Chapter 6 Spring Break #6
“He means well,” Wally promises. “I know he’s callous sometimes, especially about girls, but I think he really likes her, Han. I think it’s for real this time.”
“He told you that?”
“Not exactly, but I can read Clay pretty well at this point.”
“Oh.”
“Are you worried?”
Wally looks so kind, and so sincerely concerned, that Hannah almost wants to run away.
She looks away from him and leans against the balcony railing, touching her hands to the cold, smooth metal.
“I just—” she says. She feels the words stirring within her, threatening to come up.
“I—she’s my best friend, you know? My best friend. ”
“Yeah,” Wally says. “You care about her. You want her to be with the right guy.”
Hannah says nothing. Her throat thickens with welled-up words.
“You want to stay out here for a bit?” Wally asks.
Hannah swallows. She breathes in the saltwater air. “Nah,” she says, shaking her near-empty cup. “I think I’ll get another drink.”
The party gets wilder as the hours go on.
Tyler plays a quick succession of crowd-pleasing songs, and the party swells with peak noise when Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” comes on.
Everyone in the house starts screaming the lyrics with mad intensity, and suddenly all the girls are pointing dramatically at the boys when Taylor sings to her Romeo, and Luke’s kneeling on the ground and serenading Joanie, and it sort of feels like everyone there has spent their sixteen or seventeen or eighteen years simply waiting to sing this song together at a beach house in Destin.
Hannah tries not to watch Baker and Clay dancing together on her right, but as the song goes on, they seem to grow larger in her peripheral vision.
Their movements are in sync, and the magnetism between them is palpable, and they’re so damn complementary with their height and their style and their jigsaw bodies, and isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?
And if it is, why can’t she be happy about it?
The song changes to a club song Hannah doesn’t know, but the crowd around her shouts their approval and shifts easily into the beat. Hannah gulps from her beer to have something to do. Wally smiles at her as he dances a few feet away, and she smiles back, fighting hard to stomp down her feelings.
But she can’t ignore how Clay draws Baker closer, pressing his forehead against hers.
She can’t ignore how their bodies meld together, Clay’s hand on Baker’s waist, Baker’s hips sliding into his.
Hannah feels confused and desperate and full of rage, and all she wants is to wrench Baker away from the dance floor and ask, Is this real?
Are you forcing it? And if so, how do I do the same? Do I even want to?
“I need some air,” Hannah says, though no one can hear her over the music anyway. She pushes her way through the packed room, and suddenly it’s like she can’t move fast enough, like her heart wants to push through her throat before she makes it outside.
When she finally reaches the sanctuary of the balcony, her heart feels so high in her throat that she might choke.
She takes long, deliberate breaths and commands herself to pay attention only to the here and now: what she can see, what she can feel, what she can smell and hear.
She focuses on the smell of the saltwater air, on the distant moving of the ocean, but the pain spools out of her anyway.
Please. Please can You make it stop hurting it hurts so badly. I don’t want it. It hurts and I don’t want it. I’m trying to make it go away. Please just make it go away, just make it go away.
But there’s an ancient voice deep inside of her that knows it will never go away, no matter what she does or how hard she prays.
She would be content to stay out here all night, fighting this thing inside of her, gulping down sea air to try to clean out her insides, but some classmates interrupt her.
“Oh, sorry,” Lisa says when she and Bryce stumble onto the porch. She sounds anything but sorry. Bryce pays no attention; he’s kissing at her neck. “What’s up, Hannah,” Lisa says drunkenly. “Do you mind if we hang out here?”
“No, totally fine,” Hannah says shakily, tipping her cup toward them in a pathetic, long-distance cheers. “I was just cooling off.”
She steps away from the balcony to move past them, but right when she reaches the door, Lisa says, “Did you see your girl Baker making out with Clay on the dance floor? How cute are they! You have to tell her I said how cute they are.”
Bile rises in Hannah’s throat. “Yeah,” she says, trying to liven her voice. “I definitely will.”
She can’t find her friends when she reenters the house. She circles the makeshift dance floor, searching for Baker’s dark hair, for Wally’s glasses, for Joanie’s neon headband and Luke’s messy curls, even for Clay’s cocky smile, but none of them are there.
She disappears up the steps to the second floor, slinking in the darkness like a thief, hoping no one notices her. Her body feels loose with alcohol but her heart feels tight with pain.
She finds them in a bedroom off the main landing. Wally, Joanie, Luke, and Clay are sprawled on the floor, their backs against the bland white furniture, their eyes bleary and shining. They beam up at her when she opens the door, and the relief she feels is so sudden that she almost yells at them.
