The Infinite Noise

by Lauren Shippen

  The next thing I know, Henry is off-balance, stumbling backward, away from my outstretched arms. When did I put my arms out? What happened to the drink I was holding? My shoes are wet—I guess that’s what happened to my drink.

  “What the fuck, Michaels?” Henry barks, regaining his footing and angling his anger at me. Oh god, that is so much worse. I’m now getting a direct feed on his rage and I feel like an ant under a magnifying glass in the sun. Henry takes a step forward and I push him again.

  “Go away, Henry,” I say through clenched teeth. I’m a ticking time bomb and I want to tell Henry, want to warn him against making this worse, but he’s being an idiot, so blinded by his own anger that he can’t see I’m blinded too.

  “This has nothing to do with you,” he hisses.

  “Leave her alone.” I’m getting into his space now, hoping he’s not so stupid that he’ll think he can match me in a fight.

  “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

  I guess he is that stupid.

  Molten rage moves through my body, taking control of my arm and charging it up for a punch. I’m about to smack Henry’s dumb, smug face when—

  “Mr. Michaels!”

  * * *

  “So … that was definitely a first for me.” Caitlin breaks the silence finally, the tentative curl of her feelings reaching out to me.

  “Huh?” I’m still too numb and overwhelmed to form actual words. I feel like a sponge that soaked up way too much water and has now been violently wrung out.

  “Getting kicked out of a dance,” she continues. “Can’t say that’s happened before.”

  I look over at her to see her smile slightly—she’s trying to tease, but I know she’s nervous. I nearly lost it in there, and I know how scary that can be. And now she’s walking around the dark football field with me after a guy practically attacked her in the dance and, god, I’m such a dick.

  “I’m so sorry, Caitlin,” I breathe, my shoulders collapsing around me. “I never meant to—I just got so—But I wouldn’t’ve. I wouldn’t’ve.” I finish nonsensically, but something in her relaxes.

  “I know, Caleb,” she says, “and you have nothing to apologize for. I actually—well, I appreciate it. You, standing up for me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “It’s, uh, it’s no problem.”

  “I was about ready to punch him myself,” she says. “God, he’s such a douchebag.”

  “Yeah, he really is.” I huff a laugh.

  “He’s just got one of those punchable faces, you know?” She smirks.

  “Yeah, he really does.” I smile back at her, and there are the butterflies again.

  “I’m still sorry, though.” Maybe if I keep talking, I can banish the butterflies. “I didn’t mean to ruin your whole night. You could have stayed, you know.”

  “I know. But it was kind of lame anyway.” She shrugs. “This is more my speed.”

  Caitlin is smiling sweetly at me and the butterflies are fluttering from my stomach up into my throat and I need to be honest with her, stop this feeling before she acts on it.

  “Hey, Caitlin.” I stop walking and turn to her. I really don’t want to look at her perfectly symmetrical face but I’m not going to be a coward about this.

  “Yeah?” she asks, blinking prettily up at me.

  “Um, so, like,” I start, “you’re great. I really—I mean, you’re smart and funny and cool and I really like being friends with you.”

  “Okay…” Her eyes narrow.

  “But, um.” The butterflies are starting to wilt but it might just be my own anxiety drowning them out. “I don’t know what you expected. Like, I don’t know if this was supposed to be a date or not but, um…”

  I’m waiting for her to cut me off—hopeful that she’ll rush to correct me, tell me that she never thought of this as a date—but based on the blush rising on her cheeks, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

  “I’m not, um,” I stutter, “I just mean that … I like you like a friend. I’d like for us to be friends. Just friends.”

  I exhale and stare at the ground as the butterflies whirl around in a frenzy before flying out of my body, hopefully for good.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh, right. Well … thanks … for telling me, I guess.” She nods, looking away from me, and there’s something weighty and bitter settling into the place the butterflies used to be. I have the sudden urge to wrap Caitlin up in a hug but I have a feeling that won’t be well received in this particular moment.

