Thirteen Things Named in Honor of Spencer Hastings
I.
Hastings Park in Rosewood, PA
It’s a modest park. Some patchy grass and a few picnic tables. Some playground equipment that’s been there for years. Still, Spencer gets a kick out of it.
She remembers it like it was yesterday. Drinking a beer, swinging slowly back and forth on the swings. The night she felt like her whole life was on the verge of unraveling. She was spinning around, winding the chain of the swing tighter and tighter, her mind a whirl of dark thoughts. Caleb. Mary Drake. Archer Dunhill rotting underground.
Then Hanna was there, sitting down next to her and putting a hand on her knee.
“Stop,” she said. “You’ll get dizzy.”
Maybe Spencer was already a little drunk, but somehow Hanna’s hand was the only thing in the world that didn’t feel hopeless. When she took it away, Spencer suddenly felt like the void might swallow her whole.
“I haven’t told anyone about this,” Hanna said. “But I had a dream about you.”
Spencer felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. It turned out to not be that kind of dream. In that split second, Spencer fully understood she’d wanted it to be.
She wrote it off. She loves Hanna. She’s always loved Hanna. This must be a blip. A reaction to the whole Caleb situation. Or some kind of post-traumatic crush thing that was making her think about kissing Hanna all of a sudden. A knee jerk reaction to accidentally murdering your friend’s shady husband together.
It’s like threatening text messages and police inquiries. It’ll pass.
Except it doesn’t.
The game ends.
The feelings don’t.
She thinks about telling Hanna a thousand times a day. Sometimes she feels like her throat is burning with it. Alison knows. She keeps giving Spencer a knowing raise of her eyebrows every time Hanna walks into the room. A covert signal to do something.
It’s not until the morning of her baby shower that Alison gets more explicit. Spencer is blowing up balloons and hanging streamers.
“You should make a move.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Alison looks up from the cupcakes she’s frosting.
“Yes, you do.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
II.
Hastings Cardiac Care Center in Philadelphia
Spencer and her father are about to beat the reigning doubles champions in straight sets. Not bad, considering her mind is only half on the game.
Her body is on the court, but she can’t quite get into that state of complete competitive focus. She keeps thinking about Hanna. About the two of them.
Hanna kissing her in Ali’s kitchen. Hanna wrapped in Spencer’s bed sheets in the barn. Hanna licking the cheese off Spencer’s piece of pizza and laughing and tackling her backwards onto the couch. The feeling of waking up with her arm wrapped around the curve of Hanna’s hip.
They’re together, so far, only in a loose way. A long distance stolen weekends and red eye flights kind of relationship. A yo-yo of butterflies at the arrivals gate followed by tears in the tiny airplane toilet on the way home.
Spencer returns a volley sharply, the smarmy personal injury lawyer on the other side of the net hits it back to her father, who knocks it across the court.
There’s a rhythm to the game. The shots ticking back and forth.
Serve. Volley. Return. Look for the weak point. Wear them down.
Hanna wants her to move to Paris. To give this thing between them a try for real. Pack up your life for real. Wake up together every day for real. The audacity of hope for real.
Spencer serves. The other side returns. Her father catches the corner, leaving the ambulance chaser’s son flat footed. He swings wildly, hits the ball into the net. Peter flashes her a thumbs up.
Her therapist thinks it’s a part of her PTSD. Hesitating in the face of long term plans. A subconscious block against building a happy future out of paralyzing fear that it could be taken away.
She smashes the ball hard, sends it whizzing past her opponent’s ear.
Her father grins at her, panting a little. Match point.
Peter puts the ball over the net. An easy lob. Give the other guys a flicker of possibility.
They hit it back deep. Spencer lunges for it at the baseline, dropping a tricky little return to the back corner that’s practically unhittable. By these amateurs, anyway.
Her father pulls her into a one armed hug. He’s flushed with victory. “That’s my girl,” he says. “A Hastings has a shot, she takes a shot.”
This is the moment she clings to afterwards. Her father proud and triumphant.
Thirty seconds later he slumps against her. She hears his racquet fall. It’s the strangest sound in the world, it’s echoing in her ears as she turns and sees the grimace on his face, the way he’s clutching his chest.
“No! No! Dad! Help! Somebody help!”
The racquet bounces on the ground.
Once. Twice. Three times.
As if it’s in slow motion.
Her father is sprawled on the ground, and she’s sobbing over him. Dr. Wilcox is running over from the patio.
