The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  “I called Bryce stupid once in seventh grade,” I say, risking a look at Caleb. His eyebrows shoot up in surprise and I feel the need to defend myself.

  “We were arguing about something in class,” I explain, “and he was getting on my nerves so I called him stupid. I know that’s not okay, but, in my defense, I didn’t think he’d hold a grudge about it for five years.”

  “That’s not much of a defense,” he says, squinting at me skeptically as he shovels pizza into his mouth. Why the hell do I find that endearing?

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks,” I bite back. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. I get it.”

  “Hey, I can’t judge you. I’m, like, the king of putting two wrongs together.” A little frown crinkles his face and I have a million more questions now.

  “I have a hard time believing that,” I scoff, and his face crumples a bit more. Okay, maybe I should dial down the snark a bit—it seems like he might actually want to talk to me, which is … well, this whole thing is just incredibly surreal.

  “I just mean, you seem like a stand-up guy,” I continue. A stand-up guy? Oh god, I’m turning into my mother.

  “A stand-up guy?” he echoes, the frown turning into a small, self-conscious smile that makes him look vulnerable and cocky all at once and man, I am so screwed.

  “Oh shut up,” I mumble into my pizza. So much for reeling the snark in. “I just mean that I can’t imagine you calling anyone stupid.”

  “I think you’re a little stupid,” he says, and I snap my eyes back up, ready to fight. But he’s still gently smirking and—is he teasing me?

  “Excuse me?” I ask, mock-scandalized, trying to play along.

  “I mean, first you call Bryce stupid to his face—” he starts, counting on his fingers.

  “Yeah, five years ago,” I say in my own defense.

  “And then you try to go toe-to-toe with the guy, which is just completely idiotic.” Caleb is fully smiling now and I swear, sunlight is literally bouncing off his teeth and blinding me. “Bryce is huge, there’s no way you ever could have taken him, especially with Justin standing right there.”

  “I’m not gonna run scared from some dumb bully like Bryce,” I growl, crushing the lighthearted atmosphere that Caleb had been building. “I’m not a coward.”

  “I never said you were,” Caleb says earnestly, “but you have to know when to walk away. You’re not gonna win a fight against Bryce—”

  “I wasn’t trying to fight him—”

  “Are you sure?” he asks, like he already knows the answer. He’s staring me down and, once again, it’s like he’s looking right through me.

  “Listen, I get it. But trust me: fighting is not always the best solution.” He deflates and it looks like I’ve ruined something good by opening my damn mouth. Again.

  “Wow, look at you, oh wise one,” I say dryly, trying to pull the conversation back up to where it was before I got all defensive and weird. “Did you read that on a fortune cookie?”

  He looks back up at me, his mouth quirking on one side.

  “Even better—personal experience,” he says sarcastically. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes and I know I haven’t quite fully repaired whatever it is I broke.

  “Oh, right.” I nod, trying to pretend like I haven’t been thinking about what would drive Caleb to punch someone for months. “Is that what you meant by being ‘the king of two wrongs’?”

  “Yeah, a little.” He shrugs. “I mean, that fight definitely wasn’t worth all the crap that it led to.”

  New questions crowd out the dozens that are already filling my head. Did Caleb really get in trouble for that? I think he had to do some school service or something, but maybe his parents were really strict? There’s definitely more to that story and I’m itching to ask. But I think we’re maybe back on some sort of normal footing in this conversation and I don’t want to throw that off.

  “But mostly I meant…” He trails off, bending his head down to his food and glancing up at me nervously. At least, I think he’s nervous—he’s got the same frightened-animal look that he had in the library.

  “I meant, with you. Last week,” he mutters, not looking at me.

  “What, with Bryce?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you mean? Like you said, he’d probably have beaten my face in. You stopped him,” I say, my heart beating fast as my brain relives that moment for the thousandth time since it happened.

  “Yeah, but I was kind of a dick about it,” he says, finally making eye contact with me again. “And I’m sorry about that.”

  Huh. I didn’t see that coming.

  “Don’t be,” I say. Now it’s my turn to avoid eye contact. If he feels bad about last week then that must mean he could tell I was freaked out, and that’s really not a conversation I want to get into.

  “No, I am,” he insists, and I feel his eyes boring a hole in the top of my head. “I’m sorry I said all that stuff. It isn’t any of my business.”

  “Why did you say it?” I blurt out. Okay, I guess this is a conversation I want to have.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbles, and I’m not sure I believe him. I don’t think Caleb is a very good liar. But he is hiding something.

  My curiosity is burning under my skin, each question a little spark running through my veins. I want to ask him how he always seems two steps ahead in every conversation. I want to ask him how he knows I’m sad. I want to ask if he’s been feeling bad about this all weekend like I have. I want to ask why he invited me to lunch today. I want to ask if we’re going to do it again.

  “Do you want the rest of my pizza?” I ask instead.

  21

  CALEB

  God, talking about this stuff is fucking frustrating. I’m catching Dr. Bright up on the week, but feelings are messy and annoying and trying to describe them is even worse.

