How to Save Noah Brown

Chapter 2

Tick tick tick tick tick.
My eyes zeroed in on the pen, bouncing against the desk and clicking rapidly.
Tick tick tick tick.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.
"Could you stop that?"
Miss. Haywood looked up from a file, confused. "Huh?"
"Your pen," I motioned bluntly.
"Oh," she murmured, her eyes flickering back to the white sheets in front of her.
I rolled my eyes, waiting for her to finish. Every week she did this, meticulously reading through my unchanged file, before commencing our annual and obligatory 'counselling'. It normally took at least five minutes.
Why did she do this?
I had long since suspected it was a nervous ritual, a way of off putting the uncomfortable session for as long as she could.
My eyes flickered to the framed photo on her desk, of Miss. Haywood dressed in Arizona State merchandise, huddled with her friends in the bleachers of probably a football game. She was young, and this was her second year as a high school counsellor.
Before me, the main aspect of her job was class transfers and college admissions.
I knew I was a lot for her handle, but something she felt she had to.
She tucked her newly short hair behind her ears, before looking up at me with a large, cheery, smile. She was about 27- and occasionally confused as one of the students.
"So, Noah, how are you?" She crooned.
"I'm fine."
"That's good, good. And you dad?"
"He's out of town working."
"Oh really? He's just so smart, your father. And so successful for his age. I bet your proud."
"Hmm," I attempted to ignore her blatant crush on my father, ever since she met him. I knew she thought their union was plausible, what with their close ages.
"Is it lonely, when he's away?"
I pursed my lips, unsure how to answer. "It gets quiet. I don't stay at home often anyway."
"Yes, I know you like to go out with your friends..." She murmured, flicking through past notes from our sessions. "What else do you do, Noah?"
I shrugged.
I didn't 'do' a lot. I grocery shopped, and cooked dinner for one. I went out and got smashed. I did something to keep me away from the house and the quiet. Or I laid in bed all day during the weekend, staring at the ceiling in silence, until it was time to go out again.
"You used to be very involved in the school didn't you? I've got notes here saying you were a state runner at one time. Is that true?"
"That was a while ago."
"I know it was. You also were involved in various clubs, like debate. And on honour roll. That's very impressive."
"I'm still in advanced classes," I sighed.
"There's no denying you're a very...gifted girl. But there's been an obvious lack of effort on your part. You aren't applying yourself like you used to. You're not excelling like you used to."
I blinked rapidly. This was not typical. Miss. Haywood was meant to ask me basic questions about Caroline, how I felt, and what was my life like. And I was meant to return with monotone, short replies that she would accept with incredible fake pleasure, and we'd be on our way. This was meant to be a small inconvenience, an experience that the both of us could brush away with little thought until the next week.
So what the hell was she doing?
"Noah," she leaned forward across her desk, her eyes uncharacteristically sharp.  "You went through something no person should ever have to, and you battled through it. However, it's been a year. And while I'm not saying anyone expects you to be unchanged from these events, there is a point where you must move on, and return to life as normal. You cannot let yourself be defined by the sadness in your life."

