Chapter 12 Good Friday #3
“Yeah, Manceau pulled her out of class—Joanie, what’s wrong? Is she getting fired?”
“Hannah—”
“What? What is it?”
“Did you send that email?”
“What email?”
“Someone sent Ms. Carpenter an email about—about all that stuff Father Simon ranted about yesterday—the person who wrote it said she was confused about her feelings for her friend—”
All the breath goes out of Hannah. Her limbs start to tingle. “How do you know this?”
“Everyone’s talking about it—Michele overheard the front office staff whispering about it during her work study—she got a copy off the printer and she’s showing everyone—”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Hannah,” Joanie says tentatively, “you really didn’t—?”
“No,” Hannah says, her head reeling. “No. I really didn’t.”
Joanie’s face looks momentarily relieved, but then her eyebrows crinkle and she voices the fear Hannah has tried to push down for the last minute.
“Han, do you think Baker might have—?”
“Hey,” Wally calls, striding toward them with his lunch tray. “What’s up? Y’all coming to sit?”
Hannah and Joanie freeze. Wally hovers five feet away, his eyebrows lifting as he takes in their expressions.
“We’re coming,” Hannah says. “Sorry. We were just talking about a family thing.”
They follow him to their usual lunch table.
Hannah sits next to him and Joanie sits across from her, trying to catch Hannah’s eye.
Hannah unpacks her lunch bag, picks the crust off her sandwich, chews in small bites that make her feel like she might throw up.
Wally stirs the red beans on his tray and says, “So during Econ just now—”
Hannah doesn’t listen: Michele has just strutted into the courtyard, her face alight with a power Hannah has never seen before, her friends trailing her with satisfied smirks on their faces. Whole tables of students turn to look at her, and all at once the shouting starts.
“What’s going on?”
“Is it true?”
“Do you have it with you?”
The ruckus is enough to interrupt Wally and every other conversation taking place.
A hushed silence falls over the courtyard: No one talks, no one eats, no one shifts a lunch tray or crinkles a bag.
Michele swaggers to a table in the middle of the courtyard—the table where Baker and Clay sit—and leans down to whisper to someone.
Hannah holds down the bile in her throat.
Wally leans over. “What’s going—?”
His words are cut off by a yell from the middle table.
“—AND GET THE HELL AWAY!”
It’s Clay, rising from his seat, face flushed and eyes furious.
“Calm down,” Michele tells him, her voice carrying around the silent courtyard. “I’m just saying—”
“Well, shut up and move on,” Clay spits. He turns away from her and glares at the sea of onlookers. “Go back to your tacos. She’s just talking out of her ass, like usual.”
“Why don’t you let Baker speak for herself?” Michele retorts, her voice deadly.
The whole courtyard balances on a pin.
“She has nothing to do with it,” Clay says through gritted teeth.
“Then why do you look so scared, Baker?” Michele says. “If you had nothing to do with that email, then why did I see you crying in Ms. Carpenter’s room this morning?”
Hannah shifts down the bench, straining her eyes. Then she sees her: Baker is frozen in her seat, her face drained of all color. She stares up at Michele like a deer caught in the path of a hunter.
“Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?” Michele continues.
“I mean, the writer mentioned that she was trying to cover up her feelings by dating a guy. She said she worried about hurting her tight-knit group of friends. Yes, Clay, the Six-Pack. She made it very clear that she was drunk and had been drinking a lot more lately. And we all know that has to be you, Baker, right? I mean, you had that embarrassing episode at Liz’s party last weekend—”
“Shut your mouth!” Clay yells, rattling his lunch tray.
“I’m not trying to accuse you, Baker,” Michele says in a would-be-kind voice. “I just think whoever got Carpenter in trouble owes us an apology. Especially if that person is our class president. Don’t you think that’s fair?”
Baker opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.
“Well?” Michele prods.
“I—” Baker says weakly. She shakes her head like she can’t believe this is happening. “It wasn’t me,” she says finally.
“Oh, Baker,” Michele sighs, hanging her head like she’s deeply troubled.
“Look at Clay, ready to fight for you even though you’re so cruelly leading him on.
Look at Carpenter, losing her job because you dragged her into this mess.
Look at your old friends, hung out to dry because you don’t like who you are.
How do you not see that you’re hurting people? ”
There is a long, pressured silence, and Hannah’s heart hammers inside her chest.
“Just admit,” Michele sneers, losing patience now, “that you’re not the perfect, put-together little prom queen you want everyone to think you are, and maybe we can help you figure out these difficult feelings before you ruin anything else.”
