What Happened to Hannah (25 page)

As it happened, Anna wasn’t emotionally attached to her bedroom furniture—which consisted of a box spring and mattress on a wheeled frame with no headboard, a battered side table with matching desk, a living room lamp and a scarred five-drawer chest with one handle missing—and had no objections to Hannah replacing it as a surprise for her birthday.

And so, later that afternoon, she met with the interior designer she’d hired to look at furniture, hand over the paint chip Anna had given her, and to discuss the girl for whom the room was being redecorated.

“I don’t know her all that well. Yet. She’s my niece. She’s . . . ah, well, she’s tall and beautiful and smart and athletic—she runs. She’ll be sixteen a week from Thursday so that’s why we have to rush this. She’s kind of quiet so I don’t know how she came up with that emergency orange color for her room, because she swore she didn’t take Lucy, who’s more of an orange person, to pick out the paint. But she says I’ll be amazed at how many cool colors it’ll go with . . . not that it matters to me. If she wanted the room painted polka-dot, we’d be painting it polka-dot but . . . do girls nowadays still have, like, those sweet sixteen parties, do you know?”

In the evening she called Anna.

“Hi. It’s me again. Hannah.”

“I know. I remember your voice from last night.” There was humor in hers.

“You do? Am I calling too often?” She smiled, teasing back as she leaned against the doorjamb of her spare bedroom and wondered if the designer would toss the desk and recliner it held . . . and what she was going to do with all the books and boxes of . . .
stuff
.

Jesus!

“No. I can handle it. In fact I was going to call you. I have your number on speed dial in my new phone. I wanted to see if it worked.”

“Okay. Call me back.” She turned her BlackBerry off and waited, her smile unfaltering. When it rang she answered. “Hello?”

“It works. From now on you’re just one button away.”

“Well, that’s nice but . . . who is this?”

Anna laughed and Hannah cherished the sound.

A couple nights later Anna called to check in. “Ask me what happened at school today.”

“Anna? What happened at school today?” she asked obediently, smiling, her excitement level shooting through the roof—that’s all it took these days it seemed, a thrill in Anna’s voice.

“Cal asked me to prom.”

“Oh. Wow. Shock and awe here. Shock. And awe. Although, I have to tell you, I was sort of expecting this . . . weren’t you?”

“Hoping. I was hoping. His dad . . .”

“Right. I forgot.” Her smile widened. She was liking Cal more and more all the time—he reminded her of someone. “He decided to walk over burning coals and cross his dad for you, huh?”

“Do you think he’ll be in much trouble? Because I’d rather not go than—”

Hannah laughed. “Don’t you worry about Grady Steadman, sweetie. Not about this anyway. If he gives Cal any trouble at all, you let me know.”

And while Anna related the memory permanently engraved in her heart that day, Hannah too had a burst of recollection—of standing near her locker in the hall at the high school, spring of her sophomore year, and smiling up at Grady when he leaned against the locker next to hers, whispered
“hey,”
and grinned into her eyes . . . and of Jake Wilson, one of Grady’s oldest and best pals, laughing and acting confused about the hold up to wherever they going. He asked why he was speaking to Goodwill Hannah about his friend’s mental stability, and then asked about something she either didn’t hear correctly or didn’t understand at the time regarding her underpants.

Mostly she remembered the flash of Grady’s fist as it flew passed her face on its way to the middle of Jake’s and the three of them staring at one another—Jake from the floor, in appalled surprise—and the way Grady trembled when he closed her locker, took her hand, and walked away from his friend.

She didn’t know if or how much more flack Grady took for caring about her—and she refused to let the recall endear him more now—it was eons ago—but if he didn’t empathize with Cal’s defiance, she was going to remind him.

She popped into the office Friday morning to hug Joe goodbye and to tell the others she’d see them bright and early a week from Monday morning.

She drove straight through to Ripley and arrived in time to buy a hot dog and a Coke at the concession stand before the first heat began.

She easily spied Anna standing with her teammates and coach and wanted to whoop and holler and dance a jig when the girl sensed her staring at her and looked up with a smile. Instead, she waved decorously and flipped her a thumbs-up for good luck.

