Chapter 16 The Third Day
THE THIRD DAY
Hours later, Hannah wakes to a hot, sunny afternoon.
Joanie drives her to Zeeland Street for hash browns, and then they stop by Baker’s house to take Charlie out.
He bounds up to Hannah and licks her face with unrestrained joy, and she laughs into his fur and scratches him behind the ears like Baker does.
“She’ll be home soon,” Hannah promises him, kissing his face. “She’ll be home and she’ll be so excited to see you.”
Hannah’s mom helps her try on her graduation gown that afternoon. “It looks like a circus tent,” Joanie says, regarding the garment with distaste. “Like a cheap, red circus tent.”
“You’ll have to wear one next year,” Hannah says, “and it’ll look even uglier on you.”
Joanie smirks before reaching for her phone. “Hold on,” she says, spinning away from them, “it’s Luke.”
She takes the call with pink cheeks and bright eyes. “Yeah,” she says into the phone, as breathless as she was when Luke first asked her out two years ago. “Yeah, I’d love to.”
Hannah eats dinner with her parents after Joanie leaves to go out with Luke.
Her mom cooks her favorite meal—jambalaya—and surprises her with ice cream for dessert.
They sit at the table long after they have finished eating, talking about Emory and what Hannah’s major might be and when she wants to start shopping for her new dorm room.
“Hannah,” her mom says tentatively.
Hannah waits.
“This whole thing—you and girls—it’s going to be very new for your dad and me. We won’t always know what we’re supposed to do or say.”
“I know,” Hannah says, meeting her mom’s eyes.
“But we want you to know,” her mom continues, looking back at her, “that we’re praying for you to find love. With whomever that may be.”
Hannah’s dad takes her mom’s hand. He smiles at her in his quiet way, and a lump builds in Hannah’s throat.
“Thank you.”
“We love you,” her dad says.
“I love you, too,” she says, looking from one to the other, and it’s never been truer.
On Sunday morning, Hannah walks into St. Mary’s for the last time.
The senior hallway bursts with colorful red gowns as everyone lines up for graduation.
Hannah slips through the crowd, not talking to anyone, but not ducking her head, either.
She takes her place in line directly behind the spot where Michele would have stood.
Her classmates look curiously at her, but she looks past them for the only people in this line whom she truly cares about.
She recognizes Luke’s messy curls toward the front of the line, and when she turns to search behind her, she spots Clay’s tall form and Wally’s glasses.
They both stand subdued, neither one of them talking, Clay in the middle of the line and Wally toward the back.
Hannah makes eye contact with each of them.
Clay nods. Wally raises his palm to say hello.
She doesn’t see Baker in the line, but she didn’t expect to.
The graduation march starts to play from the gym and the seniors shift with excitement.
Then they’re walking forward, each of them processing toward the end of their high school story, and then the gym doors open and Hannah opens her right hand onto the air at her side, wishing Baker was there next to her.
Long after graduation has ended—once the cameras have stopped clicking, and Joanie has stopped mocking her red gown, and her St. Mary’s diploma has been flattened beneath a stack of books—Hannah stands naked in front of her bathroom mirror and looks at herself—really looks at herself—for the first time in months.
Her ash-blond hair, with the split ends tickling halfway down her back.
She’ll have to get a haircut before Emory.
Her blue-gray eyes, always narrowed in thought, curtained by brittle eyelashes.
Her small, thin lips on a mouth that eats and drinks and speaks and prays.
There is so much more for her to taste in this life.
The skin on her body, skin that has given and withheld, that has absorbed alcohol thrown in violence and tears wept in redemption.
Cold skin. Hot skin. Clothed skin. Naked skin.
And this neck—this neck that has leaned forward so she could pray over a chair, that has tilted back so she could see the heavens, that has turned to the side so she could hide from her demons, that has propelled her forward so she could kiss a girl.
The legs that have carried her when she wanted to separate, that have parted when she wanted to unite.
The arms that have shaken when she gripped her chair with terror, that have quivered when she touched another with courage.
And her hands—the hands that have white-knuckled on railings when she needed to breathe, that have folded together in chapels when she needed to pray, that have entered another when she needed to live. When she needed to love.
She sees herself, and she does not look away.