Peter Hastings’ eyes go wide, like he’s looking at something beyond her as Spencer hovers over him.
His voice is so thin, it’s barely a whisper, but she hears him.
”Jessica”
Two months after the funeral, Spencer moves to Paris.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
Hastings Path Scholarship Fund. A Carasimi project offering financial assistance to students who survived trauma during their high school years.
Jason looks exhausted under his deep tan. Spencer wonders if the beard is a cover, an attempt to distract everyone from noticing how gaunt his face has gotten.
He’s in Paris for thirteen hours. A long layover on his way to Juba.
Their conversations are mostly limited to catching up. Details on his new anti-poverty initiatives. Anecdotes about the programs she runs for the embassy.
“Did you change your hair?” he asks, as he signals the waiter. “Or are you just happy?”
Spencer tries to keep her smile in check. She’s completely over the moon, but she doesn’t want to flaunt it. Jason lives mostly in tents and airport lounges. He doesn’t have friends. He never stays anywhere long enough to fully unpack his bag. She remembers how she left Hanna in their apartment, sketching at the tiny kitchen table, wearing one of Spencer’s button downs. She grins. She can’t help herself.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’re allowed.”
“It scares me,” Spencer admits. “Even when things are good, it’s hard to believe the other shoe isn’t still out there somewhere. Waiting to flatten us.”
“Then again,” Jason suggests, “It’s about time, isn’t it? You deserve to be this happy. You earned it. You survived.” He runs a hand over his beard, smoothing it down. “Emily and Alison obsessing over pre-school interviews. Charlotte and Melissa just closed on a condo in Philadelphia. Sometimes I look at them, and I think - this is what it looks like, you know? Life on the other side.”
“You should try it,” Spencer tells him, arching an eyebrow at him. “You don’t have to be wandering around all Lonely Planet all the time.”
“I’m making a difference.”
“You don’t have to save the world all by yourself.”
He smiles, but his eyes are still weary.
“It’s something to do.”
------------------------------------------------------
IV.
The Spencer Hastings Reception Hall, US Embassy, Paris
Spencer pushes Hanna against the heavy wooden door and kisses her, hard.
They’re supposed to be mingling with the other guests. Ex-pats. Dignitaries. Hangers on.
All of them here for the Paul and Julia Child photo exhibit that’s just gone on display.
Spencer organized the entire event, and it’s a resounding success.
Pictures of food. Cultural exchange. Friendship between nations.
Hanna’s hands are already under Spencer’s vest, tugging frantically at the buttons of her shirt.
“Come on,” Hanna whispers. “I’ve always wanted to do it on that table.”
The table is walnut. It’s over two hundred years old. It might have belonged to Ben Franklin.
Spencer doesn’t hesitate. Hanna knows what Hanna wants.
And they may not get another chance. This is her last big project here.
Next month, her mom is going to officially declare her intention to run for governor of Pennsylvania.
It’s not like she’s calling Spencer home. But Spencer doesn’t want to miss it.
She’ll run the campaign. Bide her time until a Congressional seat opens up.
Twenty minutes later, Hanna is casually stuffing her ripped underwear in her tiny purse as Spencer adjusts her collar to hide a still red bite mark.
She takes Hanna’s hand.
They have somewhere to be.
----------------------------------------------------------
V.
Babies. After her first term, the name Spencer shoots to the top ten list of newly trending baby names across the United States. Hastings is in the top twenty.
Spencer starts with a singular focus, making a push for expanded parental leave and universal prenatal coverage. Mona sends a documentary film crew to cover the quest and release a weekly web series about it.
The images of rooms full of men shaking their heads while Spencer cites facts and figures on the white board turn into viral memes about the patriarchy.
A representative from Texas is caught making lewd remarks about her on a hot mic.
A representative from Iowa loses his temper in a hearing and calls her an uppity woman who needs to learn her place.
There’s a recall petition circulating in his district within 24 hours. He loses the special election to a woman from the local school board.
There’s a groundswell of support. Letters, emails, faxes, constituent demonstrations.
In the end, they’re shamed into action.
The bill passes.
Spencer herself uses the flexible parental leave benefit when Hanna gives birth to their first son.
She spends the first four months of Asher’s life rocking him to sleep, tag teaming his middle of the night feedings and diaper changes, watching as he kicks his feel and makes faces in the bassinet.
