Her Name in the Sky (28 page)

Hannah stands slowly and backs into the sink, words swimming around her head, worry still clutching at her stomach, and beyond it all, that ache, that terrible ache, suffocating her heart.

“Hannah,” Joanie says softly.

Hannah doesn’t look at her.

“Up we go,” Clay says, lifting Baker in his arms. “Han, can you get that water glass?”

She does as he asks and follows him out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, out of the house. Luke’s car idles in the driveway, waiting for them.

“Are y’all coming?” Clay asks, turning around briefly.

Hannah can’t find her voice.

“We’re good,” Joanie answers him. “Text us once you get her home, okay?”

“I will,” Clay promises, and then he climbs into Luke’s car with Baker resting in his lap. Hannah and Joanie stand still and watch them drive away.

“I can drive home, if you want,” Joanie says tentatively.

“Yeah.”

“Han? You should put that water glass down.”

“What?”

“That water glass. In your hand. Maybe you should go put it on the porch.”

“Yeah.”

She walks it numbly to the front porch, but then, just as she’s about to set it down, a deep pain overtakes her, a pain so sudden and blinding that she channels it without thinking—she throws the glass at the brick wall of the house—she hears it smash into a million fragments, fragments as numerous as the hairs on her head, as the sands on the seashore—she hears Joanie gasp behind her but she doesn’t care—the pain is debilitating and she wants to vomit, she wants to vomit, but she can’t.

“Hannah,” Joanie says, approaching her cautiously. There are tears in her eyes.

Hannah opens her mouth to speak, but only dry sobs come out. She shakes her head back and forth, back and forth, trying to erase everything.

“Hannah, please,” Joanie says, grabbing her wrist. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter Eleven: Possibility

Hannah stays in bed for a long time on Sunday morning. She blinks at the sunlight streaming through the crack in her crimson curtains, but all she sees is Baker on the bathroom floor, vomit on her mouth and in her hair.

Hannah, she’s my girlfriend, okay, I can handle this.

“Hannah?” Joanie calls through the door. “Can I come in?”

Hannah hides her face in her covers, but Joanie enters the room anyway. Hannah hears her set something on the dresser. Then she feels Joanie’s weight settle onto the bed, right over Hannah’s feet.

“You should probably get up,” Joanie says. “It’s past noon.”

“So what.”

“So you’re being a total lard-ass.”

Hannah doesn’t respond. A heavy silence falls over them, a silence that Hannah can feel wrapped all around her.

“Han?” Joanie says, her voice fragile. Hannah can imagine her face, sad and anxious like it was the time Hannah fell off her bike and sprained her wrist when she was in first grade and Joanie was in kindergarten. “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

Hannah breathes into her pillow. Unexpected tears spring into her throat. “No,” she says.

Joanie shifts her weight on the bed, and Hannah feels a lighter pressure on her foot, the pressure of Joanie’s hand.

“Han?” Joanie’s voice is so, so fragile. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

Hannah breathes. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

“They’re at Home Depot.”

“Oh.”

“Hannah? What’s going on with you?”

Hannah sits up and wipes at her eyes. Her heart sprints away in her chest, like it knows what’s coming before she does.

“I—” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I—I don’t know how to explain this.”

“Okay…well, does it have something to do with Baker and Clay?”

Hannah swallows. “Yeah.”

Joanie studies her for a moment, and Hannah keeps her head down, bracing for the question that might come. “Okay,” Joanie says, and her voice sounds nervous all of a sudden. Hannah looks at her. There is something fearful and expectant in her eyes. “What is it?” she asks.

The question hangs between them for a second. Hannah searches Joanie’s expression, looking for signs that Joanie already knows what she needs to say. Joanie stares back with her jaw set.

Hannah’s face sears with heat. Her whole body revs up for danger, her primal instincts kicking into gear like those of a trapped animal. She can hear her heart pounding in her head.

“I have—feelings,” Hannah says carefully, her voice shaking. “Feelings for—for—” 

“For Clay?” Joanie suggests, her eyes too hopeful.

They look at each other for a long second. Hannah considers capitulating to the lie Joanie has handed her. Joanie looks scared, yet defiant.

“No,” Hannah says finally, the word wrestling its way out of her throat. She takes a breath. “Not for Clay. For Baker.”

Joanie stares hard at Hannah. She blinks once, twice. The entire moment feels surreal, like they’re playacting the way they used to as children.

“Okay,” Joanie says finally. 

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Joanie nods. “That makes sense. I mean, I always wondered if maybe—” She nods her head again. “Okay. I’m glad you told me.”

“You’re not—it’s not weird?”

“Why would it be weird?” Joanie says, and the question is so affectedly defiant—grounded in heartiness, like Joanie expected to be asked this question and rehearsed this inauthentic answer to preempt any real analysis—that Hannah starts to cry. She opens her mouth and tries to respond, but her response turns into a sob, a sob as quick and surprising as a hiccup, and now Hannah is sobbing into her pillow, sobbing so loudly and physically that her body starts to feel like it isn’t even hers, like it’s functioning independently, casting out demons at the command of the Christ.

Then she feels Joanie’s weight on her body, feels Joanie hugging her through the duvet cover, hears Joanie whispering to her that it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. She cries and shakes and thinks of Baker, drowning in toxic shame, fighting to exorcise it from inside of her, wondering to what depth it goes.

She cries for long minutes while Joanie holds her through the covers. “It’s okay,” Joanie says, her voice raspy, her weight still on Hannah’s body. “It’s okay.”

