Chapter 4 Dirty
DIRTY
When Hannah wakes in the morning, she finds Baker packing up her overnight bag, the tumbler of water next to her.
“Hey,” Hannah says.
Baker doesn’t look up. “Hey.”
“You feeling okay?”
“I think I’m hungover.”
“Yeah. Me too. Just drink that water. Want me to put on some coffee?”
Baker hesitates; she snaps in an earring and looks down at the floor. “I should get going.”
Hannah sits up in bed, deciding to tackle the truth head-on. “Look,” she says, tying her hair into a bun, “I know we’re both being weird about last night—”
“Don’t,” Baker says, her face scrunched up.
“Don’t?”
“Just—don’t try to bridge last night and this morning. You always do that, always try to bring things out in the open. Just let it be, okay? It was a crazy party, we were both really drunk, and I can’t even remember most of it. Let’s just leave it alone. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Hannah’s breathing stops. I can’t even remember most of it. “But we—”
“Hannah.” Baker’s voice is unnaturally sharp. She won’t look Hannah in the eye.
An anvil-sized weight drops in Hannah’s stomach. A sick feeling of shame spreads across her skin. “Okay.”
Then they exist in silence, two little girls mired in a mud puddle, unsure of how this submersion feels, unsure of whether they’ll ever be clean again.
“I need to take Charlie out,” Baker says, swinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”
“Have fun,” Hannah says, her voice sounding fake to her own ears.
Baker leaves the room, and Hannah retreats under the covers without bothering to show her out.
Later that morning, Hannah’s mom drags Hannah and Joanie to Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Mary’s.
“We don’t want to go,” Joanie whines from the back seat of the car. “I hate Ash Wednesday. It’s so, like, depressing.”
“And primitive,” Hannah adds.
“That’s enough,” their mom snaps. “Be respectful.”
“We don’t want dirt on our foreheads,” Hannah grumbles.
“It’s not ‘dirt’ and you damn well know that. With all the blessings in your lives, you should want to thank God for everything you have.”
“This isn’t the gratitude holiday, it’s the oh-no-I’m-inherently-evil holiday,” Joanie points out.
“And the one-day-I’ll-die-and-wither-into-dirt holiday,” Hannah adds.
“I truly am so glad,” their mom starts, her voice rising warningly, “that we’re busting our asses to pay for Catholic education so you two can grow into ungrateful brats with zero respect for our faith.”
Hannah shoots a sideways glance to Joanie and they silently agree to drop the matter. But a few minutes later, when they’re walking into the vestibule and their mom is distracted by her sandwich ministry friends, Joanie sidles up to Hannah and mutters “Trash Wednesday” under her breath.
Hannah sits through Mass with knots in her stomach.
Father Simon delivers a homily about the start of the Easter season, and what it means for them as Catholics, and how they should remember Christ’s deliberate sacrifice every day for these next six weeks.
Hannah has never paid much attention to the life-sized crucifix above the altar, but today she can’t bear to look at it.
She falls in line to receive ashes, feels Father Simon thumb the cross-shaped pattern on her forehead, hears the words—Repent and believe in the Gospel—murmured all around her.
She returns to her pew and tries not to touch her forehead.
To her left, Joanie and her mom seem unfazed by the ashes: Joanie picks at her nails and her mom closes her eyes in prayer.
But Hannah cannot resist raising a hand to her forehead and pressing her fingers against the mark there.
When she draws her hand away, her fingers are tainted with dirty charcoal.
She wipes them on her jeans and avoids looking at the crucifix.
When they get home from St. Mary’s, her mom pours herself a glass of sweet tea and retreats to the study to start on their taxes. Hannah and Joanie shuffle around the kitchen, making themselves chicken salad sandwiches, Joanie chatting about how funny Luke was at the party last night.
Hannah pours herself a glass of water. Just as she’s about to take a sip, she remembers, with a jolt, how it felt to kiss Baker.
No, she tells herself, blocking the feelings. You don’t want that. No.
She plops onto the couch with Joanie, trying hard to feel relaxed and carefree on their last day of break, trying not to look back at the memory she just discarded in the kitchen. Joanie turns on the TV, scrolls through the guide, and chooses an E! True Hollywood Story episode.
“So what are you gonna give up for Lent?” Joanie asks, popping a chip into her mouth.
Hannah takes a bite of her sandwich to buy herself some time. She drinks another sip of water.
“Nothing,” she says.
