Chapter 9 The Prom Queen #3
He takes her hand and leads her back over the grass. Just before they step onto the patio tile, he halts and pivots towards her.
He wants to kiss her. She knows it in an instant, even before she sees the look in his eyes.
Wally doesn’t say anything; he just looks at her, his eyes gazing into hers before flitting down to her mouth. There is a hunger in his expression, and though Hannah has caught glimpses of it before, tonight she sees the full manifestation.
She shifts her weight on the grass, unable to look away from his mouth, unable to make a decision. She wrestles with her instincts, remembering Baker kissing her on the beach, but also Baker kissing Clay on the dance floor.
Why should she fight this? Why fight it when Wally is standing patiently in front of her, ready to be with her?
Wally, who is kind, and loving, and who believes in good things even when he doesn’t receive them?
Wally, who sees her, who wants to understand her, who makes her feel like she might be better than she is?
Maybe that’s what Baker has figured out: that it’s easier to swim downstream, carried on a current that delivers her to a boy she knows so well, giving herself over to the expected order of things.
“Hannah—” Wally says breathlessly, and when he says her name, she thinks, Maybe this can be enough.
So she arches her neck up to kiss him. His lips are warm and tinged with mint from the Altoids she saw him eating in the car.
She kisses him hard, like she means to, and he kisses back hungrily, and though her body has no reaction, and though she feels no burst of magic, she at least feels safe, like she has found a still harbor for the first time in months.
They kiss for several minutes, until the kiss turns heated and Wally has to pull away from her.
“Damn,” he pants, pupils blown behind his glasses. “Did I mention I’m glad you’re my prom date?” He stoops to pick up his socks and shoes, reaching for Hannah’s high heels, too. “Come on,” he says, voice mischievous, “let’s go punch Clay in the face.”
It’s past midnight now, and everyone has changed out of their formal attire. Wally glances at his tux and says, “Guess we ought to follow suit? No pun intended.”
Hannah smiles. “That was awful.”
He shrugs, still grinning, and hands over her overnight bag. “I’ll see you in a minute.”
She takes the bag and winds her way through the forest of people in the house, eager to reach the stairs.
She scoots around Todd and Olivia making out on a sleeping bag, Kathleen and William kissing over a game of beer pong, Meaghan and Chris spooning on the couch.
It seems everyone has coupled up tonight, and Hannah feels reassured in her decision to kiss Wally.
Just before she reaches the stairs, she runs into Baker and Clay.
Baker lounges against Clay’s chest, her bare legs splayed over the carpet, her hair thrown up in the messy topknot she usually reserves for sleepovers at Hannah’s house.
Clay has an arm around her, and he’s wearing the petite, dainty queen’s crown askew on his tousled hair.
They’re circled up with a large group of people, passing a flask when they think no one is looking.
At that moment, right when Hannah moves into their line of sight, Baker looks straight at her—and gives her a quick, almost imperceptible, nod.
At first, Hannah thinks she has imagined it—but no, Baker is still staring at her. She bites her lip and gives another subtle but unmistakable nod, almost as if she and Hannah have come to an agreement. And then she turns away, looking incredibly, irrevocably sad.
And Hannah understands.
Baker saw her kissing Wally in the yard. She believes they are on the same page, that they have silently agreed to move forward with the boys, that they share an implicit understanding to leave the beach house bedroom behind them.
It’s better this way.
All at once, Hannah is flooded with the same incredible, irrevocable sadness she saw on Baker’s face.
But what can she do? What can they do? This is the new world order, and they have drawn their lines in the sand, and Hannah will play her part the same way Baker is playing hers: so damn well that you could crown the performance.
She makes herself climb the stairs to the second floor, carrying the image of Baker’s eyes the whole way.
Hannah spends most of the night huddled with Wally in a corner of the family room, drinking Fanta, munching on Chex Mix, and listening to David from AP Calc ramble on about his predictions for the next season of The Walking Dead.
She intentionally turns her back to the chaos of the main room so she won’t have to witness Baker and Clay and all the other couples flirting, kissing, and sneaking around, taking advantage of the fact that Clay’s parents have surrendered to sleep.
Around two in the morning, with the party still in full swing, Wally asks Hannah if she wants to go for a walk.
“Right now?”
“Yeah, if you want to.”
