And then Hannah feels Baker's fingers on the back of her neck, playing with the stubborn wisps of hair that have escaped from her ponytail. "All set," Baker says, her voice still harboring some of that tenderness.

"Thanks," Hannah says, turning around to offer her a half-smile.

"Can someone do my back?" Joanie says.

Baker's eyes tick away from Hannah, and for a shining hot second she seems to be looking at nothing, but then she blinks and focuses her eyes on Joanie. "Sure," she says, her voice back to its normal cadence. "Did you get your shoulders yet?"

On that first night at the beach, hours after Clay's parents have gone to bed, Hannah and her friends sit by the pool and drink whiskey-c.o.kes. Hannah can feel the sun's latent heat trapped beneath her skin, can taste the salt on the air when she takes a breath, can hear the ocean's rhythm playing deep in her ears.

She sits in a love seat with seash.e.l.l-patterned cushions, and Baker sits next to her, her legs pulled up toward her chest and her arms wrapped around her calves. Clay sits on the ground with his whiskey gla.s.s secured between his feet, and every other minute he lifts the gla.s.s, shakes it, takes a swig from it, and spits the ice cubes back. Joanie and Luke sit tangled up in the same chair, her knees b.u.mping into his stomach and her elbow resting on his shoulder, and Hannah watches as Joanie plays with one of Luke's curls. Wally sits opposite them, in the other chair, occasionally catching Hannah's eye and smiling in his steady way.

They talk for hours, one of them always heading inside to pee, another always heading inside to fill the ice bucket, another always carrying the thread of conversation so that nothing ever truly stops. They take turns shushing each other so as not to wake Clay's parents, and Baker and Wally take turns announcing the time and insisting that they should all go to bed, but they continue to sit in the cooling air while Clay tells the story of the time he broke a cla.s.sroom window in second grade, and Luke tells the story of the time he got a crayon stuck up his nose in kindergarten, and Baker tells them about the boy she punched at Vacation Bible School. They laugh hard at each other's stories, leaning forward in their seats to point at each other and say "You would do that," and all the while the ocean plays for them in the background, quiet music in the their teenaged cathedral.

"I'm getting tired," Baker says, b.u.mping her shoulder against Hannah's. "You ready for bed?"

"Want me to make you one last drink?" Hannah asks, her heart beating happily, her fears quelled by the alcohol and the ocean's magic.

A tipsy smile plays across Baker's face. She shakes the ice cubes in her gla.s.s, then shakes her head with that same lax smile. "Just sleep for me," she says.

They say good night to the others. Clay whines that they ought to stay down here for a while longer, 'cause don't they know they've got a whole handle of whiskey and a whole ocean of water to keep them company?, but Baker yawns and shakes her head no.

"Tomorrow night," she promises. "When we don't have to get up for Ma.s.s the next day."

"f.u.c.k," Clay says, at the same time that Luke says "s.h.i.t."

"What time is it?" Joanie asks.

"Almost four," Baker says. "And Clay's mom said we had to leave by 9:15."

"I don't know why they can't give us a Sunday off," Clay says, wiping a hand down his face. "I'm sure the Good Lord would understand that we're on vacation."

"And drunk," Luke says.

"It's Palm Sunday tomorrow," Baker says, her voice flat, her eyes glazing over.

"Alright, whatever," Clay says, picking himself up off the ground. "I guess we should all head to bed and continue this tomorrow night."

"Let's get some water first," Wally says. "We're gonna be hungover in the morning."

"This is why I don't like Catholicism," Luke says as they clean up their gla.s.ses. "It seems to get in the way of everything."

Upstairs, in the quiet of their bedroom, Hannah and Baker get ready for bed with a comfortable calm between them. They stand in front of the bathroom mirror and brush their teeth together, crossing their eyes at each other's reflections. Baker washes her face while Hannah changes, then Hannah washes her face while Baker changes. They peel back the covers of the bed and shimmy their bodies beneath the sheets, and the linens are cool on Hannah's bare feet and legs.

"I feel tipsier than normal," Baker whispers.

"We had a lot of whiskey," Hannah whispers back.

Baker closes her eyes, then shifts closer to Hannah so that they're lined up, front to front, like two hands meeting in prayer.

Hannah smoothes Baker's eyebrow with her thumb, then runs a hand down the back of her head. Baker shifts even closer, until her face is on the edge of Hannah's pillow.

"You okay?" Hannah asks, her heart beating fast, fast, too fast.

Baker opens her bleary eyes. "Yeah," she says, her voice drunk and only half-there.

They stay like that, facing each other, until Hannah touches Baker's cheek and tells her to go to sleep.

"Only if you do," Baker whispers.

Hannah closes her eyes and dreams.

