Chapter Text
It starts like this: Shauna and Jackie are fighting.
“None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you, if you hadn’t–”
“Hadn’t what?” Jackie asks as Shauna approaches her. Her arms are crossed. Her eyes are wide. “Huh?” Her eyebrows are raised. “Stolen him?”
Shauna just stares at her, unsure of what to say, and Jackie feels… vindicated. It tastes like acid. It’s the first thing she’s been able to taste in weeks.
“Wow,” Jackie says. “The irony.” The group seems invested, like they always are with Jackie and Shauna’s spats, and Jackie wants them all to be paying attention as she scoffs and says, “Shauna was fucking Jeff. Behind my back, you know that? Yeah, that’s who’s really responsible for her little bundle of joy .” It’s bitter, too. Closer to the ashy taste that’s lingered on her tongue since she read that goddamn journal.
“It was you,” Shauna says, the audacity to be the victim. “You read my journal.”
The vindication is gone. Jackie whispers, “How could you? You were my best friend.” Past tense, right, Shipman? In the grammatical past. How could they be best friends after this?
(Oh, but Jackie thinks they still could be. She does. She does. It wouldn’t hurt so bad if Shauna wasn’t still her best friend, the most important person in her life, even when Jackie knew that Shauna hated her.)
“You– You don’t even like him.”
“And how would you know?” Shauna asks immediately, and, ow, that stings. “You’re so obsessed with yourself, I’m surprised you’re aware other people even exist. You know you never even asked me if I wanted to go to Rutgers?” That’s worse. So much worse. Is she throwing back her journal in Jackie’s face? Does she even remember what she wrote? Shauna’s always had a way with words. She’s steamrolling along, too. There’s no stopping Shauna Shipman once she gets started. “You just assumed I’d go wherever you wanted. You tell me what to wear, what to do, who to hook up with. I don’t even like soccer! But you just get everything you want. All the time like it’s nothing. And the rest of us, we’re just extras in the movie of your fucking life!”
Shauna knows that’s not true. She knows. She knows what Jackie’s mother is like, she knows how hard Jackie has to try for everything. She knows. She knows, but why does it feel like she’s telling the truth? Why does it hurt?
Jackie says the only thing she can think of. “Oh, my god. You’re such a cliché.” It’s all her effort to sound mocking. “Oh is the– is the sad little sidekick mad? Did I force you to live in my shadow, Shauna?” There. Throw her own words back at her. Good girl. The voice in Jackie’s head sounds too much like her mother’s. She scoffs. “It must be hard being this jealous all the time.”
Shauna’s laughing now, though, a mean sound, one that Jackie hates is directed at her. She gets defensive. “What? You’re so fucking jealous of me, you can barely breathe.”
“Are you quoting Beaches at me right now?” Shauna asks, her tone nasty.
Jackie’s defenses grow. “What? No.”
“I’m not jealous of you, Jackie,” Shauna says, and she’s such an awful liar that this must be true. She gets closer. “I feel sorry for you. Because you’re weak. And I think that, deep down, you know it. I’m sure everyone back home is so fucking sad to be losing their perfect little princess, but they’ll never know how tragic and boring and insecure you really are. Or how high school was the best your life was ever going to get.”
“I’m worried I’m peaking,” Jackie joked as they laid on Shauna’s bed, facing each other. It was a joke, really, it was, but it was true, too. “Like, homecoming queen. Soccer captain. District champs in the running for state, for nationals . What if this is the best I’m gonna do, Shipman?”
Shauna rolled her eyes. “Shut up. You’re awesome, and you know it. You’re gonna get out there and do amazing things.”
“Like what?” Shauna always had the answers. Jackie wanted her to give them to her.
“Uh…” Shauna floundered, though, so maybe she didn’t have all the answers. “I don’t know. But something amazing, okay? I know it, and so do you.”
Jackie hummed, but she was pleased by the ego boost. “You’re right. Fuck peaking. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us!” She sits up, already excited. “I bet there’s gonna be some great parties at Rutgers. We have got to go through your wardrobe. I mean, really, Shauna, all that flannel’s too much.”
“Fuck you,” Jackie says, her voice weak. She feels weak. She’s weak. Pathetic. Tragic and boring and insecure. Shauna’s hit it on the head. She did it in her journal, in private, and now she’s airing it out for their team. Jackie’s heart thunders. There’s blood pulsing in her ears. “You know what? That’s it.” She shakes her head, her voice growing stronger. “That’s it. Get– Get out.” She points at the door, and Shauna just stares, even when Jackie shoves her shoulder. She’s more solid than Jackie is, always has been. It’s even more prevalent now. “Go on, get out!”
“No.”
“I can’t be around you, I–I can’t even f-fucking look at you right now.” She’s trembling. She hates it.
Shauna is steady. She’s always been a rock. “Well, that sounds like your problem. So maybe you should leave.”
Jackie scoffs, but there’s not a single person that looks like they’ll back her up.
Mari’s eyes glint when Jackie looks at her. “Maybe you’d be better off, since we’re all so crazy.”
“Okay, everybody just stop,” Coach starts. “Nobody is going outside.”
Lottie has been watching the whole time, observing. She’s never had a friend close enough to understand how either Shauna or Jackie feels, but she can feel it now. She doesn’t know why, she doesn’t know how. This feels like something that was always supposed to happen. She doesn’t understand how she knows that, but she does. Like she knows other things. Like we won’t be hungry much longer .
“Stay out it, Coach,” she finds herself saying, and she’s not even looking at him, she’s looking at Shauna and Jackie, and she wants to know who will cave first. She thinks she knows.
It will be Jackie. It’s always Jackie.
Jackie starts to cave. She always does. It’s what she’s always done. And she’ll try to spin it like it’s her idea, but they know. Everyone knows. Jackie is weak. She’s tragic. She starts, her voice acid but no longer vindication. “You know what? F–-”
“No,” Shauna starts, sneering. “ I’ll go, Jackie. Because you always get your way.” But Shauna knows that’s not true. She knows. She knows Jackie.
Any self righteousness that Jackie might feel is lost in this moment, fading as her face goes slack as she watches Shauna gather up a pillow and blanket ( Jackie ’s pillow and blanket, an extra level of fuck you , since it’s unlikely anyone will want to share with her.
“Shauna, come on. Don’t go outside,” Tai says, sounding tired.
“It’s fine, Tai,” Shauna says, though she’s still staring at Jackie. She gives a mocking bow. “Your highness.”
“I don’t even know who you are anymore,” Jackie says quietly, hunching in on herself.
There’s tears in Shauna’s eyes, but she still raises her eyebrows a hair and is almost sanctimonious as she says, “Or maybe you never did.” before shutting the door with a harsh slam.
For a moment, Lottie doesn’t understand what’s just happened. She doesn’t think anyone does, really. They’re all silent, unsure of what to say. Her eyes search the faces of the girls she can see, but not a single one of them has anything to say.
Lottie doesn’t understand what just happened because it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Right?
Her grip is tightening on the cup in her hands. No one moves, not really. Only idle fingers, lips being worried between teeth, eyes glancing between each other, as if asking for permission. It takes Lottie a long time to realize that more than one of the girls are staring at her. She feels small under their gaze, she knows they want her to say something.
She doesn’t know what to say.
“It…” Lottie starts. She still doesn’t know what to say. “Let her be.” Tai has whirled around to look at her, incredulous. Lottie feels scrutinized under her stare. “Jackie will go talk to her later, once she’s cooled off.” And Jackie is supposed to be their captain, but no one has followed her in a long time. Not out here.
Lottie turns her gaze from Tai to Jackie. “Right?”
Jackie glances up at Lottie, at the sound of her voice, perpetually wide eyes even wider before she looks away. She doesn’t say anything. After the bear meat fiasco that started all of this (or maybe just thrust it out into the open; was that really just a few minutes ago?), Jackie doesn’t want to deal with the rest of the group, least of all Lottie.
Lottie, who pointed out just as clearly as Shauna how little Jackie matters, who knows how useless Jackie is.
