Chapter 2 Ordinary Time #3
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 Joanie—“Don’t come home too late,” Hannah tells her, “I don’t want another joint lecture from Mom”—and then 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, and 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 stove light on for them.
Hannah pulls out the metal pot and colander 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 boils the water.
“How do you think they choose the shapes?” Baker whispers.
“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?”
“Children, obviously. Don’t you read?”
Baker laughs and tosses the macaroni box at her. “Tend to our food, brat.”
“Get me the milk and the butter, brat.”
Hannah pours the macaroni into the pot and gives it a stir while Baker gathers the milk and butter from the fridge.
And then Baker comes to stand behind her and loops her arms around Hannah’s waist, and suddenly the steam from the pot spreads all over Hannah’s body, settling into the hammock of her torso and finding its way to her ears and fingertips.
She feels Baker’s touch everywhere, and when Baker drops her head onto Hannah’s shoulder and watches the boiling water with her, Hannah’s heart climbs in her chest and peeks out over the water, too.
“Can we still do this when we’re in college?” Baker asks, her voice bare.
Hannah nods very carefully, not wanting to betray her insistent heart or the steam inside of her.
Then Baker turns her head—Hannah can sense it with every nerve inside of her—and kisses Hannah’s cheek.
Hannah holds her body stock-still, begging the steam not to spill out, begging her heart to stay balanced where it is, until Baker moves away from her, as casual as a breeze on the bayou, and opens the refrigerator.
Hannah picks up the ladle for something to do and swirls the macaroni around the pot. Her body feels flushed all over, but she answers as nonchalantly as she can when Baker asks her if she wants a Coke.
“Sure, but is there any caffeine-free? I don’t want my heart to start racing.”
They fall into bed with their bellies full of macaroni and cheese and their teeth coated with sugar from their Coca-Colas.
Baker wears Hannah’s favorite old T-shirt and a pair of her Victoria’s Secret PINK shorts.
She plops on her stomach and starts to breathe on a sleep cycle almost right away—before Hannah even has a chance to queue up the show—so Hannah lies down next to her and re-memorizes the familiar sound of her breathing.
The fan blades circle overhead, moving the air in the room so that it washes over them in gentle waves, occasionally carrying Baker’s scent to Hannah like a bee carries pollen to a flower.
Sometimes, with her heart beating strong in her chest, Hannah realizes that Baker does not belong to the rest of them.
“You’re too good,” Hannah tells her, meaning every word sincerely, offering this truth with a degree of wonder she’s never felt for any other human.
“I’m not,” Baker insists, her long, dark eyebrows drawing together in surprise.
But Hannah knows the truth from fall semesters spent cheering Baker on at her volleyball matches, when Baker would score serve after serve after serve while the crowd and her teammates screamed their applause, and then she would approach the opposite team’s captain, the girl who had been crying at the end of the match, and whisper in her ear at the corner of the court when no one was looking.
Hannah knows it at a party in mid-February, when she walks upstairs to find Baker crouched on her knees with her arm wrapped around a sophomore girl. “It’s okay,” Baker soothes while she rubs the girl’s back. “Your name’s Ally, right? You’re going to be okay.”
“I feel sick,” the girl says, sniffling and clutching her head. “I want to go home.”
“We’ll take you home,” Baker says, her voice light and gentle and filling up Hannah’s heart. “We’re going to get you some water first. My friend Hannah is here, and she’s the best person you could ever know. She’ll help me take care of you.”
And so they do, Hannah driving carefully, Baker sitting in the back seat with her arm around the girl and her eyes meeting Hannah’s in the rearview mirror.
“You’re too good,” Hannah says after they get the girl safely inside her house.
“I’m not,” Baker promises. “You would have done the same.”
“I don’t know that I would have,” Hannah says honestly.
“But I do,” Baker says with her deep, dark eyes.
Hannah knows that Baker does not see in herself the same miracle of goodness Hannah sees in her.
She knows that Baker struggles to measure up to her brother, that she desperately craves her mother’s approval, that she worries constantly about whether or not she’s a fair team captain or an effective student council president.
“You’re amazing,” Hannah wants to tell her.
“You’re the best thing that’s ever been.
” But Hannah knows that Baker, when she’s not smiling at parties and laughing with their friends in the parking lot, carries these secret worries in her heart, worries that Hannah wishes she knew the full extent of, worries that Hannah sees in Baker’s eyes when Baker thinks no one is looking.
“You’re so much better than you even know,” Hannah says one afternoon when they’re sitting in Baker’s 4Runner, talking through Baker’s latest argument with her mom. “You’re just—you’re so—I wish you could believe me—”
“What’s funny,” Baker says, blinking down at their sun-spoiled sweet teas in the console, “is that, when I tell you these same things about yourself, I wish you could believe me, too.”