“That means ‘good to go’ or ‘well done’.” Grady’s voice from behind startled her, and she jerked like an eel out of water. “That’s for after her race.”

“What are you doing here?” She sounded as cross as she felt all at once—and he was out of uniform.

“Supporting our youth. As you can see, track isn’t one of our big-money sports.”

It was true. There weren’t many spectators. Less than half of the bleachers on either side were occupied, but there were also small groups of people—mostly adults—wandering the outer rim of the fenced track.

“So what do I do, Sheriff? Whack at my leg with the side of my hand for ‘break a leg’ . . . which sounds like the worst possible thing you could wish on a runner, by the way.”

He led her down the cement steps between the bleachers and stopped at a row that was high up and midfield. “How about crossing your fingers for good luck? But just two fingers. If you cross them all it’s bad luck.”

“Army Rangers again?”

He snorted a surprised chuckle and grinned at her. “My Book of Dad. I’m not sure all kids are, but mine were very superstitious and distrustful. Their mother leaving left them . . . unsure of things for a while. And they knew my job could be hazardous once in a while, so Lucy explained how crossing her fingers for good luck and wishing me to come home safe worked.”

Anna happened to look up again just then, so she smiled and waved her single set of crossed fingers at her. The girl nodded and grinned and she mouthed,
“Thanks.”

“Protect and serve. Want another hot dog?”

“No, thanks. I’m too nervous to eat. I only ate that so I wouldn’t pass out.”

“I’ll be right back, then. I see my kids over there looking like they’re waiting for my wallet to show up.”

She watched Lucy, Biscuit, and Cal move to the back of a short line the moment they saw him stand and head up the steps toward them—they knew him so well.

Glancing back at Anna, stretching her leg muscles, her focus solely on what she was doing, Hannah wondered if she was hungry, too, then stopped herself. If she knew nothing else about Anna, she
did
know the girl knew how to take care of a runner’s body . . . the exceptional bleeding ulcer notwithstanding. If her own stomach was in knots, she knew Anna’s was not so full as to give her cramps but full enough to give her plenty of fuel to win—she knew her that well.

She squirmed in her seat feeling ridiculously like a parent. Like Grady knowing his kids were hungry and surely short on funds.

Simply knowing, without being told. It wasn’t a big deal certainly, mostly a lot of common sense, she supposed, but the fact that she had someone other than herself to think about, to apply her vast scope of common sense to, well, that was unquestionably satisfying.

Trying not to make Anna any more uncomfortable she tried not to stare at her alone and waited for the others to take their seats—Biscuit between her and Lucy with Grady and Cal behind them, making a tighter group—before launching into her list of questions.

“Should we go down by the fence like those parents over there?”

“You can,” Biscuit answered, taking the role of tour guide around his mouthful of cheeseburger. “But you can see the track events better from up here. Those other people are watching the long jumpers and discus and shot putters. We don’t have anyone who pole vaults or a javelin thrower this year, or they’d be in the middle of the field and down there by the goalpost.”

“She’s never said anything about jumping over things.”

“Hurdles. She doesn’t.” He popped a French fry in his mouth. “With those long legs she’d be really good at it, though.” Cal darted a wary look at his friend and chewed his food with more aggression, but Biscuit didn’t notice. “In track-and-field, you focus on what you can do best unless you want to get into multiple-event competitions and that can get to be crazy . . . and really exhausting. There are some kids in high school who try, like, two things at a time. They’ll combine maybe one short or medium running event with one throwing event or a jumping event. But everything takes time for training, if you want to be good enough to be competitive in it. So the more you do the more time you need for training, and in high school you don’t have a lot of that kind of time.”

“I see. And Anna focuses on the longer runs and the relays.”

He nodded and finished chewing. “The 1600 meter run and 3200 meter relay . . . sometimes they call it the 4x800 meter relay because four runners run around the track twice each, which is 800 meters each, before they pass off the baton. That’s 3200 meters total. But there are shorter relays . . . 4x100, 4x200, 4x400.” He shrugged. “Anna’s always run like there’s something chasing her, she’s fast, but the shorter sprints were never enough. Endurance and long distances are what she needs, and she’s trained her body to give them to her.”

