Chapter 10 Shards of Glass #2
The courtyard breaks into applause. Michele looks smug where she sits with her friends. Clay wraps his arm around Baker, and Hannah knows he’s thinking of the service projects she organized in the fall.
Wally doesn’t clap much.
“Not excited about the Cup?” Hannah asks him.
“It’s like you said months ago,” he says. “The whole thing is kind of weird.”
Hannah shrugs. “Whatever gets people excited.”
Wally frowns. He rustles his hand around a bag of Cheetos, lost in thought.
“Hey,” he says after a moment, “I’ve been meaning to ask you … have you talked to Baker at all?”
“You know I haven’t. Why?”
Wally hesitates. “Clay’s really worried about her.”
“What? Why?”
“We went for a run yesterday and he was telling me that she hasn’t really been eating.”
Hannah’s chest constricts. “She’s not eating?”
“No, no, I mean, she is, I think she’s just not eating as much as she used to, you know? She told Clay she hasn’t really had an appetite.”
Hannah shifts on the bench to get a good look at Baker.
She sits in the middle of her crowded, lively table, smiling and talking to the people all around her.
But there’s something different about her, and Hannah can see it now that she’s truly looking for the first time in days.
Baker is skinnier. Paler. Her smile less bright.
“She’s probably missing you, Han,” Wally says.
Hannah says nothing.
As they shift into May, the days grow longer and the earth grows greener. Hannah hears the birds when she wakes and the crickets when she falls to sleep. The whole world holds a feeling of balance, like a tightrope walker poised on a wire, waiting for something, restless in the heat.
The ache in Hannah’s heart starts to scar over, so that it no longer feels fresh, but more like a routine part of her.
She sits on the back porch at night and wonders how long she will carry it within her.
She breathes slowly, asking air into her lungs, and feels the air shape around the outline of the ache, as if too frightened to go near it.
On the first Saturday of May, Hannah rearranges the jewelry on her sink while Joanie gets ready to go out to a party. “Turn off that stupid emo music,” Joanie says when she dips into the bathroom to grab her makeup bag. “You’re making me depressed.”
Hannah hangs out with her parents after Joanie leaves. She helps her mom cook baked ziti while her dad plays Fleetwood Mac songs through his laptop speakers, and then she and her parents fall into the big couch in the family room and watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on AMC.
Joanie calls her sometime after midnight, an hour after their parents have gone up to bed. Hannah ignores it. Joanie calls again.
“What?” Hannah answers. “I don’t want to pick you up, Joanie, I thought you were staying the night there.”
“You need to get over here,” Joanie says urgently.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“It’s Baker. She’s really sick.”
Hannah’s heart stops. “What happened?”
“She drank too much. She won’t let me help her. Please just come over.”
“I’ll be right there,” Hannah breathes, rushing to grab her keys. “Just stay with her and—and tell her I’m on my way.”
She speeds out of the Garden District, across South Acadian, down into Liz Freeman’s neighborhood, and pulls up outside a loud, pulsing house. There’s no room to park, so she ditches her car on the tree median and sprints through the grass with her shoes halfway off.
The house is overrun with people, bodies packed together in a humid, sweaty mess, the walls vibrating with music, a glass chandelier rattling above the fray.
Hannah runs past drunken classmates who laugh at her panic and tug on her messy hair.
“Where’s the fire?” someone laughs, but Hannah pushes past him and rushes up the stairs.
With a swell of relief, she finds Joanie in one of the upstairs bedrooms, crouched against a door.
“Where is she?” Hannah asks, practically throwing herself on Joanie.
“In here.” Joanie spreads her palm over the bathroom door. “She won’t let me in.”
Hannah tries the handle, but of course it’s locked. She drops to her knees and raps on the door. “Baker?” she calls, desperate to be heard over the pulsing hip-hop music coming through the ceiling. “Baker, can you hear me?”
She presses an ear to the door and hears a retching sound coming from the other side.
“How much did she have to drink?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t with her for most of the night, but Liz said she was drinking straight vodka for the last hour.”
“And no one stopped her?”
“I don’t think they realized.”
“Where the hell is Clay?”
Joanie shakes her head. “I don’t know. I found her slumped over the kitchen sink and tried to take her into the downstairs bathroom, but she wanted to come up here. I don’t think she wanted anyone to see her.”
Hannah shifts onto her belly and peers through the crack beneath the door. She can see Baker’s bare legs spread over the tile floor. “Baker?” she calls again. “Baker, it’s me, it’s Hannah. Can you let me in, please?”
“I tried to use a bobby pin,” Joanie says, her eyes wide and frightened, “but I couldn’t get it to work.”
“Let me see it. Where’s your phone? Look up how to unlock doors with bobby pins.”
Joanie finds a helpful article and reads it aloud while Hannah jiggles the bobby pin in the keyhole.
“Come on,” Hannah pleads, “come on.”
Finally, something clicks, and Hannah wrenches the door open and falls forward onto her hands.
Baker is slumped against the bathtub, clutching her stomach, her legs stretched toward the toilet. She has vomit on the corner of her mouth and in her hair.
“Baker,” Hannah says, wrapping her arms around her, “are you all right? What happened?”
Baker rolls her head toward the sound of Hannah’s voice. She nestles her head into Hannah’s shirt and starts to cry.
“She needs to throw up more,” Joanie says. “We need to get it out of her system.”
“Baker,” Hannah says softly, rubbing her back, “we need you to vomit more, okay? Okay? We’ll help you.”
Baker scrunches up her face. “Can’t,” she cries. “Hurts.”