She no longer feels like the friend Jackie once had, like the girl she asked, a smile on her lips and a carefully written note in her hand, to be her co-captain. Instead, Jackie moves away from the table, towards the back of the cabin. Tai sighs, but most of them get back to eating. They don’t get that this isn’t just another Shauna and Jackie fight. They don’t get that something’s wrong here. Probably because they’re more concerned with eating diseased bear meat.
Lottie watches Jackie go, she doesn’t know how to fix any of this. She doesn’t know if she’s supposed to. Something in her tells her that and she’s afraid of it. But the girls all go back to eating once Jackie is gone, and no one goes after her.
It’s later when Lottie finally feels like she needs to do something. Dinner finished in mostly silence, just the sound of silverware clacking against tin cups and wooden bowls. Lottie didn’t eat much, she couldn’t, her stomach had felt nauseous, wrong.
Something felt wrong.
Still, she pushes through the feeling and finds Jackie at the back of the cabin still. Everyone else is getting ready for bed-- Tai and Van have gone up into the attic and Lottie remembers how Shauna had been sleeping up there, too. She was outside now and that wasn’t supposed to be how it was.
“Jackie,” Lottie starts, standing a distance away from her, the same distance that has grown between Jackie and the rest of the team. But closer than the rift Shauna has now torn. “You didn’t finish your dinner.”
Jackie has stayed close to the bedroom, trying to ignore the sound of eating, as nauseating and uncomfortable as it is. Instead, she picks at the moss on the wall, watching the dirt trap itself under her fingers before, disgusted, she picks it out. Repeats. It’s a nasty habit, her desire to pick, her disgust at the consequence of the picking.
She startles when Lottie walks close, her eyes wary. “I’m not hungry.” She can’t look at Lottie for long. She wanders away, giving Lottie some distance, heads to the window and looks out, frowning. Shauna is fine . She has a fire. Her back is to the cabin. Her shoulders are hunched, set. Jackie can feel her anger radiating into the cabin. Even if there’s a chill out there, between the rage and the fire, Jackie thinks she’s sure to be warm.
Lottie knows she’s lying because they’re all hungry, but she doesn’t need to point that out. Jackie is lying because she doesn’t want to talk to Lottie, and Lottie watches her look out the window at Shauna.
Boldly-- odd, for Lottie, she’s never really been that bold, but now she feels like she has to be, because something inside of her has changed and people keep looking at her like she’s supposed to know what to do next. Because she killed a bear with just a knife and she knew they wouldn’t be hungry much longer-- Lottie steps up next to Jackie and looks out at Shauna, too.
“Just go talk to her,” she says without looking at Jackie.
Jackie scoffs with as much effort as she can muster. It’s not a lot. “Go away, Lottie.” She’ll go get Shauna. She knows that she will. She’ll give in and bring her back inside. Not that Shauna needs her to, not when she’s just fine out there, in here, everywhere. She’s fine, and Jackie’s tragic.
Her bed’s been taken, and she refuses to ask anyone to share. There’s only one person that Jackie would ever consider sharing with, and they’re not exactly friends right now. Instead, she takes up vigil by the window. She’ll go out eventually.
Lottie should have expected that, really, but it still hurts. Lottie still remembers a time when Jackie would smile at her, when she would ask her if she was feeling okay when Lottie’s eyes would gloss over because she’d forgotten take her meds (but no one knew that, thank fucking god no one knew that), when she had passed her a note that asked her to be her co-captain and Lottie had probably smiled more that day than the day she’d first made the varsity team.
She doesn’t say anything else when she turns away from Jackie. It isn’t supposed to happen like this. Instead, she simply grabs her bed and sets it down next to Jackie at the window. She doesn’t crawl in, though, she goes back over to where the others are and sits in the chair and watches the fire and hopes Jackie goes and talks to Shauna because it’s not supposed to happen this way, and Lottie can’t help but feel like something bad is going to happen now.
Jackie’s every intention is to go outside and get Shauna. In fact, she does, she knows she does, her breath puffing out, the air growing cold seemingly by the minute.
She’s goes outside to get Shauna, her hands tucked into her letterman pockets, her shoulders shivering. “Hey,” she starts.
Shauna looks away from her fire, Jackie’s blanket wrapped around her shoulders, to Jackie’s face before she scoffs. Clearly, she thinks the fire is more interesting.
Jackie crosses her arms over her chest. “Come inside, Shipman.”
“Stop telling me what to do.” Shauna’s words come out in little angry clouds. When they were kids, it was hard to be scared of an angry Shauna Shipman, with her doe eyes and her pouty lips. She’s perfected the art of looking mean, though, and she’s able to back it up. She was a terror on the soccer field, yellow cards constantly thrown in her direction. Jackie and Shauna had gotten into their fair share of hair pulling scuffles over the years, though Jackie says she’s grown out of that.
She doesn’t think that Shauna wants to fight her now, though. She doesn’t even think Shauna wants to touch her. She hates her.
“I’m sorry I told you to go outside. Quit being such a bitch. This is stupid,” Jackie says, and it’s such a shitty apology.
Leave it to Shauna to clock that immediately. “I didn’t come outside because you told me to.”
“It’s cold,” Jackie says. “Please come inside.”
“If you’re cold, then you go inside. I’m fucking fine.”
Jackie huffs. “Not until you do.” She looks up at the sky. Then, quietly, “Please? Everyone wants you to come inside.”
Shauna looks at Jackie again. “Everyone?”
A beat. Even the wilderness is quiet. “Yes.”
Shauna stands. Jackie wants to reach out, to touch her. She doesn’t think she can. Instead, she says, “I– I’m sorry.”
“For telling me to go outside.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For telling me to go outside?”
Jackie closes her eyes. “You hurt me. I wanted– I wanted to hurt you, too. Now, I want you to–- to come inside.” To be my friend again. “Will you? I’m asking.”
Shauna motions with her hand, and Jackie leads the way, opening the door and letting Shauna walk in first. There’s quiet relief in the sigh she lets out, and she gives Jackie a sidelong glance. “It–- It is freezing out there.”
Akilah puts a blanket around Shauna’s shoulders, and Jackie leads Shauna to the fireplace, to get warm.
Something feels… odd. She can’t place it. She doesn’t know what it is.
But Jackie’s gone outside, and she’s brought Shauna in, and she can’t really feel anything but relief as the others gather around.
“I’m so tired,” Shauna says, snuggling into the blankets like she’d do on those rare mornings she let herself sleep in, cold winters in New Jersey where the bed’s just too good and warm to leave.
Lottie leans down, her eyes big and brown and glassy, and Jackie thinks it’s odd, just a little, but not enough to warrant too much of her attention. Not when her hands ache to reach for Shauna. Not when she thinks she’s still not allowed. “Here,” Lottie says, “this will help.”
Shauna takes the tin cup, drinking what Jackie assumes is hot water before Shauna’s eyebrows actually lift in surprise. “Hot chocolate? How? Where did you find this?”
God, what Jackie wouldn’t do for some hot chocolate. What she wouldn’t do to be able to stomach something good . She almost wants to ask Shauna for a sip. She realizes that they’re no longer at that place, anymore.
“Does it matter?” Tai asks from the throng of girls, stepping forward and smiling. “We got it for you.”
“Just for you,” Jackie finds herself murmuring.
“Jackie,” Shauna starts, like she’s going to say something, like she needs to. Jackie wants her too.
That doesn’t stop her from shaking her head. “It’s fine. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
There’s a need in Jackie’s chest. A desire. An urge. She can’t stop it. How long has it been since she’s voiced these words? “I love you, Shauna.”
Shauna looks like she might cry.
Jackie reaches forward, encouraging Shauna to drink more of something warm, something sweet, something good. “We can talk in the morning. You deserve something nice, Shauna. You deserve this.”
“You deserve this, Shauna,” the team repeats in unison.
It’s strange. Jackie cannot think about how strange it is. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” Present tense, Shipman. Jackie’s still there if you want her. “You know that, right?” Please know that .
