I answer, “Yes, I want it real.” Because what other answer could there be? He hasn’t left any room for my anxiety to answer for me.
“If you want to know what I’m scared of,” Noah says, “I’m scared that I don’t know how to leave high school. Because right now college is feeling a lot like high school.Todayis feeling a lot like high school, following someone else around the city. The only piece of it that doesn’t feel like high school is you. Because while we’re all shooting the shit, you’re wrestling with it. And I’m scared because I have no idea how to help with that. You say that I’m nice, and sure, I try to be nice. But that’s not the same as connecting. I’m scared I don’t know how to connect. I know you think it’s bullshit when I say there’s no actual reason I didn’t return your messages. What I mean is that you’re not the reason. I’m the reason. Because you’re not like my other friends, and while that doesn’t scare me, necessarily, it definitely confuses me. Or intimidates me, even.”
I laugh. Like, really laugh. Because the notion of me being intimidating is so far from reality as I know it.
“I’m serious!” he says. “There’s something about you that will force me to know myself a little more, and that’s weird to me.”
“Hey, I’m the weird one.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it worse to not be weird at all?”
“Oh, you’re plenty weird.”
“Is that so?”
“Let’s start with your relationship to windows.”
Noah punches me (lightly) on the shoulder. “I confided in you!”
“Oh, all your secrets will be safe with me.”
“Like I’m ever telling you another secret.”
“Oh, you will.”
Noah pauses, pretends to think about it. “Yeah, maybe I will.”
We’re face-to-face, and there’s something between us—we just don’t know what it is yet. My brain being my brain, I think about windows, and how you don’t understand that they’re there as long as you’re focused on something beyond the glass.
“We should have hung out this break,” I say.
“I recognize this,” he tells me. “But look ... we’re hanging out now. A triumph of Mister Rogers over Paul, if your earlier equation is to be believed.”
“The Paul quotient isscience, Noah.”
“I will be sure to write about it in my journal as soon as I get home.”
“Oh, so you keep a journal?”
“I do. And you don’t. Which is why as soon as we leave the rest of them, we’re going to swap presents. Sinéad will look better on you, anyway. Though I insist on visitation rights.”
“Visitation rights will most certainly be granted.”
Suddenly I hear Andie’s voice. “Come on, guys! We’re hungry!”
A couple blocks down, she, Pam, and Margaret are sitting on a bench. I didn’t see them before because they’d left the sidewalk.
“Stick with me, okay?” Noah says.
“Okay.”
“I know it’s stupid to tell you not to be scared. I know you don’t control that. But we’re on really safe ground now, aren’t we?”
“I’m not sure I’d say ‘really safe’—but maybe as safe as it gets.”
“I’ll accept that. Let’s go.”
We walk back to them. Noah starts to tell me about a time that he and his brother had tried to sneak into Chinatown to get firecrackers. They were too young to know where it was, so their solution was to ask every local they passed whether they were going in the right direction. As he tells the story, I can see his seven-year-old self pulling on total strangers’ sleeves, thinking it’s the right thing to do. I enjoy the story, but more than that, I enjoy watching him tell it.
