13. Noa
NOA
Growing up, my dad loved to tell anyone who would listen that I learned to run before I could walk.
“This one,” he’d say, pointing at me like a prize heifer at the county fair, “came out sprinting.”
Which, gross. But also kind of true.
By sixth grade, I was the girl who had other kids faking asthma attacks to avoid racing me during PE.
Coach Martinez actually cried when she clocked my hundred-meter time.
Happy tears, she clarified, while shoving a track & field permission slip at my father through the driver’s window of our Subaru in the pickup line.
“Your daughter could get a full ride,” she said. “The Olympics aren’t off the table.”
Sitting in the backseat, Aiden cooed, “Noa’s gonna be famous. Better practice your autograph, diva.”
“Shut up, buttface.”
But secretly? I was already dreaming up how nice Noa Hart, Olympic Gold Medalist would look on a cereal box.
The thing about track was, it was mine. Just mine.
Being twins, Aiden and I did basically everything together–same classes, same friends, same cavernous hole in our heart left by the passing of our mom when we were toddlers.
Aiden would cheer me on from the stands at every meet, but when I ran, it was the only time I wasn’t part of a matched set.
I was just Noa. Singular. Flying. When I was running, I didn’t owe anything to anyone but myself.
Maybe that’s why it was so easy to give up.
By eighth grade, I wasn’t just good–I was untouchable.
College scouts were showing up to my meets, timing me with professional equipment, whispering to each other behind clipboards.
When Piedmont Prep in Redding, California offered me a full ride to join their elite athletic program, it felt like destiny calling.
“This is it,” Dad had said, eyes shining as he read the scholarship letter. “This is your ticket, kiddo.”
We sold everything, although we didn’t have much to begin with. Packed our whole lives into a U-Haul and drove south to move in with Dad’s sister and chase down my future.
Aiden had officially become Aiden the year before, and being trans in rural Washington had not been easy.
Even though technically he was born three minutes before me, I’ve always felt like the elder twin, protecting his softness from the world’s sharp edges.
Defending my sweet, creative sibling felt as inherent to me as breathing.
We hoped that California would be different for him. Progressive. Accepting.
We hoped wrong.
Piedmont was paradise for athletes. Olympic-sized track, professional coaches, a nutrition program that actually understood carb-loading.
The varsity team welcomed me like I was their missing link, their secret weapon for nationals.
But while I was doing two-a-days and getting fitted for my uniform, Aiden was navigating his own special hell.
He didn’t tell me, and I was too high on my own glory, too drunk on the new social echelon I’d been ushered into, to notice my twin was drowning.
One afternoon in early spring, I was in the locker room, lacing up my spikes for our first big meet, when Coach pulled me aside.
“Your brother’s been suspended,” she said. “Fighting. He broke another kid’s nose.”
The world tilted. Aiden didn’t fight. Aiden made art and cracked terrible puns and cried at dog food commercials.
“The kid called me a freak,” he’d tell me later. “Said worse things. I just snapped.”
The suspension meant he couldn’t attend school events. Including my meet.
“It’s fine,” he’d insisted as Dad drove us to the track. “I’ll wait in the car. Read or something. Better than watching other kids sweat anyway.”
“This is bullshit,” Dad muttered.
I warmed up, trying to focus. This meet was important. Scouts would be there.
They called us to the starting line. I crouched into position, fingers pressing into the rubberized track. The official raised his gun.
That’s when I looked up, past the stands full of strangers, to the parking lot, where I could see our beat-up Subaru just outside the gate. Dad and Aiden leaned against the car, arms folded identically. The two people in the world who mattered most to me.
“Runners, set!”
I rose into position.
But all I could think about was my brother. Punished for defending himself. Banished because yet another place had decided he didn’t belong.
The gun fired.
Everyone exploded forward. Except for me.
I stood up, stepped off the track, and walked away.
Coach was screaming. Officials were blowing whistles. I didn’t care. I strode right through the chaos, across the field, past the gawking spectators, to that goddamn parking lot.
Dad saw me coming. His face went through about seventeen emotions in three seconds.
“Noa, what–”
“We’re getting our GEDs,” I announced, yanking open the back door. “Both of us. Together.”
“Noa, no,” Aiden protested. His eye was still swollen from the fight. “This is your dream–”
“Dreams change,” I said. “We’re done here.”
Dad tried to argue. Aiden begged me to go back. The coach jogged over, promising we could work something out.
I didn’t budge.
That night, I took my shoebox of medals and buried them in Aunt Susie’s hall closet behind musty board games and Hanukkah decorations from the Carter administration. We were looking up GED programs by morning and I never ran competitively again.
The rest of that spring, I was climbing the walls.
Track season was happening somewhere without me, and I needed something, anything, to fill the Olympic-sized hole I’d punched in my own life.
Dad had started teaching English at the community college, and I’d wander campus between GED classes, restless and untethered.
That was how I wound up at the chemistry department’s open house one sunny afternoon.
