Her Name in the Sky (22 page)

“Oooh,” Aunt Ellie drawls, swiveling to look at Hannah. “
Wally
.” She winks.

Joanie starts to laugh. “Yeah,” she says, smirking at Hannah. “
Wally
.”

Hannah rolls her eyes and stabs a piece of ham.

“And our friend Clay is going to LSU,” Joanie says, “and so is our friend Baker—you remember her, right? Hannah’s best friend?”

“The pretty girl?” Aunt Ellie asks. “The one with the cute little laugh?”

Hannah’s stomach starts to ache.

“Yeah,” Joanie says, “her. She got into LSU Honors so she’s going there.”

“So just the two are going to LSU?” Uncle Joel asks, sounding offended that the number isn’t higher.

“Yeah, but they’re probably happy about that,” Joanie laughs, glancing sideways to Luke. “I don’t think they’ll mind it being just the two of them.”

“What?” Hannah’s mom asks, her eyes growing wide at this new piece of gossip. “Are they together now?”

“I don’t know, kind of,” Joanie says, shaking her head. “They’re weird.”

“Very weird,” Luke agrees.

“I always thought they’d be cute together,” Hannah’s mom says.

“Is Clay going to play at LSU?” Hannah’s dad asks, speaking for the first time since they sat down.

“He says he might try to walk on,” Luke says. “But I don’t think he’s gotten his hopes up about it.”

“Tell him to try,” Uncle Joel says, pointing his finger at Luke. “No harm in trying. We need new talent. You tell him that.”

“Joel, for heaven’s sake,” Aunt Ellie says. “Leave the poor kid alone. Anyway, I want to hear about Hannah’s college plans.”

“Oh,” Hannah says. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Don’t they have deadlines for these things?” Uncle Joel says.

“She’s got time,” Hannah’s mom says. “She has to choose between several schools that offered her admission. It’s a good problem to have.”

“She got into Emory,” Hannah’s dad says with a smile.

“I heard!” Aunt Ellie says. “That’s beautiful news, Hannah. Beautiful. Are you leaning towards Emory?”

“I’m really not sure,” Hannah says politely, feeling better now that the conversation has turned to something she can speak honestly and confidently about. “I got my acceptance letter just before we left for the beach, so I haven’t had time to really sit down and think about it. And Atlanta’s kind of far—”

“But isn’t that where Georgia Tech is?” Aunt Ellie asks. “So you’ll have your friend nearby?”

“Yeah, Han,” Joanie smirks, “so you’ll have your
friend
nearby?”

Aunt Ellie starts to laugh behind her hand. Joanie laughs, too, and Luke snorts into his napkin. Even Hannah’s mom has to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

“Are we done?” Hannah says, her heart hammering. “Or did you want to keep being a stupid bitch, Joanie?”

Joanie’s laughter dies in her throat. Her eyes narrow with anger. “Screw you, Hannah. Learn how to take a freaking joke.”

“Stop being such a freaking gossip. Or do you just do that because you’re insecure about how much of a baby you are compared to the rest of us?”

“Screw you!” Joanie says again, slamming her napkin onto the table. “God—you are such a—” she shakes her head with fury. “Come on, Luke,” she says, pulling him up from the table, “let’s go for a walk.”

They stomp out of the dining room, Luke glancing uncomfortably back at the table. The front door slams and Hannah sits stock-still in her seat, unsure of what to do. After a long moment, Hannah’s mom starts to clean up the dishes, and Aunt Ellie gets up to help her. Uncle Joel shakes his head and takes another bite of ham.

Hannah’s dad sighs at the other end of the table. When Hannah looks at him, begging him to say something, he takes his glasses off his face and stretches back in his chair, in a way that only fathers with teenaged daughters can do. 

“You always had a way with words, Hannah,” he says tiredly.  

