Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The cold stings Shauna’s cheeks the second she steps onto the field, sharp and unforgiving like the air itself has something to prove. January in Wiskayok is cruel that way—icy wind slicing through her layers, the tips of her ears burning even under her headband. But there’s no time to complain. This is the first game back after winter break, and everything—everything—feels like it’s riding on it.
Wiskayok’s rival school, Ridgemont High, is already on the field warming up, their maroon-and-white jerseys obnoxiously crisp in the frost. Jackie’s been ranting about them since mid-December, even at her family’s ugly sweater Christmas party.
“We can’t let them humiliate us” she kept saying, practically vibrating with captain-level stress. “It’s not just another game, Shauna. It’s a pride thing.”
Now, standing on the sidelines, Shauna can feel every bit of that pressure pressing down on her like a second skin.
They’re undefeated this season, and Wiskayok High wants to stay that way. Tai being out with the flu has already messed up their formation—Melissa, pulled up from JV to cover midfield, is too green for this kind of pace. She’s solid, sure, but she hesitates, and hesitation is the death of strategy out here. That leaves Shauna to anchor the center line and cover for Melissa’s slack, all while feeding the ball up to Jackie.
Technically Shauna has another midfielder at her side, Natalie, but they’re not exactly a unit. Natalie plays a looser, more unpredictable game. She’s fast, sharp, but not one for coordinated plays. She’s not someone Shauna would call… dependable.
Jackie’s their striker, and a damn good one, but for today’s matchup, the coaching staff has made it clear: Shauna is the key. With Ridgemont’s defense hyper-focused on Jackie, Shauna’s the one with room to slip through and score—if she can stay sharp, if she can stay calm, if Melissa doesn’t fuck it all up, If she can keep Natalie from going rogue.
She can hear the Ridgemont girls laughing across the field, their voices echoing too loud, too cocky. One of them, #12, spits into the grass like she owns it.
Shauna rolls her neck, trying to breathe the nerves out of her lungs, but it’s no use. She’s wound too tight.
Jackie jogs over and nudges her with an elbow. “You good?”
Shauna forces a smile. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
“Let’s kill them,” Jackie grins, already electric with adrenaline. “Pride of Wiskayok, right?”
Shauna nods, but her fingers are curling into fists at her sides.
Pride of Wiskayok.
She’s never hated a phrase more.
On the sidelines, Jeff is standing with a few other guys from the basketball team, yelling and clapping like he’s some kind of golden retriever. His voice carries above the others—“Let’s go, Jackie! Go, Shauna!”—and Shauna flinches.
She hasn’t been able to look at him the same since that night in November, when he drove her home from a party and parked outside her house for a little too long. He and Jackie had been broken up—again—but that didn’t make it okay. He leaned in like it was nothing, like it made sense, and said something like, “You’re always there, you know? It’s different with you.”
Shauna had pulled away, muttered something like “you’re drunk,” and slammed the car door.
The next day, he was back with Jackie, all smiles and apologies. But now, at every game, every hallway passing, every group hang—he watches her. Stares too long. Like he’s waiting for her to acknowledge something she never wanted.
So when his voice cuts through the winter air, cheering her on, it doesn’t fill her with school spirit.
It makes her skin crawl.
The first whistle splits the air like a shot, and the game kicks off in a frenzy of cleats, cold air, and adrenaline.
Right away, it’s clear what Ridgemont’s strategy is: go for Jackie. Hard.
Their defenders swarm her the second she touches the ball. Shauna can barely track Jackie’s movements through the tangle of bodies. Every play breaks down before it can build, and Shauna’s heart is thudding painfully in her chest, every breath shallow and fast. She’s not even ten minutes in and already her head is swimming.
Get it together.
She repeats it like a mantra as she jogs across the frozen grass, eyes flicking from player to player. It takes a few fumbled passes, a near-miss from Melissa, and a snapped order from Coach Martinez before her feet finally start syncing with her instincts again.