They walk the streets of Clay’s neighborhood, accompanied by the whispers of lawn sprinklers and nighttime insects.
Wally ambles along with his hands tucked into the pockets of his drawstring pajama pants, and Hannah holds her hands in her sweatshirt and reminds her heart that it should be here, with Wally, and not back at the house.
“I like you,” Wally says suddenly, after they’ve wandered down a couple of streets. “I’ve liked you for a really long time.”
They reach the outskirts of the neighborhood, cross a quiet street, and start a path toward the LSU lakes.
“I guess I want to know,” Wally says, kicking a pebble along, “do you like me back? Or am I just the friend you occasionally make out with?”
They reach the edge of the lake and sit down upon the soft earth, staring out at the dark water.
At this late, quiet hour, with only the two of them, with the full moon reflecting off the lake, everything in the world feels predicated on hope, on possibility, on the certainty of what Hannah has been taught to believe.
She holds fast to the decision she made earlier and tells herself for the second time that night, Maybe this can be enough.
“I like you, too,” Hannah says, and as soon as she speaks the words, she feels calmer, safer, like she’s slotting into place.
For now, in the whispering peace of this night, she and Wally are the only two humans who exist, and it’s easy to imagine that she could always feel this way.
He’s Boy, she’s Girl, and maybe her teachers have been right all along, and maybe the churches have been right all along, and maybe Wally has been the divinely anointed one for her all along, ever since the beginning of time.
Wally kisses her there alongside the lake, and Hannah lets him.
They return to the house to find their classmates asleep on various parts of the floor. There is one light turned on near the staircase, and Wally leads Hannah toward it, both of them tiptoeing through the land mines of sleeping people.
“Looks like it’s just guys down here now,” Wally says. “Can I walk you upstairs?”
Hannah smiles. “No, I’ll be okay.”
He kisses her good night, and she breathes in and takes that feeling of safety with her.
At the top of the stairs, she finds the linen closet and shines her phone light over the various sheets and summer quilts. Just when she’s about to pull some linens free, there’s a sudden noise behind her.
Hannah wheels around, her heart racing. “Who’s there?”
The phone light falls upon Baker, standing there with a frightened hand over her chest. “You scared me,” she whispers raggedly. “Jesus.”
“No, I’m Hannah.”
For just a splinter of a second, Hannah swears Baker is about to laugh at their old joke; but then a dark, despairing energy comes over her. Gone is the luminous smile of the prom queen; now she looks like a long-forgotten phantom.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asks.
“Nothing.” Baker says it too fast, too hastily. “Just getting some water.”
Hannah takes a step closer, shines her light more fully on Baker’s ashen skin, her red-rimmed eyes. “Something’s wrong. Have you been crying?”
“I’m fine,” Baker says, trying to push past her.
Hannah grabs her wrist, forces her to stop. Their faces are inches apart in the dark, so close that Hannah can hear Baker’s anxious breathing. She can tell Baker is on the edge of breaking down, of crying out, of giving up the whole facade.
“I’m here, okay?” Hannah says seriously. “Whatever happens, whatever changes, I’m still here.”
Baker inhales sharply. She opens her mouth like she’s about to relent, but then shakes her head and hurries down the stairs. Hannah turns back to the linen closet with a heavy heart.
She’s carrying her sheets past Clay’s bedroom when his door jerks open, startling her again.
“Whoa!” Clay shout-whispers, jolting backward. “Who is that?!”
“It’s Hannah,” she says, exposing herself with the phone light. “I was just getting some blankets.”
“God, you scared the shit out of me, Han.”
Hannah doesn’t apologize. She shines the light on him instead, noting his naked chest, glistening with sweat, and his messy, rumpled hair. He is wearing his boxers and nothing else.
“What are you doing?” Hannah asks.
“Nothing,” he says hastily. “Just, uh—brushing my teeth and everything.”
A cold, sick feeling spreads through Hannah’s stomach—a kind of instinct that hints to something she doesn’t want to know.
“Come on,” Clay says. “Let’s get to bed. I don’t want to wake up my parents.”
Hannah hesitates. That sick instinct slithers through her body, clogging her throat, making her want to throw up.
“Your boxers are inside out,” she whispers.
They stand in uncomfortable silence.
“Oh,” Clay says, fiddling with his waistband. “Yeah, uh. Pulled ’em on kind of quickly. I’ll fix it. Thanks.”