“I know,” Shauna whispers. She might even smile. But she faces forward, and she sees something, something that Jackie cannot, her expression falling, growing confused. And then it grows scared.
Shauna is scared.
Jackie goes outside to get Shauna, and, yet, when she blinks, she’s leaning with her face pressed against the glass of the window, freezing cold, with startling brightness and whiteness in front of her. Whiteness.
Snow.
Shauna.
“Shauna!” Jackie trips over bodies, causing groans and curses, and she doesn’t even care, she doesn’t, she doesn’t, she doesn’t. It snowed. There’s snow outside. Her breath is a cloud in front of her, even in the cabin, even surrounded by bodies, heat.
Where’s Shauna? Shauna’s smart. Shauna came inside. Where’s Shauna. Where’s Shauna ?
Jackie flings open the door, unable to see for a moment from the brightness of the snow in comparison to the darkness of the cabin, but she doesn’t care. Where’s Shauna?”
“No,” she breathes. No. Just no. There’s a lump near the firepit, Shauna’s sturdy blaze now nothing, covered completely in snow. Just like the lump. The lump that’s not moving.
No.
“Shauna?” she whimpers, rushing out, tripping. She’s never been able to find solid ground out here. “No, no, no, no, no.” She’s brushing off the snow, revealing Shauna’s flannel, fingers trembling as she grabs the pattern. She brushes the snow away. Shauna’s face. Cold. Pale. Like she’s sleeping. Like she’s a statue. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
More snow is brushed aside. Shauna’s skin is too cold. It’s like holding ice. Jackie’s fingers are turning red. She can’t feel it. She doesn’t care. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”
The others have joined. Jackie doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. There’s only this.
There’s only Shauna. “No! Shauna?”
Shauna, who won’t move. “No, Shauna!” Jackie shakes her shoulders.
Shauna, who won’t tell Jackie to stop crying, wailing, screaming. “Shipman, wake up! Please, Shauna!” She’s begging. She’ll beg for the rest of her life if she has to. “Shauna, please, please, please! Please, wake up! I’m sorry, please!”
Lottie is the first one who wakes up as Jackie trips through their bodies. She’s still sitting in the chair, there’s a kink in her neck-- she’d fallen asleep, too. She hadn’t meant to.
Even without the sound of Jackie’s voice, desperate and trembling, Lottie knew something was wrong. Something was wrong. She stumbles out of her chair and follows Jackie to the door, outside. She stops dead on the porch at the top of the stairs. She sees the unmoving lump near the campfire.
This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.
Jackie is screaming, crying, shaking Shauna-- Shauna’s body-- and Lottie is moving without even thinking about it. She is falling into the snow next to Jackie and wrapping her arms around her and staring at Shauna’s cold, frozen body and it wasn’t supposed to happen like this .
The others are all behind them, standing, staring. No one else is saying anything. It’s only Jackie crying into the snow and the ice and the frozen air and Lottie doesn’t think any of this is ever going to be okay again.
She doesn’t know how to fix anything.
“Shauna, please, please don’t leave me, please, please don’t leave me.” Jackie’s words start to blur together, more choked sobs and wails and screams than human language. She does not feel human. She’s not. She’s ice. She’s cold that clings to Shauna’s clothes. She’s some sort of animal with claws, like the rest of them, now, only they were hunters that night at Doomcoming, and Jackie knows, here, that she is nothing but prey.
She doesn’t care who it is that wraps their arms around her. It means nothing. Nothing at all. She simply holds Shauna tighter, crying, her fingers digging into her clothes so that no one can attempt to take her away.
Jackie doesn’t stop, even when her voice is ragged. She’s still begging. She’ll beg forever if she has to. For what? She can’t say. She can no longer feel Shauna’s heartbeat beneath her fingers, more familiar than each beat of her own. They beat in time with each other, she used to think when they were children, before such thoughts became dangerous.
Shauna’s heart doesn’t beat anymore, and Jackie thinks hers has stopped as well. She is no longer holding herself up. All she can do is cling to Shauna. There’s nothing. The cold has faded into the background. The others don’t exist; background in the horror movie of Jackie’s life.
Isn’t this funny, Shipman? Come on, laugh. Jackie’s selfish and obsessed with herself. And Shauna. Shauna, who is just as much Jackie (more, really) than Jackie is herself. There is no Jackie without Shauna.
Shauna’s heart doesn’t beat anymore. Jackie wishes hers would stop, too.
It never grows quiet because Jackie never stops crying. Too much time passes before other people are moving, realizing they need to do something, realizing that Lottie is tied up with keeping Jackie sitting and out of the snow so that she doesn’t freeze to death, too.
And Lottie can’t help but feel jealous of her own actions. When Laura Lee’s plane had exploded and Lottie’s entire world had gone up in flames, who had held her like this? Who had come into the water to drag her back out?
No one.
Eventually, she’d grown too cold. The cloud of smoke in the sky had disappeared and with it, it had taken all Lottie had left of Laura Lee. Except her memory, her clothes, a suitcase full of things that proved she was real and she’d lived and she’d loved. Proof she wasn’t just in Lottie’s head.
Lottie flinches when someone kneels next to them. It’s Tai, and she’s crying, too, but it’s silent and the tears look frozen to her cheeks. Lottie doesn’t remember when she started crying, but her own cheeks feel icy and wind bitten. Slowly, Tai reaches out and she grabs Jackie, too.
“We have to…move her,” Tai chokes out. Lottie’s eyes follow Tai’s and she watches as Van and Mari and Melissa have come to stand across from them, staring down at the frozen husk of Shauna Shipman.
Lottie realizes then that Tai doesn’t mean Jackie.
“No,” Lottie whispers, her voice husky, “not yet.”
“Lottie…” Tai starts.
“I said no,” Lottie is more firm this time and she doesn’t know where the voice comes from, “not yet.” She’s still clinging to Jackie. “Give her time.”
They’d all been out there for too long, shivering in the snow, but Jackie still needed time. They all did.
Even with the others speaking, someone’s voice behind her, against her back, Jackie doesn’t care. She bows her head, eyes closed, one hand gripping Shauna’s shirt as the other pets through her hair. It’s stiff, frozen. Jackie wishes she had a brush. She’s long stopped properly taking care of herself, too sad after the journal, after Laura Lee, even if there are some habits she cannot break, but she wishes she could brush Shauna’s hair again.
“Please, don’t leave me,” she finally manages to say coherently, her voice raspier, aching in her throat. “Shauna. Shauna . Shauna.” She tries coaxing her awake. It isn’t often that Jackie gets to do that; Shauna almost always rises before Jackie does.
She should have woken herself up. She should have come inside.
Jackie should have gone to get her.
There’s nothing left for her, now. There wasn’t anything left the night before. Shauna was… gone. She was gone, and she’d hated Jackie until she left. Found her awful, pathetic, stupid, shallow. And she was right. Jackie’s all of those things. She always has been. She always will be.
It would be so easy to go to sleep here. When they slept over at each other’s house, it would often be Shauna that wormed her way behind Jackie, wrapping her arms around Jackie’s waist, holding her close. The attic space of Shauna’s bedroom was cold and cruel in the winter. Cuddling was imperative, Shauna would say, that mock seriousness in her voice before they both started giggling.
Jackie slumps forward, attempting to curl herself around Shauna’s body. She never got many chances to do this, her arms wrapped around Shauna, now. She’d take it one last time.
The way Jackie is calling Shauna’s name makes Lottie’s heart stutter and break. It was the same sound Lottie had made, so loud, so quiet. A scream, but silent. Falling to her knees. Uncontrollable tears until her body ran dry of them. Pain stuck in her throat. She holds onto Jackie tighter and feels her tears being soaked up by the fabric of her captain’s jacket.
Finally, Tai moves again. She places a hand on Lottie, on Jackie. “We have to,” she tells them both, “if we stay out much longer, we might… get sick.”
