55. *musical interlude*

                                    

                                              
I felt as if I were bouncing on the tips of my toes, not sure if it were the Grande iced matcha latte I gulped down from the passenger seat of my mom's van on the way to school earlier that morning or earthshattering realization that Noel Preston was a songwriter that had me so energized before first period, despite the fact that I had slept for maybe four hours the night before, but I just couldn't believe it. Noel Preston was a songwriter, and not just that but a songwriter who also produced the entirety of Bridgette's album and provided background vocals. 
I almost felt like I should've been irritated to discover one more thing he was talented at doing, but instead I was just so intrigued, so astonished that some of the lyrics I had poured over all night were written by his hands or that the voice in the background of I Loved You and All I Got was this Dumb Song, harmonizing with hers and belting toward the end of the bridge. 
Even after I finally crawled into bed last night, I couldn't bring myself to fall asleep, instead staring up at the ceiling and imagining Noel in a recording studio, wearing those bulky headphones with his mouth close to a microphone, but it felt like it was from other some alternate universe, like I was dreaming before I even fell asleep and soon he would do another completely outlandish dreamlike thing like sprout wings or—like in the dreams I used to have about him—dissolve into ash when the principal personally awards me valedictorian in front of a cheering student body. 
I had asked my mother to bring me to school a little earlier that morning, explaining to her in the kitchen while she buttered her toast and I adjusted the slippery gel eye masks from sliding down my cheeks in a hopeful attempt of concealing the puffiness lingering there that there was a meeting happening before school, which technically wasn't a lie. There probably were a few meetings happening before school started, I just wasn't involved with any of them. 
After dropping out of the election for student council, I had made some vague undefined plan to find a different extracurricular to pad my college applications and devote my senior year towards, but I hadn't actually tried out for anything yet, usually just mumbling to my mother whenever she asked that I was thinking about joining the school paper or the debate team like I had been on back in Pennsylvania but I had a harder time caring about either of those things, or anything else, in the last month. 
I knew I needed to get around to it, and I was going to, but I just never felt like doing any of it, something I never remembered mattering so much before. Perhaps I needed to be stricter about getting at least six hours of sleep every night, maybe then the smallest tasks wouldn't feel quite so exhausting to complete. 
But, for once, I felt genuinely invigorated that morning while I idled around in the hallway near where Noel's locker was, not just something I was pretending to be for the duration of spirit week challenges or in the bookstore beneath our apartment to both customers and my mother alike. 
I might have even been a little too enthusiastic because I practically pounced on Noel the second he rounded the corner of the hall, his backpack slung over one shoulder and an unopened pressed green juice in his other hand, his eyes widening somewhat comically when I hurriedly approached him, grinning probably a little too broadly while the momentary surprise turned to suspicion in his increasingly weary gaze as he reached for the dial lock on his locker. 
"I need to talk to you," I told him in lieu of a proper greeting, too excited to become distracted with pleasantries like how his morning was going or if he slept well the night before, my fingers twisted behind my back as my eyes fleetingly drifted toward his own hand spinning the lock combination, wondering if I took a step closer if I would see calluses that I never noticed before. I tried to imagine him with a guitar, fingertips poised over the neck, but I couldn't see him with anything but an alarmingly dense textbook or occasional pitchfork.