The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  Somehow, all of that just makes me miss Adam more. Yeah, his emotions are overwhelming and sometimes unidentifiable, but they fit. It’s like a Picasso painting. All the pieces don’t fit together—the eyes, the mouth, the nose—they’re in the wrong place, the wrong shape, the wrong size. But the whole thing together just makes sense. Looking at a Picasso painting, you get what that guy was going for. It’s a whole person. Sometimes Adam’s feelings get inside of me and show me my odd, misshapen bits but in the process, it’s like being put together. The thought of having lost that makes my stomach churn.

  The lunch bell rings, my morning gone in a haze of jumbled body parts that don’t quite make a face, and I bolt for the exit, not even stopping at the cafeteria to get something to eat. The cold air hits me like a wall as I burst out of the doors, clearing a bit of the bitter taste from my pores. I inhale deeply, closing my eyes and letting the noise from the hallway fade as the door shuts behind me.

  I walk toward my lunch bench absently, shaking my head like I’m trying to get water out of my ears. I’m tired and wrung out but I also feel whole in a way that I haven’t felt all week. I’m watching my feet, concentrating on the sound of my shoes on the hard ground, when something comes out to greet me. Soft. Blue-green. Hesitant. Warm. I want to lean into it.

  I look up from my shoelaces as the bench comes into view.

  Adam.

  “Hey,” I say, my steps slowing. He’s sitting on the bench like he has been for the past month and I’m both relieved and resentful of it. I don’t want to deal with any potential emotional minefields right now. I just want to sit in peace for thirty minutes until I have to go back into the swirling vortex of doom that is the student body today.

  But the blueness fills me up, rounds my edges, and clears my head. The black licorice gets replaced with glorious green and, no, I was wrong before—this is what being whole feels like. Adam’s emotions clear out everything; they quiet the infinite noise of the world and let me find the yellow parts of me that hurt. Residual anger here, stress about my math exam there, social anxiety all over. It’s all mine and I haven’t had a chance to look at it the entire day. It isn’t lost—the Picasso painting is actually a face and I’m more content than I’ve been all week.

  “Hey,” I hear Adam say, sounding like he’s underwater. I shake my head again as he keeps talking.

  “I hope it’s okay that I’m sitting out here.” He comes into focus as the haze clears. “It’s Pizza Wednesday.”

  Before I even consciously make the decision, the green is pulling my smile up. The warm, soft feeling grows in my chest, butterflies swooping in as Adam gives me the slightest smile. One corner of his mouth lifts a bit but his eyes are glowing as I swing my legs over the bench seat. I know I’m giving him a big smile and not saying anything like a complete freak, but the rush of butterflies rising into my lungs keeps me from caring. Minutes ago I was drowning in molasses. Now I’m flying.

  The other corner of his mouth twitches like he’s trying to keep the butterflies in too and he glances down at his plate, his dark eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks.

  I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone more.

  Oh.

  Oh.

  “Caleb?” He’s far away again as I hear blood rushing in my ears. “Caleb? Are you okay?”

  The cold, blue spike of his worry is like dunking my head into a bucket of ice and I snap out of my own thoughts. He’s looking at me again, the sparkle gone from his eyes as they fill with concern.

  “Yeah,” I grunt, my voice sounding not like me at all. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I—”

  I can’t tell him that I was thinking about leaping across the table and kissing him but I need to say something to explain why I’ve been—I’m assuming—staring at him, open-mouthed and blank, for the last few seconds.

  “I just realized I didn’t actually get any pizza,” I say.

  “Do you want my other slice?” he offers. That tentative smile is back on his face. He’s looking at me fondly—like he missed me—and I feel like I need to sit down. I am sitting down. Jesus, get it together, Feelings Boy.

  “Um, yeah,” I say, “thanks.”

  He pushes the pizza toward me and I reach for it, heart in my throat as I think about what would happen if I brushed my hand against his. But by the time the thought finishes crossing my mind, his hand is picking up his own slice and lifting it to his mouth. His mouth that I’m totally not watching like a creep now.

