The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

  “Noah, please.” Circuit’s voice from the top of the stairs is chilling in its normalcy. “Come back. Let’s talk.”

  A last look at Sara—and I’m out the door, through the yard, hit Piedmont running. The sun is just starting to come up, and next door Kurt raises a steaming mug of coffee. “Mornin’,” he says, like the whole world is as it should be. And at his feet Abraham the longhaired collie barks once, and it’s like this whole night I’ve been reading the following sentence, and that bark is the period:

  My life for the past three months has been erased.

  87 → the closest word

  Open the front door like a Band-Aid, the alarm goes off, and if Mom and Dad weren’t awake already, they are now, but one thing I know: I need my room. I keep my head down, avoid the kitchen, scramble upstairs, lock the door, crash into bed, and let this thing sweep over me. Something between grief and regret and impulsive anger, but all of it and all at once, and because there is no protocol for being told you have to relive a portion of life—no map or outline or anyone who’s been there before who can say, It’s going to be okay—I’m left with a nameless feeling.

  A knock on my door. “Noah!” Dad doesn’t wait for me to answer before trying to come in. “Noah, open the door.”

  “I’m okay, Dad. Just need some sleep.”

  “Noah, let me inside now.”

  He doesn’t get angry often, so when it happens, it’s unnerving. I open the door, and the minute I see his face, I know: whatever this is, it’s not anger.

  “Where have you been?” he asks.

  “Sorry. The party went late, I crashed at Alan and Val’s. I know I should have texted but—”

  His face is unreadable; and for some reason the house suddenly seems quiet.

  “Dad.”

  He swallows, and his eyes go empty, and as Dad talks, that nameless feeling begins to take shape, Last night Alan hit his head in the Longmires’ pool, begins to come together into something recognizable, He was without oxygen for a while, begins to shift into focus, He’s at Chicago Grace now.

  “Is he okay?” I ask; it doesn’t sound like my voice.

  “He’s in the ICU. Stable, but we don’t know much. Mom’s there now.”

  “I have to go. I have to be there.”

  Dad nods. “You ready?”

  * * *

  On the drive in, Dad explains how just after one a.m. Val called, trying to find me, and when she told them what happened, they dropped Penny at the neighbor’s so Dad could go out looking for me, and Mom could join the Rosa-Haases at the hospital. “She’s been there all night.” It’s quiet for a second, and then he says, “I went to the Longmires’. To find you, I mean. You weren’t there, so I drove the streets to see if you were out walking. I kept calling you, and I was about to call the police.”

  I am only vaguely aware of the conversation, of Dad’s asking where I was without really asking.

  I am only vaguely aware of my existence in this car.

  I should have been there.

  I pull out my phone to call Val—and my stomach turns: five voicemails, a dozen missed calls, a string of texts from Mom and Dad, and a series of texts from Val, the first of which is a single word, time-stamped 1:01 a.m.

  Val: Noah

  Val: Where are you??

  Val: Alan hit his head

  The next message is time-stamped 3:22 a.m.

  Val: We’re at Chicago Grace. He won’t wake up

  Val: Where the fuck are you

  I should have been there, should have been there, should have been there, should have been by the pool to jump in and grab him, should have been at the house to stop him from swimming high in the first place, should be at the hospital right now at the very fucking least.

  “It’s going to be okay,” says Dad, but we both know it means nothing.

  Numbness: it’s the closest word.

  88 → mirrored lives

  I was twelve the first time I went to Wrigley Field. After watching hundreds of televised games I was all geared up to see the park in person: that Kong-sized marquee, the brick and ivy walls everywhere, the sun shining bright on a big Cubbie win. But it was overcast when we arrived, and the average-sized marquee promoted Budweiser as much as it did the Cubs, and the outfield walls were the only ones covered in ivy, and I saw them for all of twenty minutes before it started pouring.

  This was not the Wrigley I knew.

  Alan is on his back in bed, not flat, but propped up a little. His eyes are closed, he has a tube down his mouth, a tube in his nose, a neck brace, an IV running into his arm, and when I walked in, my first thought was, Sorry, wrong room.

  This was not the Alan I knew.

  I hug Mom, then Mr. and Mrs. Rosa-Haas, and then Val—this one lasts longer. “I’m sorry, Val. I should have been there. I’m so sorry.” She shakes her head in my neck, and I feel the dampness of her tears, her runny nose, and from here I see Alan’s head in the brace, pierced by the tubes, and I just can’t fucking believe it. Mr. Rosa-Haas says something about getting coffee, and the adults leave, and now the three of us are alone.

  “I told him not to,” says Val. “Told him he was being stupid, he should just ignore Jake,” and she goes on to explain how at first no one knew what had happened, and by the time someone realized Alan was underwater, it took a while for them to heave him out, at which point he wasn’t responding. “We got him in my car and brought him here. I went, like, a hundred the whole way.”

  “Do they know anything yet?”

  Val shakes her head. “They did a CAT scan, I think. MRI, maybe. Said he definitely hit his head, so.”

