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JOANIE
Joanie is thirteen years old when she realizes there’s something otherworldly about Hannah and Baker.
She’s not yet in high school, still pouting when Hannah tells her she’s too young to understand, and her mother always says she’ll change her mind with age (about marriage and babies and careers and all things that will change but should be taken as immovable when she mentions them). Hannah has only been a freshman for two months, but she’s already a little insufferable about it in classic teenage fashion. Therefore it’s not surprising when she brings Baker over and refuses that Joanie hangs out with them.
“Stop being a baby ,” Hannah says when Joanie whines and whines about being left out, crossing her arms as she bites, “And then you say you’re not too young.”
“I’m not,” Joanie yells, because she’s thirteen . Hannah needs to stop treating her like a child, like the thorn on her side, like a nuisance. “I just want to hang with you.”
“Well I don’t!”
Baker, who’s been small and quiet this whole time, takes a step and slides a hand over Hannah’s shoulder. She softens in an instant, letting go of her frown and her baring teeth to stare down Joanie with a clenched jaw. “It’s fine,” Baker laughs, and suddenly Hannah can’t even muster the effort of seeming angry. “You can hang with us.”
Joanie decides there and then that Baker is much cooler than her sister. She lets an excited squeal out and sits down on the couch, grabbing a handful of chips. Hannah pretends to be very annoyed as she sits too, leaning on the back pillows of the couch as she lays her feet on the coffee table. Just to be difficult, she steals a chip from Joanie and pokes her cheek.
“Hey!”
“Munchkin.”
Baker laughs, and Hannah turns to watch her. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even laugh too, just stares with amazement, as if she could picture this moment forever. Joanie frowns, biting down on a new chip.
The three of them watch a movie, but only Hannah and Baker lean their heads together and whisper things low enough for Joanie not to hear. She can see them smile, however, laughs sometimes breaking out of their lips in times when it doesn’t make sense with the movie, biting it down as if they were any bit subtle.
Hannah plays with Baker’s ring, twisting it around her finger as she tells her a story Joanie is sure is not interesting enough to warrant the enthralled, enchanted look Baker is giving her. She would know. She knows all her sister’s stories.
They must say a word at the same time, because they twist to the other with wide eyes and a grin and scream jinx, and jinx, and jinx, on and on until Baker is too busy breaking into laughter to manage the next jinx and Hannah wins. They giggle, clutching each other’s hand as they do, and Joanie watches them with an arched eyebrow.
“Bakes,” Hannah finally says, voice light from the leftover of a laugh. Baker looks at her, shaking her head. She snorts. “ Baker. ”
“Thanks.”
“You could have talked at Bakes, you know? I unjinxed you.”
Baker pffs. “I’m not risking seven years of bad luck.”
When they finish the movie, the two of them climb up the stairs and go up to Hannah’s room. All evening, Joanie can hear them talk, muffled snickers slipping through the crack of the door, up until the Hadleys come to pick Baker up. She wonders what’s so funny, but she’s starting to think whatever is being spoken between the two is only understandable by them, a joke that no one else can get, a secret language no one else talks. It’s especially impressive because they’ve known each other for a cumulative amount of a few weeks.
That night, Joanie decides Hannah and Baker are the best friends ever made. A few years later, after her and Hannah’s relationship heals from its early teenage hardships, after Baker and Hannah spend nearly every day glued at the hip, after they write on their bodies with greedy fingers the language only they speak, Joanie realizes how wrong she was.
LUKE
Luke is completely plastered and it loosens him up enough to start unapologetically flirting with Joanie. She’s being nice enough about it, snorting at his poor pick up lines and patting his knee when he tells her how beautiful she is.
“If I ask you, will you be my New Years’ kiss?”
Joanie smiles mischievously. “I don’t know. Ask me.”
“Joanie Eaden, light of my life, hottest girl in the world, will you be my New Years’ kiss please?”
She leans in, dark eyes lock with his, and Luke can feel his heart start to race. Inches away from his face, she whispers, “No.” Then she laughs, backing away.