Baker breathes very fast, and even from across the courtyard, Hannah can see her shaking.
“Well, since you’re not saying anything,” Michele says triumphantly, a wicked gleam in her eye, “I guess we can take that as a yes.”
Hannah stands up without thinking, and she knows what she’s about to do before she can even process it.
“It wasn’t her.”
Her voice carries across the courtyard and clangs inside her own head, almost like it isn’t hers. Every face in the vicinity turns to look at her.
“What are you doing?!” Joanie whispers. “Sit down!”
“She didn’t write it,” Hannah goes on, breathing fast, fast, too fast. “I did.”
“Stop trying to cover for her, Hannah,” Michele says waspishly.
“I’m not.” Hannah makes eye contact with as many people as she can, though she hardly sees them at all. “She was trying to cover for me.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Hannah, just sit down—”
“I sent the email last night. I was drunk—and panicking—I had been feeling this way for a really long time”—her voice starts to break—“and Ms. Carpenter has always been my favorite teacher, and I saw how she acted at Mass yesterday…” She shakes her head with genuine tears in her eyes.
“I sent her the email without a second thought. I didn’t know what else to do. ”
“Then why did I see Baker crying to Ms. Carpenter this morning?” Michele says angrily.
Hannah swallows her tears, her mind working furiously to keep up with her words.
“I called Baker in the middle of the night and told her everything. She said she would try to help, that she’d talk to Ms. Carpenter and figure out a solution.
I was worried that I’d get in trouble and I—I might jeopardize my acceptance to Emory.
I made Baker promise she would talk to Ms. Carpenter first thing this morning. ”
“Oh, this is a bunch of crap,” Michele says. “You two haven’t even talked in, like, weeks. We’ve all noticed it.”
“She was trying to distance herself from me,” Hannah says, lowering her eyes to the table. “I told her how I’ve been feeling about—about girls—and—and she wasn’t sure we should be friends anymore. She didn’t want to compromise her beliefs.”
Clay’s voice is the first one to break the courtyard’s silence. “Is that true, Bake?”
Every face turns away from Hannah and back to Baker. Baker meets Hannah’s eyes, her expression horrified. For an infinite moment they read each other, and Hannah nods her head a fraction of an inch. It’s just us.
“Yes,” Baker says.
Hannah breathes.
In the distance, somewhere far, far away, the bell rings.
The sound of it seems to startle everyone back into reality, and slowly, silently, Hannah’s classmates begin to gather their belongings.
Then the silence gives way to a buzzing whispering, and Hannah watches in a daze as classmates stream past her, some of them staring, some of them averting their eyes, others outright glaring at her.
But the only person Hannah watches is Baker.
She rises unsteadily from her table and seems unaware that Clay is speaking into her ear.
She meets Hannah’s eyes one more time, and Hannah feels the weight of the world between them.
Then she stumbles toward the B-Hall doors, her head down and her hair hanging over her eyes.
And then everyone is gone. Everyone except for Joanie and Wally.
Hannah slumps into her seat. Everything around her feels dim, surreal, almost like she’s in a movie. Joanie gawps at her, but it’s Wally who draws her attention. He sits deadly still, head lowered, clenching his hands on the table.
“Wally—” Hannah says.
“Don’t talk to me.”
“Wally, wait—”
But he jerks out of her grip and storms away, not even stopping to pick up his trash when it bounces off the garbage can.
Hannah turns to Joanie, who looks almost as angry as Wally as she seals up her lunch bag.
“I had to,” Hannah says.
“Bullshit. Do you think she would have done it for you?” Joanie shakes her head and gets up from the table. “Do you realize Mom and Dad will find out now? Is that how you wanted this to go?”
Hannah cannot move. Her limbs have gone numb. Her mind is foggy.
“Stupidest thing you’ve ever done in your life,” Joanie says.
Her classmates stare at her all through third block.
The only person who doesn’t look at her is Wally, who sits with his jaw clenched and his head bent over the desk.
Hannah’s mind replays the scene in the courtyard again and again while Mr. Creary prattles on about the format of their Government exam.
And then the overhead intercom beeps.
“Mr. Creary?”
“Mm?”
“Please send Hannah Eaden to the office.”
Her stomach plummets. She ignores the fresh stares and summons her remaining dignity as she leaves the classroom. But once she’s standing in the empty hallway, her shoulders crumple. Her vision dims. She stops in the bathroom and throws up.