  Oh my god, what is happening?

  “So.” He chews, putting the slice back down and wiping his hands on his jeans. There’s a bubbling anxiety rising up my esophagus so I stuff pizza in my mouth to try and shove it down.

  “I want to apologize for Sunday,” he finishes.

  “What?” I nearly choke. “Why? I was the asshole.”

  “I think we can agree that we were both assholes,” he says, and I want to argue but I don’t. He’s right. If I’m being honest, Adam hurt my feelings too. And that hurt was buried under his hurt and sometimes my life is just so unfair. But I can’t explain that to Adam so I don’t know how to apologize for hurting him.

  “But I think it’s safe to say that I was the bigger jerk,” he continues. “I’m sorry for prying. Your business is your business and I shouldn’t have pushed.”

  “No.” I shake my head, wiping the grease from my mouth with the back of my hand. “No, I’m sorry for being so weird. You were just worried about me. I get it, I can be kind of … obtuse sometimes?”

  “Obtuse?” The butterflies surge and I can’t even begin to guess what that’s about.

  “You’re not the only one with a vocabulary,” I tease, and he laughs, just a little. It sets me on fire. But not in the lava anger way. This is a green fire lapping at my skin, keeping me warm and making me want to get up and jump around, like I’m stepping on hot coals.

  “I’m very impressed.” He smiles and it’s like sinking into a hot bath. Comforting and all-encompassing. He fiddles with his watch and I’m hypnotized by his fingers pulling on the strap. They’re skinny and trembling slightly, like they were in my bedroom when we were picking out an outfit for the dance. I flash back to the moment on my floor, with my arms on either side of his body, and instantly feel like I’m going to throw up. But in a good way. Is that even a thing?

  I really like Adam. As in, like him like him. A lot. I like the way he barely ever fully smiles and I like how excited he gets about Shakespeare and I like the way his feelings feel.

  The butterflies are rising through my body again as Adam takes another bite of his pizza. They’re lifting everything up, pushing everything out to make room for the fluttering. My heart isn’t even beating anymore—it’s been replaced with light, flapping wings that send pure light into my blood vessels.

  “Are you okay now?” he asks, mouth pulled down in concern. I know he’s worried from the expression on his face, not his feelings. I can’t find that worry anywhere in my body. Everything is drowned out by the tingling in my gut. And suddenly I’m seized with the anxiety of who it belongs to. Is it Adam’s? Does he get nervous and light-headed when we’re together too? I hope he does, but at the same time, if this is his feeling, then maybe it’s not mine. Maybe Adam likes me and that’s what I’ve been feeling this whole time and I haven’t had a genuine emotion of my own in months except for the fucking anxiety I’m feeling right now and I realize I haven’t answered Adam’s question but right now I want to throw my pizza down and never stop running.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Yeah, I’m good now.”

  “Wow,” he deadpans, “you really are one of the worst liars I’ve ever met.”

  “Shut up,” I mumble and, just like that, things are normal again.

  Adam complains about the epic round of college tours his parents have planned for spring break (“A week in the car with my parents, Caleb, what the hell am I gonna do?”) and I tell him about how Caitlin stood up to her dad for me when he was pissed that we got kicked o
ut of the dance. I make it sound ridiculous—like Mr. Park was one step away from pulling out a shotgun—so that I can see Adam laugh again. We spend five minutes straight speculating on what Mr. Collins does with his weekend (“I bet he plays Scrabble against himself,” Adam says) and complain about our Latin exam.

  I feel full with a happiness that’s laced with impatience. My knuckles have turned red from a combination of the cold and my constant hand-rubbing, but I’m reluctant to put them into my pockets. Adam’s hands sit on top of the table—constantly moving, picking at the corner of his juice carton, curling into the edge of his watchband—and I like looking at our hands on the graffitied wood slats of the table, inches away. I can’t feel the warmth from his hands but just imagining it drives me to distraction. It would be one quick move to put my fingers through his but I’m too paralyzed with fear and the fragile hope that’s bloomed inside of Adam (inside of me? I’m beyond being able to tell). He’s happy. He’s happy that we’re talking, that we’re here, sharing space and being.