Hannah parks her car next to Baker’s on Monday morning, just as she does every weekday morning, but today Baker isn’t there waiting for her. Hannah looks over at Baker’s car and imagines her sitting there in the driver’s seat, tapping a pen against her student planner to make sure she’s ahead of all her assignments, then smiling and stuffing the planner back into her booksack when she realizes Hannah has pulled in next to her.

Joanie gets out of the car without saying anything to Hannah. She slams the door behind her and Hannah watches, in the rearview mirror, as she walks over to Luke’s car to take his hand.

Hannah sits through first period with her stomach in knots, hardly paying attention to Mr. Montgomery. During her unassigned period she sits in the senior lounge with Wally and tries to distract herself by working on her Theology paper. When she walks into the courtyard at lunchtime, with Wally peeling off to get food from the cafeteria, she finds that none of her other friends have gotten there yet, for the table they usually sit at is vacant. She sits down on the bench with a lead weight in her stomach, feeling nervous about the prospect of seeing Baker face to face for the first time since Friday. 

“Yo,” says Joanie, walking up to the table with Luke, Wally following behind them, “what’s up with Clay and Baker ditching us?”

“What?” Hannah asks.

“Look,” Joanie insists, pointing across the courtyard.

Hannah follows the direction of Joanie’s outstretched arm and sees that Baker and Clay have gone to sit at a different table in the center of the courtyard. Some of their friends from the volleyball and football teams, and some of Baker’s friends from student council, surround them. Hannah sits rigidly and watches them for a moment, hating how everyone at the table tunes their attention to the pretty pair of them, and how Clay smiles at Baker in-between every sentence he speaks.

“Is this some sort of like ‘We’re-dating-now-so-we’re-going-to-branch-out-on-our-own’ gesture?” Luke says.

“They’re not dating,” Hannah says before she can stop herself.

“Well, whatever they’re doing, I have to admit that I feel pretty slighted,” Luke says. “Shouldn’t we at least have gotten some sort of friend group break-up memo about this?”

“Maybe they’re subconsciously resentful toward us because they think we cock-blocked them in Destin,” Joanie says. 

Wally tilts his head, his eyes studying Baker and Clay across the courtyard. “What?” Hannah asks him. “What are you thinking?”

“It’s just weird,” Wally says after a moment. “It’s not like them.”

Hannah watches Baker bite into an apple slice, her mouth turning up in a smile as she talks to one of her friends from the volleyball team. Suddenly Hannah feels deeply lonely. Lonely and, in a sad but understanding way, betrayed.

When the bell rings to move to third block, Baker grabs onto Clay’s booksack and follows him into the building. Hannah watches them from across the courtyard, her stomach emptier than when she sat down to lunch.

Hannah stares at her Calculus homework for a very long time that night.

We missed you at lunch today
, she texts.

Baker doesn’t reply.

Baker’s car has moved four parking spaces down the next morning. Hannah’s stomach drops when she sees it.

“What the hell?” Joanie says, momentarily distracted from applying her mascara. “What is going on?”

Hannah stares stupidly out the window. “I don’t know,” she says in a dead voice.

“Hannah. Seriously. What’s going on?”

Hannah’s torso aches like someone just rammed into her side.

“I don’t know,” she says.

Baker doesn’t speak to Hannah during Ms. Carpenter’s class. When the bell rings for lunch, Baker hurries out of the classroom before Hannah can catch up to her.

Baker and Clay sit at the other lunch table again. Hannah sits with her back facing them, determined to pay attention to Wally, Luke, and Joanie, and no one else. She pushes her feelings down in the same way that she pushes her plastic spoon into her pudding cup.

“I guess we’re on Day Two of our trial separation?” Luke says, nodding his head toward Baker and Clay. 

“Guess so,” Joanie frowns. “I’m tempted to go confront them about it, those assholes.”

“Don’t,” Hannah says.

“Why not? They’re being so weird. Clay keeps doing this awkward guilty smile thing, like he knows he’s being a piece of shit but doesn’t want to acknowledge it, and Baker won’t even look at me. I passed right by her on the way to lunch and she totally looked the other way. Like, on purpose. The fuck is that about?”