And they didn’t need that right now, did they? A sick girl to nurse back to health. Even if Shauna’s body wasn’t cold on the ground, losing someone else would destroy them all. Losing just one person felt like it might destroy them all.
And it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, the thought worming its way back into Lottie’s head. Something It won’t let her forget. Something had changed and Lottie doesn’t know what or how or why , but it has and now she’s taking fistfuls of Jackie’s coat and letting Tai help her stand as they lift their old captain off the ground and tear her away from her best friend, her other half-- the girl she loved.
At least Jackie got to hold her one last time.
The other three are moving, now, to move Shauna’s body. It’s stiff, frozen solid. Her eyes are closed and she looks peaceful and Lottie thinks that’s wrong. Death wasn’t peaceful, not out here. It burned and it froze and it took and it stole.
And it wasn’t just Shauna they’d lost, Lottie knew that. She’d thought maybe they’d lost Jackie long ago, but it was clear to her now, that they’d lost her in this moment. She wishes she would have pushed her more. She wishes she could have demanded Jackie to go outside and talk to Shauna. She wishes she’d been strong enough to do anything, help anyone .
There were people looking at Lottie now, looking to Lottie, and she doesn’t know when it changed or why It was speaking to her, but she wishes she could just be the person she’d been when they crashed.
Or maybe she wishes she could be the person they think she is. The person who can see the future in her dreams, the person who has visions of rotting deer, and fire, and light ; the person who can kill a bear with nothing but a hunting knife.
The person who could go outside and tell Shauna to come back in, it’s cold, you’re going to freeze to death .
Lottie, though, is none of those things.
And so she helps Tai drag Jackie back inside while the others clean up what’s left of Shauna Shipman.
Whatever little is left of Jackie Taylor stirs to life as she’s being pulled away from Shauna. “No!” she cries out, panicking. “No, no, no! Shauna!”
She is crying out to someone who cannot hear her, who would not want to hear her even if she could. Shauna does not want Jackie, but, oh, how Jackie needs Shauna. She cannot be without Shauna. There is no Jackie without Shauna by her side, and Shauna knew it.
Jackie was dead the moment she read that journal. If the plane had never crashed, she would have died when Shauna told her about Brown, or about Jeff, or about how much she hated Jackie’s guts.
“Let me go,” she snarls, but it’s weak. She tries to tug herself free, but the last few months have not been kind on Jackie, and her new diet of nothing has taken away the muscle she’d had from soccer. She used to be so meticulous about her body.
Now, all she wants is to make sure that it’s next to Shauna’s in the end. It’s selfish of her, knowing Shauna wouldn’t want her there, but Jackie cannot help what she needs.
She fights more, fruitless. If she was Shauna, she would bite, but she isn’t, even if Shauna used to joke that Jackie’s teeth were better suited for it, those points to her canines that her mother made her self conscious about but that Shauna seemed to like. Or maybe she liked to laugh at them. Maybe Jackie was just a joke she’d kept around to mock and pity in her journal.
Another weak tug before Jackie lets herself go completely deadweight. “Please,” she mutters. She should be cried out, but more are forming in her eyes. “Leave me with her.”
Jackie could thrash and slump all she wanted, Lottie and Tai were much stronger than her. Even before, when they’d all been in prime shape. Lottie didn’t have the muscle like Shauna, or the steadiness like Tai, but Lottie was sturdy, and Lottie was a defender for a reason. Lottie knew how to steel herself, how to lock joints up and become something so immovable.
Even without Tai’s help, Jackie’s feeble attempts were no match. She drags Jackie inside as Tai shuts the door and stands near it, in case the smaller girl tries to run. Lottie can see the tears in Tai’s eyes still, she knows how close they’ve gotten out here. She knows how cruel it is to have someone for so short a time.
Lottie pulls Jackie over to the chair and sets her down in it. She kneels in front of her but she can’t look up at her as she pulls Jackie’s soaking wet socks off and turns her towards the fire. She has to look up at Jackie, though, when she notices how soaked through her jeans are, her jacket, the sweatshirt she’d been wearing yesterday when everything had fallen apart. “I can’t do that,” she tells Jackie quietly, reaching up to begin pulling her jacket off, “I’m sorry.”
She looks back over her shoulder at Tai. It’s all the other girl needs to turn and go back outside. Shauna was gone, now, but the rest of them still needed to eat, to drink, to chop wood, to gather water, to clean their clothes. Shauna was dead, but the world turned on, and Lottie didn’t understand how that was possible anymore.
“Please,” Lottie says quietly. She still can’t look Jackie in the eyes. “Lift your arms for me.”
Lottie is, for reasons unknown, trying to keep Jackie alive, and she just couldn’t understand it. She blinks at the stranger she once called her friend, who won’t even look her in the eyes, even as she manipulates Jackie about like a doll, taking off her socks, her jacket. Jackie is more focused on the door as it opens, her exit gate back to the only thing left that she wants.
“Why?” she finally asks. Why. She doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand what Lottie wants from her, doesn’t understand why she won’t give Jackie what she wants when Lottie obviously doesn’t even like her anymore. None of them do.
Something thick and heavy sticks in Lottie’s throat as she tries to think of what to say to Jackie. Why? That’s the question, really, isn’t it? Why? Why here? Why them? Why now? Why Shauna, why Laura Lee? Just why ?
Lottie moves methodically. She hangs Jackie’s clothes near the fireplace to dry them quicker. She stays standing for a moment, staring into the fire. She doesn’t know where the answer comes from, but it’s the only thing that fills her mind. “I have to,” she says, and she thinks it might be the worst thing to say right now, but it’s all she has. She lifts her arm and uses her sleeve to dry the salty tears from her own face before moving back to Jackie, a little more forcibly tugging on her pants to pull them off. The denim feels as frozen under her fingers as Shauna’s body had and she sucks in a breath, choking on what might be mistaken for a sob, if Lottie were allowed to cry.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” she whispers without realizing it.
Jackie manages a weak noise of protest when she realizes what’s going on, this attempt to warm her up when she doesn’t even feel the cold.
How ironic; she’s always been cold, always felt even the slightest chill, and yet she can’t feel it at all, now, even though her fingers and toes are red from it.
Lips turning down, Jackie finds herself unable to look at Lottie, either. She had to. She can’t offer Jackie her peace. Perhaps, Jackie wonders, her thoughts no longer spiraling but meandering, she is in hell. Suffering is deprivation, denial from the one thing she craves.
If there is a world without Shauna Shipman in it, then Jackie would rather be out of it. She says, her voice cracking, “I wish it had been me.”
“Don’t.” Lottie’s voice sounds harsher than it ever has before, she doesn’t know where it came from. She thinks it’s because she knows Jackie means it. She thinks it’s because she knows this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
But how many more times can Lottie think that before she realizes that it did? It did happen this way. It happened and now the rest of them had to live with it, and that included Jackie.
Lottie grabs Jackie’s ankle and finishes pulling off her jeans before she’s standing and moving about the cabin, collecting new clothes and some blankets. She knows if Jackie tries to make a break for the door, she can get there before her in only a few strides.
But she knows Jackie won’t try. She can hear the defeat in her voice and she could feel it in her stiff limbs.
When she comes back over, she sets the clothes down next to Jackie and holds the blanket out to her. “You don’t get to give up anymore,” she says to her as Lottie finally looks down into her friend’s eyes, and she wonders what she might see when she looks back up at her, when Lottie doesn’t feel like herself anymore. When she hasn’t felt like herself in a very long time.
Jackie looks at Lottie but doesn’t really see her. She cannot recognize her. Jackie can barely recognize herself. She gave up weeks ago. This isn’t just giving up anymore. She’s already dead.
Taking the blanket but not really bothering with the clothes, Jackie covers herself and pulls her knees up to her chest without a world. She’s already given up. There’s nothing really to say.
Lottie feels paralyzed as she looks down at Jackie. She doesn’t know how to do any of this, how to help. She’s always been the quieter one, she liked being in the background, the wallflower. Inconspicuous and unassuming. Just in case. Just in case someone found out about her illness, just in case she did something stupid, just in case someone got too close and realized who Lottie really was.