  I can see it, all of it: Alan jumping in, wanting to put Jake in his place, swimming right for the wall, misjudging . . .

  Val starts crying. “I heard them tell my parents they wouldn’t try to wake him up until he could breathe on his own. Until then”—she points to one of the machines next to his bed—“this thing does it for him.”

  It’s quiet as we stand arm in arm over Alan, and I can’t stop re-creating what it must have looked like, and how different it would have gone had I been there. But I wasn’t, and now Alan is in this bed, hooked up to all these devices, and who knows if he’ll ever wake up.

  “Just look at him,” says Val, and she takes her brother’s limp hand, linking the three of us together, the most delicate of triangles.

  * * *

  I stay at the hospital all day. And I don’t know when, because time isn’t compatible in this room, but at some point Dad leaves to get Penny. It’s decided he’ll take her home, and Mom will get lunch for the rest of us, and afterward, she’ll wait with me here, and I wonder how anyone is capable of making plans right now, or why anyone would ever make a plan, seeing as how everything goes to shit anyway.

  Twice—once when Mom was reading a magazine, once when she fell asleep—I found myself staring at the side of her face: that smooth skin, not even the hint of a scar.

  I am vaguely aware of a dinner of some kind.

  I am vaguely aware that I haven’t cried yet.

  I am vaguely aware that Val and I have not spoken since I first arrived. But then no one is talking, not really.

  A few times I think I see Alan’s fingers move, but I can’t be sure.

  And that night, when they say, “Family only,” I tell Mom I’m sleeping in a chair in the general waiting room.

  She sleeps in the chair next to me.

  89 → passage of time (III)

  Three days and counting. I visit mornings and nights.

  I would stay if they would let me, but they don’t.

  When not in the ICU, I’m locked in my bedroom with this numbness, my new shadow. I sleep the hours away, and sketch morose diagrams of failed skydiving attempts, burst goiters, and the face of an old woman whose existence has been made utterly common by the a
dvancing world. And I feel every moment slipping away as it passes, like I boarded some infinite bus, but missed my stop, so now I’m doomed to watch everyone around me get exactly where they’re going, knowing I’ll never join them. Exiting the robot has never meant death, not to me, but maybe that’s what happens when you miss your stop. Maybe you’re stuck in this sort of existential purgatory, not quite here, not quite there, not anywhere really.

  Nights, Mom sits on the edge of my bed and tells stories like she did when I was little. I lie there while she talks, and when she’s done she kisses my forehead, and in those moments I am forced to consider the depths of my own darkness, that in the stage performance of my time Under, my subconscious self would cast my loving mother as an alcoholic who drove her car into a telephone pole with young Noah in the backseat. And when the soft click of the door announces Mom’s departure from my room, I am left alone in the dark to think about that; I am left alone to resume my undoing.

  I would move into Alan’s room if they would let me.

  But they won’t.

  90 → relive

  “It puts you behind right out of the gate,” Mom says, but I can’t quit staring at the side of her face. “I’m not going, Mom,” and I roll over in bed, pull the clean white sheets up to my chin; outside my door I hear their muffled argument in the hallway.

  After skipping the first two days, my parents have decided it’s time for me to go to school. They can say what they want, but my best friend is in a coma that I could have prevented had I not gotten drunk and let a madman drop me in his rat cage for three months (or six hours, whatever), so no, I don’t think I’ll get up and get dressed and restart a year I’ve already halfway finished.

  I grab my computer, climb back into bed, open my manuscript and stare at the screen. I’d left it open to the last thing I’d written: A Concise History of Me, Part Twenty-Two, about a boy and his dog in Chauvet Cave. Below it, there is nothing. Eighteen Concise Histories, thousands of words—gone. Like they never existed.

  They never did, I guess.

  * * *

  Can you burst an eardrum with a finger, or would it take something sharp, say, a pencil? Can you break a kneecap with a hammer, and how long does it take a lighter to burn through skin and muscle before finding bone, and how many stories can a person fall from and survive, and what is the meatiest part of the human anatomy, the place you could really do some damage before ending a person’s life?

  I don’t visit Alan today. Instead I sink into the heaviest of underwaters, my blankets and pillows, and I lie there with the lights out, envisioning creative ways to inflict pain on Circuit. From the outside looking in I imagine one might think, It was three months—get over it, but it’s not about the time, not really. It’s about the Manhattan State trip, and the Wormhole. It’s about every story Mr. Elam or Philip Parish told, the thousands of words I’d written that were now erased. It’s about how of course Sara Lovelock loved what I loved, had the voice of an angel, was obsessed with Mila Henry, and basically embodied everything I’d ever wanted in a girlfriend: she was, quite literally, my Dream Girl.

  It’s about my best friend who may not wake up.

  What you do, what you think, who you do it with—this is your life. So yeah, it was three months, but it’s not about the time. It’s about the life.