Then—clarity.
She sees a lane. Anticipates the pressure. Times her steps.
The game sharpens into something clean.
The aggression from Ridgemont doesn’t stop, but it stops rattling her. Their players are scrappy, brutal even, but the Yellowjackets’ defense is holding. Lottie—calm and surgical—strips the ball from a striker like it’s nothing. And Van? A wall. Nothing gets past her.
Jackie, still boxed in, throws a frustrated arm out when another play collapses around her. But Shauna’s not looking at Jackie anymore. She’s watching Natalie.
Natalie—hair pulled back messily, socks halfway down her calves—is moving like she’s dancing. Not by the book, not predictable, but smart. At the exact right moment, she flicks the ball Shauna’s way.
Shauna doesn’t think. She just goes.
She breaks through two defenders and launches the ball—low, hard, just to the right of the keeper. It sinks into the back of the net with a satisfying thunk.
The crowd erupts.
Arms close around her in a blur of jerseys and shouting. Jackie’s hugging her, Melissa is yelling something, and someone—Lottie, maybe—shakes her shoulders in celebration. Shauna’s smiling without realizing it, but her eyes are on Natalie, who’s hanging back just a little, breathing hard.
Their eyes meet. Natalie gives her a small nod—barely there. Shauna nods back.
And just like that, something shifts.
When the game resumes, everything is turned up to eleven. The tackles are sharper, the crowd louder, and Ridgemont is pissed.
Then it happens.
Jackie cuts down the sideline, the ball dancing at her feet. She’s almost past the last defender when Ridgemont’s #14—a tall, broad girl with a jawline like a brick—charges in and body-checks her so hard she hits the ground with a thud that echoes.
Shauna stops cold.
Jackie groans, curled on her side.
Coach Martinez is already yelling, but Shauna’s fists clench on instinct. It takes everything in her not to march over and slam #14 into the dirt. She turns and stalks away instead, biting the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood.
They win the game. Final score: 1–0. Shauna’s goal.
By the time they’re off the field, her pulse is still high—not from the running, but from the fury.
She and Natalie are catching their breath near the bench, complimenting Melissa, telling her she held her own.
“You did good,” Natalie says, and Shauna nods. “Seriously. You didn’t freak out.”
Melissa beams, proud.
That’s when they hear the voice.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Wiskayok’s golden girls.”
They turn to find two Ridgemont players walking up to them. The tall one—#14—is still sweaty, still smug. Beside her is a short-haired brunette with a cruel little smirk.
“You score one goal and suddenly the JV girl’s a prodigy,” the brunette says.
Shauna narrows her eyes. “Walk away.”
“Oh relax, we’re just being friendly,” the tall one sneers. Then she turns her attention to Natalie. “Didn’t think you’d still be able to run, though. Figured your knees would be wrecked from all the time you spend on them.”
Natalie just flips her off.
Shauna steps forward.
“Say that again bitch,” she says, voice low.
“Hit a nerve?” the girl grins. “Careful. Wouldn’t want Jackie getting hurt worse next game.”
Shauna doesn’t even think.
Her fist connects with the girl’s face before she realizes she’s moving. It’s not elegant. It’s not smart. It’s rage, hot and unfiltered, finally let loose.
The girl stumbles back with a gasp, clutching her face. Then she lunges.
Suddenly it’s chaos—grabbing, shoving, shouting. Natalie jumps in to pull them apart, but ends up swinging too when the brunette grabs her arm. It takes two assistant coaches and Martinez’s full volume to separate them.
When the dust settles, Shauna’s knuckles are split, Natalie’s lip is bleeding, and Coach Martinez looks like he wants to set something on fire.
“Detention,” he growls. “One month. Both of you. And you’re benched for the next game.”
Shauna doesn’t argue. She’s still vibrating.
Next to her, Natalie spits blood onto the grass and mutters, “Worth it.”
Shauna almost smiles.
Almost.
