Chapter 16 The Third Day #2
“You know the worst part? I knew she didn’t want to be with me.
I knew it deep down. She never seemed to want to talk to me.
One time she started crying when I was driving us home from the movies—she said she was just stressed about college stuff, but I knew that wasn’t it.
Even when we—you know, had sex, she was really distant afterward.
She wouldn’t let me hold her or anything, and then we just kinda lay there until she started to cry. ”
Hannah’s chest aches. Clay raises his head to look at her.
“And the way she looked whenever someone said your name,” he says, voice arching. “I knew, somehow, that she wanted to be with you. That she had always wanted to be with you.”
Hannah’s throat thickens. She swallows and shakes the hair out of her eyes.
“She,” Clay says, stopping himself when his voice trembles. He clears his throat and stares at the tennis ball in his palm. “She was telling the truth about the email. When she said she wrote it. Right?”
He’s looking hard at Hannah, begging her for the truth. She stares back into his pained eyes, unsure of how to answer him.
But Clay nods, and then he passes the tennis ball into Hannah’s hand. “You’re brave, Han. You’re braver and stronger than I’ve ever been.”
“No,” Hannah says, turning the tennis ball over.
“I really missed you when all of this was going down. Even though I didn’t want to, I did. I really missed our whole group. Even now, after all the shit that’s happened, all I want is for all of us to hang out again.”
Hannah tosses the ball back to him. “I want that, too.”
“You gonna talk to Wally?”
“I’m going to try.”
“He’ll listen,” Clay says, tossing the ball back her way.
“Are you going to talk to him?”
“I need to. Him and everyone else.” Clay hangs his head, chewing his lip. “I’m just trying to work up the courage first.”
They fall back into silence, each of them bouncing the tennis ball a few times before tossing it back to the other, until Clay stands and tells her that he needs to finish repairing the fence.
“Can we hang out when you’re no longer grounded?” Hannah asks him.
Clay ducks his head into the sun. “Yeah,” he says, with the trace of a smile on his face. “I’d love that.”
He hugs her for a long minute before she turns to leave. “I hope you figure everything out,” he says, speaking quietly into her hair. “You’re one of my best friends, and even after everything, so is she, and I’d be a pretty awful guy if I didn’t want my friends to be happy.”
And then it’s time to talk to Wally. She drives to his house on Thursday morning, knowing that his mom will be at work and his brothers still have one more day of school, and parks in the driveway next to his old Camry.
She knocks on the garage door and listens to the steady sound of his feet moving toward her.
He opens the door and blinks quickly at her, like he’s not sure whether or not she’s there. He wears the same flannel pajama pants he wore at the beach, but his glasses are missing from his face.
“Can we talk?” she asks.
He studies her for a moment, then pulls the door aside to let her in. She sits at the kitchen counter and he stands across from her, his back jutting up against the sink.
“Do you want some water?” he offers.
She shakes her head no. “I just want to talk to you.”
It’s hard at first. She doesn’t know how to articulate so many of her feelings, doesn’t know how to convince him that she thought she was doing the right thing.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” she says, eyes lowered to the counter.
“I thought I was doing what I was supposed to, and that if I made an effort to be with you, the romantic feelings would follow.”
They never discuss the email, but when they talk about Clay’s party and Baker’s fall through the fence, Wally lifts his eyes to hers, and she knows he understands.
“I really did love you, Hannah,” he says, his voice honest and bare.
“I thought you were the most amazing girl in the world. I still do.” He turns the faucet on and off, on and off, his fingers brushing through the water.
“But you know,” he continues, his expression shifting into the one he wears when he learns something new in class, “one of the reasons I find you so amazing is that you’ve always seemed to know who you are.
So if you’re now learning more about who that is, then how can I be anything but happy for you? ”
Hannah exhales. Wally shuts the faucet off and turns back to face her.
“Can we still be friends?” Hannah asks. “Because I don’t think”—she struggles against the break in her voice—“I don’t think I could ever give up our friendship.”
“I could never give up our friendship, either, but I need some time to get over everything.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he says, voice steady. “I just—need to step back and get some clarity. Get my head on straight.”
“Straight,” she repeats. “Yeah, that’s not really my thing anymore.”
