Noah’s never any good without coffee. Two blocks from the high school is a Dunkin’ Donuts, and he races there every day before school so he’s five minutes late to class. He chugs the large black coffee while jogging to campus. His tattered blue backpack with a Dave Matthews Band patch that he resolutely thinks is cool bounces on his bony shoulders. At this Western Massachusetts high school, the Dave Matthews fans are the palest of the pale, and the school is mostly populated with dishwater blonde, lanky, quiet Polish American kids. Noah’s black curls and caterpillar eyebrows don’t do him any favors. Except when it comes to a girl named Halloween.
Halloween is a spaz, but Noah doesn’t use that term lightly. He says “retarded” like everyone else at school does, but “spaz” hits a nerve.
His off-kilter coffee jog, his exaggerated r-rolling in Spanish class that no one finds funny, and his stained, ripped, and always musky clothing don’t add up to Halloween’s list of functionally-deranged habits and behavior, but when his small crew of swarthy, moderately athletic friends snicker about Halloween the spaz, Noah stays silent.
Halloween smells like gasoline, a scent Noah likes, so a part of him was pleased when she was assigned as his desk mate in math class. She’s a big fairy in dirty Converse who towers over him in sequin sweaters and shawls. She says hmm every thirty-five seconds (Noah’s counted), and her laugh sounds like both a rattlesnake and a bee. The fact that she never remembers her calculator or pencils and relies on Noah for these things fills him with a light sense of accomplishment. He violently scoots his chair back every time Halloween leans her face over the desk. Her long, stringy yellow hair slides around the glossy wood, but for this near-sighted creature, getting that close is the only way she can write.
The crush isn’t evident to Noah. When she burns him a CD of Dave Matthews’ Central Park concert, he thinks she’s returning the favor of the calculator and pencils. He still doesn’t get it when she passes him a small, tightly bound ball of tin foil. Inside are eleven pills of Adderall. They keep her up at night, she explains. Noah thanks her. He’s a demon for substances: whippets, Robitussin, weed, vodka. On weekends and after track practice, he and his friends get into all of the above. Adderall’s in a different league. He’s dreamed of trying the little blue pills, and as soon as he gets home, he will.
The pill takes an hour to kick in, and when it does, his strobing thoughts are replaced by a fervid but glacial peace. He cleans his room like his life depends on it. The washing machine and dryer turn out load after load until his mother hisses it’s eleven and he needs to go to sleep. Noah quietly scrubs his desk and sweeps melted Starburst and slivers of hardened cheese into his palm and brushes them into the kitchen waste basket. By two a.m. he stands as an island in the blue ocean of his carpet: everything is put away, tucked in, polished, and dry. It’s the first time in sixteen years his bedroom has looked like this.
Dunkin’ Donuts loses its appeal once the Adderall kicks in.
His homeroom teacher gasps when she sees him in his desk before the morning bell. In Spanish class, he wonders for a second if his brain has been hijacked by a Mexican alien because everything Señor Wolski says makes sense, and Noah’s conjugating and completing sentences without replacing every consonant with a whirring “rrrrrr.” He pops another pill before track practice. His heart pounds when he gets into position. It’s an engine roar, not a scary thump, and when the signal goes off, he flies around the track. His hamstrings burn, and the harder he runs, the more satisfying the sting. For the first time, he beats Sam Pskowski and Tommy Nowak and ties with the team champ, Adam Greene, his ex-best friend from middle school. Adam hasn’t wanted anything to do with Noah in years but now looks at him like maybe he is an alien, a cool jock one from a planet of cataclysmic self-transformation and might be worth being friends with again.
The next day he doubles down on the pills and gets up at five thirty. He walks four miles on the bike path to school. There’s ice on the ground and the air is freezing and damp. His brisk stride and black puffy coat keep him warm. Sunrise is a smear of orange and red. It looks like a healing bruise, a ripe mango, and its beauty reminds Noah of the swelling violin in “Satellite.” He’s always wanted to play an instrument but his thought infestation hasn’t been amenable to artistic practice. Now that his brain has transformed into a robust, disciplined machine, he wonders if he could ask his parents to buy him a guitar.
He trips over something and nearly loses his balance. He turns around and sees a man sleeping in the middle of the path. He’s skinny, maybe five or ten years older than Noah, and wearing only cargo pants and a greasy looking flannel. The man’s stare is both angry and sad. Noah flings off his backpack, unzips his coat, and hands it to the man who says nothing but looks a little less upset. Noah smiles with all his teeth, leaps to retrieve the backpack, and runs in his t-shirt to school. He gets there when Mrs. Cernak, the principal, is gliding through the doors, her dark trench coat billowing up behind her.
Noah does the stairs two at a time and then skids to a stop. He shrieks unintentionally when he calls out to Mrs. Cernak. They’ve never interacted before, and he’s surprised her name is so readily available in his mind. Her droopy face is weary and unamused. Noah stares at her flaky, doughy blue eyeshadow. She seems unfazed by his bare arms and fire-red face but appears to be listening.
