"How much vodka have you had?" Joanie says, rubbing his hair. "No way in h.e.l.l are we doing that."

"Dude, just shut up for a second," Clay says. "Okay, one more time: 2 is you, 3 is me, 4 is floor, 5 is guys, 6 is chicks-"

"We know," Hannah says. "Can we just get started? I have no idea what time my parents will be back."

"Hannah, they are at a party," Joanie says, regarding her with distaste. "And they'll probably stay there for a while because, unlike you, they actually know how to have fun."

"Shut up, Joanie."

"Alright, hey, let's just get started," Wally says.

They play several rounds of Kings, with the vodka diminishing faster than Hannah antic.i.p.ated. She starts to feel the alcohol and knows that her friends are feeling it too. Wally laughs much more readily than he normally does, Clay's voice gets louder and louder, and Baker's eyes get smaller and smaller.

"Dude, Clay, you're up," Wally says, hitting his shoulder. "Get a good one."

"Okay...8," Clay says as he reads his flipped card. "8, Pick a Date. Alright, who thinks they can keep up with my drinking?"

"Don't pick me," Luke slurs. "Joanie's making me drink too much."

"Sorry, man, but you're not what I envisioned for a date anyway. Okay, how about...Baker?"

Baker looks across the table at him. "You want me to match your drinking?" she asks, her voice carrying her smile. "I don't know if I can."

"I think you can," Clay grins.

They hold their drinks up to each other and cheers over the table. Hannah shakes the ice in her gla.s.s and takes another swig of her vodka.

By the late afternoon, with the sun beating down on them and two-thirds of the vodka gone, Hannah knows they are all drunk. Luke and Joanie lie slumped against their chairs and Clay rubs at his eyes every other minute. "I think everyone needs a nap," Baker says, her eyes small and glazed over.

"You want to send everyone off to a bed and I'll get this stuff cleaned up?" Hannah says. "Just try to keep them, like, hidden."

"Sure thing," Baker says, rising from her chair. "I'll be back in a minute to help you."

"I can do it," Wally says, sitting up straighter. "Go ahead, Bake, I'll help Hannah."

Baker hesitates, looking back and forth between Wally and Hannah, but then she turns and taps the other three to lead them inside. Hannah turns to Wally, who's looking at her.

"Y'okay?" he says.

"I'm good. Are you?"

"Yeah. Thanks for letting us hang out."

They clean up the table without talking. Hannah rinses the gla.s.ses and watches Wally through the kitchen window: he wipes down the porch table with a deliberate attentiveness, his arm muscles straining as he scrubs away a spill.

"Thanks," Hannah tells him when he comes back inside. "Can you get rid of that vodka bottle? I'm going to check on everyone and make sure they're okay."

She finds Joanie asleep in her bed, with Luke sprawled out on the floor, a blanket covering him. She imagines Baker tucking the blanket around him, touching his shoulder just before she pulls away, like Hannah has felt her do many times before.

The guest room door is slightly ajar. Hannah tiptoes toward it, not wanting to wake Clay, who is probably asleep in there, or Baker, who is probably asleep in Hannah's room next door. She's about to nudge the door open when she catches sight of something in the room.

Clay and Baker are both in there, but they're not sleeping. They're making out.

Clay stands against the bed, the backs of his legs sc.r.a.ping against it, and Baker stands with her body pressed into him, her hands rubbing over his shoulders while they kiss. Hannah ducks away from the door before they can notice her, her heart beating hard in her chest, but even as she hurries quietly back down the hallway and down the stairs, the image of them kissing burns itself on her mind: all she can see is Clay's mouth on Baker's, and Baker's mouth on Clay's, and the way their bodies had moved against each other.

"Hey," Wally says when she returns to the kitchen. Then, upon seeing her, he says it again. "Hey," he says, his voice softer and more concerned. "What's up? You look upset."

"Oh-nothing. I thought I saw a stain on the hallway carpet. I thought somebody had spilled."

"But it's all good?"

"Yeah," Hannah says, her heart aching. "It's all good."

Baker never mentions the kiss to Hannah. They go all through the following school week without her saying anything about it, even though Clay flirts openly with her and tries to grab her hand when they all hang out in the parking lot. Hannah thinks back on the previous conversations they'd had about boys-after Baker kissed Joey Dietzen, and that boy Lance in New Orleans, and Luke's cousin who came to visit; after Hannah kissed Ryder Pzynski, and Jonathan Owens, and Wally at the end of last summer-and Hannah wishes desperately that they could talk to each other now. She wants to talk about it, wants to hear it from Baker herself, even though at the same time she wants to push it from her mind, wants to remove it from her memory forever.

"Want to go to Sonic?" Baker says after school on Friday, and Hannah a.s.sumes that Baker wants to tell her now.

"Only if you let me pay this time," Hannah says, and then they're in the car and on their way.

They park at the Sonic on Perkins and roll their windows down to the smell of grease and fried food. Baker orders a b.u.t.terfinger Blast and Hannah orders a chocolate shake, and they trade the desserts back and forth while the traffic rushes past behind them.

"I'm surprised you got b.u.t.terfinger," Hannah says. "I thought you liked Oreo better."

"Yeah, but you like b.u.t.terfinger better," Baker says.

They talk about school and the test they had in Ms. Carpenter's cla.s.s yesterday and what they're going to do on spring break. Hannah waits for Baker to tell her about Clay, but Baker never does.

"Want to hang out later tonight?" Baker asks when she drops Hannah off.

"Can't," Hannah lies. "I promised my mom we'd do a mother-daughter night."

Baker's expression falls just the tiniest bit. She licks her lips before she speaks. "That's great," she says. "Your mom will love that."

"Yeah."

"Okay, well, text me tomorrow."

"I will."