Colorful neon balloons summoned me into the lab, where a small crowd gathered around a woman in a tie-dye lab coat as she poured cream into a bowl smoking with nitrogen, turning it from liquid to solid in seconds.
It was magic. It lit up my brain like a starting gun.
Forgetting anyone else was even in the room, I looked her in the eyes and asked, “Can I try?”
I didn’t know it yet, but that sorceress in front of me was Professor Celia Kersey, and she would become my mentor in all things ice cream for the next three years.
The precision of it hooked me immediately.
Ice cream was all about timing: knowing exactly when to add the stabilizers, how fast to churn, the ideal moment to stop before ice crystals formed.
It required the same obsessive attention to split seconds that track had demanded, except instead of shaving milliseconds off my time, I was chasing the perfect texture, the ideal melt, that fleeting moment of transformation.
Best of all, it was safe. No crowds watching. No scouts judging. No stakes except whether the lavender honey I brought home for Aiden tasted like frozen soap or actual dessert. I could pour all my intensity into something that wouldn’t leave anyone behind, wouldn’t force impossible choices.
But today reminded me that sometimes even a life devoted to ice cream can’t protect me from myself.
Sprinting out the doors of the CBT building is the fastest I’ve run in years. I don’t make it far, doubling over just around the corner, adrenaline burning through my veins. Those fast-twitch muscles still know what to do… my lungs, not so much.
I call a ride to Aiden’s, knowing he won’t be home for hours.
Better the colorful chaos of his maximalist backhouse than the unhip ADHD tornado waiting at mine.
I curl up among his throw pillows, turn off my phone, and fall asleep way too early, thankful for his blackout curtains and the half-smoked joint I find (and finish) in his vintage ashtray.
I’m awoken by blinding light and a bloodcurdling scream. Aiden, in an offensively sparkly poncho, stands by the lamp, hands clutched to his chest.
“Noa Jacqueline Hart! You just scared the living glitter out of me!”
I sit up groggily as everything I fell asleep to escape rushes back in. He must clock my overwhelm because he rushes over beside me and wraps me in his sequined arms.
“Talk to me, Nono. Why’re you here?”
“Spooey,” I mumble into his shoulder.
Like a drill sergeant, he repeats back, “Spooey, sir yes sir!” and hops up off the couch to grab the two most important ingredients to ever grace a kitchen pantry: pretzels and frosting.
Mouth full of my favorite snack, I finally tell Aiden everything that’s been going on, from Stella’s injury to destroying the city of Los Angeles with my butt to the horror of potentially being on national television followed by the horror of potentially not being on national television. The hot talk show host of it all…
Aiden listens without interrupting–truly, a spiritual feat for him. He sits cross-legged on the rug in his poncho, swirling a pretzel through the frosting tub while I talk myself hoarse.
When I finally run out of humiliating details, he crunches down on his pretzel and gives me a head tilt. “You done?”
“Pretty much.”
“Cool. Here’s what’s not gonna happen.” He sets the frosting down, climbs up onto the couch, and wedges himself next to me so our knees knock. “You’re not gonna run away again. We don’t do that anymore.”
“I wasn’t–I didn’t–” I sputter.
He flicks my forehead. “Yes you did. You bolted. And you’ve used up your lifetime supply of bolt credits, okay? You walked off the track for me. You’ve been stepping off tracks for years. You don’t get to do it again.”
My eyes sting. I lean my head against his shoulder, ignoring the sharp bite of sequins. “But what if I screw it up even worse? What if I’m not good enough for this?”
“Then you screw it up.” He shrugs like it’s obvious. “Big whoop. You’re still doing it. You’re not allowed to run away from yourself anymore. Not on my watch.”
“Coming from someone who calls watches ‘time shackles for the unimaginative.’”
“A gay can metaphor, okay?”
“It’s just… not that simple.”
“But it is.” He tugs me closer and drops a kiss on my hair. “Run toward something for once. Even if you trip over your own feet. Even if you demolish multiple fancy LA neighborhoods again. The world deserves to see what Noa Hart is capable of.”
I nod.
“Great,” he says. “Now that little fit is over, we’re going to get you prepared.”
“What do you–?”
“It is so utterly embarrassing that you showed up without doing your homework, so we’re not gonna let that happen again.”
Aiden pulls out his laptop and we spend the rest of the night watching clips of Aarti on Midnight Live .
Even when she’s a brand new cast member with bit parts, she’s a star.
Her timing is flawless. Her characters are unhinged and wide-ranging, from Wanda the Witness Protection Bridesmaid to Woman Who Got Neanderthal Results On 23andMe.
When she takes over the ‘Now News!’ desk for the first time and interviews the Pompeii Volcano, we both have tears in our eyes from laughing so hard.
I wish I wasn’t so genuinely impressed with her, but it’s pointless to deny it.
“This show rules,” I yawn to Aiden as I drift off on his shoulder.
I sleep another few hours, then text Stella when I wake up.
Tell Madge I’ll be there tomorrow.
I’m just drained enough that not even Jerky McGee can bully me into dressing up my exhaustion for someone else’s comfort.