Luke groans, which makes Hannah call from the other side of the room, “Leave my sister alone , Luke.”
He turns to her. She’s leaning on the wall beside Baker, a Christmas mug filled with rum and coke in her hand. She has a sparkly top that tinkers when she moves and Baker is staring at it in amusement. “ She should leave my heart alone,” he yells back. Hannah shakes her head.
Clay, wearing those 2012 funky glasses and swaying as he walks, comes into the living room. “I just threw up,” he says, and then raises his glass like a champion. Luke hollers, laughing as Clay falls on the recliner with a groan.
“We told you not to do all these shots,” Joanie says, pitiless.
“You were supposed to have the foretelling abitilites to know I was not gonna listen and literally rip the shot glass from my hands.” As Joanie rolls her eyes, Clay twists in his chair. “Bakes,” he says, drawing on the s comically. “Nurse me back to health.”
“Why Baker?” Wally asks, arching an eyebrow, although just the question is ridiculous. Of course Baker. “I could mother you just as well.” Clay puckers his lips to him as Baker leaves for the kitchen.
She comes back with a glass of water, kneeling down in front of him and offering it. “There, you big baby.” She smiles, and Clay smiles back, and it’s suddenly suffocatingly obvious why Baker that Luke has to roll his eyes. At least he has the decency to be straightforward about it.
The New Year comes undetected. All their brains are hazy, mushed by one of their first times drinking alcohol, and certainly their first time getting this drunk. Wally is half asleep, Clay sobered up enough to drink two more beers and throw up again and is now laying on the bathroom floor, Joanie is swaying on her seat listening to a Taylor Swift song Luke pretends he doesn’t know, and they all don’t really register it’s midnight until minutes later.
Luke watches Hannah as she looks at the clock, grins wide, and then trails back to Baker. “Happy New Years,” she probably whispers, although Luke doesn’t hear and is far too gone to really make sense of. Baker smiles, and it falters as their eyes lock together. Hannah leans in, Baker’s lips part, and the blond girl leaves a wet smack on her cheek. She giggles, wiping it, and then opens her arms wide to give Hannah a hug.
Luke thinks he might get why not Clay.
WALLY
Hannah Eaden is the most beautiful girl. Her long, blond air, her bright smiles, her rosy cheeks, all coming together like she’s sunrise personified. She shines on Wally’s poor heart and he always wonders if she even knows the hold she has on people when she knocks her head back and laughs, the kind that makes her nose wrinkle in the most adorable way.
It’s this exact laugh she’s doing right now as Baker retells the story of frogs released in Mrs Shackleford’s class, going as far as doing voice impressions and then gazing at Hannah from the side with a proud smile. Wally wonders what he could do to make Hannah laugh like that.
“I swear she tried to catch one.”
“No way,” Wally shakes his head, dipping his fry in his mix of ketchup and mayo, which makes Baker grimace. “She’s too proud.”
“Oh, I wish she would, though,” Hannah says, laughing some more.
“Then she did,” Baker settles.
Wally snorts. “That’s lying. Slandering, even. She could sue.”
“She likes Baker too much to do that.” Hannah nudges her side with her elbow, a smile blooming over her face as Baker blushes and looks down.
“Who doesn’t?” Wally says, and he means it as some sort of friendly teasing comment on Baker’s clear teacher’s pet-ness.
Hannah, however, doesn’t take it as that, and her eyes warm with the fire inside her that rises over the day as she whispers, “Yeah.” Baker turns to her and, for a second, they seem to exist in limbo, somewhere where Wally doesn’t exist.
Hannah, thankfully, snaps back to the cafeteria, clearing her throat and then chasing it with a mouthful of orange juice. She sets the bottle back down on her empty tray, staring at the fries leftover in Wally’s plate.
“You gonna eat that?”
“Have some.” Wally pushes his plate towards her. She grins, something childish about it, as she takes a fry and dips it in an obscene amount of ketchup and mayo, staring deviously at Baker the whole time.