“Where the hell have you been?” she says.
“Um, hello, I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve been in here,” Joanie giggles.
“Where’s Baker?”
“She went looking for something … or someone … I don’t remember,” Clay says, dropping his head against the dresser, a drunken grin plastered on his face. “But don’t worry,” he says, waggling his eyebrows, “she’ll be back.”
“Where were you?” Wally asks.
Hannah doesn’t respond at first: She’s too preoccupied with Clay’s insinuation. After a pause, she sits down and mumbles, “Porch.”
“Speaking poetry to the stars,” Joanie sighs dramatically.
“Shut up.”
“Oh, relax, Han,” Clay says, nudging her. “Here, spend a minute with my friend Jack. He’ll make you feel better.”
She stares blankly at the handle of whiskey. “What, are you just drinking from the bottle?”
“Do you want a shot glass?” Joanie says. “You can have the one with the tacky tourist’s picture or the one Luke backwashed into.”
“Thanks for saving me the good ones.”
“Tacky tourist it is,” Joanie giggles, and passes her the glass.
They play a game where everyone has to say “—in Luke’s pants” at the end of every sentence. They pass the whiskey around the circle, taking short pulls that burn their throats, the shot glasses discarded at their feet.
“Hannah, you’re taking extra … in Luke’s pants,” Joanie says.
“Mind your own damn business … in Luke’s pants.”
“I will shank you.”
“In Luke’s pants?”
“Let’s sing a song,” says Wally, “… in Luke’s pants.”
“What do you want to sing in Luke’s pants?” Joanie says.
“‘Callin’ Baton Rouge.’ In Luke’s pants.”
“Garrrrrth!” Joanie shouts.
“Let’s sing Nicki Minaj,” Luke says.
“You are so fucking gay,” Clay laughs.
“Dude,” says Luke. “‘Super Bass.’ Super. Bass.”
“Can’t we plug in a phone or something?” Joanie asks. “Where are the speakers? Hannah, where are the speakers?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Our speakers! Where are they!”
“Oh my god, Joanie, they’re at our house in Louisiana. They’re not here!”
“Oh,” Joanie says, blinking lazily at the wall.
“I’ll play something,” Luke says with the air of a magician about to pull a rabbit from his hat.
He plays “Wagon Wheel,” and they all tilt their heads back and sing along.
Luke wraps his arms around Joanie and they sway back and forth, singing loudly and off-key; Clay and Wally strum invisible banjos, with Clay following Wally’s example.
They sing and laugh and laugh and sing, but Hannah can’t bring herself to put her heart into it.
“Again, again, again!” Luke says when the song ends.
“Nah,” says Clay, rising off the floor. “Let’s go back downstairs. We’re missing the party.”
“Who needs that? We’ve got this whole handle of whiskey to ourselves. Survival of the fittest. Or the drunkest. Or whatever Charles Duckwing used to say.”
“Come on, we came for the party, we can’t just hide up here.”
“We could head home,” Wally suggests.
“Dude, this is our one chance to really let loose this week. Come on. Let’s all just go back downstairs.”
“Calm down, Clay-Clay,” Hannah says, knocking his calf with the whiskey bottle. “Your reputation won’t expire just because you’re up here.”
“I hate when you call me that.”
Hannah shrugs. “We all hate things sometimes.”
“Baker’s down there by herself. Don’t you think we should find her?”
Hannah narrows her eyes at him. There’s a prolonged pause until Wally stands up and brushes his hands together. “All right, let’s all go down.”
Luke makes a noise of protest from the floor, but Joanie kisses his cheek and says, with mock seriousness, “You can do it. I believe in you.”
“Sweet,” says Clay, nodding his head as they get to their feet. He opens the door and leads them toward the stairs. “They’ve probably all been wondering where we went.”
“Probably not,” Hannah mutters under her breath, and Wally catches her eye and smiles.
Downstairs, the party has degenerated into messy, erratic chaos.
The floor is littered with beer cans and red cups, and a group of underclassmen has hijacked the stereo.
As Hannah and her friends descend the stairs, Clay and Wally get pulled into conversation with a group of raucously drunk guys, but Hannah notices Clay’s eyes peering beyond them, searching for something.
Hannah follows Joanie and Luke back into the heart of the room, where Tyler and some senior soccer players have taken to leaping on top of the furniture.
Everything in Hannah’s vision is dim, like someone has placed a film over her pupils.