  91 → the contingency of caring

  “Val won’t leave.” Mom looks like she’s been crying; she’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Dad steps lightly into the room behind her. “She says you didn’t visit today, and she’s not leaving until she sees you.”

  I haven’t gotten out of bed yet, and unless . . . “Has anything changed? With Alan?”

  “No,” says Dad.

  How such a small word can be so damaging, I’ll never know.

  I roll over, pull my comforter over my head. “I’m tired. Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow.”

  From under the covers, I hear Dad circle the room until he’s standing over me. “You think this isn’t hard for the rest of us? Alan is like a second son to me, Noah. And when he wakes up, imagine his disappointment when he finds his best friend out cold. Now Val has absolutely planted herself in the kitchen because she cares. You know what that is? That’s a friend.”

  I feel like crying, but can’t. Take a deep breath, pull back the comforter: “I should shower first.”

  Dad’s face is pure relief. “We’ll sit with her until you’re ready.”

  After they’re gone I get out of bed, grab some fresh Navy Bowie, but before I get to the bathroom, Penny walks in.

  “Hey, Penn. I can’t really talk right now.”

  She walks over to my desk, sets a piece of paper next to my laptop. “I made something for you.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  “I miss you, Noah.” Fluff emerges out of nowhere. “Right. We both do, I guess.”

  After Penny and Fluff leave, I pick up the folded paper. It has my name drawn in marker across the front: the O in NOAH is a bright yellow sun, and the A is an upside-down heart. I unfold it and cry for the first time in days.

  Dear Noah,

  “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”

  Have you read Les Misérables, darling? Victor Hugo was a freaking genius, IMO. Anyway, you’re in the middle of a pretty dark night right now, I think, so I wanted to remind you that the sun will rise. It will! Promise, K?

  Love,

  Penelope

  PS—And maybe after it rises we can watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Consider it, darling.

  * * *

  Val’s hair is dirty, she’s still wearing the same holey jeans from the hospital, and when she asks, “Where were you today?” the tension in her voice is palpable.

  “I don’t know, Val. How is he?”

  “Same. I don’t know.”

  “But he can’t breathe on his own?”

  She shrugs. “Soon, they hope.”

  “They hope.”

  Val pushes herself up onto the counter. “Noah, I need you right now. My parents are worthless, totally outside themselves. You cannot check out on me again.”

  “Again?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t, actually.”

  Val says, “You’ve been different for weeks. Distant, or something.”

  I know what Dad said, that Val is here because she cares, but caring is contingent on the one receiving it. I’m about to say as much, but instead what comes out is, “Val, where are you going to college next year?”

  “What?”

  “Next year. Where are you going?”

  She slowly drops down off the counter, and I can tell she’s about to cry. “Who gives a fuck about college right now? Alan is hanging by a thread, and of all the people in his life, No, I cannot fucking believe you are as checked out as you are.”

  “Val, listen. I’m not—I’m not checked out. Something happened to me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “At the party. Or afterward. I met someone, and I’d had too much to drink, and I shouldn’t have been so trusting, but like you said—I’ve been off for a while, and he said he could help—so I followed him to his house. Val, this kid—he fucked with my brain. I am not right.”

  The kitchen feels eerily silent for a beat, and then Val says, “Was it Circuit?”

  There is this thing, I think, an unnamed thing that lives so deep down inside, we forget it’s there; but once in a while something happens to set that unnamed thing on fire. “What?”

  “Circuit Lovelock.” She steps forward.

  “Hold on.”

  “I have to tell you something, Noah,” and that fire inside becomes a flame. “Remember last week when we were all in the pool, and I mentioned how the Lovelocks had come over for dinner? They brought us that giant tin of caramel corn that Alan was goin
g on about. He was at practice the night they came over. Anyway, after dinner, Circuit asked about my photography, so I showed him some of my equipment. And I don’t know, we were talking about hobbies, I think, and he mentioned how he was into hypnosis, and—”

  “Hang on.” I grab Val’s hand, lead her down to the confines of the basement, where she continues.

  “So Circuit tells me this story about a friend of his who’d busted his knee playing basketball, but apparently all the doctors said this kid was fine. The kid wasn’t lying, it was just a psychological thing. So he brings the kid over to his house, puts him under—hypnotizes him, I mean—and afterward the pain is gone. Just like that. Noah, all I could think about was you and your back, how no one could pinpoint what was wrong. So I told him about you.”

  “Told him what, exactly.”

  “I told him how one of my friends hurt his back swimming, and how you’d been in like a . . . fog ever since.”

  “A fog?”

  “Circuit said he could help, but it had to be organic. Said it couldn’t feel like a blind date, or an official meeting or something. It couldn’t feel set up, or else you wouldn’t be relaxed enough.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing, not really. I just had to get you to the party. And then to the library.”

  And now: I know who Circuit was referring to when he’d said, I had some help, and now: I remember it was Val who pointed me in the direction of the library at the Longmire house, and now: standing in this basement, I think back to a time long ago when two friends watched Across the Universe, how simple things had been, and how much things had changed since.