Dries swinging his lanyard hither and yon: Check.

Mason looking distracted, his brain wandering off without asking permission: Check.

Kezia flicking through the textbook too quickly, skipping entire sections: Check.

As yet another sanity-warping past paper was placed on my desk, I wondered whether we required a mind map or a map of the frontiers of our own patience. All we need is a grade 4 next month, though to take on such a mission in our least favourite subject is, for us neurodivergent teens, to battle against not inconsiderable odds.

Afterwards, all seven of us sat on the grass in the early April sunshine, our brains buzzing at the prospect of a college-free fortnight. They are my crew, the people in my immediate orbit. And we all have ADHD.

“Sure you don’t fancy a bit of this Berrylicious, bro?”

Bailey, for whom conformity was a place of outright mystery, had fallen victim to one of teenage life’s more unfortunate commonplaces: that predictable cycle of regular vape fixes and perpetual cravings. I made it clear I wasn’t going to join him – and the hundreds of inveterate vapers around campus – any time soon.

“What shall we do later, gang?” asked Dries, whereupon – to no-one’s great surprise – Mason announced that he wished to head to Adrenergy.

“Valid” was Kezia’s terse response. “Look, our snap streak’s got to 157!”

Yes, our year has been punctuated by Thursday night visits to the nightclub-and-gig-venue adjacent to our college. The lights, the bass, the faces, the drinks – they all combine to create a sense of dislocation and estrangement from reality.

Tonight, our resident DJ asked how my revision was going - “pretty good, thanks” – before tumbling into an illustrative anecdote.

“You remember that band, the High Fidelity Superstars?”

“Oh...yes.”

“Well they’re playing here soon, you know?”

“Oh.”

“April 17.”

The resultant palpitations and expanded eyeballs – along with an unexpected discharge of semen – illustrated my elation.

On we went, with Bailey’s energy drink-assisted hyperactivity contrasting with Mason’s distracted disposition. I also ran into quondam college student Oscar, who invited us back to his flat for a post-disco catchup.

With the majority of my crew in an advanced state of disrepair, Oscar led the 2am vaping-with-drinks-and-Snapchat supplement, our fugacious classmate clad in only his boxers for reasons that weren't immediately obvious. Then again, us neurodivergents often act in a way that defies normal logic.

“Remember when I first saw you at Adrenergy?”

“Oh yeh, real.”

“There was this leng guy I met, I can’t recall his name though.”

“I don’t remember, bro.”

“Come on, you must. What was his name?”

I looked past his pristine white Calvin Kleins, the speakers upon which the Buddha collection rested, the array of sleepy faces. For the next hour, I was mentally hauling out images of the High Fidelity Superstars in a handcart and tipping them all over my mind.

The bluebells and forget-me-nots welcomed me back to Dragonfly Cottage, our family residence, for several days of sunshine, revision and relative calm. Easter though, also means lashings of E numbers, erotica and eternal Valorant tournaments; Mason and myself turned out to be ill-matched opponents for Dries and Lutricia in the latter.

Our group chat was peppered with loud promulgations of victory and trenchant remarks about my lack of gaming acumen, before I switched the subject to those Superstars once again. Even though the rest of the coterie greeted the news of an increasingly irrelevant chart act’s impending presence in our town with something of a stifled scepticism, they fully understood what it meant to me.

Oscar was in saturnine form – glaring not so much at me as through me – when we met up a few days later at the skatepark overlooking the cliffs.

“I just want to track this guy down, bro.”

“You still thinking about him?”
“For real. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

“Well I might not have time to help you out, fam.”

Clearly, this conversation wasn't going to get Oscar what he wanted. As he assessed the pros and cons of absquatulating there and then, eyeballing me with an almost laidback menace, I rerouted our discourse to the heartland territory of my own hyperfixation. How would I get within touching distance of the cordoned-off enclosure where my musical heroes and their acolytes reside without having a bona fide ADHD panic attack?

Our skyscraping levels of taking ordinary exercises to their extremes were again on display during our all-night revision refuge, with the volume of my headphones loud enough to obliterate all outside sound. The ADHD Revision Planner I’ve devised allows for some level of distraction, which my brain welcomed. Spending at least 70% of the night actually revising is some achievement for a teen with the disorder, a feat tantamount to winning a boxing match via split decision.

On our crew FaceTime chat, the other six regarded the Planner with a mixture of incertitude, disdain and boredom; Bailey gave me some exaggerated eye rolling, Kezia a guffaw dovetailing into a frenetic chorus of collective laughter. I’ll show you all, I thought.

Another Saturday at home. Another round of disordered notes and late-night revision sessions. Another flounce around my room after gainsaying my parents’ no-gaming-until-exams-are-over policy, enforced lest I fall into the torpid ways of the NEETs. Another hour of trying to convince them of my Planner’s merits, though what escaped my mouth sounded more like a supplication than a strategy.

As my date with the Superstars looms, my life has become an existential balancing act mirrored in their music, positioned one step to the side – if not ahead – of the rest.

Oscar’s long-held ambition of tracking down that mystery man from the past took him to the Shoreside Cafe, clad in vesture from his faux hip-hop wardrobe. I accompanied him and told him to focus on revision first, thereby espousing the ultimate apostasy in our perma-distracted world. You’d have thought the propinquity of exams – not to mention the prepollence of ADHD in our Creative Arts department – would have lent my instruction all the more weight and immediacy. But no, his acrasia had taken over; he spent yesterday watching a glut of documentaries about Osama Bin Laden (another of his inexplicable obsessions).

“I remember that boy’s name, you know.”

“Oh...calm. But do you recall what he looked like?”

“Of course. He’s over there!”

“What?”

“We’ve been together for three years.”

“I wish I'd said that!”

The growing swirl of minacious drama had abruptly vanished. Oscar was holding onto the dream whilst living with the reality.

Even though fans of the High Fidelity Superstars appear to be a vanishing species and local interest in this show was next to nil, I’d have thought their return here would bring more than a few spectators. The Adrenergy security guard recognised me, and upon hearing the name of the band I so venerate, recounted a tale of seeing the heyday version in the manner of a time-honoured fairy tale, postscripted by an assurance that they’ll “probably play here again sometime.”

“What do you mean? They’re playing here tonight!”

“Haven’t you got a calendar, mate? April 17 was yesterday!”

At once I felt intense chagrin and immense sadness. I could have lived with being the only attendee, but this was many dimensions worse. It bears repeating that Dries once said it takes us longer to recover from a setback than a neurotypical person. Trust me, I know. Time will tell if my neurology – and all its associated distraction propensities – will stop our seven from pushing harder on the doors my Planner has unlocked. For the moment, I remain a case study in the fine line between creative and directionless.

 

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