Her Name in the Sky

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Hannah’s words warm her like a light, but as quickly as it happens, it’s gone, covered with the shame that she feels having this conversation in the holiest of places.

A romantic ode to the strength of love and the power of choosing each other, against odds and obstacles, again and again. It’s Hannah’s birthday, aka yet another reason for Baker to let her girlfriend know just how loved she is. And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation. Chaeyoung holds the microphone low in her right hand and cranes her neck to talk to some football players.

But Hannah begins to realize her love for Baker is more than the love of a friend, and Baker too, seems to be feeling the same way. We thank you for our athletes, these young men who will represent our school tonight and who will seek to glorify you with their performance,” Father Cho says.

They hike up the stands with their drinks in their hands, the paper cup burning Lisa’s fingers with cold. Jungkook and Jin end up with powdered sugar on their mouths and chins and Felix loses his coffee cup to the mercy of the group, all of whom drink from it without asking. Around them, other students drum on each other’s booksacks and push each other down the hall, and the whole vicinity has that air about it like something is going to happen. The live oaks that line the streets of the Garden District lean forward to whisper to each other, and the Spanish moss that hangs from their branches droops like heavy shawls they are ready to discard. She raises her hand into the humid air and imagines that she can stir it with her fingers, like a child discovering paint for the first time.The students around the gym shout, and Mrs Kwog frowns at the bleachers, her mouth pulled tight in disapproval. Lisa knows the terrain of her kingdom: she knows what it is like to steal away to Waffle House to meet her friends late at night, to lie on the floor at Jungkook’s house and throw ice cubes at him when he tries to make them all talk about sex, to spend her Friday afternoons riding in Chaeyoung’s car with the country station playing and the vanilla scent of the car freshener seeping into her clothes.

Brought up by their school, community, and religion to believe their feelings are sinful and unnatural, Hannah and Baker retreat inside themselves, trying to make their love for each other go away and learn to live a “normal” life. She stills with her back against the window, her hands still held up to ward off Chaeyoung’s tickling. Quindlen also was great with showing people’s varying reactions to homosexuality, some being kind and others outright violent. The last thing she wants is to fall in love with a girl - especially when that girl is her best friend, Baker.The six of them, taken by surprise with their fingers still covered in powdered sugar, swing their heads around to the front of the room.

As they try to figure out their relationship, they grapple with the religious and cultural constraints of their community and, more severely, with internalized homophobia.

Lisa stands in the middle of her friends and cheers the team off the field until her throat starts to ache, watching Jungkook raise his helmet into the air while he cranes his neck up at the stands, looking to the parents, to the teachers, to the student body, to the senior class, and, Lisa knows, to them. Jungkook runs a hand through his dark hair and mutters “Big night” for the third time, and then a building door opens several yards behind him. Clay pumps up the crowd until the cheering around the gym is so amplified and everyone’s emotions are so heightened that Hannah feels almost delirious with excitement. Several of the seniors on the bleachers below them turn around with quizzical smiles on their faces, but Jin just grins and pumps his hands in the air, making everyone around them laugh.