“She’s been fine to me,” Luke says between bites of his sandwich. “We worked on our Econ study guide together this morning. By which I mean, she worked on finding the answers while I worked on telling her some jokes.”

“Do you think they walked in on us in the hot tub?” Joanie asks him under her breath. “Do you think that’s why they’re being weird?”

“Oh my god, stop,” Hannah says, holding up her hand.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with what y’all choose to do in hot tubs,” Wally says seriously. “They’re being weird for some other reason.”

“You have to know, Hannah,” Joanie says.

“What?”

“Come on. I know we’re all close with each other, but you and Baker literally tell each other
everything
. I have a hard time believing you don’t know what’s going on.”

“Joanie, I told you already,
I don’t know
.”

Joanie takes on that challenging expression she used to get as a little kid, the one she’d wear when she and Hannah would sneak downstairs to watch the Disney Channel in the middle of the night. “You’re lying,” she says. “I can tell.”

“I’m not lying,” Hannah says heatedly.

“Hannah, your ‘best friend’ is sitting way over there, completely ignoring you, and completely ignoring us. So maybe it’s time you let some other people in, huh? We’re your best friends too, you know. Maybe it wouldn’t kill you to share the truth with us—”

“That’s not even—Jesus, Joanie—”

“Maybe we should all just take a breather—” Luke interjects.

“Just tell us, Hannah,” Joanie huffs. “God, it’s not like the rest of us are withholding information from each other—”

“Are you
kidding
me?” Hannah says dangerously, feeling her skin flush with fire. “Like you’re some paragon of truth-telling? Fine, Joanie, then why don’t you disclose all your secrets to the table? Maybe you could start with, oh, I don’t know, how you’re planning on dumping Luke right before he goes off to Alabama?”

Hannah wants to snatch the words back as soon as they leave her. A stunned silence spreads over the table, the kind that presses on and on until the point where nothing anyone could say would pull the conversation back from the edge.

Joanie sits frozen across from Hannah, her entire face aflame, her eyes wide in shock. Luke sits frozen next to her, his mouth half-open like he was just punched in the gut, no shadow of dimples on his face.

“I—” Hannah says.

Joanie’s eyes cut loathingly into Hannah’s. She breathes very fast, her face turning redder and redder, her expression murderous.

Luke pushes back from the lunch table. He swings his booksack onto his shoulders and moves to gather his snack wrappers, and Joanie grabs his wrist and pleads, “Luke—Luke, listen—”

He jerks his wrist out of her grip. “See y’all later,” he huffs, not looking at any of them, and then he stalks away.

Joanie turns to Hannah with her face full of a horrible wrath Hannah has never seen before. “I hate you,” she spits, scorching Hannah with her loathing eyes. She lunges aggressively for her sandwich and Diet Coke can, clenching her teeth against her anger and tears, and then heaves herself up from the table. “I—
hate
—you.”

Then she turns and runs after Luke, and Hannah sits dumbly in her chair, unable to process the wave of sadness that comes over her.

She and Wally don’t say anything for a long minute. Hannah is afraid to look at him, to face his disgusted reaction. They sit in heavy silence while Wally folds his napkin into tinier and tinier squares.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Hannah says finally. She chances a glance at him and finds him staring hard at the napkin in his fingers, his face crinkled in thought. 

He looks up at her, and the expression on his face is not judgmental. “I know,” he says. “What are you gonna do?”

“Apologize to her when I can.”

“Yeah,” Wally agrees. “And to Luke.”

“And to Luke.”

Joanie doesn’t speak to Hannah on their drive home from school. When they reach the stop sign at the corner of Kleinert and 22
nd
Street, Hannah takes a breath and reaches deep into her stomach for an apology. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles.

Joanie’s quiet for a long minute. Just before they turn onto Olive Street, she says, “I don’t think you are.”

