What Happened to Hannah (11 page)

Hannah couldn’t take her eyes off the tall, lanky girl on the track. Running looked as effortless and natural to her as walking was for most people. Gradually, she’d taken close to a half-track lead ahead of the others and still didn’t seem to be fatiguing. She ran with her knees up, her arms bent, her blond ponytail swishing back and forth in a relaxed rhythm.

She watched Anna through the wire fencing as she made her way to the gate, heading for the bleachers. Being that this was only a practice, there wasn’t a large crowd of spectators. One or two adults, parents she imagined, watching from the stands and a few younger onlookers leaning against a low wire fence around the track—Biscuit and Lucy were among them.

Though their coiffures were somewhat dull due to the funeral that morning, they had gone to great lengths to make up for it with their wardrobes. Hannah now found it endearing in a strange way—perhaps because of the deference they’d both shown to her mother at the service that morning. Both had dressed in severe conservative black clothing, their hair devoid of all but their natural colors. Biscuit served as a pallbearer, along with Grady and his son, and three other gentlemen she hadn’t recognized but later found out were members of the church who knew and were fond of her mother—the parish gardener and two CCD students from many years past.

Lucy had glued herself to her best friend’s side for support and was nothing but caring and concerned. Even on such short acquaintance, all in all Hannah found herself impressed with Anna’s choice in friends—they were certainly her defenders.

During Anna’s third pass around the field, they noticed Hannah’s presence in the bleachers; and while Lucy didn’t seem to care one way or the other, Biscuit started climbing the seats toward her.

“You don’t have to sit up here alone, you know.”

“I don’t want to interrupt . . . or distract her.”

He laughed as he sat down beside her. “Fat chance of that. She gets into a zone and can’t hear or see anything except the sound of her feet and her breathing, and the track about eighty feet ahead of her. Not the whole track. That’s too much. This reporter interviewed her last fall, and he wanted to know what she thought about while she was running. She said she mostly thought about putting one foot in front of the other, and breathing.”

“She makes it look so easy.”

He nodded, watching Anna. “This fourth lap she’ll push it a little harder, to shave off a couple more seconds.”

As if he’d whispered in her ear, Anna picked up her tempo on the far side of the field and while she still looked uncommonly graceful, there was no doubt that she was working harder.

“Does she try to break the record every time she runs?”

“Just her record. It’s always nice to break someone else’s record but that’s not really what it’s all about. If it was, you’d go nuts. There’s always going to be someone faster than you are. After a while you’d have to give up. It’s more fun to beat your own personal best. You get to know yourself pretty well. You test yourself over and over again. And you amaze yourself over and over again by what you can do. It’s a great feeling.”

“You’re speaking from experience.” She waited for Anna to cross the finish line, slow down, circle back halfway toward a man holding a stop watch and a clipboard, then bend with her hands on her knees to catch her breath, before she looked at Biscuit.

“I ran junior varsity three years ago when I was a freshman, then I wrecked my knee in a car accident. It wasn’t the same after that. I can still play basketball, though. I’m a pretty good forward.” He wiggled his fingers at her and grinned. “I have good hands.”

“Do you miss the running?” she asked, ignoring his youthful innuendo. Looking back at Anna, she watched the girl straighten up and look directly at the tall wire fencing on the scoreboard end of the field. Following her gaze, Hannah spotted Cal Steadman leaning against the front of an old light-blue pickup truck, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Nah. Not anymore. It’s more fun to watch Anna do all that work.” Catching her glancing between Anna and Cal, he added, “We all like watching her.”

“Cal comes to watch every day?”

He shrugged. “And to pick up Lucy. And to hang with me.”

She had a sinking feeling in her chest. “I think I messed up again. I’m supposed to let her ride home with Cal, aren’t I? That’s what she wanted to do, right? What she usually does? I’m screwing up her routine.”

“It’s already screwed up. Coach is letting her practice with the relay team for now, but once he decides who to replace her with, it’ll be screwed up even more. Then there’s the move to Baltimore. You picking her up today is pretty minor in the overall screwed-upness of things. Besides, she’s glad that you wanted to see her run.”

