The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [30]
Noah’s seating issues repeated themselves on the band bus to football games. Noah typically was the last student to get on the bus because he wanted to ensure that the equipment and instruments were loaded properly before the band left school. He didn’t know why he was the only bandie who felt responsible for this duty. Other bandies mocked his work ethic when he loaded supplies on the box truck or practiced marching formation. “Quit working so hard, man. You’re a band manager,” one senior said to him. “It’s not like working harder is going to get you to be drum major,” another bandie said. Noah knew that people thought band managers were a joke, but he wanted to prove that he deserved to be there. He liked that people considered him responsible. The adult volunteers, parents and staff, always thanked Noah effusively, as if he were going beyond the call of duty.
Seats on a band bus—Redsen’s band filled five buses, a forty-foot trailer, and a truck—were supposed to hold a few dozen students, volunteers, and a pile of uniforms. Usually by the time Noah got onto the bus, only a couple of seats would be left: inevitably one with the adults and one next to a stack of uniforms. Other kids saved blocks of seats for friends, but since Noah and Leigh’s breakup, the Honor Guards hadn’t been saving Noah a seat.
Noah knew he was different from “most high school kids who are crazy, outgoing, and fun,” he said. Recently, his Spanish teacher led an exercise in which she asked who in the class best exhibited certain traits. “Who’s nice?” she asked in Spanish. “Who’s tall?” For most traits the students offered various names, but when she asked, “¿Quién es serio?”, the class answered in unison, “Noah!” Noah laughed because it was true.
He liked his serious side, though he sometimes worried about how it set him apart from his peers. He was in touch with his emotions, rather than airbrushing them with fake happiness. But he was okay with that. And he had thought Leigh would have been okay with that too, after seventeen months.
Noah had always been in tune with his emotions and unafraid to express them. These characteristics were partly why classmates called him an emo throughout eighth and ninth grades, when he wore all black to reflect his mood. It didn’t mean much to him to be emo, but he identified with the label because he believed he was more emotional than his classmates. He had also briefly considered cutting on several occasions. Once, a student had reported to the school guidance office that Noah was suicidal. He wasn’t, though he had considered suicide in middle school. But classmates were thrown by his attempts to have discussions “on a higher plane” about feelings and deep, hard-hitting issues. They didn’t realize that he tried to help other people with their problems so he wouldn’t have to think about his own.
THE BREAKUP HAD DESTABILIZED Noah, who was crashing more than usual lately. Crashing was Noah’s term for anxiety attacks that made him at once confused, angry, and morose. Instead of crashing once a month, he was crashing every few days. He got two to three hours of sleep a night.
But Noah and Leigh set aside their conflict for an important meeting. Before the breakup, they had spearheaded Redsen High School’s first recycling program, for which they received permission from the administration to put recycling bins in eight classrooms. Once a week, Noah and Leigh collected the recycled paper and drove it to a designated bin outside Noah’s church. A recycling company picked up the paper and gave money to the church. At the meeting, Noah and Leigh delivered an impassioned presentation to persuade the church board to give a portion of the revenue to their school for student scholarships. The board listened patiently, then agreed to give Redsen 100 percent of the profits.
That night, when Noah, distraught over the breakup, was crashing again, his father came into the room. He hugged Noah,