Chapter 6 Spring Break #3
She listens to the readings and the Gospel—the one about Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, days before his Crucifixion, while the townspeople lay palm fronds at his feet—but she zones out during the homily.
She stares instead at the family seated in the pew in front of them.
Their two small children, a girl and a boy, alternate between crawling all over their parents’ laps and coloring the pages of the church missal.
The little girl—maybe three or four years old—zigzags her crayons back and forth over the book, replacing age-old church hymns with rainbow creations.
Hannah watches as the girl’s father, upon noticing what she’s doing, leans down and snatches the crayons from her with a reproving glare.
At once, the little girl’s face changes from artless happiness to destructive anger.
She smacks her hands on the wooden pew and screams bloody murder, startling the priest from his homily.
The girl’s mother tries to soothe her, but the father scoops her up and whisks her out of the pew and up the aisle, an embarrassed scowl on his face, while the girl kicks and flails and screams so loudly that Mrs. Landry actually covers her ears.
The church goes back to normal as everyone pretends like they hadn’t been watching the little girl’s tantrum. The mother in front of Hannah straightens her back and pulls her son close to her side, wrapping her arm firmly around him. The priest resumes his homily like nothing happened.
But on Hannah’s right side, Baker’s shoulders start shaking. At first, Hannah worries she might be getting sick—but then she sees that telltale gleam in Baker’s eyes. Baker is laughing. Nervously, compulsively, uncontrollably.
Hannah catches her eye and shoots her an exaggerated look that means Seriously, you dork?
—but Baker just shakes harder with silent laughter.
And now Hannah can’t seem to reel in her own smile, can’t slow the giddiness that starts to overtake her, can’t hold in the laughter that climbs to the top of her throat.
“Stop,” she whispers through her teeth, but Baker, shaking her head, can’t fight down the hilarity that has overtaken her.
Clay leans forward on Hannah’s left. He looks across Hannah to Baker, a cheeky smile on his face, and winks.
Baker stops laughing for the space of a moment, but then she shrugs her shoulders and sends him a look that says I don’t know what’s gotten into me.
Clay simply grins and shakes his head flirtatiously.
Hannah, squished between them, feels a spike of resentment toward Clay. She shifts her posture so he is forced to scoot away.
When Mass ends, the ushers hand out the customary Palm Sunday fronds as everyone leaves the sanctuary.
Hannah’s group follows Dr. and Mrs. Landry through the parking lot, Luke sword fighting Joanie with his palm frond when the Landrys aren’t looking.
Wally walks next to Hannah, tying his palm frond into a compact shape, his eyebrows knit together in concentration.
And in front of Hannah, Clay walks in step with Baker, teasing her about her church giggles.
“We should get you tired more often,” he says, poking her arm with his palm frond.
Baker squints at him in the sunlight. She assumes the playful expression Hannah has seen on many a weekend night—after Baker has stolen a bite of Hannah’s ice cream, or when they’ve taken pictures of cats and photoshopped the boys’ heads on top—and says, with a graceful shrug of her shoulders, “Just wait till I start laughing at you.”
Clay grins like she’s just told him he’s the strongest man on earth. “Guess I’d better watch myself,” he says.
They cook a late breakfast when they return from Mass—Hannah helps Baker make scrambled eggs while Wally prepares the toast—and then change to go down to the beach.
The boys find boogie boards in the garage and carry them awkwardly over the sand: Clay over his head, Wally under his arm, and Luke dragging his behind him until Joanie plops down on it and demands a ride.
They settle in the same area they occupied yesterday, and today Baker insists the boys apply sunscreen before they go down to the ocean.
“This is because of my ears, isn’t it?” Luke says, pointing at the burnt red tips of his cartilage.
“Nah,” Clay says, grinning where he stands while Baker rubs sunscreen over his shoulders, “it’s just so the girls have an excuse to touch us.”
Baker shoves him. “You can get the rest. Good luck reaching your back.”
“Aw, come on, you’re not gonna let me burn, are you?”
“You would deserve it.”
“I would.”
Joanie and Baker stretch out on their backs after the boys go down to the water.
Hannah spreads her towel next to them, trying hard not to look at Baker’s long torso glistening with the oil from her sunscreen.
She eases onto her stomach and flips to her bookmark in A Lesson Before Dying, but she only manages to read one sentence before Joanie distracts her.
“Do you think I should keep dating Luke after y’all graduate?”
