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“Tell Mom I’ll be home to change before the game.” “I’m going to tell her you’re fornicating in the park and she’d better buy you a new chastity belt.”
“And now you’re gonna share those nachos with the rest of us?” Hannah asks. “Hell no,” says Joanie. “Sorry,” says Luke, “but they’re not-chos.” “I’m stealing one because that joke was offensively bad,” Hannah says.
They choose an episode of Parks and Recreation
oh they're so real for that
“You’re too good,” Hannah says after they take the girl home. “I’m not,” Baker promises. “You would have done the same.” “I don’t know that I would have,” Hannah says honestly. “But I do,” Baker says with her deep, dark eyes. Hannah knows that Baker does not see in herself the same miracle of goodness Hannah sees in her. She knows that Baker struggles to measure up to her brother, that she desperately craves her mother’s approval, that she worries constantly about whether or not she’s a fair team captain or an effective student council president. “You’re amazing,” Hannah wants to tell her.
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“Baker,” she says. “Yeah?” “I might be drunk.” Baker laughs. “I can tell.” “What? No you can’t.”
“Sometimes I can’t wait to graduate,” Baker says after a long minute. Hannah lets the words wash over her. “I never want to graduate,” she says.
They kiss each other’s lips, and Hannah feels the spring of creation in her body and blood.
Her lips are wet and Hannah wants to kiss them, kiss them, kiss them, and in some distant, forgotten part of her mind, she finally understands what the big deal is, why people want to kiss, why this action communicates so much more than words ever could.
“Just—don’t try to bridge last night and this morning. You always do that. You always try to bring things out in the open. Just let it be, okay? It was a party, it was a late night, we were both really drunk, so let’s just leave it alone. I don’t want to talk about it.” “But we—” “Hannah.” Baker’s voice is sharp when she speaks. Hannah feels something sink in her stomach. “Okay,” she says. Then they exist in silence, and Hannah feels like they are two little kids sitting in a mud puddle, unsure of how this submersion feels, unsure of whether they’ll ever be clean again.
The only new thing—the thing that’s not normal—is the unspoken new rule: they can never talk about it.
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.
He wraps his arm tighter around her, and she looks up at him, and then they start kissing. And it’s exactly as she remembered: a series of motions, a mouth pushing against a mouth, a tongue sliding against a tongue, and that desperate voice, somewhere in the depths of her heart, wailing in panic. Why aren’t you liking this? Why aren’t you liking this?
“Love Story” by Taylor Swift comes on.
TAYLOR MENTION!!
Tell me, how are you feeling about God at this point? Are you scared that He’s going to reject you? Maybe that He already has?
stop reading my mind
“Hannah,” Baker cries. “Hannah, make it stop.” “Bake?” “Make it stop,” she repeats, no longer fighting but continuing to cry. “Make it stop.”
baker :((
I’m scared and I—I don’t know if it’s okay. I don’t want to be wrong.”
WHY IS SHE SO RELATABLE
And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation.
Is it okay? The question bleeds forth from her and she imagines it rising into the sky, delivered on wind and air and atmospheric pressure until it reaches God. Is it wrong? Were we wrong? She lies there, bleeding into the sky, until the sky starts to bleed red with morning.
Please talk to me, Hannah texts that night. At two in the morning, when Hannah is asleep, Baker responds. I’m sorry Han. I can’t.
Christ, I’d probably even forgive my own father if he—” Wally stops abruptly, bites his lips into his mouth, takes a long breath.
WALLY SINCE WHEN ARE YOU RELATABLE
The only person in our group who ever made me feel like he absolutely wanted me to be there, even though I didn’t always get that vibe from everyone else, and especially not from you, who always made me feel like I was stupid and a nuisance. But I tried so hard to be your friend anyway because I—” her voice starts to break—“I thought maybe if I was just a little bit funnier, or a little bit less annoying, then you’d let me in. And I trusted you because you’re my sister. But I guess that was really fucking stupid of me, wasn’t it? The only friend I truly had was Luke. He made me feel special
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WHY IS EVERYONE SO GOD DAMN RELATABLE I'M GONNA CRY
out of the corner of her eye, she catches a burst of bright color. She turns to her left and sees Baker and Clay, just a few yards down at Baker’s locker, trading smiles as they look down at the bouquet of flowers in Baker’s hands. Roses. Clay has brought Baker a dozen roses. And they are a brilliant, cheerful, perfect yellow.
She wonders about this suffering. Was it designed by God, a lesson to turn her away from her sin?
god must hate me is playing right now I need to say that because it's hitting hard
It feels like her sadness will stay with her forever. The future, a vague notion that at one time felt very exciting to her because it contained only possibilities, now seems like a prison sentence, a condemnation. For now that she understands the yearnings of her heart, what is she supposed to do?
How can her feelings be right? How can they, when no matter what she chooses, she will never be whole? Somewhere, somehow, something must have gone wrong when she was born. Something got switched in the wiring. Something in her brain, or in her body, or in her blood. Everything she’s learned about union with another person, about her body’s purpose—none of that can transfer to a girl, to Baker. Disordered. She is disordered.
“There’s something going on with me,” Hannah continues, “that doesn’t fit with my conception of who I am. Or what I want my life to be. It doesn’t…it doesn’t fit the paradigm of what other people want my life to be.”
