Chapter 5 Girl and Boy #3
He wraps his arm tighter around her, and she looks up at him, and then they start kissing. And it’s exactly as she remembered: a series of motions, a mouth pushing against a mouth, a tongue sliding against a tongue, and that desperate voice, somewhere in the depths of her heart, wailing in panic.
Why aren’t you liking this? Why aren’t you liking this?
They make out for long minutes, and Hannah holds on to the hope that she will feel something, that a spring will trigger in her lower body, that she will respond like any other girl.
She remembers how Baker looked when she was pressed up against Clay, so Hannah places her hands on Wally’s shoulders and leans into his kiss, telling herself, She liked doing this, and so do I.
They don’t stop until they hear Wally’s mom’s car in the driveway. They jolt away from each other, and Wally says, “Wow,” and Hannah wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Where’ve you been?” Joanie asks when she gets home.
“Nowhere.”
Joanie tilts her head, narrows her eyes. “Were you with Wally?”
Hannah busies herself with opening the refrigerator. She pulls out the leftover jambalaya and pretends to sniff it before answering in a deliberately distracted voice.
“Yeah, we were just babysitting his little brothers.”
Joanie says nothing. Hannah grabs the sweet tea for something to do, still pretending like she’s just breezed in with nothing on her mind. When Joanie still remains silent, Hannah takes the bait and turns around to look at her. Joanie has her eyebrows raised high and her lips pulled into her mouth.
“What?” Hannah asks.
“You know what, dummy. Wally. And you. Did something happen? Was there a love connection?”
Hannah can feel her face heat. “Shut up, Joanie,” she says, meaner than she meant to sound. She shoves the sweet tea pitcher back into the fridge and stalks out of the kitchen with her cheeks burning. By the time she reaches the top of the stairs, her throat is thick with tears.
The last days of March hang full with anticipation. At school, the whole student body seems to be holding its breath for Easter break. The seniors are especially on edge, waiting for their decision letters from colleges all across the country.
On the last Tuesday of March, Hannah pulls two envelopes out of her family’s mailbox. The first, from Duke, contains a letter telling her she was not accepted.
The second envelope contains a letter from Emory. Hannah reads it carefully, her face pulled tight in concentration.
“What’s it say?” Joanie asks.
Hannah looks up from the letter to see Joanie leaning breathlessly over the kitchen counter.
“I got in,” Hannah says, the words vibrating in her throat. She laughs in relief when Joanie screams a litany of delighted profanities.
She calls her mom and dad even though they’re both at work.
“Oh, Hannah!” her mom says, her voice much too loud for the hushed, boring bank.
There’s the sound of something hitting wood, and Hannah pictures her mom smacking her palm against her desk.
Her dad, when she calls him, reacts with quiet joy.
“That’s beautiful, honey,” he says, his voice warm with pride, and she can picture him smiling into the phone.
She texts her friends after that.
BALLERRRR, Luke replies. Way to go han!!
So awesome, Clay writes. But this better not mean you’re ditching us!
I’m not surprised at all ?, Wally writes. Congratulations!
Baker responds separately from the group thread. You are amazing, she writes, so that only Hannah can see. I am so unbelievably proud of you.
Hannah rereads Baker’s message seven more times that night. She falls asleep with her phone clutched in her hand, Baker’s face swimming in her mind.
She knows she should feel excited about her acceptance to Emory and the promise of spring break.
She should feel infinite and hopeful, like the growing earth around her, like the sunlight that stretches longer each day, asking for one more minute, one more oak tree to shimmer on.
But while the whole earth prepares for spring, Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has taken root in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant.
It’s there. She knows it’s there. If she’s truthful with herself, she’s probably known all along. But now, as the days grow longer and the Garden District grows greener, she can actually see it. It has sprung up at last, and it refuses to be unseen.
She tells herself it’s passing. It’s temporary. It’s intensified only because she’s a senior and all of her emotions are heightened. It’s innocent. It’s typical for a girl her age. It’s no more or no less of a feeling than everyone else has had at seventeen.
But deep down, deep below the topsoil of her heart, she knows it’s not.
Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one has to know.
I can ignore it, she thinks. I can refuse to look. I can stomp on it every time it springs up within me.
So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it, by refusing to align her heart with the growing sunlight and the swollen heat and the flowering plants and the tall, proud trees.
“You all right?” Baker asks, when Hannah says goodbye to her after school on Friday.
Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”