Monday is hell.
Shauna knows it the second she steps through the school doors and the hallway goes quiet—not silent, just tilted. Like someone turned down the volume just enough for every whisper to cut through.
She keeps her eyes down, walks fast.
She hears it anyway.
“That’s her—”
“No way, she really punched her?”
“Scatorccio and Shipman? Dream tag team…”
“I heard she bit the girl’s ear.”
“She body slammed her. Like, WWE-style.”
“I thought she was, like… a nerd?”
The truth—if it ever mattered—has already been swallowed by Wiskayok High’s gossip mill. All anyone remembers now is the image: Shauna Shipman, Jackie Taylor’s plucky sidekick with the straight A’s and big brown eyes, throwing hands like she’s been waiting her whole life to do it. And Natalie Scatorccio, the chain-smoking burnout, fighting right alongside her like they planned it.
Shauna pulls her jacket tighter and repeats a silent mantra: Just wait. Just wait until something stupider happens. New gossip always comes.
But for now, she’s living in folklore.
She rounds the corner and sees Jackie already at her locker, Jeff’s arm slung around her like he’s staking a claim. His eyes land on Shauna immediately—too direct, too heavy—and she looks away fast, pretending to dig for a notebook.
Jackie grins when she sees her.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the Butcher of Wiskayok.”
Shauna groans. “Please don’t.”
“Are you kidding?” Jackie leans against the lockers, clearly enjoying herself. “The way people are talking, I should’ve brought a folding chair to school today. You’re a local legend. People think you powerbombed that girl into the grass.”
“I barely got a punch in,” Shauna mutters.
“Not what I heard. I heard you picked her up by the neck and suplexed her into the afterlife.”
Jeff laughs—too loud—and Shauna pretends not to hear it.
Jackie nudges her, still amused but more sincere now. “Seriously, though. You okay?”
Shauna nods. “Yeah. Just… want this to blow over.”
Jackie’s smile falters slightly. “You know, I wasn’t mad at you. I was just… surprised. It’s not you.”
Shauna shrugs, suddenly defensive. “She said she was gonna hurt you. Again. I wasn’t just gonna stand there.”
Jackie softens, like she didn’t expect that answer. She glances over at Jeff, then back at Shauna. “You’re kind of a ride-or-die, huh?”
Shauna forces a smile. “Guess so.”
She doesn’t say it, but she’s grateful Jackie isn’t pissed anymore. Right after the game, in the heat of the locker room, Jackie had let her have it:
“What the fuck was that about, Shauna? This isn’t you. People were supposed to be talking about how you won the game, and now it’s all Natalie this, Natalie that, brawl in the middle of the field—”
And maybe Jackie was right.
Maybe it wasn’t her.
But now? As people keep glancing and whispering and staring? Shauna kind of wishes it was.
The rest of the day drags on in a haze of half-heard lectures and pencil tapping. Shauna tries to focus—of course she does, she always does—but every time she glances up, someone’s already looking. And not in the curious way. In the did-you-hear way. In the wait-till-I-tell-you-what-I-saw way.
By the time the final bell rings, it’s a small mercy.
Until she remembers.
Detention.
The word hits her like a slap. Shauna Shipman—straight A’s, AP everything, perfect attendance—has detention. She realizes, with an almost surreal sort of embarrassment, that she doesn’t even know what they do in detention.
She drags her feet to the basement level of Wiskayok High, down past the boiler room and the smell of metal shop and bad janitor coffee. The detention room used to be the music classroom before the school got a proper theater, and now it’s just… storage with chairs. A cramped mess of mismatched desks, stacked boxes, and forgotten sheet music.
The air smells faintly like mildew and old brass.
She steps inside and sees him: Assistant Coach Ben, leaning back behind the teacher’s desk with a clipboard in hand. He’s young—late twenties, early thirties —and the only adult in the building who doesn’t speak to teenagers like they’re lab rats. Shauna exhales. It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been Coach Martinez, or God forbid, Mrs. Hastings.