They are all hungover the next morning. Mrs. Landry watches them warily while they cross the church parking lot, her eyes somewhat suspicious, until Clay tells her the partial truth: that they were awake until four in the morning, hanging out by the pool.

"Well, you made a choice, now you have to make due with it," Dr. Landry says in his gruff voice. "The important thing is that you all got up for Ma.s.s this morning."

The church is much smaller than St. Mary's. The eight of them walk in a line up the center aisle, stepping carefully over the stone floor, ceiling fans whirring high above their heads, the air in the room humid and stale. Mrs. Landry leads them into a pew and Hannah sits down between Clay and Baker. Clay closes his eyes and breathes deep through his nose, and Hannah wonders whether he might be sick.

Hannah listens to the first two readings and the Gospel-the one about Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, days before his Crucifixion, while the townspeople lay palm fronds at his feet-but she zones out during the homily. She stares instead at the family seated in the pew in front of them. Their two small children, a girl and a boy, alternate between crawling all over their parents' laps and coloring the pages of the church missal. The little girl-maybe three or four years old-zigzags her crayons back and forth over the book, replacing age-old church hymns with rainbow creations. Hannah watches as the girl's father, upon noticing what she's doing, leans down and s.n.a.t.c.hes the crayons from her with a reproving glare.

At once, the little girl's face changes from artless happiness to concentrated anger. She smacks her hands down onto the wooden pew and, scrunching up her face until her cheeks puff out in a near-cartoonish manner, huffs so forcefully that snot shoots out of her nose. The commotion catches the attention of everyone around her, so that the people two pews in front of Hannah turn around in confusion, and the people sitting in the right-side section of pews look over to see what's going on. The girl's mother starts rifling through her bag, probably searching for tissues, but the father picks the girl up and carries her out of the pew, an embarra.s.sed scowl on his face, while the girl kicks her legs and beats her tiny, chubby fists against his shoulders.

The church goes back to normal as everyone pretends like they hadn't just been watching the little girl's tantrum. The mother in front of Hannah straightens her back and pulls her son close to her side, wrapping her arm tightly around him. The priest, up on the altar, continues his homily like nothing happened.

But on Hannah's right side, Baker starts silently laughing. Hannah can feel Baker's arm shaking, can see, out of the corner of her eye, that Baker lifts a hand to her face to smother her smile. Hannah tilts her head very slightly and shoots her a look-What are you doing, you goober?-but Baker, upon catching Hannah's eye, just shakes harder with silent laughter. And now Hannah can't seem to reel in her own smile, can't slow the giddiness that starts to overtake her, can't hold in the laughter that climbs to the top of her throat. "Stop," she whispers through her teeth, still catching Baker's eye, watching as Baker, with tears in her eyes, tries to fight down the hilarity that has overtaken her.

Clay leans forward on Hannah's left. He looks across Hannah to Baker, a cheeky smile on his face, and winks. Baker stops laughing for the s.p.a.ce of a moment, just long enough to shrug her shoulders and send him a look that says I don't know what's gotten into me. She looks across Hannah as if she doesn't see her.

They each pick up a palm frond on their way out of the church. They walk back through the parking lot, following the Landry's to the cars, and Hannah experiences a strange exhaustion-the kind that comes after a giddy high.

Luke starts to swordfight Joanie with his palm frond when the Landry's aren't looking. Joanie reciprocates, a flirtatious smile playing on her face. Wally walks next to Hannah, tying his palm frond into a compact shape, his eyebrows knit together in concentration. And in front of Hannah, Clay walks in step with Baker, teasing her about her church giggles.

"We should get you tired more often," he says, poking her arm with his palm frond.

Baker squints at him in the sunlight. She a.s.sumes the playful expression Hannah has seen on many a weekend night-after Baker has stolen a bite of Hannah's ice cream, or when they've taken pictures of cats and photoshopped the boys' heads on top-and says, with a graceful shrug of her shoulders, "Just wait 'til I start laughing at you."

Clay grins like she's just told him he's the strongest man on earth. "Guess I'd better watch myself," he says.

They cook a late breakfast when they return from Ma.s.s-Hannah helps Baker make scrambled eggs while Wally prepares the toast-and then change so they can go down to the beach. The boys find boogie boards in the garage and carry them awkwardly over the sand: Clay over his head, Wally under his arm, and Luke dragging his behind him over the sand until Joanie sits down on it and demands a ride. They settle in the same area they occupied yesterday, and today Baker insists the boys apply sunscreen before they go down to the ocean. "This is because of my ears, isn't it?" Luke says, pointing at the burnt red tips of his cartilage. "Nah," Clay says, grinning where he stands while Baker rubs sunscreen over his shoulders, "it's just so the girls have an excuse to touch us."

