Her Name in the Sky (17 page)

“Sweet,” says Clay, nodding his head as they all stand up. He opens the door and leads them toward the stairs. “They’ve probably all been wondering where we went.”

“Probably not,” Hannah mutters under her breath, and Wally catches her eye and smiles.

Downstairs, the party has degenerated into messy, erratic chaos. The floor is littered with beer cans and red cups, and a group of underclassmen has hijacked the stereo. As Hannah and her friends descend the stairs, Clay and Wally get pulled into conversation with a group of raucously drunk guys, but Hannah notices Clay’s eyes peering beyond them, searching for something. Hannah follows Joanie and Luke back into the heart of the room, where Tyler and some senior soccer players have taken to standing on top of the furniture and pumping their hands in the air. Everything in Hannah’s vision is dim, like someone has covered the sides of her eyes and placed a film over her pupils.

“Let’s jump on the furniture with them!” Joanie shouts into Hannah’s ear. Hannah turns to give her an incredulous look, but Joanie only barks with laughter, grabs Luke’s hand, and climbs on top of the kitchen table. As Hannah watches, Joanie sways back and forth with her blonde hair falling over her face, and Luke hops around in a circle next to her. The table thumps with their weight.

“Hey!” somebody shouts in Hannah’s ear, and she turns to find Baker behind her.

“Hi!”

“Where’ve you been?!”

“Upstairs!”

Baker cups a hand around her ear to indicate that she can’t hear, then takes Hannah’s hand and tugs her out of the crowd and down the hallway. Hannah thinks they’re going out to the porch, but Baker leads her through a side door into the garage. Hannah pulls the door closed behind them but hears it bounce off the lock.

“Leave it, it’s fine,” Baker says, walking further into the garage. “I just wanted some air.”

“So you brought us to the garage instead of the porch?”

Baker smiles. Her eyelids look heavy; her eyes seem unfocused. She indicates the outdoor refrigerator and says, “I wanted a water, too.”

“How’d you even know this was here?”

“I went looking for you. Where were you?”

“We were upstairs,” Hannah says, stepping closer to the refrigerator. “I couldn’t find you but I found everyone else in a bedroom up there. We were just drinking and hanging out.”

“I thought you’d left me. I texted you like three times.”

“I’d never do that,” Hannah says, looking steadfastly at her. “You know that.”

Baker opens the refrigerator and pulls out a water bottle. She uncaps it carefully and says, not looking at Hannah, “I’m sorry for not telling you about Clay.”

There’s a pause while neither one of them looks at each other. Hannah can hear the music booming inside, but from where they stand in the garage, she feels like she’s hearing it from underwater.

“Why didn’t you?” she asks.

Baker still doesn’t look at her. Her eyes, unfocused and glazed over, cut an angular path to the cement floor. She inhales like she’s about to speak, but then she closes her mouth.

“Bake?”

“I didn’t know how I felt about it,” Baker says.

“I made out with Wally again,” Hannah offers, “and I didn’t know how I felt about that, either.”

Baker lifts her head. “You made out with Wally?”

“Yeah. Couple weeks ago.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s great,” Baker says listlessly. Then, as if asking the question causes her pain, she says, “How was it?”

Hannah gawps on the air. She takes in Baker’s expression: the downward crinkle of her eyebrows, the jutting out of her bottom lip, and her eyes, bleary as they are, colored over with that perfect dark roast shade. There’s something unnamable in her expression—some kind of bigger question that Hannah feels shimmering on the air.

“I liked kissing you better,” Hannah whispers.

Baker breathes in quickly, almost like she might be hiccupping. Her eyes flit to Hannah’s mouth, then back to Hannah’s eyes.

Hannah leans forward and kisses her. Baker startles, but then she kisses back. The water bottle rests between their bodies, pressing coldness into Hannah’s stomach. 

