Her Name in the Sky (5 page)

Baker tenses. Clay pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Come on, Michele. We’re just taking a five-minute break.”

“I have to get back to the front office,” Michele says, clearing her throat. “But y’all have yourselves a lovely time. And Clay—you’re welcome to come back to prayer group whenever you’re ready.”

Clay pulls his lips together again and nods. Luke, who sits with his back to the door, mimes throwing up on the table.

“See you later,” Michele says. “Oh—but Joanie? I’m not trying to be mean, but the lounge is exclusively for seniors. If we start letting selective juniors in, then all the other underclassmen will think they’re entitled to use the lounge, too, and it kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

Joanie’s face flushes red as crawfish. “Yep,” she says, her voice prickly.

“Thanks,” Michele smiles. Then she shuts the door behind her and leaves.

Joanie slumps down in her chair. “That dumb bitch.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Luke says.

“Everyone knows you’re basically a senior anyway,” Wally says.

“She’s not trying to be a bitch,” Clay says. “She’s just kind of a rule girl.”

Hannah trades looks with the other four. Clay crosses his arms and asks, “What?”

Hannah shakes her head. “Thank God you dumped her.”

“Seriously,” Baker says.

“Aw, come on,” Clay laughs. “She’s not that bad.”

“She’s pretty bad,” Luke says.

“Wally,” Clay says, gesturing to him, “You always liked her, didn’t you?”

Wally balances on the back of his chair and tilts his head in thought. “I could never figure her out.”

“She’s gonna tell Ms. Carpenter that I was skipping,” Baker says, raking her hair back as she adjusts her headband. “She’ll probably tell her before I even get to the student council office.”

“She needs to get over her jealousy,” Hannah says. “I mean, how long ago was that election? Like four months, at this point?”

“Yeah,” Joanie says, “but between that and Clay dumping her ass, I doubt she’s gonna be our best friend anytime soon.”

“Come on, we should go,” Wally says.

“Yeah,” Luke says, sweeping crumbs into his hands, “everyone’s going to think I’ve been taking a huge shit or something.”

“Thanks for the nice surprise, y’all,” Clay says, looking between Hannah and Wally as he stands up. “You know I love family meals.” 

“Especially illegal family meals,” Hannah says.

Baker leans down and hugs Hannah from behind while the others talk and gather their trash. “Thanks,” she says quietly into Hannah’s ear.

Hannah ignores the somersault in her stomach. “You’re welcome,” she says, keeping her voice even, and then Baker and the others are gone, and Hannah reminds herself to return Wally’s smile.

The days go on. The sun rises earlier and sets later, and the afternoons grow warmer degree by degree, and the whole earth starts to trill with anticipation of spring. The live oaks that line the streets of the Garden District lean forward to whisper to each other, and the Spanish moss that hangs from their branches droops like heavy shawls they are ready to discard.

But Hannah clings to the static of winter as long as she can. She and her friends meet in the school parking lot each morning, the group of them thumbing their booksack straps while they wait for Luke to show up just before the bell rings with his Oxford shirt unbuttoned and his tie not yet fastened; they gather in the senior courtyard at lunch time and dare Clay to eat French fries with yogurt or apple slices dipped in ketchup; they untuck their uniforms and lean against their cars at the end of the day, exchanging jokes and stories before Clay has to leave for basketball practice and Wally and Luke have to leave for track and field; they text each other late at night while they study their Theology notes and solve their math problems.

They spend every weekend together, wrapped securely in the knowledge that it is still early in the semester, that they do not have to worry about college and new lives until spring is in full bloom, that for now they are simply six high school kids allowed to plan their lives around Friday night hangouts and Saturday night parties. Hannah knows the terrain of her kingdom: she knows what it is like to steal away to Waffle House to meet her friends late at night, to lie on the floor at Clay’s house and throw ice cubes at him when he tries to make them all talk about sex, to spend her Friday afternoons riding in Baker’s car with the country station playing and the vanilla scent of the car freshener seeping into her clothes.

On Saturday mornings Hannah and Baker take Baker’s handsome Saluki, Charlie, to the dog park on Dalrymple Drive. They sit on the circular bench that wraps around the tree in the center of the park and watch Charlie gambol around the park with the other dogs.

“He’s really happy today,” Hannah says.

“He is,” Baker agrees, her eyes gentle. She pulls at the threads on her scarf as a thoughtful expression comes over her face. “Sometimes I wish we could shut down all the roads in Baton Rouge,” she says, “so there would be no cars, no traffic, and everyone could just walk around beneath the trees, and the dogs could run and play wherever they like.”

“Charlie would probably run all the way down to New Orleans,” Hannah says.

“As long as he came back.”

“He would. You know he would.”

They go to Zeeland Street Café for breakfast afterwards. Baker leads the way to their favorite booth, the one in the back left corner beneath the painting of an old Cajun man. She sits like she always does, with one leg pulled up on the seat so she can lean against her knee.

“Your mom would yell at you for sitting like that,” Hannah says, tapping her foot against Baker’s.

“My mom’s not here,” Baker says, her brown eyes dancing.

They eat bacon and eggs, hash browns with Tony’s seasoning, and biscuits with jelly. Baker spreads the jelly onto her biscuit in that quirky way she always does—with grape jelly on one half and strawberry on the other. Hannah catches her eye and shakes her head, and Baker grins and asks, “What?”, even though she knows what, so Hannah just shakes her head again.

“I’m getting you a coffee refill,” Baker says, lifting Hannah’s empty paper cup.

“I’m stealing your hash browns while you’re gone,” Hannah says.

