Free Her Name in the Sky by Kelly Quindlen

toward the door, her voice high and panicked like it is when she thinks she said the wrong thing to someone.
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m just drunk—I think you’re pretty drunk, too—I think we’re both really wasted—”
    “We’re okay—” Hannah says.
    Baker looks into the mirror and rubs her fingers over her lips again. Her hand is still shaking. “I need some water,” she says. “I think I’m pretty drunk.”
    Then she leaves the bathroom, and Hannah’s left sitting on the tub with her heart in her throat.
     
    Joanie drives them home. “I’m fine ,” she assures Hannah. “I only drank two beers and Luke made me drink, like, six cups of water before we left. What’s up with you, Baker? Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine,” Baker says, her voice high and breathless from the backseat. “Just drank too much.”
    Joanie snorts. “That’s a first.”
    Hannah’s mom calls down to them when they walk into the house. Hannah tries hard to sound sober and is grateful to Joanie for doing most of the talking. “Yes, Mama, we’re all heading to bed,” Joanie says, sounding exasperated as she kicks off her shoes. Under her breath, she says, “You’re driving next time, Hannah.”
    Baker doesn’t speak to Hannah as they get ready for bed. They change in silence—both of them turn away into opposite corners of the room—and brush their teeth without looking at each other’s reflections. When Baker gets into bed and turns on her side away from Hannah, Hannah steps toward the door and says, “I’ll get us some water.”
    “Thanks,” Baker says.
    When Hannah returns with two plastic tumblers full of ice water, Baker is fast asleep, or at least pretending to be.
     
     

     
     
     
    Chapter Four: Dirty
     
    When Hannah wakes in the morning, she finds Baker packing up her overnight bag, the tumbler of water next to her.
    “Hey,” Hannah says.
    Baker doesn’t look up. “Hey.”
    “You feeling okay?”
    “I think I’m hungover.”
    “Yeah. Me too. Just drink that water. Want me to put on some coffee for you?”
    Baker hesitates; she snaps in an earring and looks down at the floor.
    Hannah sits fully up in bed. “Look,” she says, tying her hair into a bun, “I know we’re both being weird about last night—”
    “Don’t,” Baker says, her face scrunched up.
    “Don’t?”
    “Just—don’t try to bridge last night and this morning. You always do that. You always try to bring things out in the open. Just let it be, okay? It was a party, it was a late night, we were both really drunk, so let’s just leave it alone. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “But we—”
    “Hannah.”
    Baker’s voice is sharp when she speaks. Hannah feels something sink in her stomach.
    “Okay,” she says.
    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.
    “I need to take Charlie out,” Baker says, standing up and swinging her bag over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later.”
    “Have fun,” Hannah says, her voice sounding fake to her own ears.
    Baker leaves the room, and Hannah retreats under the covers.
     
    Later that morning, Hannah’s mom drags Hannah and Joanie to Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Mary’s. “We don’t want to go ,” Joanie whines from the backseat of the car.
    “Too bad,” their mom says.
    “We don’t want dirt on our foreheads,” Hannah says.
    “Stop calling it ‘dirt.’ Be respectful. With all the blessings in your lives, you should want to go thank God for everything you have.”
    Hannah sits through Mass with knots in her stomach. Father Simon delivers a homily about the start of the Easter season, about what it means for them as Catholics, about how they should remember Christ’s deliberate sacrifice every day for these next six weeks. Hannah averts her eyes from the life-size Crucifix that hangs above the altar.
    She falls in line to