Chapter 6 Spring Break #5
“—What should I do to get with her again?”
“What?”
“Come on, I like her. And I think she likes me. Or at least it seemed that way when she was making out with me.” He waggles his eyebrows.
Hannah stares at him, unable to respond, feeling his words sink through her stomach.
“So?” Clay prompts. “Any ideas?”
“I don’t—I don’t know. She hasn’t talked to me about it.”
“Not even last night?”
“No.”
“Huh.” Clay frowns. “Does that mean something?”
“You should just talk to Baker directly,” Wally says.
“And say what, Wall? ‘Hey, Bake, I think you’re hot, wanna hook up again’?”
“Is that what this is?” Hannah says, her voice sharper than she wants it to be. “You just want to hook up with her?”
Clay’s entire countenance changes in an instant.
His eyebrows draw together and his eyes narrow with scrutiny.
He stares intently at Hannah, as if searching something out in her, and she remembers, with startling accuracy, the way she felt when they first became friends: that he possessed some kind of raw power that enabled him to understand people, to detect their insecurities, and ultimately to sway them to his side.
“No,” Clay says finally, the intense look still present in his eyes.
“Of course not. I think she’s the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen—I’ve thought that for years—and I want to hook up with her again, yeah, but it’s more than that.
There’s just something about her that makes me want to know her better.
But I’m not sure how to do that. I’m not sure how to move beyond the physical stuff.
She doesn’t let people in.” He shoots Hannah an aggrieved look. “Except for you.”
Neither Hannah nor Wally responds. Hannah feels a weird looseness inside of her, like her muscles have gone slack. Clay continues to stare her down, but there’s a shade of uncertainty in his eyes, a tinge of pleading.
“I don’t know,” Hannah says after a moment.
Clay huffs in frustration, yanking a hand through his hair. Hannah studies him—his tree-dark hair and eyes, firm mouth, strong jaw—and thinks inexplicably of the primordial Adam, willing to do anything for the sake of Eve.
“She’s just so hard to figure out,” Clay mumbles. “It feels like I’ve known her forever, but I still don’t get her. It’s like that feeling in English class when everybody else gets the metaphors, but you’re sitting there like, huh?”
Hannah and Wally say nothing.
“Never mind,” Clay says, embarrassed. “You two wouldn’t understand that.”
“Yeah, we’re both little Einsteins, never confused about anything,” Hannah says.
Clay gives her a reluctant smile. “I just wish I was different sometimes. That I could get people to open up the way you do.”
Hannah is unexpectedly touched, as if a sunbeam has warmed her whole body.
“Ugh, I hate this vulnerable shit,” Clay says, looking away.
“You’re doing great, bro,” Wally says to keep the moment light.
“Listen.” Hannah speaks before she thinks better of it. “Sometimes you just need to pay attention to the little things about a person. Their favorite book, favorite color, that kind of thing.”
Clay rubs his mouth skeptically. “You know that stuff about Baker?”
“Of course I do.” She looks between the boys. “Don’t you guys know that about each other?”
Clay and Wally look at each other like it has never occurred to them to ask. If Hannah wasn’t so on edge, she would find it incredibly funny.
“Do you have a favorite color?” Clay asks.
“Green. You?”
“Red.”
“My favorite book is Artemis Fowl,” Wally offers.
“Is that, like, about birds?” Clay asks sincerely, and Wally shakes his head but doesn’t laugh at him.
“Great work, boys,” Hannah says in her best guidance counselor voice.
Clay rolls his eyes. “So what are Baker’s favorites?”
Hannah chews the inside of her lip. She was hoping he had forgotten to ask. She doesn’t want to answer; it feels like giving away something precious.
“Han?”
She clears her throat. “Um. Perks.”
“What?”
Her chest swells. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She named her dog after it.”
“Oh. Cool. And what’s her favorite color?”
Hannah looks at the sun until it blinds her. Then she looks back to Clay, but she can no longer see him through the imprint of the sun on her eyes.
“Yellow.”
“Yellow,” he repeats. “Got it.”
“I still think you should just talk to her,” Wally says.
“Maybe,” Clay says, chewing his lip again. “We’ll see how it goes at Tyler’s party tonight.”
They eat a late dinner with the Landrys and shower in preparation for the party. “So you’re telling me there will be no drinking there?” Dr. Landry asks with narrowed eyes, staring Clay down when they’re about to leave.
“Not that I’ve heard of,” Clay says innocently. “If there is, we’ll come home.”
“Be back by one.”
“One?”
“You want to make it twelve thirty?”
“No, sir.”
