I was old enough to have missed the Adderall craze—kids at my elementary school didn’t have ADHD, they were just hyperactive or, if they weren’t white, they got labeled “troublemakers” and that was it. Scores of Sawyer students were on it, part of the chemical mix propelling them through their days: Adderall or Ritalin to amp them up, Xanax to calm them down, a steady rotation of weed and alcohol to smooth out the transitions. I felt bad I’d kept them from Tyler. What if he couldn’t get a refill? I wondered what it felt like to take, if it could help with my focus. In grad school, of course, tons of people used it, prescribed or otherwise—someone I know even slipped in a thanks to “Dr. Adderall” on his dissertation acknowledgment page. And then, before I quite realized what I was doing, the bottle was open and I was swallowing a pill, bitter and chalky on the way down.
I sat down at my desk, waiting to see what would happen. In a short while, it started working, spreading a fuzzy electric charge across me. And then it hit like a bolt of espresso, or like that time I did coke at a party in New York—this girl I’d met in the bathroom line so pushy about it I finally said yes. But this was without anyjangly harshness. I felt the space inside my head expand. I could see the thoughts as they came to me, I only had to write them down. Whatever worry and doubts had clouded my thinking broke apart, dissipating in a hot and scopious light. And as I wrote, rolling beneath the ideas falling into place, another chain of thoughts: Is this how Tyler’s body feels? This soft rush and warm charge? I felt I was learning him from the inside and the feeling of that kept me company as I worked.
The day passed like that and suddenly it was 4:00 p.m. I had just enough time to shower and get dressed. The pill had worn off but a residue remained, a low combustion across my skin. I was stepping out from the apartment when I remembered—I’d left the bottle on the counter. We would go for drinks after the lecture and then Stephen was staying over. I went to stash the pills again. As I picked them up and reached for the cabinet, something I’d seen but hadn’t registered clicked into consciousness. I turned the bottle over in my palm. There, along the edge of the pharmacy label, in small block letters: Addison Stewart Mitchell.
It was not yet five o’clock and already the afternoon’s tepid light had leeched from skies putty-gray like wet ash. The talk was in a small auditorium, a satellite of the campus outside its original walls. In recent years, the college had been gobbling up real estate: collapsing houses local families barely held on to for decades snatched for a song and demolished. The new building glimmered, steel and dark glass. Cantilevered wings stretched at oblique angles across a small plaza, the reflecting pool drained for winter.
As I approached, I was surprised to see Addison and then did a double take, the surprise (and then embarrassment) that I also recognized from his Facebook page the two people beside him: hisparents. I tried to get by unnoticed but Addison called my name, his arm cutting a wide arc, waving me over.
“Great to see you, Dr. Lausson,” he said, reaching to shake my hand. “These are my parents.” The father introduced himself—“Charles Mitchell”—his grip almost painful. “Lauren,” his mother said, both of her hands soft around mine. “Lovely to meet you.” She sounded luminous, like she meant it. Charles was even more striking in person, as tall as Addison, same wavy curls, silvering edges. Lauren’s flaxen hair fell blunt to her shoulders; a sharp profile, cheekbones like open plains. She could almost pass for a student but was set off by a poise that came from experience. Even under the wool heft of her sleek trench, she held herself like an exclamation point. Together the family was almost unbearable to look at it, as if the beauty of each amplified the others. I pulled at my shirt; I felt like my clothes didn’t fit right, my shoulders too narrow. Standing between them, Addison radiated, a hand at the back of each, as if posing for a photo.
“Where are you in town from?” I asked, as if I hadn’t been tracking Addison’s life online.
“Los Angeles,” Lauren said, with a slight roll of her eyes that conveyed—ridiculous, I know.
“Sorry about our weather.”
“Honestly, it’s a nice change from the relentless sun,” Lauren said. “We couldn’t make it last year—work was crazy for me.” She mentioned they were staying at the new hotel downtown. I said I lived nearby but hadn’t been; I’d heard the restaurant was good. “It’s lovely,” she said. “So refreshing to stay somewhere with personality and charm. Not like all these new places that feel like an airport, or a mausoleum. Same thing everywhere you go in the world.”
“And what are your plans for the evening?” I asked.
Addison looked puzzled by my question and then a smile cracked across his face. “We’re here for your talk.”
“Oh.” I laughed, suddenly nervous. “By no means feel obligated.”
“Not at all. We’re looking forward to it,” Charles said.
“Absolutely,” Lauren said. “Part of me always regretted I didn’t do a PhD instead of law school. I’m a little envious.”
Addison checked his phone. “Tyler’s inside. Holding us seats.”
My skin tightened, the hair on my arms pricking alert, my body tensing at the news. I should have put it together—of course Tyler would be here; he and Addison were inseparable. A wave of adrenaline rushed though me—the pill’s afterburn or the anticipation of Tyler or both. We went in, Lauren commenting on the building, a hand tucked in Addison’s arm, Charles asking how I was finding Sawyer.
In the hallway, Safie stood with Susan, speaking in low tones. Safie’s eyes caught mine, sharp with some strain that said I shouldn’t interrupt. “This is it,” I said, steering us to the auditorium. “Last chance to change your minds.”
Tyler sat halfway up in the middle of the room. He called the Mitchells over, and then waved to me. I nodded hello and even that felt like too much: my excitement at seeing him uncontainable. In the front row, Colin sat with Priya. “Man of the hour,” he announced.
I stood at the lectern, scanning my notes. When Safie and Susan came in, I thanked Susan for helping organize the night. She made a small huffing sound and left Safie with me.
“You’re looking sharp,” Safie said.
“Thanks, I did the best I could. Dazzle camouflage to hide my dread.” I lowered my voice. “What was going on in the hall?”
“Nothing,” said Safie, eyes on Susan wrestling with the coffee station at the side of the room. “Tenure stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Concerns about me going up.”
“What? You’re kidding me.”
“I guess P and T met last week”—the promotion and tenure committee—“and raised some questions about my work and its ‘intellectual merits.’”
“They cannot be serious.”
“Susan seems to think they are. She said they might recommend I take an extra year.”
“That’s absurd,” I said. And it was. “They’ve told us all along—a book and a couple articles. That’s it. You’ve gone way beyond that.”
