Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

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PART ONE:

THE EARTH LOOKS BETTER FROM A STAR

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BROADCAST INTERCEPTED #043:

TRANSCRIPTION: -ther hour without touching that dial, cause it’s another hour with me, your favorite host for that classic cosmic connection radio FM, tuning into 107.9, The Groove. I’m your host, Billy Bedrock, also known as Bill Rockwell over at NU College Radio, and I’m starting off our senior year with this here radio gig. For whatever it’s worth, if you’re listening, I hope you don’t hate the sound of my voice, because we may be spending a lot of time together, weeknights from 2 am to 5 am. You’re probably thinking, ‘Billy, that’s a real ass-kicker of a schedule you got there’- and you’d be absolutely right. Thankfully, I’m pretty Bat-like in that I’m nocturnal, but a little less into fighting crime. A little Batman joke there for you. You guys see that last one that came out with Jim Carrey? Man, that sucked.

Enough corny jokes, you’re gonna be tuning in during these lonely hours to hear some stuff meant for you. Shame we gotta stay up until all hours in a college town just to get some decent music, right? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Dad owned a used record store until I moved away from home, so I know my way around a turntable. Mariah Carey, Celine Dione, The Spice Girls? Ah, save that crap for the daytime. I know my fellow night owls are out there, just like me, working some bum job to pay for rent or room & board, and you need a little something to wake yourselves up. Well, you know what? I’ve got just the thing. Sometimes, you start the day with something to set the tone. Something low-key or chill that has some kinda positive vibe, right? Yeah, I thought so. Well, not for us. Best way to keep yourself going through the night is with something big, loud, and crazy. A little fear, a little discordance, a little jump every once in a while isn’t so bad, right? Keeps you on your toes. 

This first one here is called ‘Holland, 1945’ by a crazy little band called Neutral Milk Hotel. Weird name, but I picked up a demo CD of theirs at a show in Louisiana when I was visiting my cousin, Ricky. They’ve got a unique sound, playing as many gigs as they can to make some proper records. Mad respect to those guys for grinding it out, so I figure I’d give ’em a shout. Might be a little wacky for your taste, but I challenge you to tell me this song doesn’t wake you right the fuck up. [DISTANT] Wait, hang on, Carol, can I swear? [INAUDIBLE] Oh, shi-

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“The only girl I've ever loved

Was born with roses in her eyes

But then they buried her alive”

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MAY 23rd, 1996
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Before Jackie Taylor left for finals, she wanted to lose her virginity.

She didn’t.

On the eve of the doomed flight 2525, she figured it was her best shot to do it with her on-again, off-again boyfriend(?) Jeff Sadecki. Had they actually broken up, as Shauna had put it, ‘10,000 times’? 

At that point, more or less. 

Was he an ideal candidate? Not really. The kind of stable-but-disposable high school guy who was just bland enough not to be anything worse than a bore, which, in Wiskayok, was actually the best you could do. Would the sex actually be good? Well, that was always gonna be too much to ask no matter the name of Jackie’s choice, anyway. Point is: the circumstances were hardly ideal. Deep down, she knew this was probably a zero-sum game for her, all things considered. 

Then she told Shauna, and… something inside her just snapped. She tried to explain herself, to make logic from her mildly off-kilter plan make it sound like it was a little less pathetic than it actually was. 

She couldn’t. 

It so easily devolved into making Jackie, queen of both Homecoming and charisma, just a tiny little voice on the other end of a phone call. Shauna had never been one to back down when it came to being there for Jackie Taylor and her occasionally very messy life, but that evening was the night her undefeated streak ended. She couldn’t have possibly understood the magnitude of the situation since Jackie had done a rather good job of suffering through all this in silence without alarming anyone, and remained the constant beacon of young adult wisdom that she was while doing so. It was why Jackie got picked to be team captain; after all, she was a good communicator. It may have sounded lame, but not many teenage girls had that frequently vital skill. 

That communication did little for her that day, as Shauna’s attempt at consoling her felt atypically rather hollow. She was her best friend; the least she could do was half-heartedly assure Jackie that, of course this was a good idea. That Jeff will realize he’s going to miss his chance if he doesn’t take it, and that he’ll finally make a move once she gets him alone and makes it obvious. That this isn’t some dumb, impulsive mistake that Jackie is making to distract herself from the mountain of problems she had. 

But she didn’t. Instead, she got a lot of awkward mumbles and ‘I don’t know’s that made her uncomfortable. Why was Shauna being like this? She was never like this. She didn’t seem like she wanted to attend the party they were all going to the night before they were leaving for nationals, never once mentioning it with anything but obligatory enthusiasm, but she still insisted on going. Jackie knew Shauna didn’t do super well with bigger crowds anyway; she hated when she did this stuff just because she knew Jackie was doing them too. It was like Shauna had a predisposition for undue suffering, and all Jackie wanted was for Shauna to learn it was okay to stick to her comfort zone sometimes. 

Besides, being a social butterfly sucked ass. More people who didn’t really know much about her beyond the obvious, not that she blamed them. Jackie wasn’t one to consider herself very interesting. Or many other positive adjectives. 

A lot had gone down during the party. Tensions had been weird since the last practice ended strangely, and the flight to leave was the very next day.  After a brief argument that Jackie diffused both for the sake of the team and her own peace of mind, she went back to the kitchen to scout out where exactly the drinks were for later. She didn’t need to be sober tonight. 

Thankfully, within twenty minutes of thinking that precise thought, she practically wasn’t anymore. 

When Nat, mostly there out of curiosity, offered to share a tab of acid with her, she immediately backed down, noting that she’d already had several red solo cups of… something. Maybe a couple of things, Jesus. 

Jackie looked frazzled. The absolute worst ‘fake it till you make it’ smile plastered on her face, one that became just a little easier to feign once she noticed who it was that walked up to her. 

She had really taken to Jackie. At first, she couldn’t stand her, but that was often how her affections bloomed. She just couldn’t help it this time around because she was… different. Nat never knew exactly why, but she found herself thinking about her a lot. More than likely, it was because she completely baffled her in a lot of ways. Jackie seemed like the exact breed of girl who Nat was put on this Earth to loathe. Preppy prom queen try-hards who walked around flaunting their superior ways of breathing by consorting with the ‘common folk’ enough to instill jealousy. She didn’t have to dig deep to know Jackie was projecting, but she also knew that she didn’t really care, either. 

Nat, at the very least, knew what a lot of people thought about her; there was no sense in not embracing her status as an undesirable. At the end of the day, their respective images didn’t even really feel as though they properly represented them; it was more so the world placing them in the two most diametrically opposed positions fathomable that made it so weird. The one-percenter versus the lowly lowest common denominator. 

So why didn’t she hate her?

There was nothing she loved more than a challenge, so in some wraparound, topsy-turvy way, that’s how she rationalized it. Life had looked her square in the face and told her ‘forget it,’ so that she would do what she always did: give up before she even tried.

Fate had decreed it, but who was Nat if not someone who wanted to spit in fate’s eye just a little bit? Fuck fate. Fate kept her in fucking Wiskayok. 

They’d talk after practice every once in a while. Chat about music. Home stuff. Oddly enough, very little about soccer or school, the main reasons everyone else is even there. At first, Nat figured it was because she sized her up. Lonely ‘alternative’ chick who can’t do people, but she can sure as shit do music, right? Ugh, eighteen and she already feels like a cliché.

Does everyone think that about themselves at some point or another?

It only took Nat this long because admitting she ‘belonged’ to an existing archetype just sorta betrayed her whole image. Now that adulthood was around the corner, maybe her willingness to lie to herself was finally starting to diminish.

It’s either that or Jackie, really. She wasn’t sure which was more responsible. 

Jackie apparently loves punk music. Go figure. She looked like the type to stuff her fingers in her ears if she heard anything heavier than Van Halen. It’s why she’s so shocked when Jackie compliments her on her ‘The Clash’ t-shirt, six months prior to that very night. She can’t even remember where she got it. Had to be a Goodwill, right? Had to be. If she had variety to choose from, she would’ve picked something with the self-titled album on it. ‘London Calling’ was just a little overproduced for her liking. As Jackie used it to start a conversation about discovering them because she heard ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ on the radio once, Nat had never been more thankful to own merch of her fourth favorite record from a band. It got the door open for more conversations. 

Sometimes it’s about music. Occasionally, it’s about Jackie’s Mom. It’s almost never about her own parents. She knew Jackie wouldn’t ask. She probably knew some of the rumors, at the bare minimum. If they were true, then she was an asshole for messing in Natalie’s business. If they were false, she knew Natalie would be hurt if she simply just assumed they were true because Natalie fit the bill of being a problem child. There were lots of times where she stopped herself, either before a sentence or in the dead middle of one, where common courtesy would lead her to reflexively ask something about Natalie or her home life. She never finished a single one of these questions, noting the look on her teammate’s face when she knew where the inquiry was headed. Frankly, that was what did it for Nat. No one had ever been that considerate with her before. She respected her enough to back down before it became a problem, rather than carelessly tripping over herself. 

Besides, it’s good that Jackie gets a little break when she talks to Nat. Her own family’s dirty laundry has enough stink for the both of them. 

Her mom’s apparently a lunatic. The exact kind of Stepford-adjacent, Valium-popping suburbanite that Natalie knows would hate her hanging around her daughter. Controlling, passive-aggressive, way too hard on Jackie, but Jackie doesn’t just take it. She vents to Nat. Enthusiastically, even. Nat can’t help but admire it a little bit. She couldn’t even talk about her crap with other people yet. She might not ever, the more she ponders it. 

Now, Jackie channels the frustration into soccer. It doesn’t make her better, but it makes it feel better- that’s how she describes it, anyway. 

Oh, and boys. She’s been trying to mess with Jeff for months now. 