  “Usually, it’s that the feelings are all just jumbled up,” I try to explain, “like in most of my classes, when there are a bunch of different people feeling a bunch of different things. But then sometimes, it just takes over and kind of finds … like a, like a home in my chest. Like with Adam.”

  “What do you mean it finds a home?” she asks.

  “Well … I don’t know.” I shrug. “It’s like … when I’m around him, whatever he’s feeling just sort of settles into me and sits there. Next to my own feelings. Like, his sadness, or whatever, becomes my sadness.”

  “Does that happen with anyone else when you’re one-on-one with them?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I think about the only other people I’m comfortable around. “Like, when my mom is worried, I feel worried. And I know it’s hers but I also feel like it’s mine a bit. It’s got a different color to it from my own, but sometimes the edges blur together and it creates a new kind of color. Does that make sense?”

  “It does,” she says, and I believe her. “So, for example, if your emotions are yellow and Adam’s are blue, you get green.”

  “Right, yeah.” I nod, relieved that she understands. “Yeah, and with him, it’s like everything becomes green. With other people, it’s a lot of yellow and a lot of blue and then a little bit of green between them. God, this is a fucking stupid way of talking about things.”

  “No it isn’t. In all my years as a psychologist, I have yet to discover a perfect way to talk about emotions. Visualizing them can be very helpful.” She smiles and I feel infinitely less dumb. “So with Adam it completely blurs together? You can’t tell the difference between his emotions and yours?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, sometimes he’s blue, and he stays blue,” I say, thinking about how strong the blue can be sometimes. “But yeah, sometimes, his feelings make green and I know that they’re his feelings but they feel real to me. Like more real than other people’s.”

  I feel stupid as I say it but Dr. Bright just nods like it makes perfect sense to her. She asks a few more questions about Adam and before I know it, I’ve recounted the entire lunch
to her. As I’m talking, something solid and satisfied settles into me.

  “So his feelings didn’t overwhelm you?” she asks, and I feel bad about having to deflate her pride.

  “Well, they did, sort of. I mean, I could feel them really strongly—he was nervous and confused and excited—but I was kind of all of those things too and it was just … it didn’t rub me up the wrong way like Caitlin’s emotions did.” I think about the strange squirmy, hot feeling from Caitlin and how the same kind of thing from Adam didn’t feel nearly as bad and realize they must have been completely separate feelings after all.

  “I mean, it was a totally different set of emotions, I guess,” I say mostly to myself, “but they seemed to fit. Like, I could feel his emotions fine, but I could also feel mine pretty well. And I apologized for shouting at him last week and that made him less nervous and then it was just … I don’t know, it was easy.”

  “I’m very pleased to hear that, Caleb.” She smiles, and my face warms. “Were you able to control how much of his emotions you were feeling? Balance them out a bit?”

  “Um, I’m not sure. I didn’t really try.” I honestly didn’t feel like I had to, but admitting that feels like a trap for some reason. “Sometimes it did it on its own—like, it would be softer at times and bigger at other times and … ugh, I don’t know how to describe it.”

  “Try a visual comparison again,” she suggests. “See if that helps.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think the color thing applies.”

  “Then try to think of something that does. What else have you encountered in your life that was similar to this experience?”

  “Um…” I think. The colors of Adam’s emotions don’t change but the levels do. There’s a rise and fall to them, except it’s not consistent, it’s unpredictable.

  “… it’s kind of like—” I start. “… it’s kind of like the ocean.”

  “The ocean?”

  “Yeah,” I breathe. “You know when you’re standing at the edge of the water and the waves come up the sand to your feet and sometimes there’s, like, a strong wave and your whole leg gets wet? It was sort of like that. The more we were talking, it was like his feelings were the water. I could feel them all the time, but sometimes there would be a big wave and the feeling would sort of cover everything up for a moment and then go back again. But I was always myself, you know? It wasn’t like I ever became the ocean too. I didn’t get washed away.”

  “Well.” Dr. Bright blinks but it’s not surprise, it’s that warm feeling again. “That is quite the analogy. I’m very pleased to hear that further exposure to Adam has made it easier to balance your own emotions with others’.” The warm solid feeling is so comforting I don’t want to tell her it’s still hard to balance with most people.

  “I’m curious,” she continues, “the ocean as you describe it is often thought of as a very calm place. Does Adam make you calmer?”

  “I guess so. But, I mean, sometimes waves get really big and scary too. Like, when we really started to talk about the guys who were making fun of him, there was definitely a really big wave of anger that sort of took me under for a second. I got really, really angry too and had to take some deep breaths like you taught me to calm myself down.”

  “And where was your anger directed? I know in the past you’ve had a hard time with other people’s anger. It’s made you want to lash out at the source. Did you get angry at Adam?”

  “Uh, no. No, I didn’t. It was—I was angry at those guys. But I was sort of angry with them to begin with. Well, not sort of. Like actually, really fucking angry.”

  “Do you think you would have done something if those boys had come by in that moment?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, the breathing helped, but, yeah, I mean, I was still pretty mad. But I won’t hit anyone again, I mean, I promise.”

  “I know you’re trying, Caleb, but remember why you’re here. You haven’t been handling your anger—or the anger of others—particularly well,” she says gently. “I’m happy to hear that the breathing is helping you, but we still have a long way to go on that front.”