Baker shoves him. "You can get the rest," she says. "Good luck reaching your back."

"Aw, come on, you're not gonna let me burn, are you?"

"You would deserve it."

"I would."

Joanie and Baker stretch out on their backs after the boys go down to the water. Hannah spreads her towel down next to them, trying hard not to look at Baker's long torso glistening with the oil from her sunscreen. She eases down onto her stomach and flips to her bookmark in A Lesson Before Dying, but she only manages to read one sentence before Joanie distracts her.

"Do you think I should keep dating Luke after y'all graduate?"

Joanie's expression, even with her eyes closed, is uncharacteristically anxious. Hannah keeps her thumbs over the pages of her book, unsure of whether she wants to engage in this conversation. Baker, lying between the two of them, speaks first.

"Where is this coming from?" she asks gently.

"Just something I've been thinking about."

Baker sits up on her towel. She pushes her sungla.s.ses off her face and gives Joanie an open, sympathetic look. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Joanie says, but Hannah hears the tremor in her voice and notices the old telltale sign: Joanie starts rubbing her left elbow, the way she used to when they were young and she was afraid to step onto the school bus.

"What's wrong, J?" Baker asks.

"I just-I mean-I have to start thinking about going through my day-to-day without him. He wants to stay together but I don't know if I can-not when he's going to be in a different state, making all these new friends, and meeting new girls-"

"Joanie," Baker soothes, setting a hand on her wrist. "Don't think about that yet."

"It's only April," Hannah says loudly. "Why are you worrying about this now?"

"It's spring break, Hannah," Joanie says.

"Exactly. We have so much time left-"

"No, we don't. It's basically the end of the year, whether you want it to be or not."

"It is not the end of the year. And even if you did break up with him, you wouldn't have to do that until, like, August."

"He's going to running camp for most of the summer," Joanie says. "I might have to do it before then."

"Still," Hannah says, opening her book again. "You're wasting your time worrying about this. Luke's awesome, and you like him, so why are we even having this conversation? Why don't you just enjoy being with him?"

"I am enjoying being with him, but I'm not going to act like things aren't about to change-I don't want to be stupid that way, like you-"

"Shut your mouth, Joanie," Hannah says, snapping her book shut.

"Learn some empathy, Hannah," Joanie growls, standing up and glaring down at her. "And start accepting that you're going to graduate soon."

She stalks away, her cell phone in her hand, and Hannah tosses her book into the sand in frustration. She wipes her hair back from her face and glares at Joanie's retreating figure.

"You okay?" Baker asks.

"I'm fine."

Baker is quiet for a moment. Then: "I'm scared, too. About graduating."

"I'm not scared."

"I'm worried I'm going to miss our friends too much. And St. Mary's."

"Why would you miss St. Mary's?" Hannah says, grating the words against the lump in her throat. "It's repressive, and close-minded, and n.o.body can go a minute without talking about G.o.d-"

"Hannah," Baker says. She smoothes her hand over Hannah's hair, starting at her hairline, moving across the crown of her head, and trailing off at the apex of her braid. She does it again, going more slowly this time, and Hannah feels the lump in her throat grow thicker.

"It's okay," Baker says.

Hannah swallows. She lowers her eyes to the pattern on her towel-yellow suns on a midnight blue background-and collects herself for a moment before she speaks.

"I don't want anything to change."

"I know," Baker says. "Me neither."

"I don't know where to go to college. Emory, or LSU, or even one of the other schools I got into...."

Baker drops her eyes. She rubs sand between her forefinger and thumb, her eyebrows creased in a frown.

"What should I do?" Hannah asks.

Baker sprinkles sand onto her towel. "Do you have a gut feeling about this?" she asks. "Where do you think you'd be happiest?"

"As of this moment..." Hannah says slowly, "my gut tells me Emory."

Baker moves her jaw around, still sprinkling sand onto her towel.

"But," Hannah continues, "I have a hard time believing I'd be happy without my best friend."

Baker looks up. Her eyes are sad. "You know if it was up to me," she says, "I'd probably be selfish and choose LSU for you. Just so we wouldn't have to be apart."

"I know."

"But when I think about it unselfishly, I want you to go to Emory."

"Why?"

"Because I had a feeling your gut was telling you Emory. The way your voice sounds when you talk about it-I can just tell you want to be there."

Hannah says nothing. Baker brushes the sand off her towel. The seagulls fly above them, filling the silence with their high-pitched squawks.

"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.

They drink by the pool again that night. Clay starts them in a game of Truth-or-Dare, which then evolves into a game of dares, which then evolves into them anonymously calling their teachers and administrators to say ridiculous things.