When she starts talking about Jeff while they wait around after practice, Jackie doesn’t mind that Natalie lights up. In fact, she never seems to mind. Hell, she barely notices. At this point, it was a game with her. How many cigs can you smoke around someone until someone gives you the stink eye? Previous record: Taissa. Natalie had smoked thirteen before she told her to ease up before she got cancer. Now? It was ongoing, with Jackie in the lead by double digits. 

So why doesn’t Jackie know that she’s too good for this?

Never once does she really ever sound like she likes him. In fact, her descriptions of him are almost exclusively unflattering, even on the days in which they get along. It’s all in the details of how she talks. ‘Why isn’t he more up front about liking me?’ or ‘How come he insists on still flirting with other girls when he knows I can see?’ tell Nat a lot about her new friend… who also feels a little bit like her patient on some days. Nat didn’t have the patience for mock therapy with many other people, but with Jackie, she didn’t mind.

She could’ve done with a little less Jeff talk, though. Just another world-class white bread guy who will talk about how he thinks he peaked in high school, and simultaneously won’t think it’s weird to bring up the fact that he thinks that. It’s not like they’d wind up together, but if not Jackie, it would be someone else. Some woman who’d get saddled with two and a half kids and a mortgage. Opening up a joint bank account and signing ‘Mrs. Jeff Sadecki’- ugh, no thank you. She was at the exact moment in her life where she’d start seeing everyone around her turn into a future ‘Mrs. Jeff Sadecki’- and to be blunt, it was depressing to think about. All those girls she played with, hobbling themselves for a mediocre guy. At least if it were with a mediocre woman, they could say something interesting about themselves.

When the two started talking more, Nat had mild cause for alarm when she caught a few choice glances from Shauna, figuring there was a chance that Shauna’s attachment to Jackie perhaps ran a bit deeper than some suspected. Their relationship was tough to read; they’d been long-time pals, so Nat figured this was a classic case of maybe a little girl crush. One of the ones you got on one of your friends before you had yourself completely figured out. If Nat bothered to be social at any point, she would’ve had one of those friends. Oh well, it was best to let Shauna figure out for herself that everyone had to get over their first unrequited crush. Hell, it was partially why Nat figured that Jackie had been a little out of sorts lately. It seemed like there could’ve been friction there. 

After very quietly refusing Nat’s offer to share her contraband, she signaled that she wanted to leave the room with her after briefly (and rather insubstantially) checking her surroundings. She was nodding in the direction of the entranceway. 

Nat nodded back to her. Jackie looked… mildly distressed. Those who didn’t know her better would’ve seen a kind smile on her face, but Nat knew the eyes that went with it all too well. Darting around as though she were trying to find the nearest ride that would take her as far away from there as she dared to ask. Her telltale sign of nervousness. Nat couldn’t help but wonder exactly what had happened to this girl in the past to make this, of all things, her tell. 

She could sense something was wrong, so she reached into her jacket pocket and grabbed the pack of American Spirits she nabbed at Super America just a few days ago. She mouthed ‘smoke break’ to assure Jackie had some cover if someone asked where she was going. It took her a minute, but ultimately, she nodded after briefly fixing her attention on Nat.

She was deeply appreciative that even though Natalie didn’t care much for her own social standing, she understood it was somewhat important to Jackie. If someone saw her leaving the party so soon, or caught her looking even mildly upset, she was going to be under some kind of scrutiny. The team knew she wasn’t made captain for her raw skill alone, and some of them felt a bit sore about being passed up by Coach Martinez for her. If she faltered any step of the way as they inched closer to Nationals, the entire thing was going to be riding on her, regardless of her actual level of responsibility. Now more than ever, the team captain found it necessary to project an image of unimpeachable, ironclad confidence. 

The party is like every other high school party Jackie has been to and Nat has lurked at: downtempo and overcrowded. Nobody knew the number of people that were in that house at the present; they had seemingly just invited as many people as they could because… that’s just what you did. It’s how reputations worked. Invest now in being a party spot; you got credibility for the future and, if you’re lucky, a few stories people can pass around for social currency to back it all up. 

Nat never really got that. She figured a party with just the other Yellowjackets would’ve been more enjoyable, but that was a pipe dream. Just because she wanted just one chance to bond with those guys without the looming context of school or soccer infringing on their collective ability to have or make conversation didn’t mean she’d get one. The present setup was a few dim lights, a relatively upper-class home, music with bass that shook the whole place, and an abundance of alcohol procured from someone’s older brother in various coolers around the kitchen and living room. They weren’t exactly missing much if they needed to make a quick exit. 

As Jackie did her best to not make eye contact with anyone, she took Nat’s hand so they wouldn’t lose each other in the crowd.

She lets it go when they step out onto the front porch, letting out a pre-emptive sigh of relief, but to Nat’s surprise, she kept walking down the stone steps and onto the walkway. She apprehensively follows her, noticing Jackie didn’t check to see if Natalie had walked up behind her or not. 

To appear like she knew what she was doing, Nat followed immediately, just a few feet behind her, a skeptical furrowed brow now etched into her face. 

What the hell was in those drinks?

Jackie’s stride is determined, so to keep up, Nat’s was too. When she sharply turns left onto the sidewalk and keeps going, Nat follows her and wonders why she hasn’t said anything to her yet. Her wordless question gets answered when she begins to hear her slightly labored breathing. 

They’ve now passed the property line of the house, and Natalie is certain that Jackie knows she’s following her. She has to be able to hear her by now, surely.

It doesn’t matter. In the blink of an eye, Jackie Taylor is sitting down on the grass at the far end of the neighbor’s lawn, in front of the sidewalk, right next to their mailbox. She leans to the right, propping herself up against the stocky wooden post, and laughs to herself.

Well, this can’t be good.

Figuring it was from an impressive amount of alcohol being consumed in record time, she knew it would probably be best to just ride this out with her. In this state, she didn’t need to be anywhere alone tonight. 

Nat situated herself right next to Jackie, sitting on her teammate’s left side, seeing as the opposite side was occupied by the mailbox post, who she couldn’t help but feel like she was now third-wheeling with. She silently thanked whatever watches her that she chose to only have a little bit of the Tequila they had left, which was practically nothing to her quasi-experienced liver. If she was gonna talk to Jackie in any meaningful way, or console her through drunken tears, she had to be drunk enough to make it through the rough stuff, but sober enough to actually be there for her. Not always an easy balance to strike.

She looked over, seeing Jackie’s drunken chuckle slowly wilt into something more reserved, something quieter. Her posture leaned her forward, her elbows pressing into the sides of her legs as she began to subtly rock back and forth in place.

“Nice night,” Jackie said, the first words she’d actually spoken directly to Nat all evening.

Natalie sighed, giving her a brief once-over.

“That’s what this is? A nice night?” Nat countered skeptically, still trying not to lay it on too thick.

Jackie’s chuckle shattered her composure. Whatever was left of her ability to put up a facade had been forcibly taken from her by whatever she’d ingested. The panic in her eyes wasn’t gone, and the smile on her face was even less convincing than her usual fake ones.

“Yeah,” Jackie said dryly, “Isn’t this what you do? On a nice night?”

Her rocking didn’t subside. It seemed like this was something more than just alcohol and some pre-flight jitters. 

She’d gone off to find Jeff after that argument with everyone, but Jackie herself made sure there was as little bad blood as possible. It probably wasn’t that. 

Had someone actually given her something? This was about how she would’ve expected her to react, had she actually accepted the offer for what was in her pocket. A brief flash of anger had to be forcibly suppressed on her behalf. If someone spiked anything at that party, she would start hosting interrogations in the basement. 

Natalie laughed, more bemused than anything as she gave Jackie a toothless, pitiable smile right back.

“Oh yeah, I’m always leaving parties right after I get there and having panic attacks outside on the neighbors’ front lawn. You’re actually keeping me from doing this at my house right now, so chop-chop, Taylor. I got places to be and sidewalks to puke on,” Natalie mused, lifting up her arm to pat Jackie on the back.

When Jackie opened her mouth to speak, the second her smile became just an iota more detectable, she profusely vomited onto the grass in front of them. Nat nearly threw herself backwards; it wasn’t just throwup; this was a projectile hose of stomach acid and alcohol of varying colors. When the downpour concluded, Jackie slumped over onto Nat’s shoulder before her body went slack.

She was mumbling a bunch of apologies and half-thoughts that Natalie was ignoring as she attempted to get her onto her feet. If she passed out completely right here, they weren’t going to move her until morning. She needed a lot of water and preferably someplace comfortable to pass out. She couldn’t let her get home too late, or get home in such a sorry state; she knew her mother was already gonna chew her ass out for being late. There was a very real chance that some late-night partying was what got her from getting on that plane. From what she’d heard about Jackie’s mom, it wouldn’t have been out of character.

“Come on dude,” Natalie grunted as she hoisted the prom queen onto her shoulder, legs shaking as she tried to keep her friend up and vertical, “We’re gonna get you some water, and I’m gonna call you a taxi.”

She knew Jackie wouldn’t be thrilled to know she showed up, was seen ‘fighting’ with the other core team members, got absolutely plastered, and then immediately left as the older Yellowjackets covertly called her a cab and made her drink as much water as they could ply her with. There was a general attitude in the air of everyone feeling sorry for being at each other’s throats, so thankfully everyone was cool about keeping it out of the way. Or, more importantly, judging Jackie for it. 

Nat figured if she knew about Jackie’s home life, the rest of the team must’ve known too, right? 

Then again, did they even care enough to? Not that they were all bad people or anything, but outside of Shauna, nobody seemed to really hone in on Jackie. Did they view her as being that untouchable? Was it why Nat was able to approach her? Not caring about this stuff did occasionally have its perks. 

For as many people that envied or even outright disliked their team captain, there were just as many that recognized her skills as a leader were valuable. Primarily, it was because she was one thing not everyone else was: nice. It sounded so dumb, and Jackie could have her moments, but she was just such a damn ray of sunshine. It was occasionally obnoxious, and it was doubly obnoxious that she was nice enough for you to feel bad about thinking it was obnoxious. 