When Hannah’s last cry pours out, she breathes hard into the pillowcase, inhaling its laundry detergent scent, drawing comfort from the familiarity of it.

Then it’s quiet, and Hannah listens to the hum of the air conditioning running through the house.

“Sit up,” Joanie says. “I brought you some Sprite.”

She feeds the glass into Hannah’s hand, and Hannah gulps down the soda, imagining it flooding over her empty body and fizzing away all the bad things.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Joanie asks. Her eyes are large and pained and bluer than usual.

“How could I have?” Hannah says.

“Hannah, I’m your sister. You can tell me these things. You can tell me how you feel.”

“I didn’t know how.”

Joanie picks at a snag on the comforter. “Um,” she says. She raises her eyes carefully to Hannah’s. “Do you like other girls, too? Or is it just Baker?”

Hannah drops her eyes to the floral pattern on her comforter. The question hangs between her sister and herself, delicate and important like the long threads they used to swing their stuffed animals on when they were younger.

“I think,” Hannah says evenly, tasting the words, “that I like girls in general. I think I always have.”

“How long have you known?”

“I don’t know—I mean, it’s like, how long have you known your own name?”

“Yeah.” Joanie pauses. “Do you think Baker feels the same way?”

Hannah glances around her bedroom—at the clothes on the floor, at the hairbrush on the dresser. Her eyes settle on a picture of Baker and herself from last summer. They’re sitting on the back porch at Wally’s house—Hannah on Baker’s lap, Baker’s arms clasped around Hannah’s waist—while Joanie and Luke photobomb the picture from behind. Baker’s mouth is open mid-laugh, her eyes dark and happy, a piece of gum visible on her back teeth. They had all been drinking Bud Lights and eating Doritos on the porch that night, while Wally’s mom was away with his two younger brothers, and it had started to rain, one of those light, humid rains that made the backyard feel like a sauna, and they had all stood up to go into the house until Baker had said, in a voice full of wonder, “Wait—why don’t we just stay out here and experience it?” So they had stayed sitting on the porch, yelling at each other about how they were all dumbasses, watching the rain drip down their wrists, feeling it slide down their noses, until they were all wearing the rainwater like another layer of clothing.

That was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done
, Hannah had laughed later.

Don’t knock it
, Clay had said.

She’s not
, Baker had said, her eyes lighting on Hannah.
That’s just Hannah-speak for loving something.

“What are you thinking, Han?” Joanie asks.

“Just remembering something.”

“About Baker?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened at the beach?”

“What?”

“The beach,” Joanie says. “Everything was all fine and great while we were there, but then it went to shit when we came back. What happened?”

“I don’t know, we just….”

“Did you tell her how you feel?” Joanie guesses. “Did you, like, confess to her?”

“In a way,” Hannah says dazedly.

“What did she say? Did she feel the same way?”

Hannah hesitates. “It’s hard to explain. I think—that even if she did, she wouldn’t allow herself to let anything come of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, she has these ideas, you know, of how she’s supposed to be. Of what it means to be the good girl.”

Joanie sighs. “I cannot figure her out.”

Hannah says nothing.

“Han?”

“Yeah?”

“What about Wally?”

Hannah’s heart drops. “I love him, too,” she says, her voice sad and wistful, “but it’s not the same.”

Joanie swallows. “I worry that he really loves you.”

“I do, too.”

“Han—I’m sorry that I didn’t talk to you for so long. Especially when you were going through this.”

“Don’t be sorry. I deserved it.”

“I didn’t understand.”

“I didn’t know how to explain.”

They lapse into silence, until Hannah starts to blow bubbles in her Sprite glass.

Hannah stares at her phone screen for a long time that afternoon, until her fingers can no longer stay still.

How are you feeling?

Baker doesn’t reply.

School is better and worse on Monday. Better because Joanie is talking to Hannah again, worse because Baker is not.

“She could at least, like, acknowledge that you took care of her on Saturday night,” Joanie says at lunch. “A simple ‘Hey Han, thanks for wiping all that vom off my face’ would suffice.” 

Hannah, Joanie, and Wally gaze in the direction of Baker’s lunch table. Baker sits in her usual place—right in the middle of the table—and Clay sits next to her, occasionally reaching out an arm to squeeze her protectively around the middle, his leather letterman’s jacket creasing every time he does so. Baker looks thin and sallow; her hair looks unkempt and her eyes seem smaller on her face.

“Exactly how sick was she?” Wally asks.

Hannah shakes her head and looks to Joanie.

“
Sick
,” Joanie answers. “Like, totally incapacitated. She was heaving her freaking guts out.” 

Wally looks sideways at Hannah. “And she let you take care of her?”

“I think she was too out of it to argue.”

“That’s not true,” Joanie says. “It’s more like, she was so out of it that she acted like her true self instead of this weird person she’s been lately.”

“I don’t get her,” Wally says. “I mean, I’ve never understood her the way you do, Han, but now I understand her even less.”

“You and I are in agreement on that, Walton,” Joanie says.

“Did Clay tell you anything more about what happened on Saturday?” Hannah asks.

“Nothing that you haven’t told me,” Wally says.

“She looks so skinny,” Joanie says. “And like she needs a really long nap.”

Hannah watches Baker again, and the ache in her heart bleeds anew.

Hannah charges her way through her final exams, feeling grateful for the distraction of intense studying. She and Wally continue to meet at Garden District Coffee to trade notes and make outlines together, and now Joanie comes, too, and buys them all sugar cookies when they need a break. “You look like you’re just drawing lines of gibberish,” Joanie says as she watches them work through a calculus problem. “Why the hell would you take AP Calc anyway?”