Then Father Simon steps forward to address the gym. He stands still with his left hand gripping his right elbow and his fingers raised to his lips, as if figuring out how to counsel a death-row prisoner. He remains silent for a full 30 seconds, until the freshmen start to rustle in their bleachers, and then he raises his head, finally looking around at them all, his expression solemn.

"Here we go," Hannah mutters under her breath.

Father Simon berates them for a quarter of an hour. "I'm disgusted," he tells them. "I am at a loss for what to say. And to think that this behavior took place right on the cusp of Lent, and when we're in the midst of a compet.i.tion for the Diocesan Cup...."

Mrs. Shackleford stands off to his side, her expression hard to read. Across the gym, Ms. Carpenter sits with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed.

Five minutes into the lecture, Hannah looks over at Clay. His cheeks have colored with only the lightest tinge of pink. When he catches Hannah looking at him, he takes his hand away from his mouth and chews on a smile like he's about to burst out laughing.

The student body is unusually quiet after the a.s.sembly. They return to their cla.s.srooms without talking much, the boys walking with their hands in their pockets and the girls tugging insistently on the sleeves of their sweaters. But many of the seniors smirk knowingly at Clay and nod conspiratorially at Hannah, Baker, Wally, Luke, and Joanie, and there is an inherent understanding that the whole thing is a big joke rather than anything to worry about.

They cross paths with Michele when they reach the senior hallway. She has the grace to look ashamed when she sees them. "Clay," she says, her voice barely audible, "I-"

"Don't even," Clay says, cutting her off. He pushes past her, and Hannah and her friends follow, and Michele stands limply at the lockers, her head bowed against the looks of revulsion the other seniors throw her.

The bell rings for second block, and Hannah and Baker step into their English cla.s.sroom to find their cla.s.smates leaning on the backs of their chairs and complaining to each other. Hannah joins in with the griping and gossiping while Baker sits with her chin on her hand, her brow furrowed as she absorbs her friends' outrage.

Ms. Carpenter shuts the door to signal the start of the cla.s.s period, and the murmuring in the room trails off. Ms. Carpenter leans against the door with a funny smile on her face. "I guess we didn't enjoy the a.s.sembly, huh?" she says.

Hannah's cla.s.smates launch into loud complaints. Ms. Carpenter's eyebrows arch comically as she listens to them all.

"Okay," she says. "So you all didn't appreciate Father Simon's tone. To be honest with you, neither did I. But what about the substance of what he said? Don't you think he had a point?"

"Come on, Ms. C, high school parties are just a given thing," Michael Ramby says. "He can't get mad at us for doing something that teenagers have done forever."

"What's the big deal, anyway?" Jessica asks. "What's so bad about parties? Adults always act like they're the worst thing in the world."

"Adults are afraid of teenage partying," Ms. Carpenter says.

"Why? Like, what do they think is gonna happen, we're all gonna be in the bathroom doing lines of c.o.ke?"

"Some of your parents probably worry about that, sure."

"Ms. Carpenter, you know we're not doing that kind of c.r.a.p," Harrison says.

Ms. Carpenter shifts onto her high wooden stool at the front of the cla.s.sroom. Her long skirt falls over her legs. "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.

"What do you mean?" Jackson asks.

"Someone tell me how you feel when you're at a party," Ms. Carpenter says.

"Really good," Michael grins. "I feel really good."

Ms. Carpenter gestures at him to indicate that she expected that response. "The way I see it, parties can be very liberating, and that's their appeal. Alcohol can be liberating, music can be liberating, the absence of parents can be liberating. The normal rules don't apply, right? It's just you and your friends acting on impulse. And sometimes, when a party makes you feel especially liberated, you'll start acting from your deepest nature. The part of you that's still an invincible little kid-that does whatever you want to do, that takes the world as if it's all yours. It's a return to your most basic nature, before you knew rules. So you find yourself acting with either earliest innocence or earliest evil. And sometimes it's hard to tell them apart from each other. And that is what scares adults."

The cla.s.sroom of students sits in rapt silence. Everyone around Hannah has his or her face turned toward Ms. Carpenter with a hungry, childlike expression, and Hannah remembers story time in elementary school, when her teacher would lead them to the rectangular blue carpet in the back of the room so she could read to them about talking animals and magical children and nightmarish monsters.

So you find yourself acting with either earliest innocence or earliest evil. Hannah's gut twists beneath her skin, and her heart rate increases like she's preparing to sprint out of the cla.s.sroom and through the hallways. To her left, Baker's face is sickly pale, the way she looked just before she fainted at her volleyball match in ninth grade.

"I don't believe that," Hannah says into the silence. Her cla.s.smates turn to look at her as if jarred from a daydream, and Ms. Carpenter's eyes skip to her in surprise.