Baker gags as Hannah plops the fry in her mouth and smiles victoriously. It brightens her entire face, and that’s when Wally thinks she looks the most beautiful.
He notices a bit of ketchup left on the corner of her lips and, heart racing, readies himself for reaching out and- Baker cradles Hannah’s cheek, wiping away the red with her thumb. Her hand lingers a second, and then she drops it to clean it with a napkin, smiling.
Wally can’t believe his move got taken by Baker. And then, as he thinks, he can actually believe it.
CLAY
Clay is not over Baker. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries, how much he wants to. She’ll do something small, like a smile at a joke only she hears or a look over two ends of a room when someone says something that reminds her of him and suddenly he can feel himself fall all over again. He loves her. He’s never loved anyone before.
It doesn’t help that Baker and Hannah are dating either. It’s not like it feels wrong, per say. There always was something between them that was simmering. Clay thinks that he’s been holding his breath wondering what it would come to once it boiled for quite some time before it finally did, before he saw them kiss at that party, before everything snapped into place.
It’s not even like they’re unbearable about it. Really, there’s something still shy, still quiet about them. They’ll whisper in each other’s ears secrets the rest of them will never be privy to, but they’ve always done that. They’ll exchange looks that last longer, feel more intense than whatever fleeting thing Baker will throw his way. They’ll linger a hand on the other, on their shoulder or their side or their thigh, but they’ll let go before anyone really sees.
In some way, Baker and Hannah haven’t changed at all. It makes it worse, because that means Clay never had a chance. That he dated a girl who only saw him as a placeholder.
And he doesn’t like to be hurt. He doesn’t want to be. But he is.
Baker is just tipsy enough to grow a little more adventurous and she holds Hannah’s hand on her lap, playing with her fingers one by one. Clay’s heart is rumbling with something dark and he’s just drunk enough to grow mean. He doesn’t know what he says exactly, some off hand rude comment that cuts Baker deeper than he means to.
She stares at him, hurt contorting her face, and then she drops Hannah’s hand and walks away. The blond is quick after her, sending a daggering glare his way as she follows her girlfriend.
Clay sighs, burrowing his head between his hands. God, he’s an asshole.
“You’re an asshole,” Joanie says.
“Yeah. I know.”
"Then do something about it."
"I will," Clay cries, head snapping up from his hands. "Jesus."
He stands up, dragging his bones to the room Baker just eclipsed to, trying to come up with words to apologize. The door is ajar, and Clay can see her sitting on the bed sniffling. His heart tightens and he wishes he could just get rid of all those feelings.
Hannah kneels in front of Baker, holding her two hands as she looks up at her, whispering, “He’s just lashing out, Bakes. You know Clay.”
“I don’t want to hurt him.”
“Who cares?” Hannah throws louder, hands tightening around hers. “He’s hurting you, too.”
She wipes her cheeks, lips quivering. “Exactly. I don’t want this to be an endless hurt cycle. He’s my friend .”
Hannah rubs circles on her skin. “I know, baby. He’ll come around. You know he will.”
She shakes her head. “We don’t know that.”
“I do. Baker, I swear he will. Clay is all big, intense emotions, but he mellows out. He’ll get over you.” Because Baker keeps sniffling, hunched shoulders shaking, Hannah straightens up enough to near her mouth, hand leaving hers to nestle her cheek. “It’s not because I cannot physically move on from you that he can’t.”
Baker snorts, shoulders shaking for a different reason. “I don’t want you to move on.”
“I won’t.” With this, she kisses her, lips slanting together through smiles. “I promise,” Hannah whispers, before raising her hands to her hair and locking her fingers in the brown strands, kissing her deeper.
Clay quietly leaves before he feels like a creep. There’s never been something wrong about Baker and Hannah, but he sees now that there is something completely right about them. He doesn’t move on right there and then. But he will.
After all, he can’t blame Baker for following fate. And he can’t blame Hannah for welcoming it home.