Chapter 5 Girl and Boy #2
Hannah stands between Wally and Baker, waving up at the floats as their riders toss slabs of green beads and random trinkets into the crowd.
Luke catches a purple stuffed penguin, Joanie catches an Irishman’s hat, and Wally snags more beads than the rest of them put together.
Clay manages to catch two Jell-O shots, thrown down to him in white paper cups quivering with green gelatin, which he insists they split between the six of them.
When all the floats have rolled past, they gather on the grassy median and ask a stranger to snap their picture, all of them weighed down by beads and sweating in the early-spring heat.
They start the trek back to Hannah and Joanie’s house on Olive Street, darting their feet onto clear patches of asphalt, occasionally slipping on rogue strings of beads.
Above them, tangled on tree branches and streetlamps, hang the far-flung beads that never reached the parade-goers.
They sparkle in the sunlight, each one desperate and pathetic on its own, but the whole scene magical when taken together.
“My neck hurts,” Joanie says when they get home. She collapses on the couch like an old Hollywood actress. “I need a drink.”
“Are your parents home?” Clay asks.
“No,” Hannah says, “why?”
Clay takes on that look he gets when he knows he’s about to get his way. “I have some stuff in the car.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Alcohol, Han, what do you think?”
“I don’t know if we should—”
“Come on, Hannah,” Joanie says in a lofty voice. “You know they’re at the des Cognets’ and won’t be home for hours. We can drink on the porch and clean it all up before they get back.”
“Sounds good to me,” Luke says.
“Hold on, I’ll get it,” Clay says, hurrying out to his car.
He returns with a handle of Absolut and a two-liter bottle of Sprite. Joanie sets about filling glasses with ice while Luke gathers snacks from the pantry.
“You all right?” Baker asks Hannah under her breath.
“We can still shut them down,” Wally offers.
“It’s fine,” Hannah says, not looking at either of them. “We just have to be careful.”
They sit around the porch table and nurse their vodka Sprites, all of them still wearing green, Luke wearing Joanie’s Irishman hat.
Joanie produces a deck of cards for them to play Kings, with Clay reminding them of the rules and Luke attempting to change them.
“Why does it have to be ‘three is me’?” he argues.
“We should make it, like, ‘three is naked spree,’ and everyone has to run around naked.”
“How much vodka have you had?” Joanie says, rubbing his hair. “No way in hell are we doing that.”
“Dude, just shut up for a second,” Clay says. “Okay, one more time: Two is you, three is me, four is floor, five is guys, six is chicks—”
“We know,” Hannah says. “Can we just get started? I have no idea what time my parents will be back.”
“Hannah, they’re at a party,” Joanie says haughtily, regarding her with distaste. “And they’ll be there for a while because, unlike you, they actually know how to have fun.”
“Shut up, Joanie.”
“All right, hey, let’s just get started,” Wally says.
They play several rounds of Kings, with the vodka diminishing faster than Hannah imagined it could.
She starts to feel the alcohol and knows that her friends are feeling it, too: Wally laughs more readily than he normally does, Clay’s voice gets louder and louder, and Baker starts poking her tongue against her teeth.
“Dude, Clay, you’re up,” Wally says, hitting his shoulder. “Get a good one.”
“Okay … eight,” Clay says as he reads his flipped card. “Eight, pick a date. All right, who thinks they can keep up with my drinking?”
“Don’t pick me,” Luke slurs. “I’m already married.”
“Sorry, man, you’re not what I envisioned for a date anyway. Okay, how about … Baker?”
Baker looks across the table at him. “You want me to match your drinking?” she asks, smiling wryly. “I don’t know if I can.”
Clay grins. “I think you can.”
They hold their drinks up and cheers across the table. Hannah shakes the ice in her glass and takes another swig of her vodka.
By the late afternoon, with the sun beating down on them and two-thirds of the vodka gone, Hannah knows they are all drunk. Luke and Joanie lie slumped against the table while Clay belts out country songs a cappella, his head lolling against his chair.
“I think everyone needs a nap,” Baker says, her eyes glazed over.
“You want to send everyone off to a bed and I’ll get this stuff cleaned up?” Hannah says, somehow still able to know what needs to be done. “Just try to keep them, like, hidden.”
“Sure thing,” Baker says, rising from her chair. “I’ll be back in a minute to help you.”
“I can do it,” Wally says, leaning forward with tousled hair. “Go ahead, Bake, I’ll help Hannah.”