“I know,” Hannah coos, pulling Baker’s hair back into a ponytail, “but it’s going to make you feel better, okay? I promise. Come on, we’ll help you.”
“Come on, Baker,” Joanie says kindly, “you can do it.”
They pull Baker to her knees and shuffle her toward the toilet, flanking her like bodyguards. Joanie grips Baker’s arm to keep her upright while Hannah rubs soothing circles on her back.
“Doing great,” Hannah coaches her. “Now try to make yourself vomit, okay?”
“Just stick a couple of fingers down your throat,” Joanie adds, miming the action.
Baker bends forward and heaves. Joanie looks pointedly away, her face screwed up in distaste, while Hannah counts tulip petals in the wallpaper.
They remain that way for several minutes, the sound of Baker’s retching echoing across the bathroom, the vibrations from the party pulsing through their veins.
And then Baker stills.
“Feel better?” Hannah asks, rubbing her back.
“Yeah,” Baker rasps. Hannah hears the pump of the toilet flushing.
“Careful,” Hannah guides. “Sit down slowly. We’ll get you some water, okay?”
She leans against the bathtub and pulls Baker into her arms again. Joanie squats next to them, her eyes still crinkled with worry.
“Do you think you got it all out?” Joanie asks.
Baker nods against Hannah’s chest. Hannah strokes through her hair and smooths a thumb over the sheen on her forehead.
“Can you get me a washcloth, Joanie? Or a wet piece of toilet paper?”
Joanie finds a washcloth under the sink, wets it, wrings it out. Hannah presses the blue cloth against Baker’s forehead, her cheeks, her collarbone, wiping the sweat and vomit away.
“Does that feel better?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Baker breathes, sounding a little more like herself. She nestles her head farther into Hannah’s shirt. “Thank you.”
“We’ll just sit here for a little while, all right?”
The three of them rest in silence, Joanie sitting against the door and Hannah and Baker propped against the bathtub. Hannah can feel Baker breathing against her body, and she pulls her fingers through Baker’s sweaty hair in the same rhythm.
“It’s a good thing I called you,” Joanie says.
Hannah looks up. Joanie is wearing an unusual expression: She seems older somehow, and sober in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol.
“Yeah,” Hannah agrees, shifting her eyes to the tile floor. “I’m glad you did.”
“I’m gonna get her some water. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Thanks.”
Then Joanie is gone, and Hannah is left with Baker in her arms.
“What the hell happened?” Clay yells, bursting into the bathroom. Joanie trails behind him with her mouth open in protest and a glass of water sloshing in her hand. Luke follows last, his usually bright face falling into worry.
“She drank too much,” Hannah says, shifting forward with a protective arm around Baker. “Keep your voice down.”
“Why didn’t anyone get me?” Clay asks, falling to his knees in front of them. “Baker, are you okay? What happened, baby?”
Baby. The word echoes in Hannah’s head, tears through her skin, pierces her organs.
“Don’t move her, Clay,” Joanie snaps, stepping forward. “Here, Hannah, give her some water.”
“I’ll get my keys,” Luke says from the doorway. “Bring her down in two minutes.”
“Thanks, man,” Clay says. He inches closer to Baker and brushes his knuckles down her cheek. “You all right, Bake? What were you drinking?”
“She can’t talk, Clay,” Joanie says impatiently. “She just puked up a whole swimming pool of alcohol. Give her some space.”
“Here,” Clay says, reaching for the water glass from Hannah, “I’ll do it. You and Joanie go clear a path to the front door.”
“What?” Hannah says, nothing making sense in her head, her impulse to hold Baker strengthening by the second.
“I’ll take care of her. I can carry her down the stairs.”
“I don’t think we should move her yet.”
“Hannah, she’s my girlfriend, okay, I can handle this. C’mere, Bake.”
Hannah watches numbly as he pulls Baker’s body into his lap, cradling her in his strong arms. “Here, baby, come on,” he says, holding the glass of water to her lips.
Hannah stumbles into the sink, words swimming around her head, worry still clutching at her insides, and beyond it all, that ache, that terrible, yearning ache, suffocating her heart.
“Hannah,” Joanie says softly.
Hannah doesn’t look at her.
“Up we go,” Clay says, lifting Baker in his arms. “Han, can you get that water glass?”
She does as he asks and follows him out of the bathroom, down the stairway, out of the house. Luke’s car idles in the driveway, waiting for them.
“Are y’all coming?” Clay asks, turning around briefly.
Hannah can’t find her voice.
“We’re good,” Joanie says. “Text us when you get her home, okay?”
“I will,” Clay promises, and then he climbs into Luke’s car with Baker still clasped in his lap. Hannah and Joanie stand motionless in the driveway, watching them back away.
“I can drive home, if you want,” Joanie says tentatively.
Hannah doesn’t answer.
“Han? You should put that water glass down.”
“What?”
“That water glass. In your hand. Maybe you should go put it on the porch.”
Hannah looks at her hand like she’s never seen it before.
She walks numbly to the front porch, trying to follow orders, but just as she’s about to set the glass down, a deep pain overtakes her, a pain so sudden and blinding that she channels it without thinking—she throws the glass at the brick wall—she sees it smash into a million tiny fragments, granular as the sands on the seashore—she hears Joanie gasp behind her but she doesn’t care—the pain is devastating and debilitating and she wants to vomit, she wants to vomit, but she can’t.
“Hannah,” Joanie whispers. There are tears in her eyes.
Hannah opens her mouth to speak, but a dry sob comes out instead. She shakes her head back and forth, back and forth, trying to erase everything.
“Hannah, please,” Joanie says, taking her wrist. “Let’s go home.”