They break the kiss to breathe, but Hannah doesn’t dare pull away from her, not when either one of them might realize what they’re doing. She kisses Baker again, and Baker kisses her, too, and the garage is quiet but for their wet kissing sounds and the throb of the music on the other side of the wall.  

Baker moves her hand across Hannah’s back, and Hannah mirrors her automatically, instinctively touching as much of her as she can. Baker kisses her with soft, rhythmic motions, her lips coming together and separating gracefully. And when Hannah opens her mouth wider and touches her tongue tentatively to Baker’s, Baker responds with a hum and an equally eager tongue.

It’s better than Hannah remembered, better than she imagined all those nights she lay awake in bed. It’s hot and sweet and it
does
something to her; it awakens her body in a way kissing Wally never has. She feels it in her stomach, in her heart, and in that mysterious cavity at the base of her torso, propelling her to keep going, to kiss this girl until some unnamed need is filled.

Then, a noise. The slamming of a door.

They jolt apart and whip their eyes to the door, which is now fully closed. Hannah’s stomach shrinks with dread.

“Someone saw us,” Baker chokes out. In the dim light of the garage, her expression is wild with primal fear. She breathes erratically, her breath coming in short heaves, and her eyes are frenzied, like those of a trapped animal.

“It’s okay,” Hannah says, feeling equally panicked. She can hear the terror in her own voice and struggles to control it for Baker’s sake. “I bet someone just bumped into the door on their way to the porch.”

Baker doesn’t seem to be listening. Her eyes dart all over the garage, but she doesn’t look at Hannah. She places a hand on the refrigerator to steady herself, then falls against the wall of the garage, nearly hyperventilating.

“It’s alright,” Hannah says, pleading with her, or maybe just pleading with herself. The panic she feels is suffocating. “We’ll just—we’ll just go back into the party like everything’s fine—”

“We need to go home,” Baker rasps, her eyes still wild with fear.

“Okay,” Hannah says, trying to breathe around her panic, “let’s just go grab the others—come on—”

“No,” Baker says, still refusing to look at Hannah. “We’re not going anywhere together. We’re not.”

“Stop freaking out,” Hannah says, hearing the flood of emotions in her own voice.

“You go inside. You go inside first, and I’ll come in a few minutes—”

“I’m not leaving you here by yourself, you’re too upset—”

“Just
go
!” Baker orders in a shrill whisper.

Hannah stumbles away from her, feeling like the whole night has been poisoned with fear. She sneaks back into the house and tries to catch her breath, but her heart hammers so fast that she thinks she might pass out from it.

She hurries out to the porch without thinking about it. It is, mercifully, devoid of people. She hangs her arms over the railing and gulps on the saltwater air, begging her head to clear and her heart rate to slow.

Please
, she thinks, the words coming from deep inside of her.
Please, please, please help me.

The walk home is fuzzy. Hannah is vaguely aware of Clay leading the pack and of Luke and Joanie walking behind her. She walks instep with Wally and says nothing, feeling lost in the labyrinth of her own mind.

The only thing she can focus her attention on is Baker, who walks next to Clay, her shoulders hunched and her sandals shuffling listlessly on the sidewalk.

“I’m going to bed, y’all,” Clay says when they enter the house. In the dim light of the kitchen, he looks tired and worn. “Anybody need anything?”

“Nah, I’m going to bed, too,” Luke mutters tiredly.

“Let me get everyone some water,” Wally says.

“Everyone come take some aspirin,” Joanie whispers, rifling through her purse.

Hannah stands uncertainly at the back of the group, hyperaware of Baker and the knotted tension that seems to be radiating off of her. 

“Hey,” Clay says, stepping over to Baker and speaking in a low voice. “You alright? Need anything?”

“I’m fine,” Baker whispers. “Thanks, Clay.”

“No problem,” he smiles.

