Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

On Saturday nights they play music in Hannah’s bedroom while they dress and do their makeup for whatever party they’re going to that night. Joanie breezes in and out of the room, asking them which flats she should wear and whether they can see her thong through her dress, and all the while Hannah cannot stop looking at Baker, cannot stop yearning to take her hand or touch her waist, cannot stop wanting to make her laugh or hear what she’s going to say next. When they stand next to each other at the dresser mirror—when Baker is so close that Hannah can marvel at the length of her eyelashes, can breathe in the scent of her hair, can glance at her eyes and wonder what exact shade of brown they are—when they stand next to each other, all of the goodness inside Hannah swims to the surface of her skin and shines outward into the air, until she feels like a conductor for light and electricity.

Hannah looks through the windshield and begs the sky that her life will always be like this—large and loud and brimming with youth, but always followed by the quiet drive home and the promise of ending the night with her favorite person in the world.

Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one has to know.

Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”

“Do you want to have a reading party?”

She wonders how the six of them must look to the clouds. Lined up across the sand, their half-naked bodies spread out in offering, their burnt skin and newly-formed freckles proof that they are not afraid of the sun, that they believe only in this day and their own immortality.

Hannah searches the clouds, the gulls, the sun. She wants to leave and she wants to stay. She wants to raise her hand to the heavens and command that everything stop, that time stills, that the rules and the laws retract their grip so nature can have her way. Hannah wants to sit up off her towel and look across her friends’ lined-up bodies, frozen in time beneath the sky, and she wants to pull Baker out of their midst, out of time, and walk with her along the shoreline, following the infinite ocean, nothing moving on the whole green earth except for the two of them and the water and the sky. And

Hannah wants to ask her things. What does she think about in those last few seconds before she falls asleep at night? Does her mind swim in colors when she listens to music? How does she feel when she walks beneath the trees in the Garden District? When does she feel most afraid? Does she realize when she is acting brave? When she prays, does she mean it? Has she ever known God? Does she want to? When it’s late at night, and the world feels uncontainable, and the air is warm on her skin, who does she think about?

Is it wrong? Were we wrong? She lies there, bleeding into the sky, until the sky starts to bleed red with morning.

Find a house with her in a safe part of town and fill it with animals and books. Stay in on Friday nights and fall asleep on the couch watching Netflix with their bodies lined up next to each other under the blanket. Learn each other’s secrets. Love each other’s faults. Promise her the world.

“I think the most essential thing is that God didn’t want Adam to be alone. God wanted Adam to be able to love someone.

Do you ever think about how crazy that is?—Our miraculous capacity to love? We don't know why, we don’t know how, but our hearts and souls are drawn to others. We weren’t made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know God without even trying to, because God is love. If we love as he made us to love—if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria—then we simply are love.”

“I can tell you that I believe—that the human heart’s mysterious ability to love others is never wrong. Your heart will never ask your permission to love. It’s going to love whomever it was made to love, and the best thing you can do is follow it.”

Hannah stands naked in front of her bathroom mirror and looks at herself—really looks at herself—for the first time in months. Her ash blonde hair, with the split ends tickling halfway down her back. She’ll have to get a haircut before Emory. Her blue-gray eyes, always narrowed in thought, curtained by brittle eyelashes. Her small, thin lips on a mouth that eats and drinks and speaks and prays. There is so much more for her to taste in this life. The skin on her body. Skin that has withheld and has given, skin that has absorbed alcohol thrown in violence and tears

wept in redemption. Cold skin. Hot skin. Clothed skin. Naked skin.