Leuthold Preparatory | ✓

Chapter Eleven

The Recordings

Yard work was a penalty that lasted. Over the next week, Noah fell into the routine of waking before Liam, turning off his alarm, getting dressed, and heading to the shed. By the third day, Hannil had started to wait for him at the top of the steps and they had started a conversation that would last them the entire morning by the time they reached the front door of the dorm.

Noah hadn't had someone like that before, he realized. Someone that waited for him, that went out of his way to talk to him. In reality, Noah thought in quiet moments, he had never had a friend like Hannil Sinclair. All of the friends were deemed by his parents, or by the circumstances of simply having the same classes. Yet, most of his friends were laidback, quiet, reserved; they didn't rail against the system the way Hannil did, they didn't have stories or even talk the way he did. They minded Noah's silence, they minded his reservations, they minded his everything, but Hannil seemed to go right along, the only thing Noah minded was his acquired nickname. 

In that week, Noah felt as though he had learned a lot about Hannil Sinclair. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes that smelled sweeter than Noah ever imagined and were nowhere near as disgusting as Noah imagined them to be. He was a fast runner, he often left to get them breakfast and returned within fifteen minutes during their early morning punishment. He truly and wholeheartedly enjoyed singing and did not seem to be aware when he started and stopped. He whistled and mimicked bird calls to the point that he could get a bird to come out of the forest. What Noah considered to be of the most interest was that he knew anything and everything there was to know about plants and how to maintain a garden.

("It's not really a hobby of mine," Hannil had answered him after Noah worked up the courage to ask. "My grandmother has a massive garden. As a kid, I grew up hopping on a train and going to Nan's to play and work with her in the garden. I do enjoy gardening and plants--I often think of things as being very fragile, yet every time I stepped on a plant, accidentally over-watered, accidentally set them on fire, they came back. I like to think that motivates me to keep coming back after the harshest of trials and treatments the world hands out to me.")

"You are very social for an ugly person," Liam said after Noah had explained the topic Hannil and he had talked about all morning: The Existence of Trees, as Hannil had put it. Hannil wasn't just well-read in the sense of books of fiction and art, but he had dozens of books of theology and philosophy. Noah couldn't shake the look of them when Hannil stacked several of them up and said: "If I don't read all of these, I'll never be able to be a good man."

"Thank you," Noah replied bitterly to Liam.

"You're not that funny either," Liam continued. "I suppose you must not be all that ugly."

"I'm not really ugly, Liam!" Noah groaned.

"You said you are unsociable."

"I am!"

"Yet you have made several friends."

Noah dropped his shoulders. "I have spent most of my life avoiding people. I don't go out of my way to find friends."

"Why not?"

Noah paused for a long while. He didn't want to answer with what came to mind. He didn't enjoy what he knew the answer to be. The reasons why he never liked being close to people. Why his quiet was more comforting, why his solitude was better.

"Mr. Cooper," Headmaster Berg's voice bordered on welcome to Noah's ears.

"Yes?" Noah squeaked out as he turned towards him, he saw that he and Liam had wandered towards the Headmaster's office. Noah had planned to go back outside, to see if he could join Hannil in the garden. It was so warm out that Noah didn't want to miss what games Hannil was certain to play on unsuspecting people.