Her Name In The Sky Part 8

"Prom?"

"Yeah," Baker smiles.

"And he gave you a flower?"

"A rose. Look, smell it."

Hannah holds the rose up to her face, but she can't smell anything. "Awesome," she says, the word sc.r.a.ping up from some hollow place inside her stomach.

The door opens and Michele hurries into the office, heading straight for the vice president's desk without looking at either of them.

Hannah hands the rose back to Baker. "I'll see you later."

"I'll call you about the AP Lit homework," Baker says, her eyes touching Hannah's only briefly before she looks at the rose again.

Hannah has her hand on the door when Michele's grating voice stops her. "What is that?"

Michele is looking at the rose. Her jaw hangs loose from her face.

Baker eyes her without blinking. "It's a rose..." she says slowly, as if speaking to a child.

"Who gave it to you?"

"Clay. Why?"

Michele pushes her tongue against her front teeth. After a long second, she says, "Did he ask you to prom?"

"Yes," Baker says, "and I don't see why you care. He broke up with you almost six months ago. And then you ratted him out to Father Simon. Remember?"

Michele's face flushes pink. She breathes heavily through her nose as her eyes fill with tears.

"He asked me to go with him," Baker continues, her eyes still unblinking, "and I want to. So I'm going."

Michele wrenches her booksack off the desk and storms out of the room, pushing Hannah with her shoulder in her haste to get out the door.

Baker blinks very fast, her eyelashes fluttering like bird's wings. She sets her lips hard against each other and tosses the rose onto her desk.

"That wasn't like you," Hannah says quietly.

Baker drops down into her chair and slumps her shoulders over her desk. "A lot of things haven't been like me lately," she says.

On Thursday morning, when Hannah pulls into her parking spot, she notices Clay standing with Baker at her car. Baker holds a skinny, rectangular white box in her arms.

"What's he doing here?" Joanie frowns. "He never gets here earlier than us."

"'Morning," Clay says when they step out of the car.

"Hi," Hannah says. "You're early today."

Clay shrugs and looks over at Baker. "Felt like it."

"Clay brought us donuts," Baker says, opening the white box's lid. Inside, there are half a dozen donuts, glazed and covered in chocolate icing.

"Baker's favorite," Clay says.

"Wow," Hannah says, nodding at the donuts. "That was nice of you. What's the occasion?"

"No occasion, just wanted to."

"Wow," Hannah says again.

"Do you want one, Han?" Baker offers. "Joanie?"

"I'm good," Hannah says while Joanie shakes her head.

They hang around the car and wait for Wally and Luke to arrive. When the first bell rings and they all start to walk inside, Joanie jogs up to Hannah and knocks her elbow. "The h.e.l.l was that about?" Joanie snickers. "Are donuts supposed to be romantic or something?"

"Ha," Hannah laughs, her stomach hollowing out, "Yeah. I don't know."

Though Baker offers her a donut three more times that day, Hannah can't bring herself to eat one.

The six of them spend Friday night hanging out at Clay's house, finalizing their plans for their spring break trip to Destin. They drink c.o.ke and eat Doritos while Joanie flips through the TV channels to find a good movie.

"I'm still trying to convince them not to come," Clay says.

"They're going to," Wally says.

"Yeah, that's not gonna work," Luke says. "Besides, if your parents don't end up going, I doubt any of ours will let us go."

"Our parents definitely won't," Joanie says.

"My mom's already uneasy enough," Baker says. "I think the only reason she feels okay with it is because she thought your mom was like the most religious person ever in their bible study group."

"Not too far off," Clay smiles.

"I don't see why you don't want them there," Hannah says. "We like your parents."

"It's not that, it's just that I think we'll have more fun if they're not there."

"Clay, we don't always have to be drinking," Hannah says. "I think we're all perfectly okay with a chill week at the beach."

"I didn't say we always had to be drinking, I just wanna be able to have a beer here and there."

"Your parents' house is our best bet."

"Yeah, I get that, I just still think they might come around to the idea of us being there without them."

"Your mom won't go for that," Wally says. "You know she won't."

Clay huffs in frustration. He looks down the couch, to where Baker's sitting. "What do you think, Bake?" he asks.

"I think it'll be nice to have them there," Baker says. "Your parents are great people. I think we all just appreciate that they're willing to have us down there."

Clay is quiet for a minute. "Alright," he says finally, "you're right."

When they go to leave that night, Clay hugs Baker for much longer than he normally does. Hannah waits awkwardly by the front door and stares at the fleur-de-lis symbols in the Landry's wallpaper. When Baker finally breaks free of the hug and joins Hannah and Joanie in the car, Joanie turns around from the front seat and waggles her eyebrows.

"That was a beautiful hug," Joanie says. "Did he give you more donuts, too?"

"Shush," Baker says, and Hannah watches, in the rearview mirror, as Baker leans her head against the window and frowns.