"I don't think Father Simon has thought about any of that stuff," Hannah continues. "I doubt he's ever even been to a party. And if he has, then he's probably just yelling at us out of bitterness because he couldn't get a hook-up to save his life."

The cla.s.sroom breaks into shocked laughter. Some of the boys pound their desks with their fists, and the girls' mouths go wide with delighted disbelief.

"No ladies for Father Simon?" Jackson says, his expression gleeful.

"No dudes, more like," Hannah says. "You know how half these priests are."

The laughter in the room surges to a high pitch, and the boys pound harder on their desks, and the girls cover their mouths for just a fraction of a second before leaning towards each other to whisper Oh my G.o.d.

Ms. Carpenter sits absolutely still on her wooden stool. Her eyes burn into Hannah's until Hannah looks away and joins in with the laughter she created.

The laughter dies when Ms. Carpenter stands up from her stool. Her sharp eyebrows draw together in anger. "This discussion is over," she says, her voice tense. "Hannah, I will speak to you after cla.s.s." She purses her lips and clears her throat. "For now, we're going to spend the rest of the hour on Their Eyes. Take out your books, and someone tell me: What is Hurston trying to do with the scenes of Janie beneath the pear tree?"

There's a flurry of activity as everyone digs their books out of their booksacks. Ellie Thomas raises her hand to answer the question, and Marty Carothers speaks after that, and within minutes, the cla.s.sroom has returned to its normal, relaxed state. But Hannah sits with her shoulders hunched and her throat full of bile, and to her left, Baker spreads her fingers over her book as if she can draw strength from its leaves.

Ms. Carpenter meets Hannah's eyes when the bell rings for lunch. "My desk," she says, pointing to the back of the room.

Baker casts Hannah a quick look before she leaves with the rest of the cla.s.s, but Hannah cannot discern what her look means.

"I'm sorry," Hannah says before Ms. Carpenter can sit down.

"I'm not interested in hearing an apology," Ms. Carpenter says. She settles herself in her desk chair and burns Hannah with her eyes. "I'd rather hear what prompted you to say those things."

They sit in silence while Hannah tries to articulate in her head. "I just...don't like Father Simon."

"Liking and respecting are two different things."

"Well, I don't respect him, either. Him or his religion or his faith. Any of it. It's all just a huge fabrication that's been used to oppress people for ages."

"Cynicism doesn't look good on you, Hannah."

"I'm not being cynical, I'm being truthful."

Ms. Carpenter gives her a knowing look. "Whatever you are being, it's not truthful."

Hannah inhales from her stomach.

"I don't know what's bothering you," Ms. Carpenter says, "and I don't need you to tell me. But I do need you to understand that words mean something, and the words you used just now were very damaging."

Hannah's heart hammers in her chest. "I wasn't being damaging, I was just speculating. Besides, so what if I'm right about him? How is that damaging? Because he's not supposed to be that way?"

Ms. Carpenter's eyes rest steadily on Hannah's. Her sharp, dark eyebrows crease inward again. "Damaging because you insinuated it would be a bad thing."

"No, I didn't."

"You weren't going for the laugh? You weren't trying to wound? Your words were meant to hurt. Not just Father Simon, but anyone who could have been listening. What if one of the boys sitting around you yearns to be with a 'dude,' and you just made it clear to him that that option is repulsive?"

"But-but that's not what I-"

"Just answer this question: What was the purpose behind what you said? Was it to wound? Was it to hurt? Did your words come from a place of hatred?"

To Hannah's horror, her eyes start to sting with tears. Her face and neck heat with blood.

"I wasn't-" she croaks. "I wasn't trying to-"

"I know," Ms. Carpenter says. "And I know you weren't acting like yourself. I've known you for four years and I've never heard you say anything like that. 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."

Ms. Carpenter pauses to watch her for a moment. She offers Hannah the box of tissues on the corner of her desk. Hannah does not take one. She looks away from Ms. Carpenter and swallows down the bad things in her throat. "Can I go?"

Ms. Carpenter nods quickly and repeatedly, as if remembering herself. "Go ahead," she says. "I'll see you later."

Hannah hurries out of the room and into the empty hallway. She pushes into the bathroom and checks the floor beneath the stalls to make sure there are no pairs of saddle-shoed feet in the room. Then she shuts herself into the handicap stall, leans her head against the cold tile, and breathes.

"I heard you got in trouble in Ms. Carpenter's cla.s.s today," Joanie says after school. She stands across from Hannah in their mother's yellow kitchen, snapping pretzels in her mouth. "What'd you do?"

"Nothing."

"I heard you said some s.h.i.t about Father Simon."