Baker hesitates, staring from Hannah to Wally like they’re plotting to rob a bank, but she drunkenly shrugs and taps the other three to lead them inside. When Hannah turns to Wally, he is already looking at her.
“Y’okay?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” she lies. “Are you?”
“Yeah. Thanks for letting us hang out.”
They clean up without talking. Hannah rinses the glasses, trying very hard not to drop them when she is less coordinated than usual. She watches Wally through the kitchen window, his arm muscles straining as he scrubs a spill on the glass porch table.
“Thanks,” Hannah tells him when he comes back inside. She takes a deep, centering breath, trying to stay in control of everything. “Can you get rid of that vodka bottle? I’m gonna check on the others.”
She finds Joanie asleep in her bed with Luke sprawled out on the floor, snoring under a quilt.
Hannah peeks into her own bedroom, assuming Baker has passed out in her bed, but is surprised to find it empty.
Concerned, she tiptoes down the hallway until she reaches the guest room, where the door is slightly ajar.
She is about to nudge it open when she sees something that makes her freeze.
Baker is inside, but she’s not sleeping. She’s making out with Clay.
Hannah’s heart stops.
Baker stands above him, hands rubbing over his shoulders, as Clay sits on the edge of the bed with his knees bracketing the backs of her legs.
The sound of their kissing is almost as unbearable as the sight of Clay’s hands moving over her lower back.
Hannah slips away before they can notice her, suddenly wishing she could chug the rest of the vodka bottle.
“Hey,” Wally says when she returns to the kitchen. Then, upon seeing her, he says it again. “Hey,” he says, his voice softer and dialed in. “What’s up? You look upset.”
“Oh—nothing—I just thought I saw puke in the hallway. I was worried somebody had gotten sick.”
“But it’s all good?”
“Yeah,” Hannah says, her heart aching. “It’s all good.”
Baker never mentions the kiss to Hannah.
They go all through the following school week without her bringing it up, even though Clay flirts openly with Baker and tries to grab her hand when they all hang out in the parking lot.
Hannah thinks back on the previous conversations they’d had about boys—after Baker kissed Joey Dietzen, and that boy Lance in New Orleans, and Luke’s cousin who came to visit; after Hannah kissed Ryder Pzynski, and Jonathan Owens, and Wally at the end of last summer—and Hannah wishes desperately that they could talk to each other now.
She wants to talk about it, wants to hear it from Baker herself, even though at the same time she wants to push it from her mind, wants to bleach it from her memory forever.
“Want to go to Sonic?” Baker says after school on Friday, and Hannah assumes that Baker wants to tell her now.
“Only if you let me pay this time,” Hannah says, and then they’re in the car and on their way.
They park at the Sonic on Perkins and roll their windows down to the smell of grease and fried food.
Baker orders a Butterfinger Blast and Hannah orders a chocolate shake, and they trade the desserts back and forth while the traffic rushes past behind them.
They talk about school and the recent test in Ms. Carpenter’s class and what they’re going to do on spring break, and Hannah thinks Baker is going to spill the truth about Clay any moment, but she never does.
“I’m surprised you got Butterfinger,” Hannah says after a while. “I thought you liked Oreo better.”
“Yeah, but you like Butterfinger better,” Baker says simply, and Hannah wants to scream.
When Baker drops her off a few minutes later, Hannah lies about what she’s doing that night.
“Hanging out with your mom?” Baker repeats, frowning. “I thought you said you were coming over later.”
“Yeah—sorry—I forgot I’d promised her a mother-daughter night.”
Baker’s expression falls, but she quickly tries to hide it. “Oh, well, that will be fun. Your mom will love that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Okay. Well. Bye, Han.”
“Bye,” Hannah says cheerily, making her smile overly bright. She slips out of the 4Runner and waves as Baker reverses down the driveway. Then she hurries into the house and sends a text before she has even taken her school shoes off.
Want to hang out?
Wally replies seconds later, even though he probably just finished track practice. Yeah, I’d love to. What do you want to do?
They end up on Wally’s back porch that night, his little brothers asleep in their room inside, his mom still out with her speech therapist friends. It’s a cool night and Hannah shivers from the breeze.
“Here,” Wally says, scooting closer to her. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she deliberately relaxes into his side.
“Thanks.”
They are quiet for a minute. Hannah can smell his deodorant, musky and boyish, carrying her back to last summer when they made out on the dock.
“I’m glad you wanted to hang out,” Wally says. “I love hanging out with all our friends, but it’s nice to hang out with just you.”
“Yeah,” Hannah says. “Same.”