Sick and crazy and dangerous.
Lottie doesn’t feel like those things anymore and it surprises her. Laura Lee told her she was special, that her visions were a gift. Lottie still has a hard time wrapping her head around that, but she wants so desperately for it to be true. She doesn’t want to feel sick and crazy and dangerous anymore.
Lottie looks down at Jackie one last time and realizes there’s nothing really left to say.
Jackie does not move from the chair until the others walk in, her eyes gazing at the fire. Time is nothing. It’s nothing . It could be minutes or seconds or years or hours. She wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t care.
Her head lifts and she stands, the blanket still around her body. She doesn’t feel the cold on her bare feet, touching her body. That’s not why she’s shaking. She doesn’t think that’s why she’s shaking.
“Shauna,” she rasps out, trying to make eye contact with someone. “Where’s Shauna? Where’s–- Where’s Shauna?”
Lottie’s head snaps up from where she’s sitting on the ground near Jackie’s chair, trying to distract herself with mending some of their clothes. As soon as Jackie is standing, so is she, dropping whatever was in her hands and moving to stand behind her, ready to reach out and snag her lest she try and run outside again.
It’s Tai and Van coming in first. Tai’s face looks empty, hollow. “The…the ground’s too hard,” she says, clearing the stutter in her throat, “we couldn’t bury her.”
Van is standing as close to Tai as physically possible, her own face drawn into a pale sorrow that Lottie feels deep in her soul. Without thinking about it, Lottie is reaching for Jackie, fingers brushing against the blanket around her shoulders.
“She’s in, um--” Van starts but has to stop a moment to swallow-- “she’s in the shed for now.”
More girls trickle in behind them, but none of them say anything. None of them look at Jackie.
Lottie bites the inside of her cheek. There’s really nothing to say to that, so she just nods, pulls on Jackie’s arm to try and get her to sit down by the fire again. There’s really nothing else to do.
Jackie thinks she’s strangling on some sort of sound that doesn’t know how to claw its way out of her throat, but this is a good thing. Shauna’s not… she’s not in the ground where Jackie can’t reach her. She’s close. She can still reach her.
She’s heading for the door only for the hand on her arm to stop her. Jackie turns to see that it’s attached to Lottie, her fingers somehow warm against Jackie’s skin. She’s confused. She attempts to tug her arm away. “Let me go.”
Lottie’s grip tightens reflexively. “Jackie,” she says gently, as gently as she can manage when her throat is still raw and her chest feels like ice. She can’t let her go. It’s already getting dark outside, the looming reminder that winter wasn’t just on the way, but that it was here.
Tai and Van don’t look at Jackie as they walk by, and Lottie wishes she weren’t alone in this. She feels like the only one trying to keep Jackie sane, on her feet.
But Lottie has always been alone, and so she thinks she can do this alone, too. She has to.
“We can go…tomorrow,” she tells her, “it’s getting dark.”
Jackie feels her breath quicken in her chest, but she doesn’t say anything at first, if only because awareness is starting to sink into her skin. They’d all been out there most of the day. What happened to the day? Why was it already getting dark? Time means nothing, but it’s coming into her periphery, along with other things. The physicality of her sense of self.She’s not wearing much. No one will look at her, and, suddenly, Jackie feels too seen, as contradictory as it is. Too exposed.
She manages to jerk away from Lottie for real this time, and she hates how much that takes out of her. The effort is draining. She wraps the blanket around herself, picks up the clothes Lottie set out for her, and goes to find herself a place to change. When she’s done, she avoids the chair but makes her way back to the window, pulling her knees to her chest on the bench seat.
Lottie doesn’t fight much once she’s sure Jackie isn’t going to run outside. She’s thankful she’s still listening to her, at least a little bit. When she turns back to the cabin, she finds more than one set of eyes on her and it makes her feel antsy.
She tries to ignore it as she picks up her pile of clothing she’d been stitching, moving to sit in the chair Jackie had been in. She wishes Jackie would sit close to the fire, but she’s pouting over by the window, staring out into the blank whiteness that the snow has poured over their camp.
She can’t really blame her, though.
The cabin bustles quietly around Lottie as the girls prepare for the night, cleaning things up to make room for their beds as Mari sets about starting dinner. None of them pay any mind to Jackie or Lottie, working around the two of them as if they’re simply furniture as well.
When the door opens for the last time that day, it’s Melissa, and she’s holding the board Shauna always puts-- used to put -- the bear rations on. She also doesn’t say anything as she sets it by Mari and then heads off towards the back.
Lottie turns her gaze to Jackie once more, but she hasn’t moved at all. She doesn’t know if Jackie will even eat, but she hopes she’ll at least try.
Jackie watches as the world grows dark outside the cabin, snow coating every available surface except for the others’ footprints. If she stares long enough, it will be Shauna coming inside from having been out to butcher whatever meat Nat and Travis hunted that day. Shauna will move beside her and nudge her to scoot over, or she’ll give Jackie a little wave before she goes to chat with Tai.
If Jackie stares long enough, her vision will go black, and her eyes will close, and she will fade into nothingness.
She is briefly aware of the food being prepared, the scent of cooked meat reaching her nose. Jackie holds herself tighter.
There’s an eventual nudge against her foot, and Jackie looks up to see Nat. Where was Nat and Travis when Shauna was freezing outside? Did they see her, talk to her, try to coax her in? Did Nat blame Jackie?
Those pale eyes are unreadable to Jackie as Nat says. “C’mon, Jackie. Get up. You need to eat.”
“Leave me alone.”
Nat, with her few inches and her retained muscle tone, manages to force Jackie to her feet with ease, pushing her despite her protest towards the table. She refuses to let Jackie attempt to partition herself away from the others, instead forcing her next to Lottie. Nat looks around the group. “We all need to eat. I know… I know what happened was awful. Shauna wouldn’t want us to stop living, though.”
Oh, but she would. Jackie knows that she would. Shauna hates her. She’d want Jackie to be dead, too.
Lottie is grateful when it’s Nat who finally goes over to Jackie and nudges her up. She would do it if no one else had, but Natali isn’t going to let Jackie starve herself, either. It’s a relief and Lottie feels her body deflate a little.
It doesn’t last long.
Everyone is looking at her again, as if waiting for her to say something, to agree or disagree with Natalie. Lottie doesn’t understand why they need that from her, but she knows she needs to give it to them.
“Nat’s right,” she says, nodding at the food, “everyone needs to eat.”
Akilah sets down the bowls and spoons on the table and begins to hand them out. Quietly, they all begin to start reaching for the food.
Lottie looks to Natalie, then, searches her face for something, anything, but the blonde girl just glares at her and Lottie feels small under her gaze. She knows Natalie is mad at her, beyond mad, really, but she wishes there wasn’t something she could say to fix it. She knows there isn’t, though, so she let’s Nat shove Jackie along to make her eat.
Lottie will wait until everyone else has.
When the bowl of food is deposited in front of her. All Jackie can do is stare at it. The smell of it turns her stomach. The look of it makes her want to gag.
Jackie’s used to going hungry. This is a new kind of hunger, a worse kind, and months ago, she’d wanted nothing more than a cheesesteak and a Diet Coke and maybe even splitting a chocolate milkshake with Shauna. But she’d gotten past all of that pretty quick. She just didn’t feel hungry anymore.
“Hey, Lott, maybe you could… again,” Van starts, though she trails off. Jackie looks up, sees the look on Tai’s face, on Van’s. She sees the way Natalie rolls her eyes, likely not even really comprehending what’s going on right now.
Jackie’s head’s bowed. Maybe they’ll think she’s praying as she stares at her congealing soup. She doesn’t care if they call her out again, though. It would be a relief to be thrown out in the cold, to right the night before’s wrongs.
Lottie blinks as she looks at Van but they need her to do this, and so she will. She feels like this is going to be a pattern.