“There is nothing you could be that God wouldn’t love. Your deepest nature—whatever it is—is who you are, and God loves you for it. You are good. And no matter what people might say, you need to believe that.”
god I wish someone said that to me
“I think,” Hannah says evenly, tasting the words, “that I like girls in general. I think I always have.” “How long have you known?” “I don’t know—I mean, it’s like, how long have you known your own name?”
“She looks so skinny,” Joanie says. “And like she needs a really long nap.” Hannah watches Baker again, and the ache in her heart bleeds anew.
“Han,” Joanie says, coming into the kitchen and clutching her cell phone in front of her body, “have you seen the news today?” “No,” Hannah says, only half-listening. “The president came out in favor of same-sex marriage.” “What?” “I just saw it on my news feed. I read the transcript. Look—”
THE FACT SHE WENT TO TELL HER THAT IS SO SWEET
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 FUCKED 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
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I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.” “Jesus, Han,” Joanie says. “Nobody knows that.”
“Yesterday,” Father Simon says, “the president made a statement that challenges our beliefs about what’s right and what’s wrong, and about the kind of culture we want to promote in this country.” Hannah’s heart starts drilling so fast that she can hardly breathe. Her palms and underarms sweat. Searing heat flares up beneath the skin of her face. Across the gym, Joanie sits straight-backed on the bleachers.
shut up stop it
“Here it is,” she’d tell him. “Everything that’s in my heart, for you and me to see.” She’d ask him to stand in her kitchen when Baker came over to hang out. She’d have him witness Baker’s laughter, her smile, her kind heart, her vulnerability. Baker wouldn’t see him, but he would see everything: the goodness of her heart and the light in her eyes. And afterwards, Hannah would ask him, “How could I not love her?” She’d ask him about the other people. The ones like her, the ones unlike her. “There are so many people who make me hate myself,” she’d say. “Who make me feel ashamed. They claim to
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If he knows every hair on her head, why can he not recognize the truth of her heart?
She looks at the stars and wonders why God made them so good, so brilliant, but made her so wrong and broken.
STOP MAKING ME CRY
“You’re not supposed to go getting our favorite teacher fired. Or, you know, decide to be a lesbian.”
literally shut the fuck up I will punch you
Ms. Carpenter, please, I need your help. You’re the only person I know who can hlep me. I’m so scared right now. I have feelings for another girl, feelings I’m not supposed to have. We did things together that you’re not supposed to do, things I only should have done with a boy. i’m so shocked at myself that I feel like it didn’t even happen, like it’s not real. Sometimes when I think about it I’m just disgusted with myself and I feel so dirty, I feel so wrong and like god hates me. But the scariest part is I was so happy when we were togehter. It felt so amazing, it felt like everything I
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SHUT UP I NEED TO HUG HER
“I want you to know I’m proud of you. Keep going, okay? Don’t lose faith.”
I might cry
“Can we please address the rainbow-colored elephant in the room? So Hannah might not have a fairytale plantation wedding. So what?”
joanie is such an icon I love her best character
“Everyone give Baker a drink tonight!” Clay shouts from the front of the party.
what? after what happened that night? but you know she's struggling with alcohol
“I hurt you, Han. I hurt you,” Baker says, her body convulsing. The sobs burst out of Hannah’s throat. “Yeah,” she cries, choking on the word, hating that she needs to release it. “Yeah, you did. You hurt me. You really hurt me.” Baker’s face contorts with anguish. Her chin trembles; her mouth gasps around shuddering breaths. Her eyes bleed with agony. “I’m so—” she heaves. “I’m so—” “But Baker,” Hannah says, touching a hand to her tears, “you also saved me.”
And then she whispers a word without meaning to. “Gay.” She opens her eyes in surprise. She tastes the echo of the word on her tongue, raises her head to the statues of Mary and Joseph to see if they heard. They stare back at her serenely. “Gay,” she says again, louder this time. The life-size statue of Mary Magdalene, the one that stands in the corner of the chapel, shimmers with morning sunlight. “Gay,” Hannah says, her voice at its normal volume now. “Gay.” The chapel stays silent. The statues do not reprimand her. She raises her eyes to the Crucifix that hangs above the altar and stares
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I'M SO PROUD OF HER
“But if things were different, if I was straight, then there wouldn’t be any of this pain. You’d be okay, Baker would be okay, I would be okay. Ms. Carpenter, I just feel—I feel so lost. I can’t tell what’s right or wrong anymore. I can’t figure out the truth. I wish so badly that I could find Jesus, or God, or whatever—I just wish I could find him in the park or something, and sit down with him on the grass and ask him what I’m supposed to do. Or why any of this happened. I wish I could look into his face and say, ‘Why do I have these feelings in my heart? Are they bad? Why does everyone say
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“And you weren’t scared?” “No, I was, but I wasn’t really thinking about it. All I could think about was her.” “Why?” “Because,” Hannah says, her heart pounding with the answer, “I love her.”
“You mentioned Adam and Eve,” she says, her eyes narrowing further and further. “Which is pretty perfect for this conversation, since they represent both love and sin.” Hannah follows Ms. Carpenter’s line of sight toward the altar, but she finds she can’t look steadily at it. “And how do I—how do I know which one I’m playing into?” “Oh, I think we’re always playing into both,” Ms. Carpenter says easily. “That’s what makes us human, right?
I think about that story in my head and—all I see is a man and a woman and no way to reconcile who I am with who they were.”
“I think the most essential thing is that God didn’t want Adam to be alone.
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.”