"'Bye, Han," Baker says, and then she puts on her sungla.s.ses and backs out of the driveway.

Want to hang out? Hannah writes.

Wally replies seconds later. Yeah, I'd love to. What do you want to do?

They end up on Wally's back porch, his little brothers asleep in their room inside, his mom still out with her speech therapist friends. It's a cool night and Hannah shivers from the breeze.

"Here," Wally says, scooting closer to her. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, and she feels warmer.

"Thanks," she says.

They are quiet for a minute. Hannah can smell Wally's deodorant, musky and boyish, carrying her back to last summer when they made out on the dock.

"I'm glad you wanted to hang out," Wally says. "I love hanging out with all our friends, but it's nice to hang out with just you."

"Yeah," Hannah says. "Same."

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?

They make out for long minutes, and Hannah holds onto the hope that she will feel something, that something will trigger in her lower body, that she will respond like any other girl. She remembers how Baker looked when she was pressed up against Clay, so Hannah places her hands on Wally's shoulders and leans into his kiss, telling herself She liked doing this, and so do I.

They don't stop until they hear Wally's mom's car in the driveway. They jolt away from each other, and Wally says "Wow," and Hannah wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Where've you been?" Joanie asks when she gets home. "Nowhere."

Joanie tilts her head, narrows her eyes. "Were you with Wally?"

Hannah busies herself with opening the refrigerator. She scans the items inside-orange juice, chocolate pudding, leftover jambalaya-before she answers in a deliberately distracted voice.

"Yeah, we were just babysitting his little brothers."

Joanie says nothing. Hannah grabs the orange juice for something to do. She pours the juice into a gla.s.s, still pretending like she's just breezed in with nothing on her mind. When Joanie still remains silent, Hannah turns around to look at her. Joanie has her eyebrows raised high and her lips pulled into her mouth.

"What?" Hannah asks.

"You know what, dummy. Wally. And you. Did something happen? Was there a love connection?"

Hannah can feel her face heat. "Shut up, Joanie," she says, meaner than she meant to sound. She shoves the orange juice back into the fridge and stalks out of the kitchen. By the time she reaches the top of the stairs, her throat is thick with unexpected tears.

The last days of March hang full with antic.i.p.ation. At school, the whole student body seems to be holding its breath, waiting for Easter break. The seniors are especially on edge, waiting for their decision letters from colleges all across the country.

On the last Tuesday of March, Hannah pulls two envelopes out of her family's mailbox. The first, from Duke, contains a letter telling her she was not accepted.

The second envelope contains a letter from Emory. Hannah reads it carefully, her face pulled tight in concentration.

"What's it say?" Joanie asks.

Hannah looks up from the letter to see Joanie leaning breathlessly over the kitchen counter.

"I got in," Hannah says, the words vibrating in her throat as she laughs with relief.

She calls her mom and dad even though they're both at work. "Oh, Hannah!" her mom says, her voice louder than it ever is when she's at the office. There's the sound of something hitting wood, and Hannah pictures her mom smacking her palm against her desk. Her dad, when she calls him, reacts with quiet joy. "That's beautiful, honey," he says, his voice warm with pride just like it was when she would bring home her report cards in elementary school.

She texts her friends after that.

BALLERRRR, Luke replies. Way to go han!!

So awesome, Clay writes. But this better not mean you're ditching us!

I'm not surprised at all, Wally writes. Congratulations!

Baker responds separately from the group thread. You are amazing, she writes, so that only Hannah can see. I am so unbelievably proud of you.

Hannah re-reads Baker's text message seven more times that night. She falls asleep with her phone clutched in her hand and Baker's face in her mind.

She wakes the next morning with a pit in her stomach.

She knows she should feel excited about her acceptance to Emory and the promise of spring break. She should feel infinite and hopeful, like the growing earth around her. Like the sunlight, which stretches longer each day, asking for one more minute, one more oak tree to shimmer on. Like the late March mornings, which arrive carrying a gentle heat, rocking it back and forth over the pavement in the parking lot, letting it crawl forth over the gra.s.s and the tree roots, nurturing it while it is still nascent and tender, before it turns into the swollen summer.

But while the whole earth prepares for spring, Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has grown in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant.

It's there. She knows it's there. If she's truthful with herself, she's probably known all along. But now, as the days grow longer and the Garden District grows greener, she can actually see it. It has sprung up at last, and it refuses to be unseen.

She tells herself it's pa.s.sing. It's temporary. It's intensified only because she's a senior and all of her emotions are heightened. It's innocent. It's typical for a girl her age. It's no more or no less of a feeling than everyone else has had at 17.

But deep down, deep below the topsoil of her heart, she knows it's not.

Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the s.p.a.ce 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.

I can ignore it, she thinks. I can refuse to look at it. I can stomp on it every time it springs up within me.

So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it. By refusing to align her heart with the growing sunlight and the nurturing heat and the flowering plants and the tall, proud trees.

"You alright?" Baker asks, when Hannah says goodbye to her after school on Friday.

Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. "Yeah," she says. "I'm good."

Chapter Six: Spring Break.

On the first day of spring break, Hannah steps outside to a mild blue sky. She stands still on the front porch, holding her sungla.s.ses in one hand and her travel bag in the other, until Joanie lumbers out behind her and says, "Move your dumb a.s.s, can't you see I've got an economy-sized duffle bag here?"

Baker shows up right on time, swinging her car into the driveway with country music pouring out of the open windows. Hannah drums her fingers on the hood of the car and offers her a smile. "Are you pumped?"

"So pumped," Baker says, stepping out of the car with her long legs and long hair.

She wears her favorite white shorts from Banana Republic and the old Raybans she inherited from her brother, and Hannah tries not to look at her for too long.

Hannah's mom steps out onto the porch behind them. "Do you have everything, girls?"