All that said, it didn’t matter what she thought as long as she was safe and out of everyone’s sight. Yeah, sure, it was sort of a ‘going away’ party, but she was Jackie Taylor. If there was one thing that was dead certain about her future, it was that there would be a lot more celebratory parties to be thrown in the wake of her inevitable accomplishments. No one was going to begrudge her; thankfully, anyone who would didn’t see her there anyway. 

Nat basically assigned herself the role of ‘caretaker’ for Jackie for the evening, and even tried to help her start walking properly again. By the time she could finally move on her feet, the taxi promptly arrived. They made their way over… albeit rather slowly. She was going to have to tip this guy well. 

There goes the rest of my cig money for when we land. Ugh.

She loaded up Jackie in the car and was escorted back to her house, which was about as nice and untouchable as she imagined it to be. She’d been by that neighborhood a few times over the years, and it was like when captive animals looked at the people visiting them at the zoo. She could only wonder what it was like to have the freedom of the people who moved through life without ever caring once about what a dollar was really worth. What it was like to just… come and go. When people like them came to places like Wiskayok, it was to be tourists, visitors, guests. They could leave whenever they wanted, out into the world that was vast and wide and totally beyond what Natalie was capable of imagining. She could only peek from behind the bars and dream of what real freedom really was. 

Once they arrived, she and Nat walked around to their deck outside on the back porch, carefully walking up the few wooden steps before sitting on the the thankfully-uncovered, waterproof, outdoor furniture that allowed them to rest without stepping foot inside. She was going to have to make it past her mom, so she had to be sober enough to pass a quick inspection.

“Think they’ll care if I crash at your place? They know we’re teammates, right?” Natalie had asked as they neared the house back in the taxi.

While Jackie did give her a nod as she tried to remember how to form proper syllables, Natalie didn’t actually look for confirmation. She wanted plausible deniability in front of Jackie’s parents. She didn’t want to go home. The entire reason she made someone else pay for the taxi, and had strictly regimented her spending money, was that she did have enough to make it back to where she lived. She was no stranger to hustling to and fro with nothing more than her sneakers, thankfully, so she was covered no matter what as long as she was prompt. Before, she planned on being driven home by someone willing to give her a ride, she’d arrive back home, grab her suitcase quickly, and deliberately avoided saying as much as ‘goodbye’ to her mom. 

Did that little act of protest actually mean anything? She wasn’t sure.

With the benefit of Jackie’s room, now, if she missed an alarm in the morning, at least it wouldn’t be her fault. Besides, she was hungry. She might have been able to get a pity meal outta these guys. She knew the last thing she needed was nothing but the junk food from the party on her empty stomach during a plane ride, she could barely handle too much Gatorade at practice sometimes. 

Waiting outside with Jackie for a half hour was as much fun as she had all evening. She would constantly attempt to keep her teammate engaged and using her brain with some low stimulation thinking. Quizzing her on everything from last names of team members to state capitols, and even as a drunken mess, Jackie is sharp enough to get around half of them right. Once the game stops being fun, Nat knows they’ve been out there long enough.

Jackie’s father is fine. By some miracle, it’s him that’s in the kitchen connected to the backdoor entrance. She introduces Nat as though she’s any of her other teammates and friends, and thankfully she’s recognized as such since hair like hers is fairly memorable even if you’re only seeing it when picking up your daughter from practice. Otherwise, she may have had to prove herself with some half-assed technique. 

She just didn’t want to have to explain herself. For reasons she could write a book’s worth of justification on, she just couldn’t handle it. Jackie would at least make it easier, but… 

Natalie Scatorccio is scared. 

She’s always a little scared to go home. 

Maybe it wasn’t the type of fear people were used to experiencing, not that she was super special or anything. Nat learned there were many different ways you could be afraid. One major form was less the provocation of your survival instincts and more a lingering, malicious dread that feels like it seeps inside you. The fear that comes from losing pieces of yourself every single day, and since you’re too scared to look in your own fucking mirror, you don’t know how many you still have left.

Seeing how many you have left sometimes isn’t worth it. Not to her, anyway. 

Jackie plays ‘daddy’s girl’ rather well. She pretends to yawn, gives a theatrical stretch, and promises her father they didn’t do anything ridiculous while they were out, Natalie’s unexpected sobriety being what seals the deal on the lie. Since she’s already been caught being out late in the past, getting home at a meager 10:45 PM isn’t exactly suspicious. The real sell is the one she has to do for Natalie. 

There’s a look briefly exchanged between the father and daughter that Natalie only catches half of. She idly stands around as they have an innocuous discussion about packing, when they’re leaving, and how her mother had a headache- one that doesn’t grab her until Jackie subtly checks to make sure she’s not paying attention. At this point in her life, Nat is great at pretending she doesn’t. 

A look of mild doubt flashes over Mr. Taylor’s face. It’s sudden. Especially unexpected given his somewhat less rigid appearance. He looks soft, a little round; he’s balding, with a friendly graying beard attached to the bottom of his face, and not a drop of his DNA seems to be found anywhere in his daughter. They could’ve been strangers for all Nat knew. Nothing changes the fact that when he’s listening to Jackie whisper whatever it is that she’s whispering to him, concern is a very natural look on his face. He nods, eyes scanning Natalie quickly before they return to his daughter again. She nods back, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and turns around, smiling at Nat as though nothing in the world was wrong.

She grabbed Nat’s hand just as she had during the party, and led her up the stairs and down the hall towards her room. She looked different, her smile painted on much thicker than usual. 

It was then that Natalie realized for the first time why she and Jackie were drawn to each other, despite being such polar opposites. For the purposes of existing around their own homes, both Jackie Taylor and Natalie Scatorccio were unparalleled actresses. 

The house is less opulent than she’s expecting, but for the sake of the visual symmetry in her head, she had imagined them to look way more like the interiors of buildings she read about when they did their unit on The French Revolution. It wasn’t quite that untouchable, but the sheer amount of living space and breathing room in this place is incredible. Actually ascending a home staircase was something she’d probably done only a handful of times, and seeing the decor of photos, different colored walls, furniture, and various embellishments poked and prodded at that part of her that was distinctly envious of Jackie. Naturally, she mentally shoved all of that crap away from her, because she didn’t want to think about her like that. She didn’t want to think about her like she was just another girl who had more stuff, a nicer house, and a nicer family than she did. 

But that was the trouble. How did she want to think of her?

She gets shown the bathroom across the hall from her room after going down a hall- lit only by a cheap nightlight. A tiny blue glow that lets both girls know where the paintings, doors, railings, and stairs are but not what details they’re comprised of. Natalie nearly looks down out of shame, eyes glued to the soft carpet beneath her feet that she really hopes she’s not tracking mud on.

It’s… a bathroom. Light blue walls, overhead cabinet, shower, all of it just nice enough to remind you that some people shit in places you’d be willing to sleep in. It wouldn’t be so bad, really. The floors look clean; there’s a fuzzy blue rug in the center of the tile, and there’s enough towels hung on the back of the door to use as sheets and a blanket. 

After briefly daydreaming about what would be the most comfortable way to position her body on the rug, she was yanked across the hall into Jackie’s room.

It’s a lot more tomboyish than she expects. A few posters of notable women’s soccer players hung from about three separate spots, a bulletin board hung on the wall opposite the entrance that was adorned with old school projects and photographs, mostly of Jackie playing various sports and winning some awards, even a few different angles of the night she’d been crowned prom queen. The room itself was a darker, tasteful green, with big, cozy-looking, freshly washed sheets. In the middle of the room was a simple black suitcase, clearly struggling to contain its contents. The blinds on the window remained half-open, letting in just a few shafts of the wandering moonlight, presently looking like a giant quarter suspended in the sky.

She was more no-nonsense than Nat would’ve predicted. Seemed the type to have a lot of knick-knacks or stuffed animals, but honestly there was a pretty startling deficit on that stuff. The most interesting things in there were the posters aside from the soccer players. She had one of Debbie Harry, Kurt Cobain, one of The Beatles, and one of… The Clash.

She had to do a double-take really quick, as a familiar flash tore through the deeper pits of her memory until it surfaced. A ‘London Calling’ poster, huh?

Jackie walked over to her dresser next to her desk in the corner, right beside the window, and rifled through her pajama drawer. She grabbed some spare soccer shorts and a T-shirt and tossed them at Natalie, who caught both articles of clothing in one bundle with one hand. With the other, she motioned behind her to the Clash poster. 

“You never told me you had this in your room,” she said, more curious than accusatory.

She held out the clothes she’d been handed in front of her. Just some sportswear and a plain t-shirt, but they’d both been washed so much that Natalie couldn’t help but marvel at the fabric, mindlessly rubbing her thumb over the material as she spoke. Nothing she owned had been washed enough to ever be anywhere close to this soft.

Jackie picked out her own choices for sleepwear, looked up, and her eyes got a little wider than Nat had seen them all evening.

“Oh yeah… well, I guess I sorta forgot,” Jackie fumbled, “I bought it at the mall just before I met you, actually. Figured it would be good to take up the empty space, y’know?”

Nat couldn’t tell if she was still a little discombobulated from earlier, or if something about the tone of her voice felt a little off. It really could’ve been either.

Come to think of it, it really was a hell of a risk hanging that in here. Jackie’s parents were far from evangelicals, but they were definitely the type to sit you down and give you a serious talk about making smart choices and making the ‘right’ friends upon seeing such a thing.  

“Shocked your Mom didn’t flip her lid. Hell, shocked you can even hang posters in here,” she remarked.

Jackie coldly smiled. 

“Don’t think it wasn’t a struggle,” she said sharply, “Worth it if her yuppie feathers get ruffled by a few scruffy English lads.”

Her attempt at a fake British accent was horrific stuff. Natalie couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“Look at you, little rebel. It’s cool. You’ve got a nice place,” she complimented. 