Then she sees the desks. Two, pushed side by side near the front.
One empty.
One occupied.
Natalie Scatorccio sits with her boots up on the edge of her desk, fingernail tracing a carved heart someone left in the wood. She glances up.
Her eyes drag slowly over Shauna and a crooked smile curls onto her face.
“Well, look who’s fallen from grace,” she says. “Didn’t think you even knew where detention was, Shipman.”
Shauna feels heat rise to her cheeks. “Yeah, well. There’s a first time for everything.”
Natalie chuckles, low and amused. “Guess so.”
Shauna slips into the chair beside her, stiff and awkward. She can feel Natalie’s eyes flick toward her, assessing. She looks back at the front, trying to ignore it.
Coach Ben claps his hands once. “Alright, ladies. No phones, no talking. You’ll be organizing and labeling the contents of those music storage bins for the next hour. Try not to stab each other with the pens.”
He points to a pile of plastic containers overflowing with sheet music, battered band folders, and god knows what else. There’s even an old tambourine sticking out like a sad prop from a failed school play.
Natalie groans. “Manual labor? What is this, prison?”
Coach Ben raises an eyebrow. “Less attitude, more filing.”
Before Shauna can even start sorting, the door creaks open and Misty Quigley pokes her head in. “Coach Ben? We’re missing two goalie gloves and a water jug. I think someone left them in the gym and—”
“Okay, okay.” He’s already standing. “Don’t touch anything you can’t pronounce,” he calls as he follows Misty out into the hallway.
The second the door shuts behind him, silence settles.
Shauna stares down at a pile of papers, pretending to read a title.
Natalie shifts in her chair. “This place used to be the music room, right?”
“Yeah,” Shauna answers without looking up.
Natalie scoffs. “God, I hated the glee club. So dramatic. You ever see those kids trying to jazz-hand through ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? It was like watching a cult.”
Shauna snorts before she can stop herself. “Honestly? Kind of agree.”
Natalie turns, surprised. “Didn’t peg you for someone with taste.”
Shauna looks up, sharp. “Why? Because I don’t smoke behind the cafeteria and pretend not to care about school?”
Natalie shrugs, unbothered. “Because you hang out with Jackie Taylor and wear matching headbands.”
Shauna clenches her jaw.
Natalie glances sideways again, a little grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “But you’re not totally hopeless. You’ve got decent music posters in your locker. Liz Phair? Whitechocolatespaceegg?”
Shauna blinks. “You’ve looked in my locker?”
“Walked past it,” Natalie says, too casually.
Shauna shifts uncomfortably. “What, you expect me to be listening to… what? Show tunes?”
Natalie grins. “Honestly, yeah.”
They fall into a weird rhythm then, trading names. Nirvana. Elliott Smith. Natalie rolls her eyes at how mainstream Nevermind got after Kurt died. Shauna quietly defends it. Natalie says she likes Either/Or better. Shauna agrees. It’s the kind of conversation she never gets to have, not even with Jackie. Jackie listens to the radio and says she likes Alanis but never remembers any of the lyrics.
But Natalie knows this stuff.
She also notices that Natalie is…pretty.
Not in the Jackie Taylor way—polished and smiling and soft-focus like a teen magazine ad. Natalie is sharp. Gritty. There’s eyeliner smudged under her eyes and a tiny scar above her eyebrow and Shauna catches herself looking before she remembers she shouldn’t.
Natalie leans back in her chair, watching her.
Then, without warning, she says, “You’ve got rage in you. Didn’t think you did.”
Shauna freezes.
The words hit too directly. Like a hand reaching inside her.
She forces a laugh. “That obvious?”
Natalie shrugs. “You punched a girl in the face. That’s not nothing.”
Shauna looks down at her hands, the faint pink line still healing on her knuckle.
“People always think I’m harmless,” she says, mostly to the desk.