I wanted to take her nauseating monogrammed picture frame and smack her over the head with it.  "Okay."
"Okay..." She repeated, disbelieving. "Okay."
Her tone had a newfound confidence.
"You need to do something for yourself. Right now, your in a very stagnant state. You need to go out and do an activity for the first time since Caroline passed. Go on a date. Read a new book. Go for a run. Make a new friend. I need you to...to...to challenge yourself. You need to grow. "
She paused and we both sat there in silence.
I didn't need to do anything.
It felt like there was a sudden thorn in my side, piercing through skin and wedged between tissue. The thorn was Miss. Haywood's new ideas on counselling.
I didn't need her help- what happened, happened, and I was functioning just fine.
"What's changed?" I asked, coolly.
She cocked her head to the side, surprised by the question. "What do you mean, Noah?"
My voice was strong and lacked hesitation, "Why are you suddenly acting like a therapist?"
Her expression did little to hide how shocked, or offended she was. "Noah that's part of my job. I'm a crutch for you, until your healed."
I rolled my eyes at the metaphor.
"Okay...okay." Again, her hands went to smooth the hair tucked behind her ears, as she avoided my steady gaze. "I'll admit, despite my best efforts I may not have been the best counsellor to you when it came to your...grievances. I want to help you Noah, I really do. So over the break, I did a little extra studying of my own."
"Congratulations."
She visibly flinched at my sarcasm. Her newfound confidence was long gone.
With a quick check to her wrist watch she sighed. "Our time is up, so you can go back to class now."
I slowly got up and made my way to the door. Halfway out she called, "And Noah? I mean it when I say do something new."
I nodded, and continued to back out into the office while looking at her.
Which was how I collided into a body.
"What the hell?" Looking up from the ground, my eyes connected with an angry pair of blue ones.
I drew my gaze away, taking in my spilt bag before me. Great. Robotically, I began scooping back the pens and notes into my purse, stopping when I noticed the tapping foot in my eyesight.
The owner was still looking down coldly. "What's your issue?"
I looked behind me, to check if he was speaking to someone else.
"Excuse me?"
"Are you slow?"
I paused. No one talked to me like that. Ever.
In fact, no one, save for those I  knew personally, dared to speak more than a few sentences to me. I slowly stood up, my eyes coming to his wide, built chest.
"No," I murmured, in a daze by his intensity.
"How about you learn to keep your eyes ahead of you?"
"Callum?" Miss. Haywood's sweet voice called from the doorway. "I'm ready to talk about your college admission now."
He pushed past me, leaving behind an ache in my shoulder, and the smell of his aftershave.
I let out a deep breath when the door clicked shut behind me.
What the fuck is up with this day?
*
"Gun to your head," Alyssa began, leaning across her lunch tray, "do you do the dirty with Mr. Napthine," she gestured to the overweight, elderly physics teacher, "or kill Mrs. Rendall?"
"Kill Mrs. Rendall. Easy," Jason responded quickly. "Karma for the week of detention."
"Yeah but you'd have to store the body and hide the evidence, and deal with the guilt."
Jason shrugged, "Better than receiving from Mr. Napthine's little friend. Could you imagine the emotional scarring? I'd have PTSD."
"Interesting," Alyssa started, holding up a turkey sausage, breakfast link. "I never said you had to be the one to take the sausage." She wiggled it at him mischievously.
Two trays landed on the table either side of me, followed by their owners.
Duncan smiled at me briefly, before turning to join the conversation, pushing back his over grown locks.
Olivia, on my other side, tapped me on the shoulder and smirked coyly. "Gun to your head, are you going to kiss my ass, or my feet?"
In her hands she held out my missing wallet and phone, the ones that had been abandoned in the chaos of Jason Strewer's party.
"Oh my god, I'll do whatever you want. Thank you so much for going back for me."
"Anything for you. There was no way he could have found it on his own," she motioned to him across the table, now in a heated debate with Alyssa.
"Well, consider me eternally grateful. That night was such a bust. God, I hate our high school parties."
She nodded, while playing with her food. "I know what you mean, babe. They can be slightly dull compared to what we like."
Olivia and I had rarely spoken at the start of high school, but after Caroline died I couldn't handle being with my old friends. They're structured and polished way of living clashed with my suddenly chaotic and uncertain life.
Their sympathetic eyes were laced with judgement. They pitied me and  they looked down on the way I fell off the face of the earth in those first few months.
I had seen Olivia in a bar on the outskirts of town 4 months after the funeral. She didn't ask me questions, and she seemed to understand the fact that I wanted to go out, and I wanted a distraction.
This lead to the countless nights in bars and clubs that now makes up my routine.
Across the table, Alyssa leaned forward to kiss Jason on the cheek,  "Babe, I promise to never say that you like taking it, again."  
Jason huffed in response.
"Babe," Duncan began, in a tone matching Alyssa's,"I promise to always remind you how nauseating you two are."
"Literally Duncan," Alyssa began, "If you weren't such a..."
I was distracted by the movement in the lunch line.  A tall boy sauntered up to the middle, and was met with a chorus of cheers by his friends, all looking to clap him on the back. He turned his head, exposing his side profile.
It was the boy from earlier.
Who was he?
No longer in shock by his scathing tone, I could take in his features. And appreciate them. His tanned skin was pulled tight over his pronounced jawline and high cheekbones. From distance, I could still see how he filled his clothing out, hinting towards the possible muscle that accompanied his athletic built. His hand moved up to run through his dark, unruly locks.
He was hot as hell.
"Who is that?"
Olivia followed my gaze. "What do you mean 'who is that', it's Callum Gray."
She met my silence with shock, "Don't you dare tell me you don't- Noah come on? That boy has been going here for, God, almost a year, pretty soon. How have you not noticed that tight little ass roaming the halls?"
I took a bite of my carrot stick. That meant he showed up a few months after she died. When everything was grey and dull and silent. Of course I didn't notice him.
"He yelled at me. We bumped into each other and he yelled at me."
"Oh, well ignore him. Either he doesn't really know, about you, or he's just a dick."
I smiled. Maybe he didn't care.
After watching him disappear into Miss. Haywood's office, I could hear my heart in my ears. No one had spoken to me with such anger or such intensity in a year. His eyes lacked the sickening softening that comes with understanding, and instead the refreshing sting of hardness.
I liked his anger. It reminded me for a brief second, between the avoided eyes and heavy whispers, that I was alive, and worthy of his anger. I was normal.
"Callum Gray," I murmured, more to myself than Olivia, "what a dick."