Chapter 14 The Fall
THE FALL
Jarring music blares from a set of speakers on the outdoor bar.
Two long tables have been planted at the top of the lawn, and dozens of Hannah’s classmates crowd around to watch players shoot bone-white Ping-Pong balls into weak plastic cups.
Beyond them, swarms of people plaster the backyard, all of them dressed alike in Polo button-downs and khaki shorts, sundresses and pearl earrings, clutching sticky Natty Light cans in their fists.
The old swing set lurks forgotten in the background, its worn-away beams and rusted chains whispering eerily to Hannah, as if from some haunted place she knew long ago.
Clay has lit the torches so the backyard dances with fire, adding a ritualistic feel to this final high school party.
The flickering orange light catches on people’s faces like a camera shutter so they are glowing one moment and shadowed the next, and Hannah is unnerved by the contrast. Only the woods below are completely shrouded in darkness, but Hannah can sense the ancient trees whispering like forgotten guests, separated only by the rickety old fence along the perimeter.
“Clay’s looking at us,” Joanie says, and Hannah turns to see Clay watching them from across the yard. His eyes are bleary with alcohol, but there is no doubt that he is staring them down.
“I think he wants us to leave,” Hannah says.
Clay takes a long pull from his beer can, his drunken gaze still on Hannah. Then someone from the beer pong table claps him on the arm and beckons him over. Clay sends one last look at Hannah, then stumbles to the table and lines up his shot.
“Guess he doesn’t care that much,” Joanie says.
Hannah swallows, feeling unnerved. “I want to leave.”
“Just help me find Luke first, okay?”
They walk silently around the outskirts of the party, leaving several feet between themselves and everyone else.
Joanie carries a cup of vodka lemonade but Hannah walks empty-handed, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes darting all over the backyard.
A few classmates make eye contact with her, nodding in a polite but pitying way, but the vast majority either glare or ignore her.
At last they find Luke. He stands in a small circle of guys in the back corner of the yard, his curls catching the light off the torches. As Hannah and Joanie approach him, Hannah recognizes Wally standing across from him.
“Shit,” she whispers. “I’d better hang back. Go ahead. Do your thing.”
Joanie clears her throat and hands Hannah her drink.
She straightens her back and walks confidently up to Luke, her hair now carrying the torches’ light, too.
The circle of guys stops talking as she approaches, and Luke turns just a fraction of an inch to face her.
Wally’s eyes flit across them and land on Hannah.
After a moment, he gives a quick jerk of his head, but then looks down to his beer.
Joanie has spoken to Luke for less than thirty seconds when the music abruptly cuts off and there’s a commotion at the front of the yard.
Clay has jumped up onto the short brick wall that encloses the outdoor bar, and he is now swaying on his feet, sweaty hair plastered to his forehead, raising his arms to call for everyone’s attention.
The floodlights illuminate his face in a stark, garish way, turning his usual grin into something menacing and fake.
“Thank you for coming!” he shouts, and the partygoers all around the yard holler and whistle and raise their beer cans into the night. Luke, Joanie, Wally, and the rest of their circle stand in silence, waiting to see what Clay wants to say.
“It’s just after midnight, which means we’ve officially finished our last ever day as high school students—yeah, yeah, I know!
—but anyway, I’m drunk and I just want to say that St. Mary’s Class of 2012 is the best damn class that school has ever had, and I’m really glad I was a part of it with all of y’all! ”
A raucous cheer goes up through the yard. Hannah claps tepidly along with Luke, Joanie, and Wally.
“Before I turn the music back on and get totally wasted,” Clay says sloppily, “I just need to thank my girlfriend for helping to set this up. Where are you, Bake?”
A collective cheer goes up at the sound of Baker’s name. Clay surveys the crowd until he spots her, and then he smiles genuinely and extends his hand to pull her onto the brick wall. Hannah squints through the mass of people in front of her, but she can’t see Baker’s face.
“Baker, you are the best,” Clay says, slurring now, “and we all know what a hard time you’ve had lately with some of this nasty bullshit that’s been going on, but we all love you!”
An even bigger cheer goes up around the yard, a cheer that lasts for a full minute, with whistling and whooping and drunken shouts that echo inside Hannah’s head. Her mouth goes dry, her heart starts racing, and she turns to find Joanie watching her with a troubled expression.
He’s an asshole, Joanie mouths.
Hannah bites her teeth together. She feels a growing desperation inside of her, like her heart is drowning and doesn’t know where to reach.