The plan spools out of him gracefully. He wants to start a coat drive. It’s not just the homeless man on the bike path, it’s the infinite beggars on the Route 9 median. How are they supposed to survive a sub-zero winter with the tattered layers they’re wearing. He’s stumping with words like “ostracized” and “precarity” — vocabulary that he’s never uttered, or thought before, but their protrusion to the surface of his consciousness fills him with delight. I’m smart, he thinks in the midst of his speech. The way Mrs. Cernak’s eyes flash from annoyance to a reptilian glare makes him think she agrees.
Noah sits on the floor by his locker to work on the flyer. He presses the pencil down hard and draws a crooked trench coat on a sheet of printer paper with the words “coat drive” below it in bubble letters. While darkening the belt, he notices a limp curtain of blonde hair dangle above him. Halloween cocks her head and asks what he’s doing. Noah gives a zippy explanation of the coat drive, and Halloween coos in approval. She twirls to the ground and takes his pen and draws an impressively realistic fur coat. Her face burrows an inch away from the paper as her quivering hand draws the sleeve linking arms with the trench coat. She hands him the paper with a smile so wide her chapped lips crack. Noah doesn’t see, though; he’s fixated on the flyer. It’s perfect.
For the next two days, there’s never not a spring in his step. The coat drive, classes, assignments, and the high-fives he gives in the hall spin in fluidly together. He slaps hands with Halloween, and before he continues his saunter, he thanks her. She furrows her brow. You gave me a new lease on life, he wants to say, but instead he fist bumps her, which he has never done to anyone before. Three awkward punches: one in the middle, top, and bottom. She still looks confused, and Noah’s seized by an uneasiness, a rattle of doubt that lived in him before Adderall came into his life.
The morning of the scheduled coat collection day Noah opens the tin foil and grimaces at the two remaining pills. He swallows them both and chews his toast wistfully. The stillness in the kitchen, the smoothness of the peanut butter, and most importantly, the silence in his mind — the deft poise of his thoughts makes him sad. But there’s so much to do today, and no time for feelings, so he cleans up and heads to the bus.
Noah’s militant with the coats and categorizes them on a lined sheet of paper that’s taped to a binder. He carries them from class to class in big plastic trash bags, which makes it easy for
his classmates to hand off their donations. He takes each coat with a ceremonial grace. No one seems to pick up on his demeanor, but it’s not like most people know what he’s like when he’s normal. Noah’s way out on the periphery, a slacker who can’t get it together, and with every passing hour, his insignificance creeps back.
The last bell rings and he drags the bags to Mrs. Cernak’s office. Her head pops around her computer when Noah pulls at the door. The bags’ ties are wrapped around his fingers, and he tries to grab the handle with a spare pinky but the door slips. He drops the bags, shoves the door open with his shoulder, and hobbles with the bags to the middle of the office. The room smells like stale coffee, and when Mrs. Cernak sighs, the coffee stench becomes stronger. She flares her nostrils when she looks over her desk at the pile of bags.
She asks Noah where he’ll donate the coats and he says the local shelter. She nods and raises her eyebrows at him.
He says he’ll do it tomorrow, or the next day, whenever he can get a ride from his parents. Mrs. Cernak seems to believe him. She tells him he can store the coats in the first floor janitor closet in the meantime.
Noah shoves the coats into the closet. There are fifteen of them, a once prideful and exciting number. He stuffs the handwritten spreadsheet in his pocket, knowing it will turn into dried mush in the washing machine. The red sun shines bright against the slate blue sky when he stumbles out of the building, but it’s not an evocative or beautiful sunset, it’s a dreary reminder of time and purpose, dreams and potential slipping away.
There’s a car in the parking lot blasting “Ants Marching,” his old homework song.
He’d read his text book a little; sing; swivel his shoulders and head in time with the staccato violin; go back to studying; then pogo on the carpet and try not to trip on cords, bags, and whatever else crowded the floor.
He’d start the song over just before it ended and take another stab at the homework. This memory hovers before him like a tempest. He will succumb, there’s no question about it, to the void that once passed for living, but not without commemorating the amphetaminized version of himself. He will bring the coats to the shelter.That’s a promise.
The next morning, Noah flicks the empty tin foil pouch on his bedroom floor. He rolls out the door at 7:10 a.m., twenty seconds before the bus arrives and then sulks to Dunkin’ Donuts. The bell has already rung when he gets inside, and he drags his backpack against the lockers as he makes his way to math class. The strap buckles clang against the metal like a call to arms. He walks past the first-floor janitor’s closet, and for half of a second, considers asking his mom to help him bring the coats to the shelter.
He slinks into class and says hey to Halloween. It’s a low-belly hey, a gritty croak, and she whispers hey back but doesn’t turn around to look at him. When she hovers her face over their assignment, Noah pushes his chair so far back that he falls over. The class erupts in sardonic laughter, but Halloween doesn’t flinch. He gets up and scooches slowly to their desk. The rest of the day floats by in tempered agony, and after the last class, the thought of the coats appears and vanishes like the quickness of his breath as he rushes down the steps to catch the bus. The next day is the same, and so is the next month, and before he knows it, it’s June and the coats are still in the janitor’s closet.
Julie Morse is a former freelance journalist living in Massachusetts’s Pioneer Valley where she grew up. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, The Nation, VICE News, The Rumpus, The Believer, and Pacific Standard. Website: juliemmorse.com