  “I’m—I’m sor—”

  “It’s fine, Caleb, really.” She looks up and meets my eyes, a sad smile on her face. “I like being friends with you too.”

  Even with the sludge of disappointment weighing me down, I know she means it.

  26

  ADAM

  The bench we’re sitting on is so cold, I’m already turning numb even though we’ve been here for five minutes. I thought Caleb’s insistence on sitting outside during lunch was just because he wanted to avoid the cafeteria, but apparently it applies to all sorts of settings. I wanted to stay in the coffee shop, where it was warm and cozy and Fleet Foxes–soundtracked, but Caleb just marched out the door the moment the barista handed him his hot chocolate.

  I try to not find it adorable that six-foot-something, football-playing, letterman-jacket-wearing Caleb drinks hot chocolate (with whipped cream) but I’m failing.

  “Hey, you okay?” I ask, holding my latte up to my face so my nose doesn’t freeze off. “You’ve been weirdly quiet for the past five minutes.”

  My heart is pounding a tattoo of please say you’re okay please say you’re okay. From the moment Caleb walked into the coffee shop, I knew something was off. He’s been surly and distant and meeting today was his idea—I’d never be so bold as to suggest two hangouts in one weekend—but now I’m worried that he’s going to friend-break-up with me, which is completely ridiculous because, first off, that’s not a thing, and second, are we even good enough friends now to stop being friends?

  This entire situation is ridiculous. Just the very idea that the golden boy would want to hang with the weird nerd is absurd. I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security and now Caleb is going to tell me that it was all part of some bet and my life really will be a bad teen movie. Or—even worse—he’s going to tell me that, sure, hanging out has been fun, but Friday night got a little too homoerotic for his tastes. My brain has been working overtime the last thirty-six hours trying to purge the memory—Caleb’s arms on either side of me, his face close to mine, his eyes big and wandering, looking at me like he was going to, I don’t know, do something that would almost certainly kill me instantly with surprise and joy—and now it’s the only image it seems able to produce.

  “Yeah, I’m okay, I’m just—” Caleb pauses, which gives me a second to push away the thought of Friday and refocus on him. He looks twitchy and sad and the latte curdles in my stomach in anticipation of what he’s going to say next.

  “The dance went really bad last night.” He exhales, not looking at me.

  Oh. This is about the dance. Not about me. That makes sense.

  All right, so I may have been spiraling there for a second. Time to get back on track, Adam. You want Caleb as a friend? Be a friend.

  “What happened?” I ask gently, giving my best “I’m listening very attentively” face, though I’m not entirely sure I want to hear the answer. If this is about Caitlin, I might genuinely throw up my latte. But even that thought crossing my mind churns my stomach—I don’t want to be the weird, jealous guy who’s pining after his friend and blaming Caitlin for simply existing. I’m psyching myself up in my head, convincing myself that, no matter what, I’m going to be there for Caleb because I care about him regardless of any other feelings I might have, and I’ve gotten completely sidetracked in my own social anxiety maze so that I practically get whiplash when Caleb speaks.

  “I tried to punch Henry in the face.” The words come out in a rush and Cale
b winces as he says it. I choke on my drink—narrowly avoiding a full-on spit take—and before I can think about what I should say, I blurt—

  “What? What the fuck, why?”

  Caleb smiles, which is the last reaction I expected.

  “What?” I’m suspicious, thinking he’s pranking me and is just so bad at hiding it, but then he turns to look at me.

  “I’ve never heard you swear before,” he says, grinning. “It just caught me off guard, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” I deflate. “Well, yeah, you’ve been a bad influence on me. Clearly.” I let myself make eye contact with him and my stomach swoops. His eyes are soft and fond and I want to crawl under this bench and freeze to death. My face doesn’t get the memo, though, and I’m starting to smile in return so I hide it behind my cup as I ask him again what happened.