“Yeah,” she says lightly, holding out her hand, “join hands again.”
Everyone except Nat does so and Lottie wishes she would. Lottie wishes for a lot of things but it doesn’t seem like she’ll get any of them. She bows her own head.
“For our meal tonight, we thank the Wilderness,” she starts out, pausing. Van is eager to give her thanks, along with a few others, Misty included. Lottie can hear her voice lofting over some of the other’s. “And though tonight we also mourn,” she goes on, fighting through the lump in her throat, “we vow to live on in her honor, and we thank the gods of the trees and the wind.” She thinks back to the things her mother taught her, about the people she came from. “And most of all, we thank each other,” she finishes off, “for the company we keep.”
Lottie takes in a breath before looking up once more. They’re all waiting for her again and she nods. They all start eating and Lottie feels something like dread beginning to take root inside of her.
It’s kind of a shitty prayer. Jackie’s parents aren’t the most religious, but she’s been dragged to services on Christmas and Easter. She knows the drill. Never prayed to the trees and the wind, though, and Jackie’s not making any vows.
If she’s got any of the luck so many people seem to think she has, she’ll be holding hands with Shauna in the ground by the time it thaws.
Unceremoniously dumping her uneaten stew into the bowl of the person beside her, Jackie stands without a word and heads back to her spot by the window, the cool of the glass against her forehead almost soothing.
Lottie doesn’t think she’s good at many things, except soccer and history. She’s certainly not good at making up prayers, or reassuring people that things are okay, or being there for someone who’s grieving, but she thinks she has to try.
She notices Jackie dump her stew into Mari’s bowl and head back over to the window. Lottie stands quickly, gives Mari a pointed look as if to say ‘ Do not eat all of that’ before she moves past her and towards Jackie.
Nat is looking over at them as she does so, as if curious to see what Lottie might do or say. Lottie thinks Nat might be better at this than her, but she’s busy with Travis-- Javi never came back last night.
But for some reason, Lottie isn’t worried about him. She knows he’s fine. She doesn’t know how, she just does.
She’ll figure that part out later.
“Jackie,” she says, “you need to eat.”
Jackie doesn’t even bother looking at Lottie. “Go away.”
Lottie frowns. “I know you’re upset,” she starts, “but you have to eat.”
“I don’t need to do anything. I don’t matter anymore, remember?”
That hurts. Lottie remembers saying it, but she also remembers not being herself. Not being in her own head. Not that anyone really knows that, not that anyone cared to ask.
They’d all been fucked up that night, Jackie was right about that much.
“I didn’t…know what I was saying,” Lottie mumbles, “I’m sorry.”
Jackie turns just enough to look at Lottie. There’s a tugging of something trying to pull her out of the hole she’s in: guilt. She should apologize. The last girl she didn’t apologize to is so close but will forever be too far, now, because of Jackie’s mistakes.
She still can’t bear to utter the words. “Whatever,” Jackie rasps out, her voice thick. “I’m not hungry.”
Lottie half rolls her eyes. “Yes, you are,” she says back, “we all are.” They’re all fucking hungry, they’d been starving before the bear. That’s why they’d had that stupid Doomcoming in the first place.
She picks up Jackie’s empty bowl and scoops food into it. “Eat,” she instructs.
Jackie can still manage to be stubborn. She still has that, at least. She stands, Lottie towering over her. One hand grasps the bowl before pushing it back. “I. Am not. Hungry ,” she says, her voice low.
“Jackie, you need to eat,” Coach Ben says, but Jackie really couldn’t give a fuck.
Van’s voice is much louder when she says, “If she doesn’t want to eat, you can’t make her, Lot. She’ll get hungry eventually.”
Jackie hears Mari mutter something to Gen, who laughs, but she doesn’t care. She smiles up at Lottie. She wonders if it makes her look any more alive. She feels dead. “I’ll get hungry eventually.”
She can make her, actually, Lottie thinks. But she doesn’t want to. So she won’t. “Fine,” Lottie says, turning to set the bowl back down. But instead of making one for herself, Lottie heads back over to her chair and picks up her sewing project.
She doesn’t say anything else as she starts working again.
For a second, all Jackie can do is watch Lottie as she walks away, as she, too, refuses to eat. She should say something, do something. She does not have the energy. Instead, she sits back down and leans against the window, her eyes closing against the pleasant chill.
Jackie thinks that she doesn’t mind being cold anymore.
The rest of dinner is once again silent. Lottie can feel the tension around them all as they begin to prepare for bed-- rise with the sun, set with the sun, it was the only way of life they had out here, now.
Lottie scoots her bed back over by Jackie sitting at the window, and while she doesn’t say anything to her, she does set her blanket back down next to her before crawling into the bed and laying down.
She watches Nat and Travis mumbling in the back before they both head to settle bed and she wonders if they’re discussing what to do about Javi missing. She realizes no one else has said anything about it.
But Lottie is exhausted from the past few days and so she closes her eyes and thinks that she’ll just bring it up to them tomorrow.
She’s asleep even before the last girl has settled down in their bed.
There’s no sleep to comfort Jackie, but she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t need it, doesn’t deserve it. Maybe she can sleep soon. Maybe she can rest.
When the others have settled down, Jackie gets up. It’s habit that has her quietly shoving her feet into her shoes. It’s basic need that has her searching for one of Shauna’s flannels.
There’s no prickling of shame in her stomach as she sniffs the collar, only an ache in her chest where her heart is. Her heart, half of it gone now, the one that matched its beat no longer present.
She heads out the door and trudges through the snow, barely picking her feet up as she makes her way to the shed.
“Shauna,” she murmurs as she opens the door. It takes her a moment to adjust to the darkness, the space only lit from moonlight streaming through cracks in the walls. At least the clouds have gone. Her eyes search until they land on a figure leaned a corner.
Shauna looks like she’s sleeping. She looks like she’s just curled up for a nap. But there is still snow in her hair, frost along her lips, the color long since drained from her skin.
Jackie stumbles towards her, falling on her knees. She crawls until she makes it to her best friend, cold and so very dead. Shauna is dead. Jackie, she knows, is dead, too. It’s only a matter of time.
Brushing the snow out of Shauna’s hair, Jackie attempts to sit her up a little bit before she curls up in Shauna’s lap. Between the two of them, there is only one set of working lungs, one cloud of breath puffing out into the air around them. Jackie’s hand goes to Shauna’s flannel, rubbing the material between her fingers.
With her head in Shauna’s lap, Jackie can feel Shauna’s abdomen, the bump there. Two lives. She’s killed two people in the span of a day. Jackie is worse than boring and self obsessed and tragic. She’s a murderer, condemning one of the few people she’s ever cared about to freezing with just a few words.
Her eyes closed. Jackie thinks, maybe, she can sleep now.
Something feels wrong.
Lottie’s eyes snap open to the dark of the cabin. There are only embers burning in the fireplace now, the only thing she can see properly as her eyes adjust.
But once they do, she knows what’s wrong.
“Jackie.” The name leaves her mouth in a puff of air. Her voice is quiet enough to not wake anyone else, even as she scrambles up and finds her boots. She doesn’t know how long it’s been-- she hopes it hasn’t been too long.
She opens the door as quietly as possible in her hurry, her desperation. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she finds Jackie dead, too. She doesn’t know what she’ll say. What kind of person could she be for others to look to if she couldn’t keep at least one person alive?
Lottie’s boots crunch in the snow and she sees Jackie’s own footprints. They lead to the shed.
She’s rushing over and throwing the door open. “Jackie?”
She’s laying in Shauna’s lap, curled up. Is Lottie too late? She thinks she might be too late. She’s trembling. “Jackie…”
She takes a step forward, the dark of the shed preventing her from telling if Jackie’s face is pale blue like Shauna’s. She isn’t sure she wants to find out.
Lottie kneels in the snow in front of her, reaches out with her shaky hands. Places one on Jackie’s shoulder. “Jackie.”