The boys head off to the basement and Joanie leads the way up the stairs, Hannah following behind her and Baker following several steps behind Hannah. Joanie steps into the bedroom on the first landing, waving silently behind her as she closes the door, and then Hannah leads the way to the bedroom on the top floor, her chest leaden with anxiety.

They don’t speak as they get ready for bed. It feels clinical and depressing to Hannah, who can only remember nights of giddiness and muffled laughter and making cross-eyed faces at each other in the mirror. But now Baker won’t look at her in the mirror or in person. 

Hannah opens the windows while Baker brushes her teeth in the bathroom. The cool night air makes it easier for her to breathe. She leans her forehead against the window screen, trying to stay calm, trying to contextualize this night as just one disorienting event in what will otherwise be a long life of steadiness.

To her surprise, Baker speaks to her.

“I don’t want the windows open.”

Hannah turns around, entirely caught off guard. “What?”

Baker strides past the windows, staring determinedly away from her. “Not tonight. I can’t handle it.”

“What do the windows have to do with anything?”

“Just—shut them, please,” Baker huffs. Her voice trembles with barely constrained anger.

Hannah stares at her, waiting for an explanation, but Baker climbs into the bed, rolls onto her side, and says nothing.

“Fine,” Hannah says. She shuts the windows hard—for a half-second she startles, worrying that she might have woken the Landry’s—but the room quickly dissolves into silence again.

Chapter Seven: The Only Two Humans on the Earth

Baker is gone from the bed when Hannah wakes the next day. Hannah finds her in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cereal and talking to Clay’s mom.

“Good morning, Miss Hannah!” Clay’s mom says, far too loudly and bubbly for Hannah’s current state. She clutches a coffee mug and wears a floral-patterned robe. Baker sits next to her at the table, but she doesn’t raise her eyes from her cereal.

“’Morning, Mrs. Landry,” Hannah says.

“What would you like to eat?”

“I’m just going to get some Raisin Bran, thanks.”

She pours the cereal into one of the delicate ceramic bowls, then fills a plastic cup with ice water. Clay’s mom resumes her conversation with Baker, asking her about how she’s going to choose a roommate for LSU. When Hannah sits at the table with them, Mrs. Landry glances away from Baker to give Hannah a welcome smile, but Baker keeps her eyes trained on Mrs. Landry.

Hannah tries hard to make eye contact with Baker, but Baker only looks between her cereal bowl and Mrs. Landry. A cell phone rings, and Mrs. Landry peels herself gracefully off her chair to answer it.

“Oh, hold on, girls, I’ve got to take this one, it’s one of my bible study babes,” she says. “Hello?” she answers. “Well, good morning to you, too!”

Hannah plays with the raisins in her bowl, burying them underneath the milk, until Mrs. Landry walks out onto the back porch and closes the door.

“Hey,” Hannah says quietly, looking up at Baker. “You alright?”

Baker meets her eyes for a fraction of a second. “Fine. Are you?”

“Yeah.” Hannah taps her spoon against her bowl.

They say nothing else to each other. 

Baker doesn’t speak directly to Hannah after their friends wake up and fill in the space around them. They all walk down to the beach again, and the sun beats hot on Hannah like it has every other day this week, but Baker doesn’t catch her eye or smile at her, and every joke or remark Hannah says to the others seems to materialize from a scared, hollow place inside of her.

The boys spend a long time in the ocean. Hannah hangs out on the sand with Joanie and Baker, pretending to read while the two of them hit a volleyball back and forth. After a while, Joanie plops down onto her towel and puts her headphones into her ears, and Hannah and Baker are left in hot silence.

Baker kneels on her towel to apply sunscreen, and Hannah focuses so hard on the text of her book that the letters blur. She can see Baker out of her peripheral vision, squinting beneath her sunglasses as she lathers her shoulders and arms. Baker reaches behind her to rub in her back, and Hannah watches her struggle for a moment before she can no longer take it. She flops the book down onto her towel and sits up to help her.

“I’m fine,” Baker says.