At first, there’s a rush of visitors. Ashley and Veronica both show up to help for a few weeks. Alison and Emily bring the girls for a weekend. Emma’s allowed to hold him, carefully, sitting on the couch. Aria spends an afternoon with them, which gets cut short when Ezra has a temper tantrum via text message about her absence. Mona drops by frequently, usually bearing stuffed animals and articles on the best Pre-K programs in the city. Jason bounces Asher on his knee and insists on setting up a college fund for him. But mostly it’s just her and Hanna and the baby, who smells like talcum powder and coconut oil and makes her heart feel like it might actually burst with emotion every time she looks at him.
“I didn’t know,” she tells Hanna one night. “That I could be this happy.” They’re cocooned in their bed, watching Asher sleep. His mouth is open and he’s drooling a little, one hand still clenching Hanna’s pinkie finger. “It feels like a fairy tale.”
Hanna gives her one of her dazzling smiles, the kind that still makes Spencer feel a little weak in the knees. “Oh, don’t go all happily ever after on me,” she says. “We’re just getting started.”
---------------------------------------------------------------
VI.
Hastings Knot, a loose style of fastening women’s neckties.
She should never have called her opponent a dinosaur. She was snarking to Hanna over the dinner table, irritated at having to fend off a well funded Republican challenger. But Atticus overheard and he didn’t understand her metaphor about climate change and freedom of choice and equal pay. He thought Jurassic Park. His mom bravely going up against a T-Rex, or fighting off a Stegosaurus.
With two minutes left before she has to be on stage for their debate, Atticus won’t stop crying. He’s inconsolable that the dinosaur is just a stupid old man. Hanna has her hands full with Asher, who keeps trying to photobomb the news cameras.
Spencer picks Atticus up and runs a soothing hand through his hair. His sobs trail off into hiccups, and he clutches fiercely at Spencer’s tie. She has just enough time to feed him a few animal crackers and pass him off to Emma DiLaurentis Fields, who’s been an absolute godsend as their au pair this summer.
Spencer appears on stage with a loosened and slightly wrinkled tie and a supremely unruffled demeanor.
When the dinosaur makes a crack at her appearance, saying he “didn’t realize this would be a casual event,” Spencer cuts him to the quick with a series of statistics on working mothers and the need for a livable minimum wage. She catches him flat footed, and ends her diatribe with a zinger about politicians who have more to say about women’s appearance than their policy concerns.
Her tie becomes the must have fall accessory. Scores of women wear them, loosely tied in the Hastings knot, as they go to the polls.
The returns come in quickly. It wasn’t even close.
That’s the thing about dinosaurs.
Eventually they die out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII.
Hasty Cauldron Ale. A microbrew favored by her political opponents. The label features a caricature of a dark haired witch that bears a more than passing resemblance to the hottest rising star in the Democratic party.
Mona brings a case of it to their annual 4th of July cook out.
“I don’t have a wart on my nose,” Spencer grumbles, studying the bottle.
“And it’s too hoppy,” Melissa opines. “Who drinks this swill?”
“It’s hard to come by in DC,” Mona shrugs. She wrinkles her nose and raises a toast.
“May the other side have plenty of sorrows to drown.”
It’s like a crappy craft beer prophecy.
The witch on the bottle looks like she’s winking.
Karma might be its own form of black magic.
Because Spencer Hastings just keeps winning.
----------------------------------------------------------------
VIII.
Hastings Criminal Justice Center, formerly the Rosewood District Courthouse.
Everything seems smaller than Spencer remembers. The benches in the gallery, where she was sitting with Emily and Aria right before the cops arrested them. The witness stand where Alison tried so hard to defend herself.
Maybe it’s her anger, which is so huge it makes everything else seem tiny in comparison.
Alison sits next to her now, her gaze as steely as Spencer’s own as they stare daggers at the back of Ezra Fitz’s bowed head as the judge prepares to read the sentence.
He’s trying to appear contrite. He maintains that he didn’t really do anything wrong. That the laws are outdated. The girls were all mature for their age. Old souls. He did an interview with a right wing website that frequently makes him out to be a political prisoner, who the Hastings want out of the way because he knows where the bodies are buried.
It’s the only news outlet that’s had any sympathy for him. All the others have been running headlines about the fallen Fitzgerald heir for months. Child pornography. Statutory rape. Gross sexual imposition.
Ella is tight lipped and pale on the other side of Alison. The knuckles of her clenched hands are white.