Natalie feels weird about the compliment. Everywhere is ‘nice’ when you’re trailer trash. 

Trailer trash. How funny. 

She remembered when Jackie called her that on the first day of practice. Saying it not because she meant it, or because she even really wanted to hurt Natalie, but because she knew it was what someone who looked like her was supposed to say to someone who looked like Nat. 

It was nearly unfathomable to think it started out that way. Nat brought it up with her once, and Jackie was so eager to apologize that she nearly made Nat feel bad for her. 

Natalie found it refreshing. Normally, girls their age had to commit to their archetypes so steadfastly. Jackie seemed to belong to hers because she fit there, not because she wanted it. She wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable and even admit that she was wrong, two things the world at large seemed to be incapable of by Nat’s own assessment. There was an alternate version of Natalie out there somewhere who was born into better circumstances and ended up as Jackie. 

“Do you want it?” Jackie asks, not realizing that it almost sounded like she’d offered Natalie her home.

She knew what she meant, thankfully. Something unspoken still hung in the air between them, so she chalked it up to that being the cause. 

“Do I want… your poster?” Nat asks, pointing back at the poster. 

Jackie nods enthusiastically before raising her top over her head. Natalie immediately turns to the side, away from full view of her changing, and hastily sets the clothes down on the corner of the desk as she begins to do the same. 

And she looks unfathomably nervous. Why? They weren’t exactly strangers to this. 

It felt different because Natalie hadn’t worn a bra, making her blush visibly red- even with the lights off. Thankfully, she’d ‘hidden’ herself just in time, but Jackie’s traveling  eyes never threatened to look there specifically, anyway. 

“Nah, that’s okay, looks good here,” Natalie remarked absently as she quickly pulled the shirt over her head.

She easily could’ve been imagining things, but it seemed as though Jackie’s acting abilities were a bit more hit-and-miss around her specifically. Case in point: Jackie was clearly lying about when she bought that poster. She didn’t want to be blowing smoke up her own ass, but it really seemed as though she bought it with the express intent of trying to impress her. Not that she was some deity owed tribute, Jackie really did just get dramatically more transparent when she removed her clothes. Some truly B-movie tier stuff.

Should it have bothered her more?

Jackie pulled up her shorts as she turned around, inhaling and exhaling deeply as she swallowed the fading temptation. Sure, either one of them could’ve changed in the bathroom, but they were tired. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t shed clothing in front of each other before. 

That still didn’t change the fact that Jackie rushed to her alarm clock when Natalie hopped into the legs of her shorts, quickly showing herself without pants and making it clear that blushes were, in fact, contagious. 

As Jackie sat on the edge of her bed right after making sure her alarm was set, Natalie just dropped to the center of the room on the floor, carefully pushing the incredibly dense suitcase off to the side. She sat cross-legged, palms flat on the floor as she leaned back, looking up at her teammate. 

“So, we gonna talk about what’s bugging you, or did you actually bring me here to look at posters?” Natalie asked, a grin on her face that she tried her best to decorate with sympathy.

Jackie didn’t really react at first.

“Besides drinking way too much, way too fast?” she incredulously posited, “Besides leaving for nationals tomorrow and being really stressed out about it? Besides… Jeff giving me the cold shoulder? Nope.”

Jackie settled herself onto the bed, looking back at Natalie without breaking eye contact. Even when she was honest with her, it felt like a performance. It was the one thing she didn’t really care for about her. Dispense with the theatrics and just be vulnerable if you were gonna get all mushy. 

Nat’s smile went a bit lopsided. It wasn’t like she didn’t see this coming. Or didn’t warn her. But in these instances, even Nat knew that people didn’t want to be told ‘I told you so’ when this stuff happened. They wanted an ear, a shoulder to cry on, the things that Nat had permanently designated herself as for Jackie’s sake. Maybe then she could usher herself out of her own self-imposed exile.

“Yeah,” Nat said with an understanding nod, immediately before squinting with one eye and tilting her head to the side, “Ya need a hug?”

Jackie couldn’t find it within her to figure out why or how, but she really liked when Natalie did that. She didn’t know anyone else who did, but when she asked a question that threatened to cross a boundary, she’d give her that little tell right beforehand. She didn’t think Nat was fully conscious of it, so she didn’t say anything out of fear she’d try and stop. She liked it. It gave her some extra personality… not that she was ever short on that. 

Jackie felt her composure fading in the way you did whenever you were really sad, and your parents asked you if you were okay, and your only response was to just revert to being a crying child. Just a helpless animal they could cradle when everything felt just a little too scary. 

She had only been kicking her feet on the edge of the bed for a few seconds before she abruptly stopped, her shoulders sank, and her face seemed to smear itself into something that looked much, much sadder than the fake Jackie that had spoken to her dad just a minute ago.

She didn’t answer her. She just nodded before the tears came.

Nat leapt up, walking over to the bed and climbing onto the edge to get beside her, throwing her arm over her shoulder like she wanted to do earlier as she began crying milliseconds before burying her face into her teammate's nearest shoulder. She exhaled nothing but sobs, muffled by the sound of the cries disappearing into the very shirt she’d just been given. 

This was still more or less unexpected. Jackie was not ever one to lose control of her emotions. One of her key traits was her ability to put up a front. She could be sad or angry, sure, but never so much that it would keep her from doing what needed to be done. The Jackie in front of her right now would’ve been lucky if she were capable of making a bowl of cereal. 

She more or less knew why. It was a little bit of everything. She would listen to her elaborate, of course, but Nat couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen the signs that something was coming in the last few weeks. She just hadn’t quite expected it to be… this. 

Her palm and fingers made large, circular motions on Jackie’s back as Nat calmly repeated ‘shhh’ over and over again, the only real thing in her repertoire that she knew to do in a situation like this. It was the last way she remembered being physically consoled by her mother before she stopped paying attention to her altogether. Thankfully, it seemed to do the trick, which assuaged her worries quickly. She just wished it felt like it was more effective, as Jackie felt a hundred times more fragile when she cried.

“He said he’s met someone else,” she sniffled and blubbered before grabbing a tissue on her bedside table and blowing her nose, tossing the tissue away, “I know, huge surprise. Who could’ve seen it coming?”

At least she’s self-aware…

Even though it wasn’t a surprise, and she did see it coming, she had no desire to kick someone while they were down. Though, she couldn’t lie, part of her was glad. Cutting out the tumor before it had a chance to become malignant was always the way to go; not many people got an up close look at the worst case scenario of that very circumstance quite like she did. It wasn’t as though she saw Jackie Taylor one day turning into Nat’s own mother, but a version of Jackie could turn into a version of her mom, given the right circumstances. Jackie didn’t deserve that. Hell, Jeff probably didn’t deserve it. Their hypothetical child in their potentially loveless marriage didn’t either. 

“He s-said t-that… that he wanted to tell me before I left. So we could have a clean break, whatever the fuck that means,” she said, sounding as confused as she did heartbroken.

Natalie leaned in, pulling Jackie a little closer.

“Shithead,” Natalie remarked plainly, “You wanna know something, though? He’s right.”

Jackie didn’t stop crying, not exactly, but Nat could now add confusion to the mix of unpleasant emotions that were very visible on her face. 

“H-He’s what?” she asked, real frustration buried beneath the snot.

Nat nodded, slowing her hand’s circular motions to try and get her away from the edge of being a total emotional wreck. 

“Listen to me,” Natalie said, reaching forward as she took advantage of Jackie’s attention being caught, wiping the tears from her cheeks with her free thumb, “Jeff Sadecki is a fucking loser. Am I saying this because I’m kissing your ass right now?”

Jackie smiled, a half-formed laugh pathetically escaping her mouth as she was caught between emotions. One persistent confirmation of lingering dread, the other soft, warm, temporary relief. She wished whatever feeling temporarily alleviated the weird pain in her chest that came from Natalie reassuring her, both verbally and physically, could be bottled up and accessed any time. It felt like the only adequate remedy for the plague of uncertainty she’d been saddled with. 

She shook her head, unable to even mouth ‘no’ due to trying to hold her composure for the sake of conversation.

Natalie could tell she was trying, so she picked it back up to buy her time.

“Exactly,” she confirmed, enunciating softly, but with deliberate intent, “I am saying this because it is true, alright? He did you a favor. You wanna know why?”

Jackie looked at her like a clueless child. Something about whatever that look either was, or came from utterly broke Nat’s heart.

“Why?” she asked, swallowing a sob and sniffling.

“Because if you hooked up with him tonight, you would spend the entire time at nationals worrying,” she said, “You would be freaking out. ‘Ahhh! Does Jeff really like me?’ or ‘Ahhh! Are we gonna work out when I get back?’ would be the beginning and ending of what is going to be on your mind. Then, you’d be distracted, you wouldn’t be fully committed to being your best, and you’d fuck up. Not because you’re a fuck up, but because Jeff is a horny loser. Then, you would come home, and you’d be wondering for the rest of your life what that championship would’ve looked like without Jeff Sadecki. Best case scenario? You win, take home that trophy, and you finally get enough self-respect to realize you can do better. Like, way better.”

While Natalie had never been one to leave a stone unturned when it came to dressing someone down when it was required of her, even she felt that bubble up out of nowhere. She didn’t realize just how much animosity she’d built up around Jeff just by proxy. 

Jackie looked… a little stunned. In fact, she looked as though she actually needed to think about what had been said to her. Her eyes, after a few seconds, became a little vacant as they now aimed themselves down. Natalie wanted to exercise patience, but she worried she had maybe been too harsh.

“You’re… right-”

Oh thank you sweet Jesus

“- about him, I think,” Jackie continued, “Jeff… could be the best guy in the world. Once we come back from nationals, winners or losers, things are gonna be different, aren’t they? If we’re losers… I want it to be because we lost. If we win… if he and I were together, I feel like that takes away from it, doesn’t it? Like… like his-”

“Like his penis was the good luck charm we needed all along?” Natalie posed, very much hoping her brand of humor wasn’t too uncouth for the present moment.

