Part 28 (1/2)
”No,” Hannah says, her head reeling. ”No. I really didn't.”
Joanie's face looks momentarily relieved, but then her eyebrows crinkle and she voices the fear Hannah has tried to push down for the last minute.
”Han, do you think Baker might have-?”
”Hey,” Wally calls, striding toward them with his lunch tray. ”What's up? Y'all coming to sit?”
Hannah and Joanie freeze. Wally hovers five feet away, his eyebrows lifting as he takes in their expressions.
”We're coming,” Hannah says. ”Sorry. We were just talking about something our mom asked us to do.”
They follow him to their usual lunch table. Hannah sits down next to him and Joanie sits across from them, trying to catch Hannah's eye. Hannah unpacks her lunch bag and picks the bread off her sandwich, chewing it in small bites that make her feel like she might throw up. Wally stirs the red beans on his lunch tray and says, ”So during Econ today-”
Hannah doesn't listen: Michele has just strutted into the courtyard, her face alight with a power Hannah has never seen on it before, her friends trailing her with satisfied smirks on their faces. Whole tables of students look around to her, and all at once people start calling out to her.
”What's going on?”
”Is it true?”
”Do you have it with you?”
The ruckus is enough to distract Wally from his story and to quell the other conversations taking place at all the different lunch tables. A hushed silence falls over the courtyard: no one talks, no one eats, no one s.h.i.+fts a lunch tray or crinkles a bag. Michele struts to a table in the middle of the courtyard-the table where Baker and Clay sit-and leans down to whisper to someone. Hannah's stomach chills; she waits in absolute stillness, unable to breathe or blink.
Wally leans over. ”What's going-?”
His words are cut off by a yell from the middle table.
”-AND GET THE h.e.l.l AWAY!”
Hannah cranes her neck to get a better look, but she need not move at all: Clay is half-rising from his seat, his face blotchy red and his eyes narrowed in fury, his shoulders tight with tension.
”Calm down, Clay,” Michele says, her voice carrying around the courtyard. ”I'm just saying-”
”Well shut up and move on,” Clay spits. He turns away from her and gazes out over the sea of onlookers. ”Go back to your tacos,” he says. ”She's just talking out of her a.s.s, like usual.”
”Why don't you let Baker speak for herself?” Michele retorts, her voice dangerous.
The whole courtyard balances on a pin.
”Great, Clay, you've gone and alerted our whole cla.s.s,” Michele says, crossing her arms. ”I was trying to be discrete. This is a sensitive issue. Although...it's probably fair that everyone should know who's responsible for getting Ms. Carpenter in trouble. Right, Baker?”
Hannah's stomach turns over.
”She has nothing to do with it,” Clay says. He speaks in a deliberately low voice now, but his voice carries around the silent courtyard anyway.
”Then why do you look so scared, Baker?” Michele says. ”If you had nothing to do with the e-mail, then why did I see you crying in Ms. Carpenter's room before school this morning?”
Hannah s.h.i.+fts down the bench, straining her eyes. Then she sees her: Baker sits as still as a statue, her face flushed red, her eyes stretched with fear.
”Kind of makes sense, doesn't it?” Michele continues, shrugging a shoulder. ”I mean, the writer mentioned that she had been trying to cover up her feelings by dating a guy. She said she worried about hurting her tight-knit group of friends. Yes, Clay, the Six-Pack. She said she was drunk and had started drinking a lot more lately. And we all know that has to be you, Baker, right? I mean, you had that embarra.s.sing episode at Liz's party last weekend-”
”Shut your mouth!” Clay yells, jumping up from his bench.
”Can't you see I'm trying to help? If she's the one who wrote the e-mail, then she obviously needs our support as she tries to figure out these difficult feelings. We're her friends. We're all a family. You're the one who always says that, Clay, right? Maybe if we had known about this sooner, then she wouldn't have had to send that e-mail that got Ms. Carpenter in trouble....”
Hannah scans the faces of everyone in the courtyard. Nearly all of them wear the same expression: a mixture between shock and confusion.
”So?” Michele says, speaking down to Baker. ”Was it you, or what?”
Baker opens her mouth, but no sound comes out.
”I'm not trying to accuse you,” Michele says. ”I just think whoever got Carpenter in trouble owes us all an apology. Don't you think that's fair, Baker?”
”I didn't write it,” Baker says, her voice weaker than Hannah's ever heard it.
”I don't understand why you're acting so funny, then,” Michele says, peering down at her. She hangs her head, like the whole encounter is causing her pain, and sighs. ”It was you, Baker. Right?”
There is a long, pressured silence, and Hannah's heart hammers inside her chest.
”You're supposed to be our president, remember?” Michele sneers. ”You're not supposed to go getting our favorite teacher fired. Or, you know, decide to be a lesbian.”
Baker breathes very fast; even though she sits yards away, Hannah can see her shaking.
”Well, since you're not saying anything,” Michele says, ”I guess we can take that as a yes.”
Hannah stands up without thinking and knows what she's about to do before she actually processes it.
”It wasn't her,” Hannah says. Her voice spreads out around the courtyard, and she hears it echo in her head, almost like it isn't hers. Every face in the vicinity turns to look at her.
”What are you doing?!” Joanie whispers. ”Sit down!”
”She didn't write it,” Hannah says, making eye contact with as many people as she can, but hardly seeing them at all. ”I wrote it.”
”Stop trying to cover for her, Hannah,” Michele says.
”I'm not. She was trying to cover for me.”
”That doesn't make any sense, Hannah, just sit down-”
”I sent the e-mail last night,” Hannah says, her mind working furiously to keep up with her words. ”I was drunk-and panicking-I had been feeling that way for a really long time-” her voice starts to break-”and Ms. Carpenter has always been my favorite teacher, and I saw how she acted at Ma.s.s yesterday...” She shakes her head with genuine tears in her eyes. ”I sent her the e-mail without thinking about it.”
”Then why did I see Baker crying to Ms. Carpenter this morning?” Michele says angrily.
Hannah swallows down the tears in her throat. ”I called Baker in the middle of the night and told her everything. She said she would try to help. She told me everything would be okay. She promised she'd talk to Ms. Carpenter for me and explain everything so that I wouldn't get in trouble. I was worried that I-I might jeopardize my acceptance to Emory. I begged her to go talk to Ms. Carpenter first thing this morning.”
”Oh, this is a bunch of c.r.a.p,” Michele says, but Hannah looks around at her peers' faces and knows that they believe her-that they are desperate to believe her.
”Baker has nothing to do with this,” Hannah says, her voice shaking, her eyes still wet with tears.
”That doesn't even make sense,” Michele says. ”You two haven't even talked in, like, weeks. We've all noticed it.”