  “I know. But that was ages ago. I didn’t even know what was going on at that point, that I was feeling other people’s feelings. I’m not dangerous, I promise.”

  “I know you’re not dangerous, Caleb.” She smiles. “You’re a very kind boy. You would never hurt someone intentionally, I know that.”

  “Right.” I nod. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “I’m proud of you, Caleb,” Dr. Bright says. “It can be scary to put yourself out there like that, but it sounds like the lunch went very well.”

  “Yeah.” I nod. “It did.”

  Dr. Bright smiles softly and I can feel the warmth shifting to something else—she’s about to give me new homework for this week, I just know it—and I keep talking before she can change topics.

  “I think I want to do it again,” I blurt. “Get lunch with him, I mean. I liked hanging out with him and, I don’t know, I feel like he probably could use a friend.”

  The warmth swells in time with Dr. Bright’s smile.

  “I think that’s a lovely idea, Caleb,” she says. “It sounds like you two have a real connection.”

  The way she says it makes me shift nervously in my seat but I can’t claim that she’s wrong. I felt more at peace watching Adam fiddle with his watch and avoid my eyes than I do anywhere else in school.

  “Yeah, we do, I guess,” I admit. “It’s not weird, though, right? For me to be his friend when I can feel that he’s lonely? That’s not, like, breaking some kind of rule or anything?”

  “There aren’t really hard-and-fast rules with this,” Dr. Bright tells me. “As long as the ability itself stays a secret, many Atypicals use them to improve their lives or the lives of others.”

  “So, like, there are really other people like me?” I ask.

  “I can’t talk about my other patients, Caleb,” she deflects, distracting me with a new mindfulness exercise before I can ask the questions that are sprouting in my head.

  * * *

  Between the pleased and proud feeling that Dr. Bright sent me off with and my phone telling me I have a text from Adam, I’m riding pretty high. It’s a nice day—crisp and sunny—so I walk right past the bus stop near Dr. Bright’s office to take a different route home.

  I open the text to a link to a Hozier song. Adam is one of those guys who’s always got his headphones on, and he has a lot of opinions about music. I didn’t know a ton of the stuff he mentioned at lunch on Wednesday, but we did agree that music is good for blocking out everyone in school sometimes. He told me about this Hozier song that didn’t make it onto his first album but that Adam says is really great. It makes him feel less afraid to walk down the hallways.

  Okay, so he didn’t say that last part. I sort of figured it out by the strong feeling he got when talking about it. Like he was taller and less vulnerable to attack. I could use a little of that feeling myself.

  Sometimes being out and about in the city can be way too overwhelming. All those people feeling all those different things, weaving in and out of my body like hot and cold breezes. But today, I put on my headphones and click on the link to listen. “Arsonist’s Lullaby” starts to play and I tune out the world around me, focusing on typing back a thanks to Adam. Texting him back brings up all the feelings I had during our lunch, and that warm, solid feeling moves into my chest again. Even just thinking about Adam makes me feel a little less like a sponge that doesn’t get a say in what it soaks up.

  As the song winds down, I start to feel jittery, the protective shield around me beginning to crack. I can feel my heartbeat kicking up as buzzing enters my head, making me slow and dizzy. Whatever peace I’d had just a second ago is being destroyed by someone’s emotions.

  The feelings are grating at me—making me clench my jaw and shove my fists into my coat pocket. Something isn’t right. This isn’t just the noise of a busy street’s feelings. This is com
ing from one place.

  I look around me for a person in crisis. A rush of anger and sadness has pushed into me, making it hard to breathe. Someone who feels this way has to be noticeably upset, right? You can’t just carry this with you all the time.

  But looking around me, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. People rushing to work, talking on their cell phones, a college student trying to get signatures on some petition, a homeless man sitting against a building—normal city stuff.

  No, the only thing out of the ordinary is me.

  22

  ADAM

  I don’t know how it happens, but after that first awkward, amazing, painful, incredible lunch, Caleb and I keep going. Exactly a week later, I find myself taking my Pizza Wednesday pizza out to the bench behind the gym and sitting down like I belong there. And that’s when things get really bizarre—Caleb comes out, sees me, and sits down like I belong there. We sit in the cold and stare at each other for a few seconds before Caleb does this little blinking thing like he’s resetting. Then he launches into a story about how he thought it might be worth it to read The Aeneid in the original Latin and get some extra credit for both classes and I’m so charmed that I momentarily forget how to breathe.

  And then it just … becomes a routine. Every day, we both find our way to this isolated bench and eat lunch together. And then we start texting every day. And then the texting leads to playing Xbox Live together (I never thought I would have a reason to dust off my Xbox, but here we are), and sending each other music and actually really talking at lunch. First about school and then eventually about football and debate and slowly, tentatively, about our actual, real stuff.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks exactly three weeks after our first lunch (not that I’m keeping track), popping a pepperoni into his mouth.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re—” He catches himself. Caleb does that a lot. He’ll start a sentence and then abruptly stop talking, like he’s afraid a monster is going to leap out of his mouth and terrorize the locals.