Her Name in the Sky

by Kelly Quindlen

Baker leans down and hugs Hannah from behind while the others talk and gather their trash. “Thanks,” she says quietly into Hannah’s ear. Hannah ignores the somersault in her stomach. “You’re welcome,” she says, keeping her voice even, and then Baker and the others are gone, and Hannah reminds herself to return Wally’s smile.

Baker sweep her long brown hair over her shoulder while she talks, and all the while Hannah feels that happy, sweet feeling in her stomach—the one she always feels when she’s with Baker, the one that’s been growing stronger and stronger inside her lately.

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.

Then Baker turns her head—Hannah can sense it with every nerve inside of her—and kisses Hannah’s cheek. Hannah stills all over, begging the steam not to spill out, begging her heart to stay balanced where it is, until Baker moves away from her, as casual as a breeze on the bayou, and opens the refrigerator.

“You’re so much better than you even know,” Hannah says one afternoon when they’re sitting in Baker’s car, talking through Baker’s latest argument with her mom. “You’re just—you’re so—I wish you could believe me—” “What’s funny,” Baker says, blinking down at their sun-spoiled sweet teas in the console, “is that, when I tell you these same things about yourself, I wish you could believe me, too.”

Hannah feels exuberant—freer in a way than she has ever been before. She clutches her drink and bobs where she stands, watching the people dance all around her, and for just this moment, for just this second of her life, she feels whole, she feels at ease, she feels like she could exist in this cocoon of time forever and ever. She looks at Baker, standing there with her long brown hair falling over her shoulders and her dark chicory eyes blessing everyone around her, and tenderness pours forth from Hannah’s chest like light from a broken vessel.

“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. It’s a bursting, awakening feeling. It’s so potent that it almost hurts, the way it feels to eat a morsel of food after a long period of starvation. Every nerve beneath Hannah’s skin—every deep, hidden crevice in her body—every tiny atom that makes her who she is—they all jazz to life, as if they had been long ago buried and were simply waiting to be called upon to arise.

And it’s magic, it’s sacred ritual, it’s God.

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.

“Adults are afraid of parties,” she says, leaning forward to look at them all, “because they remember, very acutely, what parties are like. The madness that pervades. How powerful it makes you feel, how special, but also how untethered it can make you feel. The things that can happen when you let it go too far.” Hannah breathes in the silence.

But Hannah—we have to take ownership for our words. Words are powerful. They can be devastating. If your words carry hate—if they shame others, if they make them doubt that they are loved—Hannah, you don’t want to own words like that.”

All the books she read as a freshman in Ms. Carpenter’s English 1 Honors class—back when Ms. Carpenter still taught freshmen, before she switched wholly to seniors—stand side-by-side on the top shelf. They are small and unassuming, their spines crinkled in a way that makes Hannah nostalgic for the 14 year-old girl who had not yet opened them.

There is an ache in her chest. It stretches from the left side of her torso across to her right. It hurts but she doesn’t know why. It feels like the tears inside of her are trying to breathe but can’t.

and when Hannah looks up and sees Baker mouthing words at her laptop, a large mug of dark roast clutched in her hand, she has a hard time remembering the girl from the bathroom: all she sees is her best friend. The only new thing—the thing that’s not normal—is the unspoken new rule: they can never talk about it.

“I’m surprised you got Butterfinger,” Hannah says. “I thought you liked Oreo better.” “Yeah, but you like Butterfinger better,” Baker says.

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 picks up Baker’s iPhone, connected to the stereo through the auxiliary jack, and scrolls through the playlists until she finds the one she wants—the one she discovered by accident a few months ago, and which made Baker blush and steal the phone back. Songs han loves.

“Can we go back to pretending we have a lot of time left?” Baker asks. Hannah clears her throat. “Yeah. Did you bring a book?” “Yeah.” “Do you want to have a reading party?” Baker smiles like Hannah has said the most wonderful thing in the world.

“How was it?” Hannah gawps on the air. She takes in Baker’s expression: the downward crinkle of her eyebrows, the jutting out of her bottom lip, and her eyes, bleary as they are, colored over with that perfect dark roast shade. There’s something unnamable in her expression—some kind of bigger question that Hannah feels shimmering on the air. “I liked kissing you better,” Hannah whispers.

Hannah’s stomach clenches and the thing inside her chest hurts more than ever. Please make it go away. Please just let me be normal. Please just let me find this funny, like they do.

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?

“I shouldn’t have done what I did—it’s just—it’s just that I felt so much, and I thought you felt it, too.” The waves stretch toward the sand, then pull back toward their indefinable center. They whisper their mesmerizing magic, saying Yes, yes, Truth.