“And Cal?” she asked on a hunch. “Is there something . . . going on, between the two of them?”

He scrunched his face and looked like he either didn’t want to or wasn’t supposed to speak on this issue.

“No,” he said at last, and she sensed he was lying—or at least not telling the whole truth. “Not really. They’re friends, is all.”

“Good friends?”

“Pretty good.” He looked at her, made a quick assessment, then lowered his eyes to concentrate on his black nail polish. “Lucy says Anna’s had this thing for him since like sixth grade. I’m pretty sure she was just his little sister’s best friend until like last summer because he was way hot on Cassie Jordan for a long time. Cal and Cassie, they were a pair. Until last summer. I don’t know what happened. I don’t think he knows what happened, but suddenly he wasn’t so hot on Cassie anymore and they broke up.” He glanced over at his friend, leaning against the pickup truck, then tilted back on the bleacher behind them, his arms stretched out wide. “He’s been smart about it, though. He didn’t make some big, huge move on someone else right away—Cassie would have made her life a hell. But I know my boy and I’ve seen the way he looks at Anna and . . .” His soft laugh was relaxed and philosophical. “His old man knows him, too.”

“Grady?”

“That’s the one.”

“He knows there’s something going on between them?”

“No, but he, like me, saw the potential for something to begin, and he told Cal to back off.”

“Why?”

He bobbed his head. “Because Anna’s leaving town. He said there was no point in starting something that can’t be finished.”

Wise advice stemming from Grady’s firsthand experience
. “So this was recent?”

He nodded. “And it was Lucy’s fault . . . again. Seems Cal said something to her about maybe taking Anna to the prom,
maybe
, and I think Lucy may have said something to Anna about it, of course. But then old Mrs. Benson . . . well, your mom, she died. So when the sheriff told them about you coming, Lucy went off about how unfair it all was . . . including Anna having this thing for Cal for so long and not being able to go to the prom with him now. Cal said it was the nicest nightmare he’d ever had.”

Hannah looked at him askance and he went on. “Cal likes to keep his dad in the dark about his life as much as possible—you would too, if your dad was the sheriff. It’s hard enough to find any privacy in this town. Living with the sheriff, or the high school principal, makes it close to impossible.”

“Your father is the high school principal?” He gave her a droll look and nodded. She clamped down on her molars and tried not to laugh . . . or to reexamine his attire. “So Cal’s embarrassed to have his dad find out that he likes Anna?”

“Not embarrassed exactly, just . . .” His expression soured, but he still had no word for the feeling. “It’s easier when they don’t know.”

“If that was the nightmare part, what’s nice about it?”

“Finding out for sure that Anna’s hot for him.” He frowned. “I don’t think he’s all that surprised to hear it. I mean, a guy can sense these things, you know. But confirmation is always cool. But then the sheriff told him to back off, so then they had to fight about it.”

Ah. The fight
. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked, when it occurred to her that she’d gotten more information in the last ten minutes than she had in the previous seventy-two hours. “I thought Goths, in particular, were sort of reticent and tight-lipped.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On the point we’re trying to make.” He stretched his long legs out in front of him. “If it’s to be as weird as everyone seems to think we are, then why bother talking at all? If it’s to embarrass our families, then our attire is usually enough said, more than enough—and, of course, if your father is the principal of a high school, then it’s a particularly satisfying statement. But to the people who know us best, how we dress and how much or how little we talk doesn’t matter.”

“I see.”

“And to answer your question, I felt sorry for you last night. At dinner. I got the feeling you were walking into this blindfolded and that’s not fair, for anyone. The sheriff wants everything to go smooth for Anna, and for you, but . . . you can’t just say make the road smooth and expect it to be that way.”

“No. You can’t.”
Smart young man,
she thought, looking at him. He had fine dark brown eyes that were keen and perceptive. She wondered if he’d be in any trouble for talking to her. “Thank you. Biscuit.”