She got another laugh out of her. This one had a little bit more behind it. She was still wiping off her face every few seconds, sniffling like she had a coke problem, but she was getting herself together. Before, she really had seemed vacant. She wasn’t sure what Jackie was right now, but this seemed like an improvement.

“I mean, I didn’t want to put too fine a point on it,” Jackie said quietly, a little humor in her voice again, “But… yeah. Don’t you kinda think so? No matter what happens, I just wanna own this, you know? If I fuck it all up… then…”

She mimicked an ‘explosion’ sound with her mouth, putting her hands together and then breaking them apart in concert with her sound effects. Nat couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Boom. If it all blows up in my face, I want it to be because I lit the fuse. Not… not fucking Jeff Sadecki. Ugh.”

Natalie patted her on the back, earning a surprised widening of her eyes accompanied by laughter that easily overlapped itself. 

“That’s the spirit! Look at you!” she encouraged, as genuinely happy as she’d been all week, “As easy on the eyes as ever.”

Jackie blushed again, a smile now flashing even though it was self-conscious and deeply awkward, one she felt like she’d shown off an awful lot recently. Debatably too much. Naturally, none of that little, silly shit mattered to Nat. She was one of the few people Jackie knew she could laugh at herself around without feeling like someone else was honing in on her imperfections- not that this behavior came from anywhere, of course.

She really did hate her mom some days. 

“I’ll let you know when I’m feeling happier, and not just really good at faking it,” Jackie responded, “Once nationals are over, then maybe I can breathe. Have a normal ‘last summer’ with my pal, Natalie.”

She playfully punched Natalie in the shoulder as she leaned out of her embrace, which Natalie would’ve never admitted she wanted to last longer. 

“Once you win Nationals-”

“Once we win Nationals,” Jackie pointedly corrected.

“Once we win Nationals,” Nat repeated with minor ire, since Jackie definitely knew how much she hated being both interrupted and corrected, causing a playful squint to narrow her gaze, “Then you will have to show me what the Hell a ‘normal summer’ is. Don’t think I’ve had one of those.”

Jackie couldn’t maintain her newly formed look of wary optimism; the final part of Nat’s sentence seemed to kill it as soon as it reared its head. She suddenly looked as though she had something important to say, and Natalie wasn’t quite prepared for a possible role reversal.

“Maybe we can try? To give you one?” Jackie asked, placing her hand on Natalie's knee.

She was too preoccupied with where this was going to comment on Jackie’s phlegm-covered hand touching her bare skin.

“W-Whaddya mean?” she asked, trying to keep her cool.

Jackie cleared her throat. The universal indicator that Nat was about to hear something well-intentioned but inescapably sad.

“Well, I’ve been talking with my parents lately,” Jackie began, “And they see you every day they pick me up from practice. They know you stay with me and Coach to help clean up. Dad asked if you needed a ride home one day and… I sorta told them about you.”

The knot in Nat’s gut felt like it was so dense, so heavy that her center of gravity changed. Now she thought she was in danger of throwing up. She rapidly blinked, which Jackie came to see was the telltale sign of an upset Natalie. 

She attempted to get in front of this trolley before it hurt anybody.

“Before you say anything!” Jackie rushed out, “I just told them that you live with your mom, and that she’s going on vacation this summer. You were going to stay home by yourself, of course, but I told them I wanted to spend my last vacation with somebody. I told them you. You live in town, your mother is always very busy, and she didn’t have time to coordinate since she got a deal on her cruise, remember? Thank God she got those days off at her job so soon, right?”

… wow…

Nat was, unfortunately, definitely in danger of throwing up. Two core concerns her present nervousness would’ve found difficult to handle on its own, but a collision of both proved to be legitimately fear-inducing.

She literally did not know what to say. 

The fact that Jackie even knew- without even asking or ever once probing about her home life- to keep a lid on her mom to anybody at all was stunning enough as is. Natalie didn’t want people to know her, and thankfully, that was one of the few blessings she’d been afforded. They lived on the side of town nobody wanted to go through, not willingly, anyway. So, to the other residents of their New Jersey town, Natalie was merely a ghost you could catch out and about every so often. It had been shockingly easy to keep to herself, all things considered. Everyone knew Nat was kinda fucked up, she was simply grateful most people didn’t know the extent to which that was true. Except for Jackie. She was allowed to know if she really wanted to, but Nat liked that she hadn’t tried to interrogate her on it.

You really are a miracle, Taylor.

It sounded lame and melodramatic, but she would’ve killed for her. Because if not for her, then who?

And now she could get away. At least for a little while. 

It was a good thing her mom didn’t want anything to do with her these days. Even if she slept at that place some people called her home, she felt invisible. 

Will she even notice?

But it wasn’t about being invisible. At least not all the time. It was about being associated with… any of the shit she was associated with that wasn’t a burden of her own choosing. If only Natalie Scatorccio knew of a way to impress upon people that she would’ve smoked, drank, and swore even with a stable home life- stability they assumed she lacked just from one look at her. It was true, of course, but that certainly didn’t make dealing with all this any easier. 

This was just who she was. Not everything was some Freudian extension of her problems. They all didn’t need to know about what living with her Mom was like. They didn’t need to know about her Dad accidentally blowing his brains out after she nearly did it to him herself. They also didn’t need to know that her entire personality actually wasn’t the direct result of some shitty stuff that happened to her. Shitty stuff they didn’t even know the half of, but assumed they did, because stories like hers weren’t exactly special, were they? 

They did not need to know any of it. 

Or… maybe they did. Maybe that would’ve solved some of her problems. 

She assumed when people inevitably got a closer look at her home or her mother, that they would just connect the dots. She still didn’t know if she was actually afraid of people connecting them, or was actually afraid that the connected dots really did mean something after all. 

And somehow, this girl knew all that. She didn’t ask ahead of time, which was sort of its own problem, but she couldn’t focus on that. Jackie Taylor was much more observant than she seemed.

Suddenly, it felt like Natalie had lived the last few months of her life under a magnifying glass. She enjoyed Jackie’s company because she didn’t feel scrutinized; how had she been able to read her like this, unless…?

“You’re mad,” Jackie said, perusing Natalie’s face as she wiped away more tears and regained the steadiness in her voice, just in time to turn the tables completely.

Natalie shook her head. She felt as though she was in an emotional frenzy, but felt as though she were in unfamiliar territory because she was also… calm. There was no threat. No danger. No thing in the distance, slouching towards her, waiting to devastate her entire life in the blink of an eye. 

There was just Jackie.

“N-No,” Nat answered, sounding surprised to even herself, “I’m not mad, I’m… you really did that? Lied to your parents to try and get me to stay with you this summer?”

Jackie’s countenance went from ‘concerned but optimistic’ to ‘devastated’ rather quickly, which, considering the evening’s events, felt kind of appropriate. 

“Yeah, I did,” she answered as though it were a confession, “I knew there were probably, like, more than a few logistics that wouldn’t work out, but we could iron out the details before we got back. I just figured I would need to butter up my parents- especially Mom- for a little while, and, honestly, they were cool with it. I… think Dad may have guilted her into it after… well, whatever.”

Nat clenched her teeth. She didn’t need to know. If she did, she might’ve done something she’d really, truly regret. 

“Unless… you have a problem with it?” Jackie continued, picking up on her discomfort, “Which I completely understand if you do; I did it without clearing it with you, and I may have implied that your Mom is a little flighty and very… busy. With her business. That she runs.”

Nat unclenched her jaw, softly smiling as Jackie’s tone quieted. 

“You know the one,” she awkwardly continued,  “T-The one that she leaves you on your own for an… awful lot. That one.”

She looked back at Nat, half-wincing. There was real disappointment in the soccer captain’s eyes. She sincerely thought she had messed something up. 

As far as Nat could tell, Jackie did not seem to know a whole lot about her past based on what she could immediately infer. She would’ve neglected to mention her Mom altogether had she known everything, which signaled to her that she had only a vague idea at best. 

Even still, she managed to find an avenue to make this weird little thing possible. 

Presenting this much context could only mean she knew enough to want to show off just how much she knew. It was precisely so Natalie didn’t have to go telling her about any of it out of obligation, something Nat did actually dread and just figured would vanish once the summer was over and everyone went away. She had no college prospects, but it wasn’t as though she was losing anyone or anything.

She would be now, and part of her resented that she could see herself actually being open with the one thing she’d miss. Maybe not now, but one day, sure. 

Natalie was looking everywhere Jackie wasn’t, and Jackie could tell. Thankfully, in keeping with this conversation, she could intuit that. She would give her as much time as she needed, which, in its own way, was suffocating. Nat was used to being hurried along. Rushed forward. Not given the time she needed, and only succeeding in a given situation through survival instincts rather than learned aptitude. Some people called that having ‘street smarts’- Natalie called it fucking infuriating. 

When her sheepish expression finally looked up to timidly meet her teammate’s face, an expression that was totally foreign to Jackie until that exact moment, she felt something inside her crack open and spill. There was no coming back from tonight, was there? She had a core memory here, forming as they spoke. No matter what happened after all this, she knew she’d carry tonight forward with her. 

“I’m not mad,” she said, lightly shaking her head to make it one-thousand percent clear, “Jackie… you asshole, that’s the sweetest goddamn thing anybody’s ever done for me.”

The tears of joy were obscured because she lunged forward so fast, hugging Jackie, because she had no idea what else to do besides that. Laughter burst out of her because there was no other reaction in her emotional inventory that did the job. It took Jackie a moment to read the situation, as well as a moment to reel back and keep herself upright on the bed with the flat of her palm. Natalie was a tight hugger.

She pulled back, aware she was probably smothering her, wiping away the sniffles accumulating beneath her own nostrils that she’d been so cognizant of earlier. They were both gross, but at least they were gross together.