"Everyone's been saying s.h.i.t about Father Simon."

"So did Ms. Carpenter give you detention?"

"No."

Joanie snaps hard on a pretzel. "What'd she do?"

Hannah turns her back on Joanie to heat a bowl of leftover rice in the microwave. "She just talked to me."

"Talked to you? What, like, lectured you?"

"Yeah. Kind of."

"Ms. Carpenter's so cool," Joanie says. "I can't wait to have her next year."

"She's alright."

"She's awesome. You've been saying that for years."

Hannah shrugs.

"Jeeze, what'd she do, shout in your face?" Joanie says. "I thought you loved her."

Hannah pushes the microwave to stop it from beeping. "She just spewed a lot of bulls.h.i.t."

"Bulls.h.i.t," Joanie repeats. "What kind of bulls.h.i.t?"

"Jesus, stop being so nosy. She just irritated me, okay?"

Joanie bites a large pretzel in half and stares Hannah down. "You're probably just p.i.s.sed because she was right about whatever she said."

"Shut up, Joanie."

Hannah takes the rice up to her bedroom and shuts the door with her foot. She sits on the end of her bed and stares across the room at her bookshelf. A Separate Peace. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Catcher in the Rye. All the books she read as a freshman in Ms. Carpenter's English 1 Honors cla.s.s-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 una.s.suming, their spines crinkled in a way that makes Hannah nostalgic for the 14 year-old girl who had not yet opened them. The other books that Ms. Carpenter gave Hannah to read outside of cla.s.s-The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Book Thief, The House on Mango Street-books that Hannah then pa.s.sed on to Baker-stand next to them. Hannah sets her rice bowl down on the bed and walks over to the bookshelf, running her fingers across the tops of the books, touching the dust that has settled over them to prove to Hannah just how long ago she read them, just how long ago she was that bright-eyed freshman girl. She trails her finger down the spine of A Separate Peace and remembers, with the soft coloring of memory, the first moment Baker existed in her world.

Hannah can still see the configuration of the cla.s.sroom-the plastic-topped desks separated into two rectangular formations, each one facing the center of the room. She can still see Ms. Carpenter, the first teacher who showed them that high school would not be scary, sitting on her wooden stool in the middle of the tiled floor. And she can still see the back of the head of the girl sitting in the desk in front of her-the girl wearing a yellow headband over her long dark hair-who, on the third day of cla.s.s, when they were supposed to be taking notes on Ms. Carpenter's discussion of A Separate Peace, turned around and looked at Hannah with big, anxious eyes.

"Can I borrow a piece of paper?" she had asked, her voice nervous but earnest. "I gave my last piece of loose-leaf to someone in first block. I can just use, like, a torn-off piece of your paper-" she had pointed at Hannah's sheet-"if you want."

"Sure," Hannah had said, sliding her paper forward, "but are you sure you don't want a separate piece?"

Baker had faltered for the briefest second, not getting the joke, but then she had smiled like she'd just found the best surprise in the world. Hannah had given her a fresh sheet of paper, and after cla.s.s they had walked to the cafeteria together and waited for each other in the lunch line, and by the end of the day Hannah couldn't remember what life had been like before her.

Hannah closes her eyes against the memory and leans into the bookshelf, breathing in the musty scent of the books. Her mind drifts to a different memory of Baker-the one from the bathroom at the party on Tuesday night-and her heart and body hum to life before she can shut the memory down.

"No," she whispers through gritted teeth. She weaves her hands into her hair and tugs hard. "Stop it."

She leaves the rice on her bed and pulls her skirt, blouse, and knee socks off her body. She turns the shower on with the faucet switched all the way to the left-heat-and waits for the humidity to seep across the bathroom, hiding the mirror and drawing sweat from her body. Then she steps into the near-scalding water and sucks air over her teeth in response to the pain.

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.

She presses her forehead to the tile wall. The burning water pelts her body and she knows her skin will be pink and raw when she looks at herself in the mirror. She studies the water droplets that cling to the shower wall and she wishes she could cry out thousands of tears to stick there with them.

She lathers soap over her hands and scrubs at her heart, at her stomach, at her inner thighs, eradicating earliest evil from her body.

Things go back to normal with Baker. They talk at their lockers and laugh at inside jokes at lunchtime. They work together in Ms. Carpenter's cla.s.s and hang around each other's cars in the parking lot. They spend the last day of February working on papers at Garden District Coffee, 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.

Chapter Five: Girl and Boy.

During the first full week of March, when Hannah drops by the student council office after school, she finds Baker holding a single red rose in her hand.

"What's that?" Hannah asks, the scene not making sense to her.

"Clay asked me to prom," Baker says, leaning back against the whiteboard and twirling the stem around her fingers.