The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

Author:Lauren Shippen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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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.

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.

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