Spencer thinks about Aria’s red rimmed eyes, the sick pallor of her face as Spencer spirited her out of Philadelphia in the wake of his arrest. It wasn’t a surprise. Aria was the one to finally turn him in. Then again, she was also the one who married him. She’s not here today. The divorce has already gone through. She’s still in the Poconos, rebuilding her entire life piece by piece.
Spencer runs through the list of things she should have done. She could have told the cops. Even if they wouldn’t have done anything. Even if they would have slapped him on the back and given him an award. She could have sent an anonymous tip to the Board of Education. She could have threatened him herself. Blackmailed him into leaving town.
She feels the tension locking up her shoulders, her neck.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Alison whispers. She’s never lost her knack for quietly reading their minds.
Some things never change.
But some things do.
It’s a new world.
Even in Rosewood.
Where the guilty are put on trial for actual crimes.
Where all Fitz’s money and charm are no longer enough to save him.
Time’s up, motherfucker.
----------------------
IX.
Hastings House Brew, a coffee shop near Dupont Circle featuring a signature quadruple macchiato.
Spencer Hastings never sleeps. Or it seems that way, when Congress is in session.
As Minority Whip, she’s known for cornering reluctant party members and roping them into meetings that don’t end until consensus is achieved. It’s amazing how much ground is given over at 3AM.
When she becomes Speaker, she’s notorious for running sessions that last all night. She thrives on photographs of the white haired good old boys nodding off in their seats, with her calm and in control at the podium. Republican retirement announcements sky rocket, leaving more seats vulnerable in the next election cycle.
There’s a picture of Hanna handing her a cup of coffee at 5am after the marathon 72 hour session when they passed the first proper budget in ten years. Spencer is smiling and resting her head tiredly on her wife’s shoulder.
This is what victory tastes like. Caffeine and free community college and Hanna smoothing her hair as she closes her eyes.
----------------------------------------------------------------
X.
Hastings Marin Avenue, the epicenter of a newly revitalized section of Tulsa.
A tornado rips through southeast Kansas and northern Oklahoma. It touches down as an F5 and levels a swath of Tulsa.
Spencer has an emergency relief bill passed and on the President’s desk within twelve hours, including a grant to rebuild two airport runways and replace the damaged tower with a new state of the art facility.
She takes a delegation to survey the damage and lead recovery efforts in person. Hanna comes along, too. It’s personal for her. The ranch that used to be her grandmother’s was hit, pieces of the house where she used to spend her summers are scattered across the county.
Hanna holds a conference call with Charlotte and Mona from the business center at the hotel. The next day, Marin Internationale announces a multi-million dollar investment in a new textile production and processing plant in an old grainery complex.
It makes the front page of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. She’s going to be the largest employer in the state, and it’s a splashy way of bolstering American manufacturing. The taxes generated by the project help to rebuild infrastructure and the public schools.
Hanna buys the land where the ranch used to be, and Ashley builds a four star Radley branded resort that she names The Regina.
They start spending a couple of weeks down there every summer. The boys love riding horses and dressing like cowboys. Caleb brings his family to join them one year, spends a memorable afternoon trying to teach them all how to fish.
---------------------------------
XI.
Hastings Gavel, a women’s field hockey team in the Potomac Recreational League. Team motto: Bring the hammer down.
There was a photographic retrospective in Time Magazine when she was named Person of the Year. It included an old picture of her playing field hockey in high school, a look of complete determination on her face as she bore down on the center from Ravenswood.
Hanna gave it to them.
“What?” she says, innocently. “I always liked your field hockey uniform.”
The Washington Post does a local interest story about a recreational league team that voted to rename themselves after the article came out.
Spencer gets a huge kick out of it and retweets the article. She and Hanna show up unannounced to watch one of their games, alternately cuddling in their matching windbreakers and cheering loudly from the sidelines.
The team invites her to come scrimmage with them. Hanna designs a limited edition uniform shirt for the practice and auctions them off for charity.
The event draws a scrum of reporters who shout questions at her as she walks off the field with grass stained knees.
“Are you making plans to run for President?”
“Do you have any advice for young girls playing sports?”
“Did you foul the halfback to score your second goal?”
Spencer grins. “You have a shot, you take a shot.”
----------------------------------------------------------------
XII.
Hastings Academy.
The morning after Spencer wins the nomination, Ella Montgomery petitions the Rosewood school board to make the change.
