We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Eleven

Ms. Warren must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, because she wanted to start off the class with model work instead of a giddy rant about some new artist she had discovered. Maybe it was the weather—it was gloomy outside, the first sign that summer was really ending.

"Do I have a volunteer to model?" Ms. Warren asked when everyone had taken a seat.

No one spoke up. All of our eyes flicked around the room, waiting for a hand to go up, or wondering which of us Ms. Warren would choose as her victim. It was nerve-wracking, being a model. All those eyes fixed on you, trying to memorize you, while you think about all your flaws and worry because you can't remember whether or not you combed your hair that morning. And if you chose an ambitious pose, God help you hold it for twenty minutes. My arms still ached when I remembered the time I decided to hold them above my head while posing.

"Guess I'll pick on the new kid," Ms. Warren said. "Noah Lord, come on down."

Wait, seriously?

Noah slowly stood, his chair scraping on the floor, but he walked to the middle of the room with a rueful smile on his face, like he had known this was coming. My heart thudded in my chest. The thought of staring at him long enough to draw him kind of made me feel like... like I was on fire. Ms. Warren dragged a table into the middle of the room and Noah lifted a chair up onto it. He made an easy jump up onto the table and sat down, stretching out his mile-long legs.

"Draw me like one of your French girls," he drawled. Every girl in the room laughed.

My cheeks grew hot. I did want to draw him. I wanted to drag my charcoal across the page in long lines, because he was made up entirely of long lines. I wanted to stare at his face in profile until I could recreate every feature on paper. His nose, long and straight; his lips, full and pillowy, and ready to break out in a condescending smile at any second. God, what a face. If I drew it, I would have it to look at whenever I wanted. If it was in my art class sketchbook, I wouldn't have to risk staring at him in person.

But what if someone saw it? What if they could read my feelings from the strokes of my pencil?

Maybe... My fingers started to tingle with the beginning of an idea. I knew I had to do it.

I raised my hand. "Can I run to the A/V studio? I need to grab something for this exercise."

Ms. Warren's eyebrows raised. "What do you need?"

"A microphone."

Noah's head turned just slightly in my direction, but I left him hanging. I jogged down a few halls to the studio and went immediately for my junk drawer. I found what I was looking for at the very back. It looked like a doctor's stethoscope, because that's basically what it was. It could plug into my phone and record things—like heartbeats—by being held against something—like Noah's pulse point.

I invented the art project as I walked back to Ms. Warren's room: I would say I was collecting heartbeats for some project. I was making a podcast intro out of them, or a song, or some kind of ambient soundscape that used heartbeats to calm people. Or something.

All I knew was that I was fascinated by Noah, and that a recording on my phone would be a safer way to indulge that than a drawing of him in a sketchbook.

I stepped back into the classroom. Everyone was working diligently, heads down. They mostly sketched, but Sam Weingartner, our resident stop-motion animator, was sculpting a tiny Noah out of clay, arms and legs as long and spindly as Jack Skellington's.

I stepped up on Noah's right side. He kept his head faced forward, but his eyes slid to scrutinize me.

"What have you got, there?" he asked.

I held it up. "It's a microphone. It's... um, can I... record your heartbeat?"

He raised his eyebrows, implying a question, but saying nothing. My stomach wobbled.

"It's for a project," I blurted out. "An art project. A podcast I'm working on. I need a lot of heartbeats. So, um, can I just record yours for a few minutes?"

He nodded and, in my excitement, I almost dropped the microphone when I tried to plug it into my phone. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

"I'm just going to hold this against your neck," I said.

"Go on."

I pressed the mic just under his jawline. I could feel the solidness of his body under my fingertips. We were only separated by this bit of plastic. If my hand slipped, my fingertip would graze his neck. What would that feel like?

A whole thirty seconds passed before I realized I hadn't set my app to record. I remedied that, and then I was too aware of the fact that each second was being documented on my phone. Would the mic pick up my own erratic hearbeat as it drummed against the pad of my thumb? I wished I had thought to test it and find out exactly what it would pick up.

Maybe if I studied Noah closely enough, I could guess his heartrate. His long, light eyelashes fluttered like the wings of a beetle. His nostrils flared a little. Maybe he was a bit uncomfortable with how close we were. We were strangers, but here I was, just a few inches away, recording the internal sounds of his body. When I thought of it like that, I realized just how intimate this was. I was literally recording the sound his heart makes, the engine that powers his body, as if I had a claim to it.

I suddenly felt hot. Noah looked at me and I looked down at my phone. I watched the seconds tick past on my recording app, counting down to the time I could step away from him and back into normalcy. Because this was not normal—standing this close to him, almost touching him, watching every movement of his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

Ms. Warren clapped, jolting me out of my reverie. "Okay, let's wrap up. We'll move on to solo work."

I took a big step backward, taking the mic off his skin.

"Thanks," I blurted out before darting back to my seat.

I couldn't believe it. I had done it. On my phone, I had a recording of Noah's heartbeat. I sat down, took out my planner, and began work on next week's A/V club schedule, but the whole time my ears rang, my blood pumped violently through my veins, my hands shook.

That recording beckoned to me throughout the rest of the school day, but I resisted its siren call until after school. I trekked out to the parking lot, resigned to my own weakness like an addict who knew he was about to relapse. I didn't even really know what I was feeling—was I excited to hear it? Was I just a bundle of indecent anticipation, like a young boy running off to masturbate?

The similarity to that feeling was unsettling.

I unlocked my car, got inside, and locked the door, as if anyone would randomly open the doors and intrude. I pulled out my earbuds, wedged them into my ears, and pressed play with a shaking finger.

Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud—   

It went on. And on. And on. It was fast. Beyond fast—it was frantic. It sounded like Noah had been running a marathon at the time of recording. But he was just sitting there, barely moving, barely breathing, except for his darting eyes.

Had the microphone picked up my own pulse? Maybe, but I didn't hear anything else in the recording. There was no background sound at all, just the singular heartbeat. If it was picking up mine, surely it would also pick up his and I'd hear some kind of steady background pulse?

Thudthudthudthudthudthudthudthudthud—

If that hammering was really his heart... Noah, in that moment, was anything but calm.

I listened to the three-minute recording a couple times through. I put the recording on repeat on my car stereo and drove home immersed in the heavy heart thuds. I felt like I had slipped into Noah's veins and become a part of him, and that thought made my own heartbeat race just as fast.        

He must have felt that same rush while sitting just inches away from me. Something made his heart race. For me, it was him.

For him, was it me?