  “He was being a dick,” Caleb declares, like that’s enough. It is for me, but probably not for Principal Stevens.

  “Henry’s always a dick,” I agree.

  “Yeah, but he was being particularly dickish last night,” Caleb grumbles.

  “How so?”

  “He…” Caleb clenches his jaw and I’m taken aback by the anger on his face. For a moment, my brain sputters like an engine as it tries to reconcile the image of Caleb, who drinks hot chocolate and laughs at my dark sense of humor, and Caleb, who got suspended for attacking another student and who looks like he could rip someone in two right now.

  “He was being really creepy to Caitlin,” he grits out, his eyes laser focused at some faraway point in front of him. “He was trying to dance with her and she didn’t want to and he kept trying and she kept pushing him away and then they started yelling at each other and I just kind of lost it.”

  “Right,” I say quietly. So this is about Caitlin. Well then. Fuck.

  “I didn’t hit him, though. It didn’t get that far. And I wouldn’t have—I mean, I wanted to, but I wouldn’t have hurt him.” Caleb turns to me and the ball of rage that I was sitting next to mere seconds ago is gone. His eyes are pleading with me, asking me to believe him.

  “That’s good,” I say, for lack of anything else to say. “That is good, right? I mean, you don’t want to get suspended again.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “Yeah, it’s good. I mean, Principal Stevens was not happy”—as I suspected—“but I don’t think I’m gonna get into too much trouble. I mean, we did get thrown out of the dance, but so did Henry, so, all in all, it turned out okay.”

  “God, that sucks.”

  “Eh, it was whatever. I was kind of over the whole thing after that anyway.” He shrugs, the earnestness gone as he reverts back to Standard Caleb Mode.

  “Yeah, I can imagine.” I try to mirror his sudden casualness, leaning back against the cold wood. “Another guy hitting on your date definitely puts a damper on things.”

  “She wasn’t my date.”

  He says it so flatly—is he disappointed by that fact? Relieved? I sneak a look at him out of the corner of my eye and get no answers.

  “Why’d you get so mad at Henry, then? You weren’t jealous?”

  Why do I always need to poke at the bruise?

  “Fuck no,” Caleb scoffs. “I was pissed. Caitlin’s a really good person, she doesn’t need that kind of shit from anyone.”

  “True,” I agree, “but she can definitely stand up for herself.”

  “So? Doesn’t mean I don’t want to stand up for her too.” He’s starting to look mad again and I’m not sure what I’ve stepped into here. “She was really annoyed and angry and scared and I think that was all making it hard for her to get rid of him and I could tell that Henry wasn’t going to stop—he was feeling so … charged up or something, and so I needed to do something. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

  He sinks into himself as he finishes his rant and I have no idea where the hell any of that came from or what I should do next. Something about what Caleb just said is bugging me—demanding that I pay it closer attention—but I can’t quite place it. I push it aside for the time being and try to do what I’ve been trying all along: be the Friend.

  “Listen, Caleb,” I start, not really sure where I’m going with this, “I’m sure Caitlin’s grateful and everything, but you don’t have to fight everyone’s battles for them. Just because you got into a fight a while ago doesn’t mean you’re, like, the designated knight for the whole school.”

  Caleb shoots me a look.

  “I know you don’t really follow school sports or anything, but you know our mascot is the Knights, right? So I am, actually, literally a school Knight.”

  I want to laugh at this but instead the sour look on Caleb’s face taps into my acidic side.

  “Just because I don’t come cheer you on at every game doesn’t mean I’m blind, Caleb,” I spit out. “I know our mascot is a knight, but that’s a silly school symbol, not a fucking code you have to live by.”

  “Why are you so annoyed by this?”

  “I’m not annoyed,” I lie, “I’m just frustrated.”

  “What the fuck is the difference?” he shouts, and I guess we’re doing this. We’re having a stupid squabble about absolutely nothing in an empty park in the middle of February.