She falls into an uneasy sleep that night, her face buried in her arm and her body sweating under the heavy comforter.
She sees Baker’s eyes again, dark and deep and startling, and then she is awash in the tactile memory of kissing her, remembering her wet lips, her hot tongue, her soft skin.
Hannah’s body starts to ache all over—her chest and her stomach and, most concerning, the area between her legs.
She tries to shut it down, to think of something else, but at the same time she desperately wants to give in to it, to feel that mystical experience again.
She jolts awake hours later, her heart sprinting in her chest. Her face and neck are damp with sweat. She sweeps her hand across her forehead and remembers, with the force of a gut punch, that she had been dreaming about God.
School resumes on Thursday. Hannah’s esophagus burns with nausea as she drives into the St. Mary’s parking lot and immediately spots Baker’s car.
But Baker steps out to greet her with a larger-than-life smile. “So, get this,” she says, launching into conversation before Hannah can even fully look at her, “Charlie has figured out how to open doors with his paws.”
Hannah hesitates for only a pocket of a moment, recognizing the offering for what it is. This is normal. We can be normal.
“That’s crazy,” Hannah says, struggling to modulate her voice. “What’d your mom say?”
It feels like she’s playacting, but what other choice does she have? They traipse into the building with three feet of space between them, and Hannah wonders if anyone notices the radioactive ash clinging to them like a death cloud.
“Oh, she’s freaked out,” Baker says, talking too fast, too loud. “Worried he’ll get into her china cabinet or something.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Hannah says with forced bravado. “If she understood Charlie’s personality at all, she’d know he has no interest in frilly ceramic china. It’s the refrigerator she needs to watch out for.”
Baker laughs, and if Hannah didn’t know her better, she would think it was completely natural. “Exactly.”
The hallways are subdued, with most people whining that they want to go back to bed.
The bell rings to get to first block, but while the freshmen scurry to heed it, most of the seniors roll their eyes and drag their feet to their classrooms. Even the teachers seem reluctant to be back: Mr. Montgomery makes no effort to stifle his yawning, and Madame Fleurs, Hannah’s French teacher, leans against her doorframe chugging a twenty-four-ounce coffee.
There’s an unspoken agreement that today and tomorrow don’t count as real school days because they’re coming on the heels of a five-day party.
When the bell rings for lunch, Hannah and Wally trudge slowly down the hallway, feeling lethargic after their unassigned period. They’re about to reach the lobby when they come upon Baker and Luke skulking by the front office, their expressions anxious.
“What’s going on?” Hannah asks.
“Clay’s in Manceau’s office,” Baker answers grimly. “Michele went to Father Simon about the party.”
Hannah’s first instinct is to panic. Does Michele somehow know what happened between them in the bathroom? She’s on the verge of an anxiety attack when her logical brain catches up to her. It’s not herself or Baker in that office; it’s Clay. This has to be about the existence of the party itself.
And I locked the bathroom door. And it was too loud for anyone to hear what was happening inside. Nobody knows. Nobody heard us.
Still, Hannah can’t help but search Baker’s face, looking for a hint of shared anxiety. But Baker turns away, staring resolutely through the office windows. Her expression is impossible to read.
“Why does she even go to these parties if she’s just gonna rat us out afterward?” Luke asks.
Hannah blinks herself into recovery. “She’s probably pissed because Clay didn’t pay attention to her.”
“Rumor is she told Father Simon she was ‘disturbed’ by how much drinking our class does,” Baker says.
“Yeah, as if she didn’t used to be right there with us,” Luke says darkly.
The four of them stand with their backs against the cold cinder block wall, tuning out the din of chatter in the cafeteria. The front office secretary eyes them beadily through the office window, her lips pursed in disapproval.
“I thought that lady liked you,” Hannah mutters to Baker, remembering Baker’s stories of dropping off PA system announcements.
Baker shifts subtly next to her. Their elbows brush, and they both jolt away. Baker clears her throat. “She liked my earrings one time,” she says neutrally.
“Now she thinks you’re a Clay groupie,” Luke says with a dry snort. Hannah stiffens.
Finally, Clay slouches out of Manceau’s office, his jaw clenched and his eyes spiteful. He weaves around the secretary’s desk and joins them in the silent hallway.
“What happened?” Wally says.
Clay tugs at the knot in his tie. “They can’t prove I had the party, but they’re using ‘an anonymous student’s word’ to go on—”
“Michele,” Hannah says scathingly.