“Everyone give Baker a drink tonight!” Clay shouts from the front of the party.
I’m gonna go, Hannah mouths to Joanie. She sets the vodka drink on the grass and turns to hurry up the perimeter of the yard.
“Hannah, wait!” Joanie says sharply, racing to grab her arm. “Let me go with you, okay?”
They’ve walked five paces when they hear another commotion.
“Wait, wait, what?” Clay is shouting from his post on the brick wall. “What are you saying?”
Someone at the front of the crowd is talking, but the distance and the crowd muffle their words. Hannah and Joanie keep walking, heads down, a sudden rush of dread urging them forward.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Clay shouts.
“What’s going on?” someone shouts.
Hannah looks up, stops in her tracks.
Clay is staring out over the yard, his face white, his eyes black as oil. He drops his beer can in a daze. “We lost the Diocesan Cup.”
“What?”
“What?!”
“No!”
The backyard is suddenly riotous, with people yelling all at once, their cacophonous voices scraping the night.
“Hold on!” Clay says, waving his arms to quiet them. He looks down to whoever is feeding him information, and Hannah strains her ears to hear.
“We can’t hear back here!” one of the guys near Luke says.
Clay looks up again, and there’s a murderous gleam in his eyes.
“Kasey just got a text from her friend whose mom works for the diocese,” he says, his voice cutting over the backyard. “They’re rescinding the Cup and awarding it to Mount Sinai.”
“What?”
“They can’t do that!”
“Why?!”
Clay’s jaw clenches. He stands deadly still, shoulders tight and fists balled at his sides. Under the glare of the floodlights, his eyes flicker out to the very back of the yard, searching for something.
“You know why,” he growls.
There is one packed second of silence, and Hannah has the sensation of tumbling over a ledge, her heart in her throat and her body beyond all control.
And then: a roaring, surging, all-consuming noise as the crowd starts to riot, thrashing about like a terrible, violent storm.
“We need to go,” Joanie says frantically. She pushes Hannah too hastily, causing them both to trip and fall.
The next thing Hannah knows, Wally is at her side, helping her up, his glasses reflecting fire. “It’s okay,” he says, his voice as steady as always. “They’re not gonna do anything.”
“I need to get out of here,” Hannah pants.
“We’ll come with you,” Luke says, appearing at Joanie’s side.
“Hey, what’s going on back there?!” Clay’s angry drunken voice shouts, and in her peripheral vision, Hannah sees dozens of dark figures turn toward her.
“Come on,” she says, leading the way along the torchlit perimeter.
“Yeah, that’s right, leave!” Clay shouts as the crowd jeers below him. “We don’t need your lying bullshit anymore!”
“Shut up!” Wally yells, his voice ringing in Hannah’s ears.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Clay shouts back, and then the sea of people between them is shouting, too, and Hannah is just trying to keep moving, keep moving—
And then Wally starts screaming at Clay.
“You’re a spineless asshole!” he roars. “You’re a self-obsessed prick who never gave a shit about his friends!”
“You fucking—!”
Then Clay is scrambling off the wall, jumping into the crowd, storming through the mass of people until he is right there, shoving Wally in the chest.
“What’s your problem, huh?”
Wally shoves him just as hard. “Back off, man! You crossed the line!”
“Are you kidding me?!” Clay snarls, his nostrils flaring. “Open your eyes, man! She crossed the line! She crossed all of us! She used Baker and she used you and now she’s making our whole school look like fucking assholes!”
Wally lunges, his sprinter’s legs propelling him forward, and throws a solid punch at Clay’s jaw. Clay stumbles backward into the crowd, his face registering shock. Then he lets out a primal roar and launches himself at Wally.
Then they’re both throwing punches, and Hannah drops to the ground with them, begging Wally to stop, begging Clay to stop, and one of their hands goes awry and smacks her in the face, and she staggers to her feet, dazed, her left cheek smarting, while Luke barrels in to pull Clay and Wally apart.
But it’s too late, because other people have now jumped into the fray, and punches are flying in every direction, and by the time Hannah has righted herself, the brawl has metastasized into a dangerous mass of muscles and limbs and vicious energy she has never seen the likes of before.
“Way to go, Eaden,” says a venomous voice, and Hannah wheels around to find Michele Duquesne slinking up to her. “Is this what you envisioned when you played martyr for Baker?”
Hannah can’t find her voice. Her cheek is throbbing, her head is ringing, and Joanie is screaming behind her, and she needs everything to stop—