Jackie knows, as the door to the shed is thrown open, that this truly is hell because she can never, never get any peace. She died in the plane crash, and all of this has just been eternal suffering.
Holding onto Shauna tighter, her mother’s voice ringing in her ear, Jackie at least knows what she’s suffering for.
“Please,” she begs, her voice weak as she keeps her eyes closed. “Lottie, please.”
Lottie can’t help the choked noise of relief that comes out of her throat. Jackie isn’t dead, but she will be soon if she can’t get her back inside.
“Do you really think…she’d want this?”
“No,” Jackie breathes, though she can’t help the way her fingers rub the fabric of Shauna’s flannel between her fingers like it’s fine silk. “No, no, she hates me. She wouldn’t want me to be here. I just–- I can’t-–” She couldn’t help herself.
That wasn’t quite what Lottie meant. She lets out a long breath. “You need to come back inside,” she tells her quietly, as if worried she might disturb Shauna in her sleep. They both know Shauna isn’t sleeping.
After a beat she adds, “Shauna didn’t hate you.”
Jackie doesn’t really process Lottie’s words. “She was right to hate me. She was right about me. Except that I didn’t love her. She wrote that. She wrote that down, and she said it so beautifully, so cruelly, but I do, you know? I love her.” Her eyes are watery as she looks up at Lottie. “I can’t leave her. Please don’t make me.”
Lottie doesn’t have the words to help ease this sort of pain. She doesn’t have the words to make any of this better. All she has are the ones in her head and even those feel so messed up sometimes. “You won’t be leaving her,” she tells her after a moment, “she’ll always be with you.”
“It should be me,” Jackie says. There should be comfort in Lottie’s words, but Jackie just can’t find it. “It should be me, and you know it, don’t you? Please.”
Lottie stills. She pulls her hand away from Jackie and averts her gaze. Maybe it hadn’t been told to her outright, but Lottie knew this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Her hands curl into loose fists. “I don’t… know.”
“Will you ask them to bury us together?” Jackie asks. “For me. Or at least beside her. I’d be okay with just holding her hand.”
“Jackie,” Lottie starts. She can’t fix any of this. “We can’t bury her till the ground thaws.” She knows what Jackie is asking here. She wants Lottie to stand up and leave and let her freeze to death next to Shauna.
Lottie can’t do that.
“You need to come inside.”
Jackie just shakes her head. “I can wait.”
Lottie is growing frustrated, but her frustration has always come out in waves of fear, of sadness. She feels the cold air stinging her cheeks. “No, you can’t,” she says to her. She unfurls her fists, reaches back out. “Come inside. Please.”
“No,” Jackie says, frowning. What a ridiculous conversation to be having. Would Lottie be having this talk with Shauna if Jackie was the one that had gone outside? Would anyone care? Why did Lottie care so much? What made her start caring now , when it was too late?
“Jackie,” Lottie sighs, “please. Don’t make me force you.” And she will. They all think Lottie is a pushover-- and yeah, okay, she is, she can be-- but she can be stubborn, too.
Scoffing, Jackie just closes her eyes. “Ask your dirt gods what they think and then get back to me.” The words are sharp, meant to bite. If she cannot beg Lottie away, then she’ll just make her want to leave.
It hurts, it always does. But Lottie is used to it. She’s been crazy all her life. There is something wrong with Lottie and we are taking her to a doctor. She’s used to it but it stings and she pretends her sniffling is because she’s sad for Jackie. For Shauna. For the baby they all lost.
Instead of saying anything, though, Lottie takes fistfuls of Jackie’s shirt-- Shauna’s shirt-- and drags her up. “We’re going inside,” she says quietly, wrapping an arm around Jackie’s waist and locking her in place against Lottie’s side.
“Lottie!” Jackie cries out, and she wishes it sounded indignant, angry, but it’s just desperate and pathetic like Jackie’s been all her life. She didn’t expect Lottie to pick her up, couldn’t help but be surprised as Lottie pinned her to her side. She was always so much stronger than those lanky limbs looked.
Glancing at Shauna, Jackie swears she sees her eyes open, those cow like brown eyes glaring up at her in the dark. Whatever desperation Jackie felt has multiplied, turned feral. Her mother would be furious. All Jackie’s manners are out the window as she starts struggling, attempting to pull herself out of Lotties grip as she cries out Shauna’s name over and over again, determined to get to her and check on her and see that she is okay. She has to be okay. She has to be alive.
Lottie doesn’t say anything back as Jackie cries out. She drags her along next to her even though she’s stumbling and tripping through the snow. Jackie is weaker now, they all are, but Jackie hasn’t been feeding properly for a bit, Lottie can tell.
She makes it up to the cabin steps when the door swings open and Natalie is standing there, bleary eyed. “Lottie, what the fuck?”
Lottie doesn’t look up at her. “Jackie was trying to--” she gives a huff of air as Jackie accidentally elbows her in the stomach-- “sleep in the shed.”
Natalie hurries down the steps and over to them, grabbing Jackie’s arms. “Hey, hey, stop it! Jackie, stop!”
“Shauna!” Jackie cries out again and again, only focused on getting back to the shed. “Please, please. I saw-- she’s there , she’s right there! Please!” She feels like she’s on fire, but fuck it. Her nails dig into Nat’s arm, causing the other girl to make a little grunt of pain.
“Jackie, you’ve got to calm the fuck down,” Nat says, and Jackie thinks she sounds a little panicked.
She wouldn’t have to panic if she just let Jackie go back to Shauna.
Lottie has to wrap both her arms around Jackie now to keep her from knocking her over as Natalie tries to calm her down. “Jackie, please,” she begs.
“You’re going to wake everyone else up, if you haven’t already,” Nat snaps, trying to get Jackie to focus on her. Lottie doesn’t know what to do now. She needs to get Jackie back inside, but she’s worried Jackie just try and run straight back to the shed, to Shauna.
“Nat, we need to-- we should--”
Natalie seems to understand enough, tugging Jackie up the stairs with Lottie’s help. Once the door is shut, Lottie lets Jackie go, keeping herself between the girl and the door.
Everyone in the cabin is now staring at the three of them. Lottie holds her hands up. “Jackie, no one’s letting you go back outside,” she says to her, “so please just... please lay down.”
Baring her teeth, because this place has made them all animals and Jackie has finally caught up, Jackie attempts to lunge back at the door, only for Nat to catch her again. Jackie doesn’t realize there are tears streaming down her face until she tastes salt. “She’s there! She’s right there, I saw, please. I have to go back.” She isn’t even trying to go back to sleep. She needs to get to Shauna and make sure she’s okay. Shauna needs to be brought inside, too. “She’s going to wake up cold, and she doesn’t like that, either. She never has, even if she won’t complain about it.”
Nat is looking at Lottie the same way she had when they were at Mari’s birthday party and the police had arrived while the two of them both had joints in their hands. She’s looking at Lottie like all the times she’d looked at her before their world became this and Lottie had watched Shauna hold a knife to Travis’ throat.
Lottie moves forward slowly. She places a hand on Jackie’s chest, over her heart. “Breathe,” she says to her, voice calm, “just breathe with me. Please.”
Every breath shudders through Jackie, painful and trembling, an effort as she tries to figure out how to do it consciously again. She tries to listen to Lottie. She really thinks that she does, especially once such a gentle touch is there. She just can’t figure out how, and she can’t shut up. She knows she’s speaking nonsense, muttering and begging and trying to convince them to let her back outside. Shauna must be so cold. Jackie needs to get her inside.
Lottie can feel everyone staring at them, but she ignores them. She concentrates on Jackie, she makes sure she’s the only thing Jackie can see, can hear. They sink to their knees, to the floor. Lottie continues to breathe with Jackie. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, “it’s okay right now.”
“No,” Jackie whimpers. “No.” It’s not okay, and it never will be again. Even still, her breathing starts to match up with Lottie’s, her heart slowing when she hadn’t even realized it was pounding. Her body feels too hot. It feels like lead. She finds herself leaning forward unwittingly.
