

  “Not yet. I’m going to protect you as long as I can.” She gives me a small, sad smile as she pushes a cup of tea into my hands.

  “Mom, you’re kind of scaring me,” I admit, trying to keep my voice steady. I take the scalding mug from her, hoping the warmth will make me feel less unsteady in this conversation.

  “I’m sorry, love.” She brings her hand to my face, patting my cheek. “I didn’t mean to.” Her hand travels to my shoulder, which she squeezes, looking at me with the intensity of love that I’m pretty sure only parents possess.

  “Today…” she begins, before taking a deep breath and starting again. “I’ve been helping out on something in an unofficial capacity. An—someone I know who’s worked on some of our projects has a patient who’s in a coma.”

  “Haven’t you worked with lots of coma patients?”

  “Yes,” she says, “but this is a little different. It’s a very unique case and I was consulting to try and find a way to wake this person up. I thought I’d cracked it but today—we tried something that I thought would work and it didn’t.”

  “Oh,” I say like I understand. “That was the bad news?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’ll just try something else, right?” I suggest hopefully, hating the defeated tone of my mom’s voice. “I mean, there’s gotta be something that’ll work.”

  “We’ve been trying for two years and … nothing.” She shrugs like “that’s just the way life works sometimes” and I want to shake her. That’s my job. To get knocked down and refuse to get back up. Rebecca Hayes is supposed to fix things.

  “I’m going to keep trying,” she insists, seeing the way I deflate, “but I’m getting very frustrated. And he’s—it’s a young man. Not as young as you, but in his twenties. Too young to be trapped in his own body.”

  “God,” I breathe, “that must be awful.”

  “Yes, I imagine it is,” she agrees grimly.

  We stand there, our backs leaned against the counter, drinking our Darjeeling in a bleak silence. I want to ask more questions—know more—but I also want my mom to wrap me in a hug and tell me the world isn’t a scary place where the most brilliant minds I know can’t help a twenty-something in a coma. I also want to put my arms around her and tell her it’s going to be okay, that she doesn’t need to worry about me, that I’ll take care of her. But I don’t do any of that.

  I stare straight ahead, pressed shoulder to shoulder with the woman I call Mom, but who is known by most other people as the brilliant Dr. Hayes. There are always things I thought I could count on but, here I am, standing in the kitchen I grew up in with a woman I realize I barely know, and it occurs to me that maybe I don’t know anything about the world at all.

  29

  CALEB

  Wednesday dawns frosty and dark. Well, okay, I guess it doesn’t dawn at all, then. I hate this time of year—waking up in darkness, coming home in darkness—the whole world made small and cold and claustrophobic. The lack of light makes everyone’s feelings press in on me, and most days feel like being trapped in an unlit meat locker with hallucinogenic gas pouring in from the vents instead of air.

  It’s been a bad week. And, fuck, it’s only Wednesday.

  I’ve been trying to lie low after the whole Sadie Hawkins mess, but any time I stop to think about the weekend—the almost-fight, Caitlin’s butterflies sitting on top of the acid from the dance, her face when I blurted out that I didn’t feel the same way she did, the fight with Adam, the fact that Adam still hasn’t texted—I want to sprint out my front door and run and run and run and never look back.

  But it’s been impossible to run away with the memory of the fear-anger-hurt cocktail from both Henry and Caitlin still fresh on my tongue. It’s left a bad aftertaste in my mouth that I haven’t been able to shake in four days. Getting that close to losing my temper again has brought everything close to the surface in a way that makes me skittish and worried. School is a nightmare. Well, more of a nightmare than usual.

  I pull myself out of bed and go through the motions of breakfast with the fam. My parents are a whirlwind of activity, my mom packing her briefcase up before I’ve even scarfed down half my Eggo, and my dad on the phone with his editor about his newest pages. Alice and I roll our eyes at each other from across the breakfast table but our hearts aren’t in it. There’s a manic energy in the house, made more urgent by the soft darkness that’s just beginning to lift outside.

