Part 26 (2/2)
”What?”
”Does he make you happy?”
Hannah hangs on the question. ”Of course he does,” she says.
Joanie narrows her eyes at her. She picks up her cell phone again and moves her thumb over the screen.
”Does he make you happier than this person?” she asks, thrusting her phone at Hannah.
Hannah stares at the picture on the screen. She and Baker stand in front of Baker's birthday cake, their arms around each other's shoulders, Baker's other arm looped around Hannah's stomach. The picture captures them mid-laugh, with Hannah gesturing down at the King Cake, her mouth open in sheer joy, and Baker looking at Hannah, her eyes lit up and her smile conveying absolute happiness.
”Well?” Joanie prompts.
”What do you want me to say? This-” she jabs at the picture with her index finger-”is not a possibility.”
”It could be.”
”In what world, Joanie?”
”In this world! Things are starting to change!”
”That's bulls.h.i.+t and you know it.”
Joanie flings her cell phone onto the counter. She steps nearer to Hannah, her eyes blazing and her arms folded. ”You need to talk to her.”
”I can't.”
”Yes, you can.”
”I can't!” Hannah shouts, her arms extended in front of her in madness. ”Joanie, do you not get it? Everything is different between us! We're not the same people we used to be! I don't know what we are to each other anymore. I don't even know if it's okay for us to be what we are-”
”Stop it!” Joanie yells, pus.h.i.+ng Hannah back against the sink. ”Stop! Stop saying that!”
”It's true!”
”It's not true!”
”THEN LOOK ME IN THE EYE,” Hannah roars, ”AND TELL ME, WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY, THAT HOW I FEEL ISN'T WRONG, THAT IT'S NOT BAD, THAT IT'S NOT DISGUSTING AND PERVERTED AND f.u.c.kED UP-”
”IT'S NOT!” Joanie screams, shoving Hannah hard.
Hannah falls back against the sink; at once, she feels a bruise bloom on the skin of her back. Joanie glares at her, her eyes still blazing, and Hannah breathes heavily and blinks against the warm tears forming in her eyes.
”I don't believe you,” Hannah says.
Joanie screws up her face and flares her nostrils. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, the St. Mary's logo on her Oxford s.h.i.+rt moving up and down with the motion. When she speaks, her voice quivers.
”Start believing.”
Hannah hears the quick intake of her own breath. She swats at the tears in her eyes and leans forward off the sink, her back aching with the new bruise from Joanie's push. ”I need some ice,” Hannah says, trying hard to steady her voice.
Joanie gathers some ice cubes into a Ziploc bag and wraps a dishcloth around it. Hannah hitches up her s.h.i.+rt and presses the cold compress to her skin. Joanie turns away as Hannah continues to swat at her tears and sniff against her sinuses.
”You should probably just let it all out,” Joanie says in a deliberately cavalier voice. She opens the refrigerator but stands listlessly in front of it.
”I don't need to let anything out.”
”Don't make me push you again,” Joanie says, still staring into the refrigerator. ”I'll hurt you worse than Baker did.”
Hannah starts to cry in full. She tucks her face into the collar of her uniform s.h.i.+rt and heaves great, expansive sobs into the fabric. Her sinuses clog, her throat aches, her eyes floods with tears.
Joanie shuts the refrigerator door and sits down at the counter. She rests her chin on her hand and looks away toward the family room.
Hannah tries to stop crying, but she can't stem this release. She cries for a long three minutes while Joanie waits at the counter.
When Hannah's sobs slow, and when she's able to take gulping breaths down into her stomach, Joanie stands up and walks back over to her. ”Here,” she says, proffering a tissue box. ”You have disgusting snot all over your face.”
Hannah laughs, short and hiccup-like, into her tissue. She laughs in that sweet way of finding the sh.o.r.e after the storm, of tethering herself to something she knows.
”Feel better?” Joanie asks.
”Yeah,” Hannah breathes.
”Hannah...you need to talk to her. You're both hurting. But I worry that she's not as strong as you.”
”Don't say that.”
”It's true,” Joanie says, her face falling. ”I'm worried that she's going to hurt herself even more. If she's not eating, and she's destructively drinking, and she's not talking to her best friend-”
Hannah turns away to throw her tissues into the trashcan. ”Joanie, I can't make sense of how I feel about this. It feels like the whole world has rolled over in the air and I can't tell which way is up. So how am I supposed to talk to her when I haven't even figured out what I believe? I don't know the truth anymore. I don't know what's right and what's wrong.”
”Jesus, Han,” Joanie says. ”n.o.body knows that.”
Late that night, Hannah lies on her stomach on her unmade bed and watches the news clip of the president five times in a row. His words flow through her headphones and into her ears, and her heart pounds fast, and she holds her hands together in front of the screen, her palms turned upward as if yearning to receive the Eucharist.
Maybe... she thinks, but she pulls herself back when she's right at the edge of that possibility. It's still too unfathomable. Or perhaps it's just too miraculous to think about.
But the possibility stays with her as she finally tucks in to sleep, and she wonders who the president was thinking about when he spoke those words. Was he imagining a scared teenaged girl in Louisiana? Was he imagining her?
Chapter Twelve: Good Friday.
On Thursday, a few minutes after the end of Hannah's AP Literature exam, the bell signals for late-morning a.s.sembly. Hannah files into the gym amongst hordes of people and spots Wally sitting with David and Jackson a dozen rows up in the bleachers. He hails her, and she climbs the bleachers to meet him.
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