Her Name in the Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

them—and sit around the table for another hour, long after Hannah and Joanie’s parents have gone up to bed, just talking and making fun of each other, and asking Luke to do impressions of their teachers, and asking Baker to tell the story about the time she walked into Mrs. Shackleford’s office to find her talking aloud to the curtains, and indulging Clay with his questions about how the St. Mary’s crowd reacted to the game tonight (“A couple of old women started speaking in tongues every time you got the ball,” Luke says; “It’s true,” Joanie says, “I sold them a nacho with your face imprinted on it”). Wally pushes discarded sprinkles around his plate while he listens to the conversation, and Joanie leans her head against Luke’s shoulder and starts to doze off, and Hannah stands the plastic Baby Jesus on the table and dances him over to Baker’s plate until Baker, her eyes swinging sideways to meet Hannah’s, tugs him out of Hannah’s hand.
    “We should probably go,” Luke says, his voice uncharacteristically hushed as he watches Joanie doze against his side.
    “Yeah,” Wally says, rising gently from the table. “Here, everyone give me your plates.”
    The boys leave just after midnight. Hannah stands at the sink and rinses the plates and forks, watching Baker hug the boys goodnight. Clay’s hand lingers at the small of Baker’s back and Hannah concentrates on scraping a stubborn piece of icing off one of the plates.
    Then the boys have gone, and Joanie has lumbered upstairs in a half-sleep, and now the only thing in the room seems to be the water pouring forth from the sink. Baker turns where she stands and casts Hannah a gentle, sleepy smile before she wordlessly walks to the sink, takes the other sponge, and starts to wipe down the table.
    “You don’t have to,” Hannah says, more out of polite habit than anything else, but Baker just sends her a look— Don’t be ridiculous —and continues to clean.
    They walk up the wooden stairs in silence, their feet tracing the familiar path to Hannah’s room, and Hannah feels content just to be together, just to have another Friday night sleepover in which Baker will borrow one of Hannah’s t-shirts to sleep in, and Hannah will turn the ceiling fan on high because Baker likes it that way, and they’ll fall asleep with some sitcom episode playing through Hulu on Hannah’s laptop.
    “Do you want your birthday present?” Hannah asks when Baker pulls the sheets back on the bed.
    Baker stills. “I thought this impromptu party was my present?”
    Hannah smiles. She walks to her desk and retrieves the carefully wrapped gift from her second desk drawer, and in some part of her mind she thinks about how she’s opened this drawer to check on this present every day for the last two weeks.
    Baker removes the daffodil-yellow wrapping paper very gingerly, her slender piano player’s fingers working under the tape with an easy grace. When she finds the book, her face alights with an expression Hannah cannot name.
    “Han,” she says as she trails her fingers across the cover.
    “I know you lost your copy,” Hannah says, stepping nearer to her. “And I thought you might want a hardcover edition.”
    “I love it,” Baker breathes. She opens the book and flips to a random page, sliding her fingertips down the hard paper, the black ink words— Scout. Atticus. Boo. —breathing off the page with the mysterious power of gospel. And in the dim light of the room, with the fan guiding currents of air across the leaves of the book and the phantom taste of King Cake on her tongue, Hannah is wrapped in magic.  
    “Think it’ll make it onto the sacred shelf?” Hannah asks.
    “Front and center,” Baker says, drawing her fingertips across the cover. She shifts her footing to face Hannah. “Thank you.”
    They crawl into bed and prop up Hannah’s laptop between them. They choose an episode of Parks and Recreation and play it with the volume on low.