The vote is unanimous.
She’s put them on the map.
Spencer Hastings is Rosewood’s favorite daughter.
There’s a House of Hastings t-shirt with a picture of the White House on it. Another one that has Spencer’s face in front of an American flag proclaiming her Rosewood’s American Girl. All the shops on Main Street sell them. Even the autoparts shop. Even the doll shops.
Everyone loves her here.
She’s been around for years, as a student and a parent.
She was in the stands when Asher led the baseball team to a state championship. She was in the front row when Atticus played Aaron Burr in the spring musical. She cried at Asher’s valedictorian speech. Beamed proudly when Atticus announced that the student council wanted her to give the Commencement speech at his graduation.
She has the town’s full support.
Alison writes notes on the chalkboard for 1984.
The past was alterable. The past never had been altered.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Rosewood High School becomes Hastings Academy.
Rosewood is rooting for her.
They always knew she was special.
They believe in Spencer Hastings.
They always have.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIII.
Hastings LGBTQUIA Organizations. Health clinics. Community centers. Political Action Committees. Youth shelters.
The entire month of June is a celebration of Pride and Spencer’s commanding lead in the polls.
She and Hanna attend pride events in thirty-four states. Six in Ohio. Three in Georgia. Two in Texas. They’re the Grand Marshals of the Capitol City Pride Parade in Des Moines. She throws out the first pitch for Pride Night in Minneapolis. The crowds in Boston are three blocks deep.
By the time they get to New York, it feels like destiny. The election is still five months away, but Spencer’s numbers have never been higher. The rising tide of her supporters is sweeping in a wave of enthusiasm and optimism for American democracy.
They’re supposed to be riding on a float, but the parade moves so slowly that most of her staff are outpacing them easily on foot.
They walk the whole route.
They dance with drag queens.
They hug spectators.
Hanna’s barefoot, her heels dangling from her left hand.
Her right hand never leaves Spencer’s.
They’re sweaty and covered in glitter by the time they make it to the rally at the festival.
Hanna kisses Spencer as they climb on stage, for long enough that there are cheers and wolf whistles before they break it off.
“All these years,” Spencer tells the crowd. “All this progress. I’m so grateful to be here with you. To be an American. To help shape the ways our country is moving forward together.” She pauses and locks eyes with Hanna. Spencer’s voice gets low and gravelly. “But most of all, I’m grateful for the love and support of my beautiful, intelligent, incredible wife. To all of the young people out there - to anyone young or old who is still wondering how to navigate this world as a queer person - it is not all celebratory parades. Building a bridge between where we are and where we want to be is an arduous task. But we have been building it for years, all of us, together. And there is nothing we can not accomplish, because we have love on our side.”
“What happened to your stump speech?” Hanna asks.
Spencer gives her a smirk that she knows can still make Hanna a little weak in the knees.
“I wanted to speak from the heart.”
“Mona says you’re polling well in Iowa.”
“Did you see her? Someone told me she and Demi Lovato were getting all Cool for the Summer in the VIP tent.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Hanna says. “You’re ahead in Iowa. They love you there as much as they do here. Remember how you destroyed everyone else in the carcass?”
“Caucus,” Spencer grins. “You know it’s caucus.”
“I do,” Hanna agrees. “But you’re adorable when you’re correcting me.”
“You just want to make sure I’m paying attention.”
Hanna rests her head on Spencer’s shoulder. They stare out at the crowd together. Aria is wearing a feathery peacock tail on the back of her dress and trying to learn some moves from some guys on the queer drill team. Emily is passing out bottled water at the First Aid tent, while Alison is wielding a clipboard and bullying partiers into registering to vote. They’re familiar faces in a teeming mass of rainbow flags and Hastings shirts. Most of them look so young, so hopeful. The mood is jubilant, as if the future is so close, they can taste it.
Spencer runs a thumb gently over the nape of Hanna’s neck, turns her head to press a kiss lightly against her ear. This is the part of them together that still feels a little like magic. The way having Hanna at her side can make the rest of the noise fade out. The way her lips against Hanna’s skin feels private, intimate, no matter how many people are taking pictures on their phones all around them.
Hanna presses her forehead against Spencer’s.
“You’re going to win.”
Spencer looks at her wife. Her hopefully-soon-to-be First Lady, barefoot and with rainbow confetti in her white blonde hair.
“Baby, I already have.”