Early Monday morning, after she drops Joanie off for her last week of school, Hannah drives to Luke’s mom’s house. He sits on the front porch steps, waiting for her, a glass of water in his hand.
“Hey,” he says as she walks up to sit beside him. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
He brings out a crate of oranges and places it on the step below their feet. They dig their thumbnails into the peels and pick off the skin with lazy, early-morning movements, the undersides of their nails turning yellow.
“What time do you leave?” Hannah asks.
“Probably around ten. Wally’s coming at nine thirty to help me load up the car.”
“And Clay?”
Luke frowns as he drops a peel on the porch. “Haven’t heard from him.”
The air smells like citrus. At this early hour, when it’s not yet eight o’clock, the heat is gentle and balmy.
“I owe you so many apologies,” Hannah says.
“I owe you some, too.”
“My sister loves you. Really loves you.”
Luke smiles in a way he rarely does—not like the world is bursting with hilarity, but rather like the world has given him something he never thought he deserved. “I love her, too.”
They chew their oranges in silence, sitting side by side on the porch, until Luke turns to Hannah and says, “I wish I had been there for you.”
Hannah nods. “I wish I had told you what was going on. I think I knew, deep down, that you would understand, that you could talk to me in a way Wally and Clay couldn’t. But I was afraid.”
Luke looks thoughtful. He chooses another orange and tosses it up and down in his palm. Then a slow grin spreads across his face.
“Well,” he says, looking her in the eye, that old familiar hitch in his smile, “orange you glad you told me now?”
She talks to Clay next. It’s a Tuesday afternoon when she parks outside his house, her body constricting at the memory of this place.
“He’s grounded,” Mrs. Landry says when she answers the door. Her voice has lost its normal warmth. “Pete and I are only letting him out to do community service.”
“I have some things I want to apologize for,” Hannah says, begging Mrs. Landry with her eyes.
Mrs. Landry scrutinizes her with an uncomfortable expression on her face, and Hannah realizes that Mrs. Landry must now see her as someone foreign, someone unfathomable, someone unknown. But Hannah stands upright, feeling her breath in her lungs and her pulse in her chest.
“He’s out back,” Mrs. Landry says finally. “You can talk to him for a few minutes.”
“Thank you.”
She finds Clay at the back of the yard, one knee in the dirt, his quarterback’s hands hammering nails into the wooden fence.
“Need some help?” Hannah calls.
Clay startles. “Oh,” he says, his tone uncertain. “No, I’m all right.”
“Can we talk?”
Clay looks at her for an extended second. Then he drops his hammer into the dirt and gestures for her to follow him. They plop down on the old swings and scrape their heels against the dirt, Clay bouncing a tennis ball to calm himself, his tree-dark hair reflecting sunlight.
“I’m not sure how to start,” Hannah mutters.
Clay clutches the tennis ball. “Yeah.”
“And it’s weird, because I’ve always known how to talk to you. I’ve always felt like I could tell you anything.”
Clay’s eyebrows draw together. He seems to be deliberating about something. “I saw y’all kissing at the beach,” he says finally. “In the garage, at Tyler’s party. I went looking for Baker, and when I opened the garage door, I saw her kissing you.”
“That was you?”
“It freaked me out,” Clay continues, squeezing the tennis ball. “Not because I thought it was bad, or wrong, or any of that shit, but because it made sense. It made so much sense. And I didn’t want it to, because I had already fallen for her.”
A long beat of silence. Hannah winds her arms around her swing. She digs her sandals into the dirt and waits.
“I was an ass,” Clay says finally. “Wally was right. I was so blinded by wanting to be with her, and wanting everyone to love the two of us, and trying so hard not to hate you … that I messed everything up. I ruined us. I ruined our friends.”
“No,” Hannah says. “It wasn’t just your fault. All this stuff that happened—it’s too big to be any single person’s fault. Maybe there’s no fault at all. Maybe it’s just stuff that had to happen.”
“No, Han. I shouldn’t have abandoned you.
I shouldn’t have said all those ugly things I said and I shouldn’t have started that fight.
” He pauses. “I shouldn’t have waited to see what Michele would do.
I think I was just so tired of trying to make it work that I finally reached this point where I wanted someone else to call the plays. ”
“There’s a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, either,” Hannah says graciously.