  “So, weirdo,” Alice quips around a mouthful of cereal, “get into any more fights this week?”

  “Shut up,” I mumble, not in the mood for Alice’s jabs.

  “Jeez,” she says with a groan, “so sensitive this morning.”

  “It’s early,” I bite back.

  “It’s always early,” she says sagely. “What’s got you all worked up?”

  “What do you think?” I gesture to the parent-created chaos around us and Alice winces, I think in solidarity. I’m having a hard time getting a read on what she’s feeling—there’s too much interference. Mom and Dad are both in high-stress mode—a buzzy caffeine feeling that I’m sure makes them productive but that just puts me on edge.

  “So when’s that weird goth kid coming back?” Alice asks. I choke a bit on my waffle.

  “What?”

  “The guy who was here Friday.” I can hear the unspoken “duh” in her tone. “He seemed cool. I liked his T-shirt.”

  “Oh, are you a Twenty One Pilots fan now?” I laugh. “How do you even know that band?”

  “I’m twelve, Caleb, I know how to use the internet, god.” She gives me a particularly pronounced eye roll. “So … is he, like, your new best friend or something?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” I give her an eye roll of my own. “I’m too old to have a best friend. And, besides, we kind of got into a fight this weekend, so … I don’t know.”

  There’s no rational explanation for why I tell her this, other than I’m desperate to talk to anyone about it. I haven’t spoken to Adam since the park on Sunday and it’s driving me nuts. For the past few days, I’ve felt him staring daggers into my back and he’s still upset but I can’t even tell why anymore. I don’t know if he’s upset from our argument or because we haven’t talked since or because he’s decided he doesn’t want to be friends anymore. Whatever it is, I don’t know how to fix it.

  I know the solution to this is to get close enough to get a better read on his feelings, but I’m terrified of the answer. I was acting pretty weird and harsh on Sunday and it wouldn’t surprise me if he just decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “Dude, did you spend your whole weekend getting into fights?” Alice snaps me back to reality. A spoonful of cereal is lifted halfway to her disbelieving face.

  “It wasn’t that kind of fight,” I explain. “I’m not even sure it was
a fight.”

  “You know,” she says dryly, “you’re getting a lot better at explaining yourself.”

  “Shut up,” I groan, “I just—I was all worked up from the dance and I told him about it and he didn’t get why I was so angry at Henry and I sort of let slip that it hurt and I couldn’t help it and then he wanted to know more about that and I snapped at him and left.”

  “Smooth,” Alice deadpans.

  “Alice—” I stare at her pleadingly, not having the patience or the energy for her smart-ass antics this morning.

  “Have you tried, I don’t know, talking to him?” she asks, like she knows everything.

  “No,” I admit. “His feelings have been kind of jagged—like sharp toward me—and it hasn’t seemed safe to approach.”

  “You should talk to him,” she says sensibly.

  I take a sip of orange juice, avoiding eye contact with her. Alice’s feelings are starting to edge toward pity, and looking at her will just make it ten times worse. She doesn’t usually feel bad for me like this—that sticky, sunset-colored gum that clogs up my joints—so I must look pretty glum.

  “Yeah,” I assure her. “Yeah, I will.”

  * * *

  But I can’t. School is a toxic whirlwind of emotion and I can’t block it out. There’s the prickly static of stress, face-melting embarrassment, dripping hot-cold sludge of shame/disappointment; twisty, twirly butterflies. My body is a mess. I want to burrow further into myself. I want to tear off my own skin.

  Ever since the dance, everything’s been right on the surface. Feelings swoop in and mix around and I’m too off-balance to regulate it. The thought of having a voluntary conversation with another human makes my stomach roil. The thought of simply being near another human makes me want to crawl underground.

  The prickly, face-melty, dripping, twisty emotions combine to create a thick, poisonous molasses. Sometimes socializing—sometimes simply being—is like having liquid anise poured into my veins, until my blood runs thick with it and all I taste from my tongue to my toes is black licorice. I hate black licorice.