  And I’m happy. I’m happy for those same reasons or maybe because he’s happy but I’m not sure there’s a difference.

  Far too soon, the bell rings and we start to make our way back inside. There’s a string between us, drawing me closer to him as we walk through the doors, and my stomach is churning at the thought of breaking that connection and going to my next class. I don’t want to go away from him.

  And then Adam asks me if I want to hang out this weekend and he smiles in that way that sits more in his eyes than in his mouth and I can feel the warm rush of joy, pure blue-green ocean water filling me up and clearing the anxiety away, and I realize that I’m not strong enough to break the string, even if I wanted to.

  30

  ADAM

  I wake up with a dull throbbing behind my eyes. I keep them closed, breathing deep, hoping it will go away. It doesn’t.

  I should check my phone—did my alarm go off? Why am I awake? What time is it? Do I need to be at school? Panic climbs my ribs like a ladder. I should check my phone. I don’t.

  I could roll over. That would be so easy. Just roll over, open your eyes, reach one hand out to grab your phone. That’s nothing. You can do that. You don’t even have to leave your warm blanket cocoon.

  Turning my body one hundred and eighty degrees is completely impossible. I’m too tired. I didn’t get enough sleep. I got too much sleep. I should go back to sleep. If I have school, my parents will come get me. I should get some rest.

  I don’t.

  * * *

  It’s five minutes later, twenty minutes later, two hours later—who knows?—when I remember that it’s Saturday. Good. I can just stay here. I don’t need to check my phone. I can stay here and sleep.

  * * *

  My brain is cataloguing every detail of the pattern on my wallpaper like it’s memorizing the information, but the moment it enters my brain, it evaporates. My head is empty. My head is too full. I’m drowning.

  * * *

  A loud crash jerks me awake—when did I fall asleep again? Was I sleeping? I hear my dad yell, “Sorry! Sorry, I’m fine!” from the kitchen, where it sounds like he’s making breakfast for twenty people.

  Oh shit. My aunt Annabelle is coming over today for brunch. I’m supposed to be up for that. A new wave of anxiety fills me but my body immediately rejects it. I don’t have the energy to be anxious. A blessing and a curse.

  “Adam?” my mom calls from the hallway. “If you’re up, could you go help your father with breakfast?”

  To call back or not to call back, that’s the question. Well, no, actually the original version stands in this situation—to be or not to be. One of the most famous lines and, in my opinion, kind of the wrong question. It’s not “to be or not to be,” Hammie—you are. Whether or not you like it. The question is how?

  While I’m lying here contemplating Hamlet, my mother knocks on my bedroom door.

  “Adam? Sweetie?”

  If I don’t answer, she’ll come in to wake me, and I don’t have the wherewithal to face another human right now.

  “Yeah,” I shout, my voice tense, “I’m awake.”

  She says something else that gets lost somewhere between my closed door and my ears processing sound and then I hear her move down the hall. I need to get up now. I need to get up and get dressed and help my dad and hang out with my aunt and be the functioning human my parents so desperately need me to be.

  How, Hamlet? Help a brother out.

  * * *

  The next thing I know, I’m sitting at our dining room table, pushing eggs around my plate, trying to work up the strength to eat them. I don’t remember getting eggs. I don’t remember sitting down. There’s little spots of white and green mixed in with the yellow—my dad has made scrambled eggs with cream cheese and tarragon. My favorite. The thought of eating any of it in this moment makes my stomach roil.

  Why the special eggs this morning? Are we celebrating something? Sound makes its way through the cotton in my ears—voices, two women, one man—and I look up blearily from the mess of food I’ve created in front of me. Oh. That’s right. My aunt is here. I knew that.

  “Adam,” a muffled voice says, “do you not like your eggs?”

  A deep inhale through my nose brings the scent of coffee into my brain, shaking my consciousness a bit. My dad is talking to me. I have to respond. If I don’t say anything, that will be suspicious and, as much as I don’t have the energy to deal with my parents now, I definitely don’t have the energy to deal with them on high alert.