“I highly doubt that, but I’m happy to oblige,” Jackie said as they gathered their bearings and sat back up fully, “I know that was kinda sudden. I was gonna tell you once we were at the airport, but now felt… right. I didn’t wanna wait. If Jeff isn’t going to make tonight special… then we’ll just have to, right?”

Natalie ghosted a brief nod, looking back at the captain with a sly grin that carried a lot more weight than a toothy, feigned, yearbook smile ever could. 

“I like the way you think, Taylor,” she said, “But, for the record, I’m not kidding.”

Jackie looked confused. Natalie was still smiling, but something did feel wrong about it. 

“Not… kidding…?” she asked.

Natalie exhaled very briefly, flaring her nostrils; her expression remained unchanged, but Jackie couldn’t help but think of the way she’d seen bulls breathe out through their noses before they charged at a matador. 

Whatever it was that she was preparing herself for, it vanished, evaporating as she took another deep breath before speaking again. 

“It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” Natalie said with resolute quiet, her face uncharacteristically soft as she spoke.

Jackie’s eyes got all big and glassy, but she looked away for a key second and sniffled, returning to her previous position, seemingly unfazed. Natalie couldn’t help but wonder if this profound lack of subtlety managed to fool anyone else on the team, or if this was a unique struggle the girl had with her. 

“That’s… you… you mean that, don’t you?” Jackie’s face scrunched up, becoming skeptical and disconcerted. 

Natalie delivered a series of quick, wordless nods. Just a succession of simple, repetitive motions that allowed her to obfuscate the touchiness of what this all truly meant.

“Yeah,” she answered, looking at the comforter she was sitting on, “I just… didn’t want you to think I wasn’t grateful.” 

She didn’t want to look at Jackie right now. She hated that she didn’t. She should’ve still probably been hugging her, giving her the gift of a potentially fun summer vacation that, to her, only existed in myth. Her one word answer told the other girl everything she needed to know. Nat wasn’t the only one trying to figure something or someone out, and this answered a good many of that someone’s questions. Why didn’t she talk about her parents? Why doesn’t she mention what street she lives on? How come I don’t see her talking to many people in the hallway? Why does the team seem so hot and cold with her sometimes?- all of it felt a little more obvious now. 

She suspected that Nat’s home life was bad for a while, but she knew that whatever was happening, it was much, much worse in reality than in mere supposition. 

“So… can I tell you something?” Jackie asked, her voice sensitive and eager not to press any unnecessary buttons by being too harsh. 

Nat nodded rapidly again, not taking her eyes away from where she had them laser-focused on the bed.

“I promise it’s not because I feel sorry for you,” she said, instantly earning Nat’s attention, “I just… wanted to give you something. Before the summer ends and we go to college, I wanted you to know that no matter what, one person really wanted you here. Like, really, really wanted you here. Because you’re the only person they feel like they can really talk to.”

Jackie Taylor. Seen, but not heard. Known of, but not known. She was popular, but what about her was popular? It was her smile. Her honeyed voice. Her voluminous hair. Her unflinching optimism that seemed to disappear around Natalie. Something she still hoped wasn’t as bad as it sounded. 

And it was far from the first time Natalie had been told such a thing. She had ‘one of those faces that makes you wanna open up’ or however the saying goes. Nat just always figured she was quiet and was a decent blank canvas for venting one’s issues. She didn’t think herself better for it, in fact, she wanted to start charging for it because it happened often enough and random enough to be inconvenient. This time really was different though. She enjoyed listening to Jackie talk. She was bubbly and goofy, but she wasn’t an airheaded idiot either. Normally, those types found Natalie intimidating or off-putting. It was sort of new for them both. She could toss in her two cents when she wanted to or when it mattered, and it could be about anything from grunge bands to advice on how to best cuss out a guy who won’t leave you be. 

“That isn’t all,” Jackie continued, and she shimmied herself over to being next to her pillow.

She stretched herself out, laying on her back and resting her head on top of it, her positioning clearly mimicking Snow White in her glass coffin, sans the flowers. She smirked at Nat, which was the only thing that really seemed to diffuse the situation for the punk.

She patted the space next to her on the bed. Nat crawled over to the other side, and did exactly as Jackie did, both of them staring at the ceiling because it was much, much easier than looking at each other. Did either of them know why? Not at all. Did that suddenly alleviate the tension? Nope.

“So… I was going to try and talk about this after you agreed to stay. If you agreed to stay, I should say,” Jackie clarified, “Can I ask you something personal? It doesn’t have anything to do with… w-with anyone. Besides you.”

Nat felt the two tides of ‘relief’ and ‘anxiety’ pushing hard on either side of her as she mentally swayed about, feeling so adrift that gravity no longer felt like it mattered. It wasn’t the possibility of them talking about her Mom that bothered her; it was the potential for whatever the hell would cause Jackie to ask permission like that. She wasn’t aware of many more terrible, dark, life-defining secrets she held from Jackie. At least not presently.

“Shoot,” she said, trying to sound far less invested than she was.

“I get why you keep to yourself. Honestly? If I could, at this point, I probably would,” Jackie began “My whole life is just kinda… already built around me being this person. Homecoming Queen. Captain of the Soccer Team. Honors Student. It doesn’t feel like it’s… mine, y’know? It was something I feel like I just… inherited.”

Nat knew a thing or two about that. 

“But,” Jackie continued, “The idea of just… leaving it all behind? Saying ‘fuck it’ and just running away into another life? It’s been this weird on-and-off fantasy I keep having. Ever since I met you, it just keeps popping into my head. You know that song? Fast Car? Tracy Chapman?”

Ever since you met me?

Of course she did. She nodded, not finding it necessary to impress upon Jackie how vital the music of the queer balladeer had been to her as an important early discovery of hers since she found the CD with that song on it in a garage sale once. 

“Sometimes I think about that song and I just… imagine myself,” she said, “I know it probably sounds gross, me envying this kind of thing, but ‘working in the market as a checkout girl’? It sounds simple. Humble. You don’t have to worry about being the best, or even a good cashier. I don’t think I’d mind it.”

Even if her instinct was to admonish, she couldn’t. She did get it. Having to live your life according to any pre-set expectations was going to feel weird and dissonant, even if you didn’t realize it. 

“I get it. Your mom is hard on you,” Natalie said, bravely taking a leap forward into not beating around the bush, “An escape sounds nice. Who the fuck doesn’t wanna get away?”

Jackie held back the urge to turn her head and examine Natalie’s rather striking profile. Keeping their stares aimed at the ceiling was just… optimal. An unspoken pact to just let the words flow out of them, nothing to potentially mix any signals with pesky things like ‘facial expressions’ or anything of the sort.

“Yeah,” Jackie said, “You got a plan to get us outta here?”

Nat thought Jackie may have skipped a few steps, but even if she did, she didn’t care. They were being honest right now. This was a new thing for her.

“Work in the market as a checkout girl,” she repeated flatly with a grin, “Just save enough money until I can get out. It’s vague, but it's all I got.”

Jackie was simply glad she didn’t think her weird for what felt like fetishizing being poor. It probably sounded rich on multiple levels, coming from her. It was just one of the easier lives to envision that didn’t include her mother. 

“We sure do have some great, well-thought-out plans for our future, huh?” Jackie chuckled, only mildly beleaguered with herself, “My plan to lose my virginity falls through, and suddenly I’m making life goals and talking about running away from home. My plans don’t even have time to properly fail before I draw up new ones- that will also probably fail!”

They both couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Feel like any ‘plan’ to lose your virginity is gonna go south, and not in the way you want,” Nat followed up, “It’s usually best to not have a plan when it comes to this stuff. Usually, it just happens. If you have all these expectations, you’ll be disappointed. Only degree I’ll ever get is in that. Disappointment.” 

Natalie was very grateful Jackie never questioned her bonafides when it came to advice with relationships or anything even remotely physical. Natalie was, at present, as sexless and virginal as they came- even if she did everything to project that this was not the case. She liked that it intimidated people. Coupled with her actual drinking, her actual smoking, and her occasional drug usage, it was just easy to toss in with the rest of it. She was just well-read enough to mimic sounding like a real person. She at least knew enough about social norms to not go around saying she related to Holden Caulfield so much, even if she absolutely did. 

Jackie snorted, a rolodex of ‘guys she’d given way too much of her limited time on this Earth’ flipping through her head. Just from a cursory look at the eligible bachelors of Wiskayok, yeah, she couldn’t really fight Nat on that one. Jeff very much included.

There were good guys out there. They both knew that. They were also just keenly aware that there were no good teenage guys out there. Not here, at the very least. 

“I guess so. Is that just… how it is? Is everyone’s first time disappointing?” Jackie wondered aloud, “Kinda feel like every girl I know has been disappointed by it. Maybe guys are just like that.”

Nat shrugged.

“I’m sure one or two people are the exception, I just know that I have yet to meet such an ‘exception’ in my lifetime,” she jested, “I wouldn’t tear myself up over it, honestly. You’ll probably meet some guy in college, and some guy with at least marginally better game than fucking Jeff Sadecki-”

They both couldn’t help but laugh just at how she said his name. And, really, his name in general. 

“- will sweep you off your feet,” Natalie continued, “Or maybe he’ll last about two minutes with you, call it quits, and forget to call you back the next morning. Like I said, don’t expect much, you won’t feel disappointed.”

Neither of them so much as moved the spot on the ceiling they’d been focusing on, which was rather impressive when Jackie shoved Nat, nearly bouncing her atop the mattress as her head remained mostly in-place.

“Eugh. Two minutes?” Jackie exclaimed, making a face after considering it, “I think my brain went directly to ‘bad sex’ and not ‘short sex’ but… shit, you’re right.”

Jackie pouted. Natalie just snorted. God, she really was concerned about this, huh?

“What’s so funny?” Jackie fired back.

“Nothing,” Nat reassured her, “Look, far be it from me to defend Jeff Sadecki-”

“But you love him so much, Nat,” Jackie delivered in about as much of a ‘dry’ tone as she was capable of.