Hannah glances sideways at her. Joanie stares straight ahead at the windshield, her jaw set and her eyes wet.

Please talk to me
, Hannah texts that night.

At two in the morning, when Hannah is asleep, Baker responds.

I’m sorry Han. I can’t.

On Wednesday, when Hannah and Joanie arrive at school, Baker’s car once again sits four spots down. Hannah knew it would, but the sight still hurts her.

Joanie immediately pushes out of the car and sets off for the building. Hannah watches her go, feeling stupid and lonely. She sits forlornly in her car, half-heartedly applying her eyeliner, until she notices Wally’s green Camry pull into its usual spot.

“’Morning,” she says as they step out of their cars.

“Hey,” he says as he fixes his tie. “How’d everything go with Joanie?”

“She won’t talk to me.”

Wally frowns. “She’ll come around.”

Just then, Luke’s car drives by. He passes right by them and parks in a space much farther down the row, near the building entrance. Hannah and Wally watch as he ambles out of his car, his hair ruffled, his tie hanging loosely around his neck, and his shirt untucked.

“Manceau’s gonna slam him with a ton of uniform infractions,” Hannah says.

“I don’t think he’s worried about that right now,” Wally says.

Hannah and Wally sit by themselves at lunch that day. Some of their classmates glance curiously at their table, wondering why Baker, Clay, Joanie, and Luke are no longer sitting with them. Michele watches them with a hungry look in her eyes, like she’s desperate to know the gossip; as Hannah looks at her, Michele leans over to her friend Taylor and whispers behind her hand.

It goes on like that all week: Hannah and Joanie drive to school in silence; Hannah casts a longing look at Baker’s car when they pull into the parking lot; Joanie dashes off into the building without speaking to Hannah; Luke pulls in just before the bell and hurries inside without looking at anyone; and Hannah and Wally continue to hang out by themselves, at lunch and in the parking lot, neither one of them mentioning how much they miss their friends.

“Wally,” Hannah says on Friday afternoon, when she and Wally sit on the trunk of her car and wait for Joanie to come out to the parking lot so Hannah can go home, “you don’t have to keep me company, you know. You should still hang out with the others. I feel bad.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” Wally says, lacing up his track shoes. “This thing’ll fix itself. Friends have arguments, you know? It doesn’t change anything.”

“Wall…this whole thing is my fault. I really fucked up with Joanie and Luke. And—and with Baker and Clay. Joanie was right—I was lying before. Baker’s avoiding me, and the rest of you, because of something that happened with us.”

Wally squints at her in the spring sunlight. Hannah looks away from him and keeps talking.

“Baker and I—we had an issue. An issue that I don’t know how to resolve.”

“Yeah,” Wally says. “I know that, actually.”

“What?”

“I talked to Clay.”

“You did? When?”

“Well, he came to talk to me. He felt pretty bad about not sitting with us at lunch.”

“What’d he say?”

Wally rubs the back of his neck. “Baker went over to his house on Sunday night and told him she didn’t want to be around you anymore.”  

Hannah’s heart stops. “What?”

“Yeah.”

“Did she tell him why?”

“No, she just said something had happened and she needed her space. Clay felt really torn up about it, but he said Baker was more upset than he’d ever seen her, so he thought he should support her for a few days, until this whole thing blows over.”

“Until it ‘blows over’? And what if it doesn’t?”

“You really think it won’t?”

“I—” The question nearly suffocates her. “I’m not sure.”

“Well,” Wally says slowly, setting his hands on his knees, “if it doesn’t…then we’ll adapt. All of us will.”

“I just don’t know if—Wally, I wish I could talk to you about what happened, but I don’t know how….”

“You don’t have to, Han,” he says, nudging her with his shoulder. “Everything will be okay. And hey, it’s not all bad. I think it’s been good for Clay and Baker. Clay said they’ve started to talk more about their feelings for each other and everything. He’s actually taking her out on a date this weekend—”

The words knock all the breath out of Hannah. “What?”

