The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [29]
Every night, Noah lay in bed, pulled up his Winnie the Pooh comforter, closed his eyes, and listed his joys and concerns, always ending with a joy to hold on to as he went to sleep, a practice instilled by his church. Tonight his concerns centered on Leigh. So did his joy. Let tomorrow allow me to have a better experience, he prayed.
The next morning, Noah got to school early, anxious about the physics test. At his locker, Leigh approached him, looking uncomfortable. “Can we talk?” she asked.
Noah’s stomach plummeted. “I’d like to, but I have to get to physics,” he said. She agreed to wait until lunch.
Noah was breezing through the test when, about midway through the period, he got nauseous. His stomach twinged in painful waves that would have doubled him over were he standing. Two classes later, he was so anxious he could hardly focus.
When the lunch bell rang, Noah stored his books in his locker and reluctantly walked to Leigh’s, where she waited with a piece of paper folded in half. “Can we talk now?” she asked. They sat on the floor, backs against a row of lockers.
“So,” Leigh said, her fingers fiddling with her lunchbox strap. She looked away from Noah, down the empty hall. “I don’t think our relationship is working out anymore.”
Noah’s eyes watered. He stared down at his palms, which reflexively curled. All the joy in my life is gone. “Is this something we can talk about?” Noah asked, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“No, we can’t,” she said. For twenty minutes, she explained why they had to break up. They had different outlooks on life, she said. He liked to argue (he preferred the term “analyze”); she didn’t. He was too immature, and yet he was also too serious. She loved him, she said. He was sweet, she said. It wasn’t going to work, she said.
Noah bent over his knees. His hair fell into his face and dampened. Leigh told him how hard it was to break up with him. She repeatedly urged Noah to read the letter she held. Grudgingly, he skimmed it through tears: thirteen bulleted points of heartache. The letter listed reasons why their relationship was failing. Leigh reached an arm toward Noah to comfort him. He flinched away.
The lunch bell rang. Noah stood up. “Can we be friends?” Leigh asked, her blue eyes sincere.
“We’ll have to see,” Noah replied. He couldn’t say yes. He thought he would throw up if he did. He needed to compose himself for school. As he walked away, he glanced back once to see a circle of supportive friends closing in on Leigh. No one looked twice at Noah.
At home that night, the hurt washed over him. He wrote a song for Leigh that she would never hear. He shuffled through a deck of Star Wars cards, seeking the kind of comfort he could find in doing something he considered geeky. Padmé Amidala, the Jack of Spades, surfaced. The quote on her card read, “I will not let you give up your future for me.” This reminded Noah of his sixth-period conversation with his guidance counselor, whom he had told that he wanted to help his ailing grandmother in California.
“That’s selfless, but you need to ask yourself what she would want you to do,” the counselor told him.
Noah stared at the card. His grandmother wouldn’t want him to sacrifice his schoolwork, but he would do anything to keep her around. He momentarily forgot about Leigh as he focused on Po. Noah finished going through the deck, unsoothed. It had been eleven hours since his “life came crashing down,” and he wasn’t in any less pain than he had been that morning. I have no idea what I’ve become. Nothing will be the same. This was one of the worst days of Noah’s life. He fervently prayed that he would find some way to cope. I want to be loved, Noah wrote in his journal that night. I want to be loved, I don’t care what it takes.
Because of the breakup, Noah had to switch cafeteria tables. Since freshman year, he had eaten lunch with Leigh and her friends, although her friends had never really become his friends.