On Sunday, Wally asks Hannah to meet him for coffee so they can work on their AP Government essays. They sit at the spindly black tables outside Garden District Coffee and argue about the structure of Wally's essay, until Wally finally leans forward in his chair and watches Hannah reorganize his paragraphs.

"That works better," Hannah says.

Wally tilts his head sideways to look at his paper. Sunlight reflects off the lenses of his gla.s.ses. Behind the lenses, Hannah can see his eyes, calm but serious as they read what she has written.

"I think you're right," he says.

"I know I am," she says.

"Hannah," he says, and suddenly he looks breathless. "Will you go to the prom with me?"

Hannah's stomach hops. Wally looks earnestly at her, the question still showing in his eyes.

"Yeah," she says, and then she has the comforting sense that she is in a story, that she is correctly playing her part, that she has brought her personal touch to the role of Girl. She looks at Wally, at how he fits the role of Boy in his own way, with his fern green eyes and his square jaw and his hint of cologne, and she feels good.

"Yeah," she says again, smiling. "I'd love to go with you."

Wally smiles. He continues to look at her with that earnest way he has, like he might just tell her that she made the sun rise that morning, until Hannah breaks eye contact.

"Here," she says, "let me look at your conclusion one more time."

They stay there for another hour, comparing essays and suggesting ideas, Hannah correcting Wally's grammatical errors and Wally pointing out flaws in Hannah's arguments. Just as Hannah starts to pack up her things, her phone chimes with a text message alert.

Hey, Baker writes, want to get fro yo?

Can't, Hannah replies, still at gd coffee with wall. He just asked me to prom.

She goes back to packing up her notes and drafts. Wally stands at the corner of the table, thumbing his booksack straps while he waits for her.

That's great, Baker writes.

Yeah, Hannah writes as she and Wally walk to the back lot where they parked their cars. Now we can all go in the same group.

"Bye, Han," Wally says when they reach their cars. "Thanks for your help."

"No problem."

He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, still thumbing his booksack straps, before walking forward to pull her into a hug.

"Bye," he says.

"Bye," Hannah says.

She reads Baker's reply after she turns her car on. Yeah, Baker writes, it's perfect.

The following week at school, the whole student body buzzes with excitement for Baton Rouge's annual St. Patrick's Day parade. Hannah and Joanie make plans for their friends to come over after the parade, since they are the only ones who live in the Garden District, close to the parade route. "Maybe we can sneak in some drinking afterwards," Joanie says, her eyes bright. "Mom and Dad have that party to go to."

"Maybe," Hannah says. "If Dad actually ends up going."

On Sat.u.r.day, the 17th, a large portion of the Garden District and a long stretch of Perkins Road are shut down for the parade. Hannah, Joanie, and their friends walk to the intersection of Terrace and Perkins, where hundreds of people mill about, all of them dressed in lime green or hunter green or Kelly green, all of them waiting for the parade floats to roll by.

Hannah stands between Wally and Baker at the front of the crowd, waving up at the floats as their riders throw down slabs of green beads and random trinkets. Luke catches a purple stuffed penguin, Joanie catches an Irishman's hat, and Wally snags more beads than the rest of them put together. Clay manages to catch two Jello shots, thrown down to him in white paper cups quivering with green gelatin.

They gather together after the parade has pa.s.sed through and compare their treasures. Joanie takes pictures of them all, weighed down by beads and sweating in the early spring heat, everything around them green and lively.

They start the trek back to Hannah and Joanie's house on Olive Street, darting their feet onto clear patches of asphalt, occasionally slipping on rogue strings of beads. Above them, tangled on tree branches and street lamps, hang the far-flung beads that never made it into the hands of parade-goers. They sparkle in the sunlight, each one of them seeming pathetic and desperate on its own, but the whole scene magical when taken together.

"My neck hurts," Joanie says when they get home. "I need a drink."

"Are your parents home?" Clay asks.

"No," Hannah says, "why?"

Clay takes on that look he gets when he knows he's about to get his way. "I have some stuff in the car."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Alcohol, Han, what do you think?"

"I don't know if we should-"

"Come on, Hannah," Joanie says in a lofty voice. "You know they're at the Mason's. They won't be home for hours. We can drink on the porch and clean it all up before they get back."

"Sounds good to me," Luke says.

"Hold on, I'll go get it," Clay says, hurrying out to his car.

He comes back in with a handle of Absolut and a two-liter bottle of Sprite. Joanie sets about filling gla.s.ses with ice while Luke grabs snacks from the pantry.

"You alright?" Baker asks Hannah under her breath.

"We can still shut them down," Wally offers.

"It's fine," Hannah says, not looking at either of them. "We just have to be careful."

They sit around the table on the back porch and drink their vodka Sprites, all of them still wearing green, Luke wearing Joanie's Irishman hat. Joanie produces a deck of cards for them to play Kings, with Clay reminding them of the rules and Luke attempting to change them. "Why does it have to be '3 is me'?" he says. "We should make it, like, '3 is naked spree,' and everyone has to run around naked."