Nat had been laying it on a little thick that night. Yeah, sure, they weren’t ‘dating’ dating or anything, but he had still more or less broken up with her! At the very least, he’d been insensitive and hurt her feelings, which made him more than a willing victim of her potential punishment in her eyes. 

“And I’ve always said that about him,” Natalie joked, adding a bit of demure faux-elegance to her words before returning to her usual self, “But, seriously, Jeff? He’s just as likely or unlikely to be as good in bed as anybody. It depends way more on you.”

Jackie couldn’t help but arch her brow. 

“It depends on me?” she asked, genuinely surprised, “I mean, I know we gotta work a little extra to get there and all, but I figured whoever it would be with would just… y’know. Take charge. Do his thing. Maybe I’ll get off, but I probably won’t. Still, it’ll be a good time.”

Nat knew Jackie wasn’t looking at her face, but she still couldn’t help but let her mouth hang open. Jesus Christ, was this what girls actually expected sex to be like? Was the bar truly that low? And, since it was so clearly that low, why the Hell did Jackie want to clear it so badly?

“God, if we’re going to live together for any stretch of time, you need to get better standards,” Nat said in a tone that was only half-kidding, “No, dude. I mean it depends on you, as in, what you look like.”

Natalie Scatorccio, what the FUCK are you doing?

“What I look like?” Jackie repeated, legitimately incredulous at this development.

Natalie, think about this for a minute…

“Yeah,” Natalie failed to elaborate, “You have to consider what you look like.”

Jackie’s face began to curl up in confusion. 

“Like, how I’m dressed? I don’t own lingerie; that’s a little bourgeois even for me,” she confessed.

Do NOT let your mind go there, Natalie, for the love of God-

“No,” Natalie playfully scoffed, “You don’t even need the money, but seriously, don’t waste it. You don’t need any help getting them to get it up. You’re so hot that anybody will have a tough time lasting long.”

JESUS FUCK, NATALIE

Jackie blinked. Did she hear that correctly?

“Oh? I don’t? You been asking all the boys for tips lately?” she asked, clearly finding the notion rather amusing for reasons she couldn’t fully articulate at the moment.

Come on, man, you’re making this too easy.

She really hoped that her immediate leap to an attempt at a joke meant she was out of hot water, particularly because of her friend's less than stellar phrasing. Even in present circumstances, Natalie’s mind couldn’t help but be set ablaze by her friend’s accidental innuendo. 

“Boys’ tips? Please, Jackie. Who do you take me for, Lottie?” Nat melodramatically riposted, hoping a joke might diffuse the bomb she’d just lit.

Thankfully, after a few seconds of trying to figure out if and why it was funny, Jackie ultimately arrived in favor of it, cackling right alongside a rather relieved Natalie. 

“Well, clearly this means I have a gift. I don’t need any special attire to tame the wild beast that is… the common teenage boy! I command them at my whim in the hopes they may bed me! Oh! Should you call me the ‘Tip Whisperer’?” Jackie asked, punctuating her question with far more laughter than she intended, as if she had borrowed the joke from elsewhere and it somehow hadn’t just emerged from her chaotic id.

She spoke with the gravity and faux fervor of a terrifying ad executive. Depending on what she did with her life, she was going to be a force to be reckoned with. 

That one got Nat so hard she very nearly choked. She had to shove her again for that, purely out of principle. 

“I will never call you, or anyone else that, for as long as I live,” Nat swore, still recovering from laughter, “At least be more dignified if you’re gonna invent a new way to call yourself a slut.”

Jackie rolled her eyes.

“Hey, I’m not the one hypothetically conversing with guys about their dicks,” Jackie retorted.

If only Nat had seen her just do it, she would’ve known to roll her eyes even harder than Jackie just had.

“You literally just were. Like, literal seconds ago. And no, I’m not doing that, hypothetically or no,” Nat declared rather emphatically, “Don’t project.”

Jackie started laughing, but this time, Nat really didn’t have any idea why. In fact, when she tried to figure out exactly what had been so funny, a mild panic developed in her. She didn’t even know why. It had only been a few seconds, it was just incredibly rare for the two girls to not be on the same page in each other’s presence.

“I’m not projecting!” Jackie insisted, “And what’s the matter, ya big lez, you don’t wanna chat with all those dumb, smelly, muscle-y guys about their junk?”

Briefly, there was silence. 

I almost actually got away there, didn’t I? Shit. 

As Jackie’s residual laughter from before continued with her chuckling copiously at her own joke, she discovered for the first time since they’d arrived there, they were not laughing at the exact same time. The way the sound traveled in her room when it was just her was distinctly so much… lonelier.

She felt as though the wind was knocked out of her when she turned to her left, head shifting quickly so hesitation didn’t hold her back. She was mildly alarmed to discover that Natalie was already looking at her, having turned her own head to the right, her mouth open just a bit to signify either surprise or the girl struggling to force something out of her lungs. 

There had been little tiny hints of it beforehand, and even though she felt it shivering up her spine whenever she thought about potentially going home, she had not felt this precise brand of actual, genuine, animal-brain fear that night until that very moment. It was unmistakable, despite Jackie definitely never having seen her like this before. 

They stared, and as soon as Jackie asked herself why she was being stared at, she more or less knew.

“If… one did like guys… that is maybe something one might do,” Nat croaked out slowly, like she was in the process of coughing up glass.

For another minute, they just looked at one another again. The only motion that either could register was the other occasionally blinking. That really had been the most elegant way she had at her disposal to put that, somehow. 

“One?” Jackie repeated slowly, nodding in Nat’s direction, “But ‘one’ is… not you?”

Natalie’s frightened animal stare persisted. It was like coming across a raccoon in the middle of the night, turning towards an overwhelming source of light only to panic and freeze up. In the brief moment it had before it was hit by the car, Natalie bore a striking resemblance to it. 

She had never told this to anyone. She had never even fully thought it. Usually, it was something she dismissed. Yeah, I could do ‘Seven Minutes in Heaven’ with a girl- she once thought a long time ago, the literal straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a question she considered briefly, said ‘yes of course’ to, and then discarded. Case closed. 

Kissing girls was normal. It was how most girls learned how to. At least, some books and movies told her that was true. She never had, so she figured it was still likely considering she didn’t exactly have friends to verify it with. So… maybe it was less normal. But, still not crazy or anything, of course.

But… what was crazy? What did that mean? Why did saying ‘yes’ to a question she had asked herself seem to bother her this much? 

She knew. She had known since she answered the query; she just ignored it. Natalie Scatorccio, professional conflict avoider. Why would now be any different? It’s not like it mattered. It wasn’t as if-

“One is not me,” she repeated with a bit more fluidity, her mouth moving and her brain only just catching up, “Not… something one would enjoy. One, uh… one enjoys girls more.”

She felt like she was running in first place for an Olympic medal in the ‘worst way to word something’ category. Really? This was how this was happening? She comes out to the first person who manages to put it together, and she can’t manage to string together a coherent thought? An immediate faceplant?

But…

But it was…

But it was Jackie.

It was Jackie, and… she didn’t feel bad?

“I knew it,” Jackie said, a smile curling onto her lips as her eyes narrowed.

Nat could still only manage to blink. Perhaps she’d spoken too soon. 

“Beg pardon?” she asked, sounding at least twice as pathetic as she’d meant to. 

Jackie looked back from the empty space she’d made her sudden declaration to over to Nat, who looked like she was in the process of turning sheet-white. It was no small feat, particularly because she was quite pale. 

“Sorry… I really didn’t think about how that sounded out loud before I just… said it,” she said, quickly looking around as though she were attempting to locate some scattered files that she’d dropped. 

Jackie took a moment to herself within the quiet that settled over the room in order to focus herself. After all, she really didn’t want to have come this far, only to blow it all up at the last possible minute.

“So, what? You guys are all taking bets now?” Natalie asked with a grin, “Oh, wow, you put money down on the trashy, inbred girl with the mullet who writes poetry and plays women’s sports. Bet you feel like a fuckin’ genius.”

Jackie chuckled, the worry that set in upon her broaching this sensitive topic was starting to fade. With every passing second Nat didn’t run out of the room screaming and crying, it was easier to deal with.

“I’m not saying it's a bad thing. I just… thought so. Good to… know that I’m right sometimes,” the team captain said, quieter with each successive word.

Anybody could tell her heart wasn’t really in that one. She tried to do more conversational calculus in her head to steer this back on track, leaving an opening for Nat to worry. 

It’s not like she had a frame of reference. Was this supposed to be how it was? Was Jackie totally weirded out? Was she going to have to leave?

She really didn’t want to.

“Sorry I… called you a ‘big lez’ a minute ago. I was… probing,” Jackie said, beginning to fidget with her hands idly as they rested atop her torso.

She didn’t need to- wait, what had she just said?

Natalie sat up on the bed, legs still laying parallel to Jackie’s, but hoisted her top half up so she was looking down at the other girl.

“You what?” Natalie asked, deeply worried about the implications of a single word.

Jackie swallowed nervously, looking back up towards the ceiling with a newfound essence of worry on her face. This was even more distinct. There was something more inexplicably painful about it. Natalie feels like she sees new facets and micro-emotions of this girl almost every day, and here she didn’t even have proper names for how she seemed to feel at a given moment. 

“I wanted to know for sure if you were,” she said in a steady exhale, “I sorta wanted to know how you knew.”

Natalie’s face contorted past disgust and went straight to bewilderment.

How did Natalie discover she wasn’t straight?

Well, there was the aforementioned ‘Seven Minutes In Heaven’ story that she’d recalled earlier that evening. It was a fairly specific, rather vivid moment, but it didn’t quite feel like the right answer. That was, more specifically, when Natalie realized she was at least a little bicurious. As to what outright confirmed it, though?

Natalie blushed again. She only did that around Jackie. It was getting annoying.