“Oh, what do you know about it?” Lucy bumped him with her shoulder as Cal once again scowled at his buddy in a most unfriendly way. “You are so full of it.” She leaned around him to look and speak to Hannah. “His mom’s a psychologist so he spouts that weird psycho-babble stuff whenever he wants to show off. Anna runs because she’s good at it. It makes her feel good. It makes her happy. Everyone has something they’re good at and Anna’s something is running.”

“And what are you good at, Lucy?” She wasn’t often in the girl’s good graces, so she wanted to make the most of it.

She shrugged and leaned back so Biscuit’s body hid her. “Not much, I guess.”

“Well, that’s not true.”

“Yes, it is. Oh. You mean the way I dress.”

“Not particularly.”

“Other than that I don’t do anything different or special. I’m just . . . average.”

Hannah leaned far forward to look at her deliberately, then leaned back “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but I think you’re good at telling the truth. And better than that, I think you’re a good friend. I think that makes you special. Sometimes it can be very hard to be a good friend. You may not know it yet, but loyalty like yours is rare in the world.”

Lucy made no comment and this time Hannah leaned back a little to look at the girl on the other side of Biscuit. Her eyes were downcast; her expression thoughtful and not disagreeable.

Grady’s hand came to rest on her shoulder, grateful, warm and intimate. She didn’t mind
grateful,
though it wasn’t at all necessary. But
warm
and
intimate
? She tipped her shoulder and shifted her torso until his hand slipped away. She simply couldn’t risk it.

“Why are they lined up like that? Why do some of them get a little head start like that? Because they’re slower? Where is she going?”

This time Grady answered, leaning on his knees and talking over her shoulder. “They’re staggered like that because the track is an oval and it’s measured so that each of the six lanes is a quarter of a mile or 400 meters. They flip a coin before each race to see which team takes the even or odd lanes, but the distance for each lane is the same. Looks like they’re doing the relay first. See the girl with the short reddish hair? That’s Trudy Meyers. She’s not quite as fast as Anna, but she’s got the endurance for the 3200 meter run. Anna can and has run it, too, but only at all-day meets when one event is scheduled in the morning and the other in the late afternoon, so the runners have time to recoup. In these after-school meets there isn’t time, so they focus on their best bet to win. Anna’s faster but Trudy’s good and very consistent.

“She’ll start the relay because 800 meters is a nice warm-up for her; she’ll barely be out of breath at the end, so she can push ahead a little and give the team a nice, safe distance to defend. If one of the two girls in the middle can’t maintain, or if they fumble a pass-off, they’ve put Anna at the end of the relay to make up the difference. And, of course, to smash the Ripley school record.”

“Of course.” She clenched her fists in her lap and tried to remember the last time she’d been this excited about anything, or more confident of an outcome. Aside from Joe, when had she ever believed so wholeheartedly in anyone?

“Please go.” She finished pushing her arms into the sleeves of a wool jacket that was getting too small for her and picked up her backpack.

“Not without you,” Grady said, shaking his head. They were crossing Main Street toward the two-acre circular town square.

Once the older Mrs. Phillips was settled in an assisted-living facility in Ripley and once school started again in the fall, her father found her a new after-school job working for his friend Mr. Dimmit, who owned the local pawnshop. And she used the term friend very loosely here, as Mr. Dimmit didn’t seem to like her father very much—which she might have considered a virtue had Mr. Dimmit been anything but a gruff, short-tempered old geezer who let it be known that it hadn’t been his idea to have her underfoot from four in the afternoon until he closed at nine every night—and all day Saturday—but if that was his only way of getting half of what her father owed him, he’d take it.

It wasn’t a hard job: sweeping and mopping the floors, washing windows, dusting off at least one example of everything under the sun that people valued—but not enough to keep, or couldn’t keep because they needed money more.

It was quiet in Clearfield at 9:15. With most of the other shops closed as well, there was little traffic. The streets were wet with rain and they could hear their own footsteps on the asphalt. Cool but not cold, there was a restless breeze pushing the fall leaves around on the trees. It made the air so sweet and clean, she felt a little dizzy.