“Yeah, they’re going out to dinner tomorrow night. He’s actually way nervous about it, which is funny, you know, because we’ve never really seen him get nervous about anything before. But it’s good for him.” Wally hops down off the trunk and starts to stretch his calves. Hannah watches him as if he’s not really there; she feels dazed and exhausted, and has the strongest urge to curl up in her bed and hide away from the world.

“I think they’re both excited about it,” Wally continues.

“Good,” Hannah says, trying to infuse some heartiness into her voice.

“Hey,” Wally says tenderly, stepping up to the trunk again. “It’s gonna be okay. You’ll work it out. That’s what friends do.”

“Yeah,” Hannah rasps.

“I have to go—I’m gonna be late for practice.”

“Yeah. Sure thing. Bye.”

Wally starts to walk away, but then he glances at her and doubles back to the car. He wraps his arms around her in a sturdy, secure hold, and Hannah gives in to the embrace, drawing comfort from the warmth of his skin and the musky smell of his neck.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Wally says into her ear.

She hugs him hard and doesn’t let herself think about anything else.

Hannah stays in bed until one in the afternoon on Saturday, her mind drifting in and out of sleep, her dreams splintered into fragments of memories. She wakes up to fogginess and slips back into darker fogginess. The memories ebb and flow, as real and powerful as the ocean.

Hey, come here
, Baker says.
I want to show you this piece I’ve been learning
.

And Hannah watches, in the theater of her subconscious, as 14-year-old Baker, with braces and an overlarge sweater vest, plays the piano for her.

Tell me your favorite thing about nature
, 16-year-old Hannah says.

Trees
, Baker says.
Really old, beautiful trees.

Hannah wakes again to the sound of the television playing downstairs. She hears her dad pacing around his first-floor study. That responsible voice inside of her berates her to get up and do her homework, do something productive, but she turns over on her stomach and slips back into the memories instead.

On Saturday night, she lies on her back on her bedroom floor and stares at the ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars Baker helped her tape up there back in freshman year. She imagines everything Baker and Clay are doing right now.

The dress Baker wears. Is it the beige one with the brown belt? The lilac one with the lace sleeves?

Tell me if this looks good
, Baker says as she stares at the mirror in the dressing room.

Of course it looks good
, Hannah says.
Everything looks good on you.

Does Clay wear a Polo shirt and khakis? Does he wear the cologne his mom gave him for Christmas? Does Baker like it?

You smell good
, Baker says on the back porch at her house.
Are you wearing perfume?

No
, Hannah laughs.

I think it’s just your shampoo
, Baker says, shifting her head on Hannah’s shoulder.
It smells like you.

Hannah pictures them at a fancy restaurant, strolling in hand-in-hand, Baker in the dress and Clay in the khakis, pleasing the world with their complementarity. Clay must pull her chair out for her, and Baker must smile shyly and thank him.

Does she laugh at his jokes? Does he think about how pretty she is? Does he reach across the table for her hand? Does she let him take it? Do the older people sitting at the tables around them nudge each other and say
Look how cute
?

Hannah plays music through her iPod speakers. Eventually she starts to talk to God. Small phrases, monosyllabic words.
Why does this hurt. Can you hear me. Can you make this go away.
Her eyes fixate on a patch of green stars on the ceiling.
I love this pattern
, Baker says as she lies on Hannah’s bed.
I wish I could sleep here all the time.

You can
, Hannah says.

Her back starts to hurt from the fibers in the carpet, but she doesn’t move from her spot.

She folds her hands over her stomach and blinks at the ceiling and imagines what it would be like if she was the one out to dinner with Baker. She pictures Baker’s smile and her dark chicory eyes and how she tucks her hair behind her ear. She sees her study the menu like it’s a textbook chapter she’s going to be quizzed on. She sees her order a sweet tea with two lemons, please, and she sees her fold her napkin over her lap.