Natalie’s voice is quieter now. “You’re not.”
Shauna doesn’t respond.
She hates how that makes her feel. Like she’s been seen. Like someone finally noticed something she didn’t even know she wanted to hide. But she also can’t stop thinking about it.
Coach Ben returns to the room, clipboard in hand. The momentary bubble of connection between Shauna and Natalie dissipates, replaced by the rustling of papers and the scratching of pens. They return to their tasks, the silence between them now charged with unspoken thoughts.
Shauna tries to concentrate, but her mind keeps drifting. She feels an inexplicable pull towards Natalie, an awareness of her presence that’s hard to ignore. She catches herself stealing glances, only to find Natalie already looking at her. Their eyes meet briefly before Shauna quickly looks away, her cheeks flushing.
The detention period ends, and they both gather their things. As they exit the building, Shauna finds herself matching the other girl’s pace, despite having no reason to do so.
The late afternoon air is crisp, the cold bites at Shauna’s cheeks as she steps out of the detention room. She adjusts her scarf, the fabric rough against her skin, and glances around the nearly empty parking lot. The sun hangs low, casting elongated shadows that stretches across the asphalt.
Natalie leans against the hood of Shauna’s car, a cigarette perched between her fingers. The smoke curls upward, dissipating into the pale sky. Her eyes meet Shauna’s, a smirk playing on her lips.
Natalie extends the pack of cigarettes. “Want one?”
Shauna hesitates for a second.
“Come on,” Natalie coaxed, lighting another cigarette and handing it over
“Now that you’re a detention regular, might as well drop the good girl act. Or do you need Jackie’s permission first?”
Shauna bristles at the comment but takes the cigarette. The paper crinkles slightly under her grip. Natalie steps closer, the scent of tobacco and something earthy enveloping her.
“Here,” Natalie said, guiding Shauna’s hand. “Inhale slowly.”
Their fingers brush, a spark of electricity passing between them. Shauna’s heart races as she brings the cigarette to her lips, drawing in the smoke. It burns her throat, causing her to cough.
Natalie chuckles, her laughter low and throaty. “You’ll get used to it.”
They stand there in silence, the only sounds the distant hum of traffic and the occasional chirp of a bird. Shauna steals a glance at Natalie, noting the way the fading light highlighted her features.
“Hey,” Natalie begins, exhaling a plume of smoke, “I think it’s cool that you stood up for Jackie like that. I know they say violence isn’t the answer, and they’re probably right for most cases, but some people really need just one good punch in their lifetime.”
Shauna looks away, focusing on the cigarette between her fingers. “I wasn’t just standing up for Jackie. I was standing up for you too. What that bitch said was messed up. What you do in your life is nobody’s business but yours.”
Natalie turns to face her, surprise flickering in her eyes.
“Didn’t think you thought that way, Jackie seems like… obsessed with how she’s perceived”
“I’m my own person. I have my own thoughts. Even if I love Jackie, it doesn’t mean we’re the same. Honestly, I’m tired of just being known as her best friend.”
Natalie smiles, a genuine expression that softens her features. “Well, thanks for standing up for me then.”
As the last rays of sunlight disappeared, Shauna dropped the cigarette, crushing it under her boot.
“Littering now? You’re a certified bad girl,”
Shauna rolls her eyes, a smirk tugging at her lips. “Need a ride?”
Natalie hesitates, her gaze flickering away for a moment. Shauna notices the brief pause, the way Natalie’s shoulders tensed slightly. She wonders if Natalie was reluctant because of where she lived, a trailer park just 15 minutes away from the school, perhaps she thought that Shauna would judge her for it.
Natalie, noticing Shauna’s reassuring smile, ends up saying “Sure.”
They get into the car, the silence between them now filled with unspoken understanding. Unlike Jackie, who monopolized the radio when she was in the passenger seat, Natalie lets Shauna pick the station. They drive in silence, the city lights casting fleeting shadows across their faces.