  “Yeah.” I flash what I know is a weak smile in the direction of my dad. “Yeah, sorry, I just don’t think I got enough sleep last night.”

  They know it’s a lie, but as long as I’m present enough to be lying to them like a teenage son is supposed to do, their worry will be at a minimum. That’s the important thing. Just keep them from worrying.

  * * *

  It’s not that they don’t have reason to worry.

  When things got to be too much I would need to let some of it out. By whatever means necessary. All that toxic feeling, the anxiety, the walls closing in; those could all be briefly solved with a sharp edge. Heavy, rib-crushing weight would descend over me and the only way to relieve it was by opening myself up.

  But sometimes the problem wasn’t that things were too much. Sometimes they weren’t enough, and a blade could fix that too. Because I don’t wonder “to be or not to be” and I don’t even always wonder “how.” There have been times when the question is: “Am I?” Times when I can’t feel my own heart beating in my chest, when the color gets sapped from the world, when opening my eyes feels like running a marathon. I never know if I’m going to snap out of it, if I’m ever going to feel anything ever again. I always know I should feel afraid of being trapped in that gray world forever, but I never have enough energy to feel fear.

  I don’t know what’s worse—feeling like the world is going to end or feeling like the world isn’t even worth ending. All I know is that cutting into my skin helped. Until it didn’t.

  I don’t do it anymore. Okay, I don’t do it anymore much. The summer before my sophomore year, I was trying to carve out my loneliness from my torso and my shaking hand pressed too hard. One hospital trip and parent-induced rehab later, it feels like so much more of a risk. I always knew that it was something I shouldn’t be doing, of course I knew, but that didn’t matter. The guilt and shame that came after each time didn’t outweigh the relief from doing it in the first place. Until that summer.

  The fear on my parents’ faces my whole sophomore year, combined with the various coping mechanisms group therapy gave me (I’ve baked more in the past year than all other years combined), have kept me on the straight and narrow. I may sneak it in here and there when things get particularly bad, but apparently the potential of disappointing my parents is terrifying enough to block out all the other stuff the majority of the time. Causing myself pain means nothing to me. Causing them pain
is unacceptable.

  * * *

  “So, Adam, how is your semester going?”

  I hear the clinking of Annabelle setting down her fork before my brain processes her question. She’s looking at me with the laser focus that she seems unable to ever switch off and it sparks just a bit of life in me. I like when Annabelle looks at me like that. It makes me feel important, puts me on my toes. Talking with my aunt is like debating with Caitlin—frustrating and rewarding in equal measure.

  I wish Annabelle weren’t here today. Or I wish I wasn’t like this right now. My body is completely unable to understand or feel that exhilaration at this moment.

  “Um,” I stutter, caught off guard by all of a sudden having to interact with the people I’m eating breakfast with. “It’s going well.” I pat myself on the back for saying “well” not “good”—if I thought I was a freak about language, I’m nothing compared to Annabelle. She uses it like a weapon.

  “I hear you’re in debate club?” Of course that would interest her. If words are her weapons, debate club is like a gladiator stadium.

  “Yeah.” I nod, the scrape of my fork over my plate keeping everything in focus. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom’s hand tighten minutely around her knife. Right. She hates the whine of utensils against dishes. I should stop aimlessly moving my cutlery around. But my mom won’t call me out on it. She would never do anything to make Annabelle think that she has a less-than-perfect family.

  The competitive spirit between my mom and her sister makes me and Caitlin look like kids on a playground. Annabelle works some high-powered job where she’s in charge of a bunch of people—I honestly have no idea what she does—but she lords her upper management position over my mom even though my mom has about two more degrees. They’re constantly measuring their careers against each other, one wordlessly trying to one-up the other. I’m pretty sure my mom uses the fact that she has a spouse and kid as a way to get more cosmic life points against Annabelle. But Annabelle also knows that she’s my favorite relative and she buys me books I actually want to read, so I might be a bit of a draw as far as pawns go.