I’m saying the noise is all the time. Everywhere. It’s like—He twirled his finger above his head. We stared at one another, not breathing. At least I wasn’t breathing. I didn’t realize you could forget how. He then said that, ever since I had asked about the sound in class a couple of months back, he realized that he could hear it too. His eyes darted about my face, searching for some reaction. Do you still hear it? he asked.

I swallowed and nodded. All the time, I replied.

Almost like . . . a kind of rumble.

Yes.

Almost like—

He tried to imitate the sound in his throat. Like a man groaning, after being stabbed. There was no human voice low enough to mimic the hum. It was an impossible sound. But I was strangely moved by his desire to try. I recognized the desire, viscerally. To give voice to the noise no one else heard. And yet someone finally did. Someone sitting a few feet away from me. It was hard to put into words what it felt like; to resign oneself to living invisibly, and then to realize you actually could be seen, by one person alone in the world. The intimacy of that. The relief. And for this person to be a seventeen-year-old boy, a student, and not just any student but Kyle Francis of all people, with his sullen precociousness. And though Kyle fell far short of imitating the hum, he somehow captured the feeling of being haunted by it. I could tell his sound was mine. I recognized it immediately. It made every hair on my body stand on end. He fell quiet, and then asked me what it was. I shook my head and told him that I wished I knew.

At first I thought it was a concussion, he said. I was playing ball and this guy hit me in the head with his elbow and I started hearing it. And it just never went away. But I went to the doctors and like—no concussion or anything.

He glanced towards the door of the classroom again, and then back down at his hands. You’re the first person I’ve told, he said.

Nobody else can hear it, I said. My family, my neighbours, they have no idea what I’m talking about. None of the teachers here.

Yeah, all my teachers are like hello wake up, he said, snapping his fingers. My friends think I’m high. I can’t concentrate. I’m getting in trouble.

I felt my face flush. I reached out and squeezed his shoulder, which I hoped he read as some kind of apology.

At night it’s worse, he added.

Oh my god.

Right?

So much worse.