“Stay together,” Mrs. Landry says. “And be good.”
They walk through the cooling night air, down chalk-white sidewalks and past patches of grass so green they almost look fake.
Clay and Baker take the lead, both of them dressed with social precision, Clay in a salmon-colored Polo shirt and Baker in her favorite navy sundress.
Luke and Joanie walk behind them, swinging each other’s hands loosely between them, Luke pointing out which beach houses he’s going to buy when he’s older, changing his mind on every new block.
Hannah and Wally follow last, both of them quiet, an easy current of companionship between them.
“That one’s just lovely,” Luke says, pointing to a flamingo-pink two-story. “I can buy that when I go through my gay phase.”
“We should live here all the time,” Joanie says, swinging Luke’s hand with exaggerated silliness. “Let’s just quit school and get jobs lifeguarding.”
“We should make a pact to come down here every summer,” Clay calls back to them. “You know, during college and in our twenties and everything. We can all rent a house together.”
“You and your fantasies,” Joanie says. “It’s like you think we’re in a sorority or something.”
“Six-Pack for life,” Clay says, raising his left hand and right pointer finger in the air.
There are very few people at Tyler’s house when they arrive. “What’s up,” Tyler says, greeting them with a beer can in his hand. “Y’all came on the earlier side of things.”
“Didn’t want to miss the fun,” Clay says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Can you hook us up with some drinks? We couldn’t sneak anything past my parents.”
“No worries. Come on in and have whatever you want. This one’s gonna be a rager.”
Hannah catches Baker’s eye as they move to step over the threshold. Rager, she mouths, lifting her eyebrows mockingly. Baker shakes her head, but Hannah can tell she’s fighting a smile.
They file into the house, waving and calling hello to a few of their classmates.
Clay leads them into the kitchen and around the island counter, where Tyler has laid out everything from Smirnoff Ice to Four Loko.
Clay grabs the Jack Daniels, pours six shots with Luke’s assistance, and leads them in a toast.
“To an amazing spring break,” he says, deep voice resonating around their circle, “and to my amazing friends.”
“To our beautiful sorority,” Luke says, winking at Joanie.
“And our beautiful faces,” Joanie says. “And just how beautiful we are in general.”
“To Luke’s future pink house,” Wally says, saluting him with his shot glass.
“Han?” Clay prompts, eyeing her from across the circle, and she can tell that he wants her approval after their conversation in the ocean earlier.
Hannah raises her shot glass higher. “To our friends, like you said.”
“May we always stay friends,” Baker says, “no matter what happens.”
“Let’s drink these already!” Joanie says, clanging her shot glass against the communal pile.
They throw their shots back and slam the glasses on the counter, gasping in reaction to the hard alcohol, and suddenly Tyler appears and hangs his arms over Clay and Luke.
“Well, come on, y’all,” he says, already bleary-eyed. “Come join the rest of us heathens.”
Half an hour later, the party has swelled to include another fifty St. Mary’s kids, so that Hannah has a hard time moving from one side of the house to the other.
The music blares so loudly that she has to yell to Joanie to make herself heard, and eventually Joanie throws her hands up and mouths, Can’t hear, before she pulls Luke into the middle of the room to dance.
Several of the other senior girls have drawn Baker into conversation, and Hannah watches them curiously, noting their excessive smiling, their arm grabbing, the dainty sips they take from their plastic cups.
Baker stands confidently before them, her hand on her hip and her hair hanging loose over her sundress.
“Some party,” Wally says into Hannah’s ear.
She spins around. “Hmm?”
He gestures toward the back patio and raises his eyebrows in a question—Do you want to go outside?—so she nods and follows him through the packed house.
“Shit,” Wally says when they step onto the porch. “I couldn’t even breathe.”
“It’s really fucking loud in there,” Hannah says, covering her ears to stop the echoes of the music.
“I know. I’d much rather be back at the house right now.”
“Why didn’t you say so? Maybe everyone else would’ve wanted to stay, too.”
“Nah. They love coming to these parties. And I don’t mind them too much. I like the people watching.”
“You love people watching,” Hannah laughs.
“I do,” Wally laughs, touching the frames of his glasses. “I like trying to understand people and how they see the world.”
“Mr. Curiosity.”
“I’m only curious about some things,” Wally says, looking sideways at her.
Hannah breaks eye contact with him. She lets out a short laugh because she doesn’t know what else to do.
“Hey, by the way,” Wally says, stretching across the railing, “were you okay today? In the water?”
The question catches her off guard. “Oh. Yeah. I just—I don’t know how I feel about Clay and—and Baker.”