Her Name In The Sky Part 30

Her mom makes fleeting eye contact with her. "Let's not talk about it right now. Just eat and put everything out of your mind."

"But-how do you feel about it? Is it okay?"

Her mom carries the soup pot to the sink and flushes water over it. She scrubs hard at it with a soap sponge, her arm working fast as if she's trying to shove the pot down the garbage disposal.

"Mom?"

"Give me some time, Hannah."

Hannah's tears drop into the tomato soup. She bites her lip to stop herself from crying again, but her whole body shakes and her breaths come out sharp and edgy, as if someone has taken a knife to her voice.

"Oh, Hannah..." her mom says, turning around.

Her mom gathers her against her body and holds her. Hannah sobs into her mother's satin s.h.i.+rt but keeps her hands balled at her sides, afraid to give herself over completely.

"Honey," her mom coos. "It's okay. I love you. Dad and I love you. Nothing could ever change that."

Hannah cries until she hears the back door turn. Then she darts out of her seat, leaving her soup bowl and her mom in the kitchen.

She stays in her room on Sat.u.r.day. She spends hours clicking around the Emory website, researching cla.s.ses, memorizing the calendar, reading up on campus traditions. She hears her family walking around downstairs, hears them talking in the kitchen, hears the jarring music of TV commercials. She waits for her mom or dad to come check on her. They send Joanie instead.

"Will you get me some hash browns from Zeeland?" Hannah asks her. "I'm craving them."

"Go get them yourself, lazy."

Hannah turns back to her computer. "Never mind."

"Ugh, fine, I'll go with you."

"That's okay."

"No, seriously, let's go. I'll drive."

"No, I'm good."

"You could use some fresh air. Come on."

"Joanie. I don't want to go."

"You just said you were craving the hash browns."

"I-never mind."

"What?" Joanie shuts Hannah's laptop screen. "Let's go."

"I don't want to go."

"Stop being such a brat."

"I don't want to go, okay?!"

Joanie pulls away from her. "Jeeze. I was just trying to be nice."

Hannah pulls her lips into her mouth. "I don't want to walk into Zeeland and see one of our cla.s.smates. Or one of their parents. Okay?"

Joanie drops her head and taps her fingers against her thigh. "Sorry," she says quietly.

"It's fine."

"You want to watch a movie or something?"

"No, I'm okay. I'm just gonna take a nap."

Joanie leaves, and Hannah falls into a restless sleep. When she wakes, she finds a Styrofoam box on her nightstand. She opens it. It's full of Zeeland Street hash browns.

Her parents call her downstairs for dinner around seven o'clock. Joanie looks up when Hannah walks into the kitchen. Her eyes ask a question. Hannah smiles in answer.

The four of them sit subdued around the table, each of them paying too much attention to their chicken. Joanie makes a valiant effort to stir the conversation, asking about everything from their dad's friends at Albemarle to their mom's recent tennis match. Neither one of their parents says much in response.

"Okay, this is just awkward," Joanie says, dropping her fork. "Can we please address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room? So Hannah might not have a fairytale plantation wedding. So what?"

"Don't start, Joanie," their mom says.

"I think it's brave what Hannah did."

Their mom pauses with her fork in midair. "In what way?"

Hannah shoots Joanie a warning look. Joanie drops her eyes and says, clumsily, "In-telling the truth about how she feels."

Their parents push pieces of chicken around their plates. Hannah drinks from her water gla.s.s for something to do, but the cold water makes the pit in her stomach feel even more hollowed.

Hannah wakes up late on Sunday morning and startles when she realizes her family is supposed to leave for Ma.s.s in three minutes.

"Don't bother," Joanie says when Hannah rushes into the bathroom and reaches for the toothpaste. "They already left."

"What? They never let us miss church."

Joanie shrugs. "I heard the backdoor slam, and then I looked out the window and saw them driving away."

Hannah's heart sinks. "They don't want me there with them."

"Don't be dumb. Of course they do. They probably just-they probably don't want you to feel uncomfortable, you know?"

The worst part of Sunday is when Aunt Ellie calls after lunch. Hannah stands outside the locked door of the study, listening to her mom whisper into the phone, listening to the breaths of silence that pour forth from her mom's mouth.

"No," her mom says after a few minutes, "never made it there. Couldn't bring ourselves to face all those stares. We went to lunch on the other side of town instead."

Hannah crawls back into her bed and stays there for the rest of the day.

Her stomach knots in on itself when she wakes on Monday morning. Joanie makes her toast, which Hannah takes only one bite of before she feels sick, and then they get into the car, neither one of them speaking. By the time they arrive at St. Mary's, Hannah's underarms are soaked through with sweat.

There aren't many people in the parking lot when they pull in. Hannah looks automatically at Baker's car, parked far down the lot next to Clay's truck.

"Ready?" Joanie asks, her face pale.

"No," Hannah breathes. "But let's go."

Several people cast her looks when she steps out of the car. She averts her eyes and follows Joanie's path to the A-Hall doors. Just as they're about to walk inside, a voice from behind them calls, "Hey, H'Eaden, wanna go out with me tonight?"

She falters in her steps, but Joanie clutches her arm and keeps her facing forward. "Go f.u.c.k yourself, Guthrie!" Joanie yells, her voice loud in Hannah's ear.