Joanie’s expression, even with her eyes closed, is uncharacteristically anxious. Hannah keeps her thumbs over the pages of her book, unsure of whether she wants to engage in this conversation. Baker, lying between them, speaks first.
“Where is this coming from?” she asks gently. Her head is turned toward Joanie, exposing the muscles of her neck, and Hannah feels the urge to wipe away the sand dotting her clavicle.
“Just something I’ve been thinking about.”
Baker sits up on her towel. She pushes her sunglasses off her face and gives Joanie an open, sympathetic look. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Joanie says, but Hannah hears the tremor in her voice and notices the old telltale sign: Joanie starts rubbing her elbow, the way she used to when they were young and she was afraid to step onto the school bus.
“What is it?” Baker asks softly.
“I just—I mean—I have to start thinking about going through my day-to-day without him. Without all of you. He wants to stay together but I don’t know if I can—not when he’s going to be in a different state, making all these new friends, meeting new girls—”
“Joanie,” Baker soothes, setting a hand on her wrist. “Don’t think about that yet.”
“It’s only April,” Hannah says loudly. “Why are you worrying about this now?”
“It’s spring break, Hannah,” Joanie says.
“Exactly. We have so much time left—”
“No, we don’t. It’s basically the end of the year, whether you want it to be or not.”
“It is not the end of the year. And even if you did break up with him, you wouldn’t have to do that until, like, August.”
“He’s going to running camp for most of the summer,” Joanie says. “I might have to do it before then.”
“Still,” Hannah says, opening her book again. “You’re wasting your time worrying about this. Luke’s awesome, and you like him, so why are we even having this conversation? Why don’t you just enjoy being with him?”
“I am enjoying being with him, but I’m not going to act like things aren’t about to change—I don’t want to be stupid that way, like you—”
“Shut your mouth, Joanie,” Hannah says, snapping her book shut.
“Learn some empathy, Hannah,” Joanie growls, standing up and glaring down at her. “And get it through your huge, stubborn head that you’re going to graduate soon.”
She stalks away, cell phone in hand, and Hannah tosses her book into the sand in frustration. She wipes her hair back from her face and glares at Joanie’s retreating figure.
“You okay?” Baker asks.
Hannah feels like she did in Ms. Carpenter’s class: as if her skin has been turned inside out. “I’m fine,” she says, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “You don’t have to be nice to me. I know I was being a dick.”
Baker is quiet for a moment. Then: “I’m scared, too. About graduating.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I’m worried I’m going to miss our friends too much. And St. Mary’s.”
“Why would you miss St. Mary’s?” Hannah says, tasting the bitter words. “It’s repressive, and closed-minded, and nobody can go a minute without talking about God—”
“Hannah,” Baker says. She reaches over and smooths her hand over Hannah’s hair, from her hairline to the apex of her braid. Hannah feels the lump in her throat grow thicker.
“It’s okay,” Baker says.
Hannah swallows. She lowers her eyes to the pattern on her towel—yellow suns on a midnight-blue background—and collects herself before she speaks.
“I don’t want anything to change.” She feels the truth of it in her bones. Not just the part about graduating, but the undercurrent between herself and Baker, and the growing pull between Baker and Clay.
“I know,” Baker says. “Me neither.”
Seagulls squawk overhead. The lifeguard blows his whistle at Luke, who has drifted outside the safe zone. The sun burns down, hot on Hannah’s head, and she wishes Baker would touch her hair again.
“I don’t know where to go to college,” she admits. “Emory, or LSU, or even one of the other schools I got into…”
Baker drops her eyes. She rubs sand between her forefinger and thumb, her eyebrows creased in a frown.
“What should I do?” Hannah asks.
Baker sprinkles sand onto her towel. “Do you have a gut feeling about this?” she asks. “Where do you think you’d be happiest?”
“As of this moment…,” Hannah says slowly, “my gut tells me Emory.”
Baker moves her jaw around, still sprinkling sand onto her towel.
“But,” Hannah continues, “I have a hard time believing I’d be happy without my best friend.”
Baker looks up. Her eyes are sad. “You know if it was up to me, I’d probably be selfish and choose LSU for you. Just so we wouldn’t have to be apart.”
Hannah’s heart swells. “I know.”
“But when I think about it unselfishly, I want you to go to Emory.”
“Why?”
“Because I had a feeling your gut was telling you Emory. The way your voice sounds when you talk about it—I can just tell you want to be there.”