He smiled when she said his name. “You’ll get used to it.” Then he hesitated and grew sober again. “There’s something else I think you should know about. I mean, not that you have to do anything about it or anything, but you should at least know.”

“Please. What?” He looked very reluctant to tell her. “Please.”

“It probably doesn’t make any difference. I don’t know that it
should
make any difference. I mean, putting things off doesn’t make them any easier and quick breaks are better anyway and . . . the sooner it happens, the sooner everyone can start adjusting and all that stuff, but . . .”

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “April’s a huge month around here. Well, not always. I mean, it’s the normal stuff, but with Anna leaving and all . . . things seem bigger. Like for one thing, Anna’s birthday is in April. Sheriff already said if it’s okay, he’ll drive us all up to Baltimore the weekend after but . . . well, we also have two big meets and one’s with Ripley.” The way he spoke the name of the rival county told her the animosity between the two schools hadn’t lessened in twenty years. “Anna was a major part in wiping the floor with them last year, but then there’s the prom the first weekend in May and, well, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, but . . .”

“Now I know.”

“Right.” His expression brightened. “Informed decisions, right?”

She nodded and looked down at Anna, deep in discussion with a man Hannah presumed was her coach. “Did she ask you to talk to me?”

“No,” he said quickly and, she suspected, honestly. “We talked about it, of course, but it’s, like . . . well, the sheriff said you were dead set on two weeks, so . . . I thought you should know, is all. So you’d know why Lucy’s so mad and why Anna might be sad and why Cal’s standing over there, instead of down here with us.”

“I appreciate it. I can’t say that it changes anything but maybe I won’t step on as many feelings as I did last night.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like most of us aren’t dying to get out of this bass-ackward town as soon as possible anyway. It’s just that we want to do it our way, in our own time. And in the middle of high school, we sort of figure that’s after graduation. We make plans, you know? We want to finish school and graduate with our friends, not a bunch of strangers. We want to head out of here to . . . wherever, at the same time; come back every few years to see the parental units and the kids who didn’t make it out. It’s tough on everyone to have to leave something in the middle of it but, well, I moved here five years ago. I’m living proof that you can leave everyone you know and survive.”

So am I
, she thought. Yet the look they exchanged told a more accurate story—survival came after the pain and the sorrow, when you couldn’t live with the misery and loneliness any longer.

“You seem very protective of Lucy. Are the two of you . . . you know?”

He leaned forward as a barrier and hid whatever he was feeling with humor. “What. I look stupid enough to want to date the sheriff’s
little Lucy
? Besides the drama queen stuff, and the bossy stuff, and the telegraph, telephone, tele-Lucy stuff,
and
the fact that she’s too young to do anything but
group
date? I look that masochistic to you?” His eyes dared her to give an honest answer.

She couldn’t stop her gaze from bouncing around to the multiple piercings on his face. A snort-laugh escaped her and he grinned.

“Certainly not.” And before the smile in her eyes faded, they met his. “I appreciate the information, Biscuit.

Chapter Eight

T
here’s enough funeral food at the house to last us six months but Joe says runners need protein and carbs especially,” Hannah said in the car on the way home. “I should get a book if . . . Do they have cookbooks for runners? I don’t cook a lot at home. I have a nice lunch, usually, and a sandwich or something in the evening. It might be fun having someone to cook for—not that I’m a great cook or anything; I haven’t had a lot of practice but this’ll
be
good practice for me.”
Take a breath!
“Anyway, we should go through the food and keep what’s best for you—you’ll have to tell me—and donate the rest to . . . what? A nursing home? Is there a women’s shelter here?”
Finally. Years and years too late.
“Maybe Father Scott can help. Then we can make a list of what’s still missing, whatever you need and . . .” She glanced from the road to the silent girl beside her. “Well, I thought I’d go in to see the principal tomorrow, get him started on your paperwork. Just in case. I can hit the grocery store after that. In the morning you can ride in with me or ride the bus like always, whichever, but I have the antique dealers coming in the afternoon, so do you think, would you mind asking Cal and Lucy for that ride home they offered?”