  “Is this about breaking up the thing with you and Bryce way back?” he asks, saying “way back” like it wasn’t a little over a month ago and we’ve been friends for ages. For some reason, that annoys me more.

  “No, it’s not about that,” I say. I’m not sure what exactly this is about, but I’m not about to admit that to him. “I just don’t get why you feel like you always have to step in the middle of these things. Don’t you want to avoid getting into trouble again?”

  “Yeah, of course I do.” He’s gripping his cup so tightly I’m worried hot chocolate will start flowing out of the top and burn his hand. “But I can’t just stand by and let other people get harassed.”

  “I’m not saying you should, but that doesn’t mean that it’s your job to handle it. You should have just gotten a chaperone or something.”

  “I know it’s not my job,” he bites, “but I couldn’t help it.”

  “What do you mean?” I demand. I know I’m being obnoxious—like a dog with a bone—but something about this conversation is rubbing me the wrong way and I need to get to the bottom of it. Caleb’s free hand is clenching and unclenching on top of his thigh and that’s when I realize why I’m so worked up. He’s lying. Or, at the very least, he’s hiding something. Whatever it is, he’s not telling me the whole truth, and that stings.

  “What do you mean you can’t help it?” I ask again when he stays stony-faced. “You’re sixteen years old, Caleb, I’m sure you can resist punching a classmate in the face.”

  “It just—it hurt too much and I lost track of what I was doing,” he spits out. His face suddenly goes pale, like he only just realized what he said, and before I can even ask what the hell that means, he jumps in again, defensive.

  “Never mind, you wouldn’t get it,” he grinds out, looking straight ahead and across the park toward nothing. Apparently, no one else thought it would be a good idea to sit outside in below-freezing weather in a park where all the plants died months ago. The bitterness of the air is making me impatient and irritable and I either need Caleb to start being honest with me or I need to leave.

  Instead, I just poke more.

  “I’m never going to understand if you don’t tell me,” I say, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. “I don’t get why you’re freaking out about this. What do you mean it ‘hurt’?”

  “I’m not freaking out, I’m—” And then he does that infuriating thing where he stops himself from speaking, snapping his mouth shut like he’s trying to trap his own words.

  “You’re, what, Caleb? You’re what?” I bark, turning to sit sideways on the bench so I can face him head on. I can see him better now, but the slats of the bench dig into my thigh like individual icicles. Heat is radiating off of Caleb’s body
and I want to burrow into it, wrap my arms around him, place my numb nose into the crook of his jaw. The impulse surprises me because it isn’t the usual kind of “wrap my arms around Caleb” kind of impulse. He’s in pain and I want to hold him, comfort him, tell him it’s all right, but I can’t. I don’t know why he’s hurting and so I can’t make it better. I feel totally powerless.

  It is the worst feeling I have ever felt. For a brief moment, I understand what my parents must go through on a daily basis with me and suddenly I’m unable to breathe.

  “Nothing. Just forget about it, okay?” And with that, Caleb stands abruptly.

  “No, come on, you know you can tell me stuff. What’s bothering you?” I follow him, standing but not moving away from the bench. It feels like I’m holding something precious and fragile that a soft breeze could blow away, taking it from me forever.

  “Nothing, okay? I’m sorry for—you don’t need to worry about it.” Caleb finally turns to look at me and there’s something helpless in his eyes. “I don’t want you worrying about it.”

  “I’m not worrying about it,” I insist, even though I am. “I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

  “There’s nothing going on with me!”

  “Yes, there is, Caleb!” I’m gripping so hard on the precious thing in my hands so that it doesn’t float away that I just might break it instead. “And you never talk to me about it and I get that maybe you’re not comfortable, but I’m not going to judge you or anything. You can tell me. I want to know.”

  “God, Adam,” he exclaims, “just because you’re a know-it-all doesn’t mean you deserve to know absolutely everything.”