"It's fine," Hannah says.

"He's always been a jacka.s.s. Whatever. Come on."

They walk into the building, and whereas Joanie would normally turn left for the junior hallway, today she turns right for the senior hallway.

"You don't have to lead me the whole way," Hannah tells her.

"I was just going to stop by Mrs. Paulk's room to ask her something about our study guide."

"Joanie. I'll be okay. I don't need an escort. Seriously."

Joanie eyes the hall behind her and sighs. "Alright. I'm sure everything will be fine."

"It will be. Thanks."

The walk to her locker is full of stares and hushed gossip. A few people smile nicely at her, but most of her cla.s.smates openly gawk. She clears her throat just to rea.s.sure herself that she is still there.

She spots Wally at the end of the hallway, his booksack propped against his side as he switches out his books. She yearns to go to him, to find rea.s.surance in his steady expression, but she stops at her own locker instead.

Ms. Carpenter isn't at school. Hannah's heart drops as soon as she sees the subst.i.tute teacher standing in Ms. Carpenter's doorway.

By late Monday morning, the news that Ms. Carpenter has been fired has spread around the entire school. "The diocese called for her immediate dismissal," Michele says pointedly as Hannah walks past her during cla.s.s change. "I heard Ms. Gramley telling Mr. Jasper. The teachers are just as p.i.s.sed about it as we are."

"Carpenter was the only cool teacher at this school," Jonah says. "This is so f.u.c.ked up."

All eyes are on Hannah when she walks into the lunch courtyard that day. She walks to her usual table, her blood pounding in her ears, and opens her lunch bag as if everything is normal, as if she's not absolutely alone in this h.e.l.l. She scans the courtyard for Wally and spots him at Luke's table, the sun reflecting off his gla.s.ses. He does not so much as look at her. She checks Clay and Baker's table: Baker sits on the opposite bench today, so that her back is to Hannah. Hannah stabs a fork into her salad and swallows against the burning lump in her throat.

Joanie joins her a minute later, brus.h.i.+ng her hair back from her red face. "We just had the dumbest a.s.signment in Pre-Calc," she says. "I almost got into an argument with Ms. Hersch about it. Just because she got dumped doesn't mean she can force us to recap everything we learned last semester."

"You don't have to talk to me like everything's normal," Hannah says. "Let's just acknowledge it."

Joanie's face falls. "How's it been?"

"s.h.i.+tty. Really s.h.i.+tty." Her voice breaks on the last syllable.

"Four more days. That's it. Just four more days."

Hannah looks up and makes eye contact with a table of guys who are clearly talking about her. As she watches, Bradford leans into the center of the table and says something that makes all the guys roar with laughter.

"How was school?" her mom asks when she gets home from work that evening. She asks the question offhandedly, but Hannah notices the anxious look in her eyes.

"Fine," Hannah says. "Nothing different."

"No one said anything about it?"

"Nope."

"Well that's good," her mom says. Her hands fumble over the grocery bags on the counter. "Will you help me put these away?"

On Tuesday morning, when Hannah opens her locker, a crumpled note falls out.

Nice going lesbeaux.

She tries to intercept Wally in the parking lot after school, but he marches straight past her to his car. She follows him and knocks on his window, but he does not turn to look at her. He blares his music and reverses out of his parking spot with fast, jerky movements.

"Maybe you shouldn't have f.u.c.ked with his heart," someone says, and when she whips around, she comes face to face with Luke.

"I never meant to."

Luke stuffs his hands into his pockets and squints at her. Up close, he looks haggard and more jaded than he ever did before. "Look, Hannah," he says, "I'm sorry that you've been going through all this stuff. I really am. I wish we'd been able to help you. But just because you were confused or going through a hard time or whatever, doesn't mean you had the right to string him along. You hurt him. You hurt him just like my parents hurt each other and Joanie hurt me."

"Joanie loves you," Hannah says thickly. "You know she loves you."

Luke swallows. "This isn't about that. Just leave him alone. I hope you figure things out and I hope you feel better, but leave him alone."

He shuffles away, his hands still in his pockets, his shoes scuffing against the asphalt.

Clay's end-of-year party is scheduled for the Friday night of graduation weekend. The seniors gossip about it all week, trading ideas for how to lie to their parents, bragging about how wasted they plan to get, whispering to their friends about which person they want one last chance to hook up with.

"Hannah," Joanie asks her timidly one night, "are you considering going to Clay's party at all?"

Hannah looks at her like she's gone insane. "Are you joking?"

Joanie lowers her eyes. "I want to hang out with Luke one last time. See if he'll talk to me." She pauses. "But I don't have the guts to go alone."

Hannah sets her makeup remover on the bathroom sink. She stares hard at the faucet for a long moment.

"I'm sorry, Joanie," she says. "I can't."

Joanie nods her head, her expression sad but understanding.

Michele Duquesne wanders up to Hannah after graduation practice on Friday morning. "Crazy that I'm invited to the party and you're not," she says.

"Leave me alone," Hannah says.

"I'm not actually trying to be mean," Michele says, and by looking at her, Hannah can tell that she's speaking the truth. "I wanted to tell you that it's not personal, what happened with the e-mail. I was trying to get at Baker, not at you."