Nat sighs behind them, and Jackie hears just how tired she is as she says, “I’ll watch the door.”
Lottie keeps her breathing steady with Jackie’s. For Jackie. And Jackie is right, she knows it, it’s not okay-- but she has to say it right now, or they might all lose it. Jackie slumps forward and Lottie takes her in her arms. She looks up at Natalie, a silent thank you. It’s not returned.
Someone else shuffles behind Jackie and Lottie sees Tai appear from the attic. Van is beside her. “Get her up here,” Tai says, just as tired as the rest of them.
Lottie is so tired, but with Tai’s help, she lifts Jackie back up for the third time that day and heads towards the attic.
Rather than fight Lottie off, Jackie clings to her, and she remembers the girl that held her hair back what night after drinking in the parking lot, the girl who used to laugh at the stupidest jokes, the girl she first met when they were still kids and Lottie was with her mom visiting the country club.
Jackie misses her friend. She wonders if she has friends anymore, if she ever had them in the first place. She’s unsure where she’s being led, confusion slurring her voice as she mutters, “Where..?”
As Tai helps Lottie move Jackie to the attic, Van grabs the blankets Lottie had been using and follows after them.
Jackie’s voice sounds weak, feeble again. The fight is gone from her, for now, but Lottie knows it won’t be for long. At least for tonight, they can rest.
“We’re just going upstairs,” Lottie tells Jackie quietly, “it’ll be quieter up there for you.”
Upstairs. There was only one exit from the attic, Jackie remembers. Somewhere to keep her from disturbing the others is more like it, or somewhere that she can’t easily get outside. To keep her from Shauna.
Jackie’s tired, though, that bone deep weariness she’d felt curled up on Shauna’s lap returning. Fine. She lets herself be led, even managing to pull herself up the set of stairs. She hasn’t really been up there much. She doesn’t like it. Jackie’s likes and wants don’t seem to matter anymore, though.
Lottie isn’t exactly happy about this, either, but it will work for the rest of the night. Once Jackie is up there and Tai and Van grab their things and leave, it’s just the two of them. Lottie moves and spreads out the blanket, puts down her pillow. Then her jacket next to it, propped up like another pillow.
When she’s done, she sits down slowly next to Jackie and tries to prod her over to the bed. “Please just rest for a while,” she asks of her in a weary voice, “I’ll stay with you.” And she would stay regardless of whether Jackie even wanted her to or not.
Back home, Jackie would care more about what the others thought of her. She’d care that they’re all basically watching her lose her mind. But she just doesn’t give a shit. Besides, they all lost their minds already. She might as well join then.
Mechanically, she moves herself over to the bedding that Lottie has laid down, curling in on herself like she’s trying to protect a wound. Her eyes remain open, glassy. Jackie doesn’t really have anything to say, but she is glad that Lottie is staying with her. She nods, her eyes closed, her breath shuddering in her chest. She’s starting to feel the cold again, the wetness of melting ice on her clothes. She doesn’t care. Jackie just can’t bring herself to care.
Sighing, Lottie is at least glad that Jackie isn't fighting her in this, too. She knows Jackie's clothes are wet again but she doesn't think she has enough energy to make her sit up and remove them, so she pulls her other blanket over Jackie and makes sure it's tucked in tight before laying down next to her, staring up at the ceiling.
She thinks about how this room felt like where everything changed. What was supposed to be a fun game turning into something Lottie didn't even remember, leaving the scar that was now on her forehead.
Lottie has never liked it up here, but she feels as if she somehow knows in the coming days, she'll be up here a lot more often.
Lottie turns on her side and looks at Jackie’s back, at the girl curled up into herself, so small and fragile. She scoots a little closer and when Jackie doesn't move away, she wraps an arm around her and hopes she can help her sleep, if even just a little bit.
Lottie doesn't think she'll be going back to sleep tonight.
Jackie doesn’t move when she feels the blankets get tucked around her, nor does she move when she feels Lottie laying down next to her, but she starts to shift when Lottie puts her arm around Jackie, managing to open her eyes and look up at her.
It’s warmer up there than Jackie would have thought, but then she remembers something from science or Shauna about heat rising. Maybe that’s why Lottie, so tall, was also so warm. Jackie scoots a little closer, wrapping her own arm around Lottie and pressing her face into the spot where her neck and shoulder meet. Jackie would never do this back home, not with anyone, not even with Shauna, but she needs something. To be held, maybe. To feel someone still alive and warm in her arms.
Jackie's crying. Pretty soon it turns to harsh, aching sobs that she can't control.
Lottie had expected Jackie to pull away, if anything, but Jackie is moving to curl herself up against Lottie and her arms wrap around her and it's hard not to notice, like this, how small Jackie really is. How thin her frame has become. Lottie knows that both of them are held to expectations they can't meet but want to desperately. Jackie had always been good at pretending, though, at being a daughter her parents could be proud of, even if it was eating her alive.
Lottie had never been good at that. She didn't think she'd ever be.
And so it feels a little strange, then, when she feels Jackie’s arms around her and remembers how they used to sit together at the country club and hold hands and talk about how silly all the adults looked.
But Lottie, for all her uncertainty, thinks this feels nice. It shouldn't, but it does, just like it had with Laura Lee.
Lottie thinks she's always had a lot in common with Jackie, but she also doesn't think anyone else has ever thought that.
She doesn't say anything when she hears Jackie start crying. She holds her just a little tighter, tucked into Lottie's chest, and thinks about how the last person she'd hugged, the last person she'd held, was the last person who had ever seen Lottie for who she truly was.
Lottie thinks about how she understands exactly what Jackie is feeling right now, and it makes her start crying, too.
Jackie holds onto Lottie a little tighter, too, and she thinks that she can’t remember seeing anyone comfort Lottie since Laura Lee died. She knows the two of them had been close, had grown closer since the plane crash. Everyone had been growing closer out there for survival, it seemed like.
Everyone except Jackie, who feels every unraveling stitch each day as everyone slowly but surely starts to realize how useless she really is. Once upon a time, there was a girl named Jackie Taylor, and she was good . Good daughter, good soccer player, good friend. Maybe not the best at anything, but still good.
Jackie’s nothing out here, and everyone knows it. She can’t do anything, and she gets frustrated when she tries. Now, there’s just no point. It’s hopeless. Jackie Taylor is dead. Her body just hasn’t caught up with that yet. But, while it’s still moving, it can at least do this. Lottie is doing her best to comfort Jackie, and, while it’s unnecessary and she wishes Lottie would just give up and let her be with Shauna, Jackie thinks that returning the favor is the least she can do. She might not really recognize Lottie anymore, but she’d been her friend, once. That still counts for something.
Lottie thinks she might be imagining things when she feels Jackie hold onto her a little tighter. She's been imagining a lot of things out here, lately, and she doesn't know what to think of them. At first, she thought they were just from her running out of pills. And then Laura Lee had told her they were gifts, visions from God. And then whatever God she was seeing took Laura Lee from her and now Lottie was back at square one, wondering if she was just going insane for real or if she really was the person Laura Lee saw in her.
She wants nothing more than to believe Laura Lee is right, and so she clings to the idea that she might be seeing things that have meaning. It gives Lottie meaning, purpose. And maybe she doesn't recognize herself anymore, and maybe none of her friends do, either, but she'll help them anyway, because it's all she's can do.
Lottie sniffles and closes her eyes and listens to Jackie’s breathing and tries to keep her own calm, and her hand moves subconsciously to rub soft circles against Jackie's back, like she always did when she hugged Laura Lee, and she hopes she can lull her friend to sleep, even if she knows Jackie doesn't want to be her friend anymore.
She doesn't really think any of them do. Lottie is a terrifying creature out here. Maybe they all are. Maybe it doesn't matter as long as they survive.
Lottie doesn't know how to comfort Jackie well, and she knows she'll never be Shauna Shipman, but she thinks she can try and be Lottie Matthews, jersey number five, center defender, at least for a little bit.
At least for tonight.