Wally bursts into laughter, falling against the counter like she just made his entire day. She looks at him and sees the young, earnest boy she met on the first day of PE class, the boy who recognized her from Geography and asked if she wanted to be stretch partners.
“I love you, Wally, in a way that I hope can be enough.”
He nods solemnly. “And I you, Han. We’ll be friends again, I promise.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
Wally smiles. “You got it.”
She picks up Joanie from her last final exam that day.
The temperature climbs to the high eighties, so they drive to the snowball stand near Country Corner and order mango-flavored cups and sit at the outdoor bench while the sun beats down on their hair.
Joanie fills Hannah in on Luke’s experience at running camp so far, telling her all about his new friends at Spring Hill and his plans to visit home in two weeks.
“That’s awesome,” Hannah says, “but let’s talk about you. You’re a rising senior now. You feeling okay about it?”
Joanie falters, her face showing her surprise, but then she leans her elbow on the table and adopts a deliberately casual expression, as if it doesn’t mean the world to her that Hannah has asked the question. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, swirling her spoon. “It’s just one year.”
“Joanie.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m your sister. You can tell me these things.”
Joanie looks at her the same way she did when they were little and Hannah caught her in a fib.
“Fine. I’m scared as hell. I know I have other friends, I know there are some pretty cool people in my class, but I can’t imagine not having Luke there, or going to volleyball practice without Baker, or eating lunch without any of y’all.
” She pauses and scratches casually at her elbow. “Or driving to school without you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Hannah promises.
They don’t look at each other as they talk through it, but afterward, on the drive home, Hannah feels like they are eleven and ten years old again, riding their bikes home after buying candy at the gas station.
“Han,” Joanie says, “what are you gonna do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Baker. What are you gonna do?”
The sun streams through the leaves of the live oaks as Hannah steers the car onto Olive Street. “I’m going to wait,” she says. “I’m going to wait until she’s ready.”
“What if she’s never ready?”
Hannah guides the car into their driveway.
She thinks about how she has waited for Baker all week, how she’s thought about Baker’s broken rib and the cuts on her hairline and the bruises on her skin.
How she’s kept her phone in her hand like a talisman.
How she’s looked out the window with the sound of every car that’s driven by.
“I’ll just keep waiting,” she says.
May melts into June. Hannah doesn’t see Wally, nor does she see Clay. She and Joanie sit on the back porch in the midmorning heat and eat Apple Jacks and toast, and Hannah swells with hope that today might be the day she sees Baker again.
She goes to Mass with her parents. Some people look at her differently than they used to, but Hannah remembers Ms. Carpenter’s words and looks up at the crucifix without shame.
When it comes time for her to receive the Eucharist, she stands confidently in front of Father Simon with her palms upward.
He holds the Host in front of her for a lingering second, his clerical collar tight on his red neck.
She reaches up and plucks the Host from his hand. It melts onto her tongue as she walks back to her pew.
It rains every day during the first week of June.
The wet heat of the morning transforms into the warm showers of the afternoon, and by early evening, it storms so hard that the streets flood.
Hannah presses her fingers to the dining room window, watching the Dupuis’ trash can fall over from the wind and rain.
She steps outside on Friday afternoon, tennis shoes laced tightly on her feet, just as the first rumbles of thunder reverberate on the air. The earth is muggy and swollen as she jogs down the street, her body moving under the protection of the strong, sturdy trees.
Just as she turns onto Drehr, a light rain starts to fall, sprinkling her face and melting into the sidewalk. She keeps running, her wrists wet with sweat and water, the streets damp and smelling of rain and steam.
By the time she reaches Kleinert, the rain has strengthened into a regular shower, but she keeps running anyway. The rain feels good on her skin and she feels good in her skin.
She’s soaking wet by the time she reaches St. Mary’s. Something builds in her heart as she runs past the familiar blond brick buildings. She looks at the statue of Jesus, visible from the street, and smiles as she runs by.
On the second Sunday of June, late in the evening when Hannah is washing the dinner dishes, there’s a knock on the back door.
“I’ll get it,” Joanie says, abandoning the cloth she was using to wipe the table.
Hannah turns the faucet off, her heart dangling high above her.