They talk about the boys and Joanie and their classmates, and neither one of them mentions how the semester is ticking by, though Hannah knows they must both be thinking about it. Hannah taps the salt and pepper shakers together and watches Baker sweep her long brown hair over her shoulder while she talks, and all the while Hannah feels that happy, sweet feeling in her stomach—the one she always feels when she’s with Baker, the one that’s been growing stronger and stronger inside her lately.

On Saturday nights they play music in Hannah’s bedroom while they dress and do their makeup for whatever party they’re going to that night. Joanie breezes in and out of the room, asking them which flats she should wear and whether they can see her thong through her dress, and all the while Hannah cannot stop looking at Baker, cannot stop yearning to take her hand or touch her waist, cannot stop wanting to make her laugh or hear what she’s going to say next. When they stand next to each other at the dresser mirror—when Baker is so close that Hannah can marvel at the length of her eyelashes, can breathe in the scent of her hair, can glance at her eyes and wonder what exact shade of brown they are—when they stand next to each other, all of the goodness inside Hannah swims to the surface of her skin and shines outward into the air, until she feels like a conductor for light and electricity.

“You look happy,” Baker says.

“I am happy,” Hannah says. “It’s Saturday night and we can do anything we want.”

Baker smiles and taps her eyeliner against Hannah’s arm. “Let’s get dressed for the party.”

They stand before Hannah’s closet and try to make sense of the kaleidoscope of clothes. Summer dresses hang next to winter sweaters, green pieces next to black, brilliant scarves next to worn away sweatshirts.

“This would be a lot easier if you color coded and separated everything by season,” Baker says.

“But then I’d be a dork like you,” Hannah says.

Baker looks sideways at her, then pulls a scarlet dress down from the closet and drapes it over Hannah’s head, and Hannah isn’t aware of anything except Baker’s laugh, a laugh with a life force all its own.

They go to parties, and the six of them fall into the same routine every time: Luke and Joanie team up against another couple in a game of beer pong, Wally sips his beer slowly and catches Hannah’s eye every once in a while, Clay walks over and talks to every person in the room, every person in the room walks over and talks to Baker. And Hannah, standing in the kitchen with Wally, looks over to Baker and feels drawn to her by a force so powerful, so lovely, that she can almost see it shimmering in the air between them. She wants to go to Baker immediately, to walk on water across the space that separates them, to wrap her in a hug and hold her forever. Instead, she stays planted where she is, clutching a cheap beer and talking to Wally and some friends from their A.P. Calculus class.

“You look pretty tonight,” Wally says when the others aren’t listening.

“Thanks,” Hannah says, affecting as much nonchalance as possible. “So do you.”

Then he laughs in that shy way he has, and Hannah turns away from him and talks to whoever is on her other side.  

Baker always finds her after a while, whenever she manages to break free from other conversations, and Hannah’s heart skips when Baker touches her wrist to get her attention. “It’s loud in here,” Baker always says. “Do you want to go outside?”

So they step onto the back porch when no one is looking, and they shiver in the early February air, and Baker looks over and asks, “Are you having fun, Hannah-bear?” with an expression that means she wants to know the real answer.

“Yeah,” Hannah says, because she’s always happy just to be around Baker. “Are you?”

Baker smiles her half-smile, and then, looking down at her drink, she says, “I’m bored.”

“You do realize you don’t have to whisper that like it’s a guilty secret, right? It’s not a sin to be bored.”

“I just feel like I should be more excited to be here. Aren’t parties supposed to be, like, a teenager’s dream?”   

“What would you rather be doing right now?”

Baker turns to look at her. They blink at each other for a moment, the crisp air cutting the space between them, and then Baker’s lips turn upwards.

“Eating macaroni and cheese at your house,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s do it,” Hannah says, throwing the rest of her beer into the grass.

They work out the logistics, deciding which one of them should drive—“I’m way more sober than you,” Baker says, “you know I only had one drink”—until Clay pokes his head out onto the porch and says, with an edge to his voice, “What are y’all doing?”

“We’re star-gazing,” Hannah says with a straight face. “Baker’s really into
Ursa major
right now.”

Clay stares at her like he doesn’t know whether he’s being made fun of or not, and Baker bites her lip to contain her smile, and finally Clay shakes his head and leaves them on the porch.

“Come on,” Baker says, tugging on Hannah’s arm. “Let’s go home.”

They say goodbye to the boys and to Joanie—“Don’t come home too late,” Hannah tells her, “I don’t want another joint lecture from Mom”—and then they make their way through the house, their classmates parting for them like the two halves of the Red Sea, everyone begging them to stay, to have one more drink, to listen to one more song.  

Baker drives them down moonlit, oak-towered streets. They drive in peaceful silence, carrying the emotions from the party in their stomachs and their lungs. Hannah looks through the windshield and begs the sky that her life will always be like this—large and loud and brimming with youth, but always followed by the quiet drive home and the promise of ending the night with her favorite person in the world.

The house is dark and silent when they walk inside, but Hannah’s mom has left the kitchen light on for them. Hannah pulls the cooking pot out from under the stove while Baker pulls out bowls and silverware, and then Baker hops up on the counter, tapping her bare heels against the yellow kitchen cabinets, while Hannah stands at the stove and turns the heat up so the water will boil.

“How do you think they choose the shapes?” Baker asks.

“What?”

Baker holds up the macaroni and cheese box. Scooby Doo smiles in all his dopey cartoon glory, and Baker points at him and repeats her question.

“Maybe there’s a secret society,” Hannah says with mock seriousness, “of people whose sole job is to choose the shapes for kids’ macaroni.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, yeah. They spend their nights agonizing about whether Dora the Explorer or Superman would make a better macaroni noodle. And if they make the right choice, they get an award trophy that says, ‘Congrats, You Really Used Your Noodle!’”

“But who gives the award trophy?” Baker asks with equal mock seriousness. “Who gets to decide whether they chose the right noodle or not?”