“I-It’s nothing funny or scandalous or anything,” she admitted, still unable to hide a mildly embarrassed smile, “You know the movie ‘Basic Instinct’?”

Jackie’s discerning squint was gone before it had even fully solidified on her face- it just instantly resulted in a pair of wide, mildly fearful eyes, no doubt picturing a few certain famous scenes from the film. Nat just nodded. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together with that one. 

“Well, I put in the VHS one day when I was bored and… well, I hid it in my room. Y’know. For later,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck.

Jackie put a hand over her mouth. A soundless, scandalous, mildly exaggerated gasp plastered on her face. 

“You stole a VHS for inspiration?” she exclaimed, “Look, Sharon Stone has some great tits, but come on, man! Get a hold of a magazine or something, you’re not an animal.”

More notably, it was the first time she’d ever seen two women kiss on screen. For as much generous, quality nudity was in that film, it was that scene she had returned to the most. Just the simple act of intimacy kind of captivated her. 

Jackie took her hand away from her face, thankfully now far more relieved than she had been a moment previously. Even with as clumsy as she was being, she didn’t want anyone’s toes stepped on.

“There is no dignity in talking about masturbation,” Nat said, wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips in mild disgust, “The self-loathing and religious guilt is plenty enough for me already, thanks.”

“I thought you were an atheist,” Jackie shrugged, genuinely curious as to how the question would be clarified. .

Natalie chuckled. She had never once specified her beliefs to… well… anybody. This meant that Jackie’s misconception here came purely as a result of speculation and rumors. Of course. Never change, Wiskayok. 

“I dunno what I am,” Nat admitted, “And guilt is a lot more universal than God.”

Jackie had to hand it to her there. Her parents were about as typical as upper-middle-class households could get, which made Nat’s lack of labels all the more alluring. On some level, she really was jealous of that. She didn’t know what it was like to decide what she believed for herself. She was still working through the hand-me-down thoughts and opinions of her own parents that she found herself increasingly outgrowing. 

“Not afraid of God smiting you? Eternal lake of fire?” she asked, her frightful childhood self genuinely invested in the answer.

Nat looked off to the side and blew a raspberry. 

“Nah. Think he woulda done that already if it was on his itinerary. If there’s a God, at the bare minimum, I’d want him to have his priorities in order. Took him until last year to fix all that shit in Africa, but you’re telling me some chick getting into my pants is keeping him up at night? God sounds like a pervert with too much time on his hands,” Nat joked, “It is what it is. Heaven sounds nice, but not nice enough to consider a Jeff Sadecki clone as a candidate for much beyond an ass-kicking.”

She was glad she could finally let loose on that dude. Sure, she wasn’t shy about her disdain, but it was clearly for good reason.

“So, does that mean it’s… only girls?” Jackie asked, returning them to the central conceit of their discussion.

A question Nat had asked herself many times. Kevyn Tan was probably the only guy she ever really considered slotting into this as an example of her ideal ‘attractive man’ if such a thing existed. She knew she liked him as a friend, that they shared interests, and had her father not been a complete dickhead and totally ruined whatever it was that they had, she would’ve considered sleeping with him. 

That was the thing though, with Kevyn, everything that appealed to her was in the margins. It had more to do with how he talked about music. The way he was respectful but not avoidant of Natalie. Most of all, she appreciated how he kept his mouth shut about her dad. Despite all that happened, Natalie’s Scatorccio’s father was an urban myth. Adults agreed not to gossip about the folks from the ‘other side of the tracks’- not because they were polite, they just didn’t give a shit and wanted to pat themselves on the back for their supposed communal virtue. Regardless, even though that was the last time she really saw or talked to Kevyn, she never forgot that he really was a good guy. 

The question was: did she think he was cute? She figured he was attractive, sure, but it didn’t exactly get her motor running in the same way Sharon Stone did. It was steep competition, but… it was never Kevyn she imagined when she got lonely. She tried to imagine it a couple of times, but it ultimately dovetailed into picturing Gina Gershon in Showgirls. It was entirely possible that she was tenuous about her attraction to Kevyn because he did kinda resemble a butch lesbian if you squinted hard enough. 

While she’d never officially made the decree, she fancied herself open-minded. Anything was possible.

“Only girls so far,” she answered, “I’m not ruling anything out, but at this point, I’m not looking to hold my breath, either.”

Jackie nodded slowly, taking in the information piece by piece.

“So… that’s just how you knew? Hot, topless blond woman and then… bam? It’s over, boys! Natalie’s playing for the other team now? That simple?”

From a lesser tongue, such words would ring as potentially inflammatory, to some degree or another. Thankfully, Nat had known her long enough to understand the tone that she spoke with. 

She was curious. 

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Nat began, pushing herself into place, resting her back against the pillows and her head against Jackie’s headboard, “It was more that, once I saw it, it just sort of retroactively confirmed a bunch of weird, stray thoughts and suspicions I’ve sorta always had. I never wanted to dress like other girls, I always did weird shit to my hair, I always had these random moments where some cute girl would just sorta… stun me? If that makes sense? I just kinda thought it was all puberty, at first, but… well, I mean, then I joined women’s soccer. You do the math.”

It was so fundamentally unremarkable in a way that kind of troubled Nat. Shouldn’t it have been more dramatic? But like, in a good way. Some fantastical calling of sapphic wonder shining a light on her, illuminating a younger Nat to a world of new possibilities? Instead it was just a series of select self-expression choices and her inability to not gawk at women she found beautiful. Thank God all her teachers were old crones or dudes, she was very liable to be distracted by such a thing and she didn’t need to be struggling with her grades any more than she already was. 

Jackie looked different now. Nat just wasn’t entirely sure how, at first. She sat up, resting herself against the headboard just as Nat did. For some reason, she felt as though she wanted to be on the precise plane Natalie was on, even spatially.

“Can you promise not to freak out if I tell you something?” Jackie asked, eyes firmly focused on the wall across the room, aimed at nothing in particular.

This again, huh?

Natalie, however, couldn’t look away from Jackie. Was she alright? Good God, she really was bouncing around her own emotional spectrum that night.

Her pulse quickened. 

Jackie leaned to her left, but didn’t change where she was looking, just positioning herself for the utility of being heard. She didn’t seem tired, but she did seem a little dazed. Probably leftover from all the alcohol still, Nat figured.

“I took some of my Mom’s Valium tonight,” Jackie said, returning herself to a proper position.

Of all the things Jackie could have said, that was not one of the candidates that Nat specifically would’ve backed, so to speak. She was surprised, not because Jackie had rebelled or acted out against her Mom, but because taking Valium definitely felt more like something you did when stealing was just means to an end. It at least explained some of her more erratic behaviors and mood swings that evening. 

Except…

“Hang on, back up,” Natalie said, her brain working through the chain of events here, “You swiped some of your Mom’s Valium, took it, and then you went to a party and mixed alcohols? Jackie, I really do think you’re sweet, but that’s uniquely fuckin’ stupid. You know there’s a reason they say not to take that stuff with alcohol, right?”

She was in no place to lecture anyone about substances of any sort, but she was never one to let that stop her from instilling a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality into Jackie when it came to their relationship. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have ever been able to give advice. That said, she could have at least been smarter about it. If Nat had scored some Valium, she would’ve been chilling all evening and letting the lesser depressant take its toll on the others. Mixing it with drinks? Bad idea. Mixing it with multiple drinks on a largely empty stomach? Insanely bad idea. Doing all this while you’re nervous and you haven’t actually been prescribed the meds in question? This could’ve been a night that ended much, much worse for all involved. Nat was deeply thankful she chose to be on ‘friend duty’ that night. Her teammates could be kind and decent sometimes, but she didn’t trust them like she trusted herself to do a decent job here. There wasn’t much left to be done now that she’d likely thrown it all up, but Nat was simply more equipped to do precisely what she wanted to do then and there: listen. After all, there was a reason Jackie talked to her and not them, right?

Jackie just nodded, her stare just as empty as before.

“I was just n-nervous, so I wanted to see if they helped,” she explained, “Then I saw Jeff, he talked to me, and I just felt like shit. Nothing had kicked in yet, and I just… knew I couldn’t be sober any longer. Yeah, it was dumb, but… I’m here, and not with him, so that’s something.”

She was so… forlorn. Nat knew something had been off all evening, but after they ‘got real’ for a second there, she figured they were more than through the worst of it. Did she maybe feel guilty? Miss Jackie Goodie Two Shoes couldn’t stand that she had stolen prescription drugs? Nah, that wasn’t it. She knew right from wrong, but one less Valium was not going to be the end or beginning of anyone’s world. 

But, they’d sorta cleared this up, right? Was Jackie just still dwelling on it?

Nat rested her arm on Jackie’s shoulder again, which brought her right back to reality. She looked back at Natalie, whose face seemed so uncharacteristically… soft. Natalie wore a scowl like the freckles on her face, so at this point Jackie was used to it. This, however, was rare. 

“I wouldn’t sweat any of that,” Nat said, trying to sound more invested and less flippant, just so Jackie knew she really meant it, “You were a little stupid, but we’re all stupid a lot of the time. Give yourself a break, y’know? You’ve got a lot on your plate. Even without Jeff… this is all a big deal. Anybody who thinks less of you for something this small and silly isn’t worth knowing anyway. Fuck em.”

Jackie’s face shattered from mild surprise into a pittance of a nervous smile. It wasn’t a look Nat saw on her often. 

“It’s not about any of that,” she admitted, “I took it after I talked to Jeff. I guess it just sorta made me not care. I was already on edge because of everyone else fighting and stuff. Then, he turned me down and I still… still…”

Natalie was legitimately worried now. It seemed like she wasn’t even making complete coherent sense. Her body probably was in desperate need of some sleep and a good meal. 

“Shh,” Natalie interrupted as she trailed off, “Slow down, man. I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere. Take your time. Or, if you need to-“

Jackie emphatically shook her head.

“No,” she said, mustering up what little defiance she had, “I have to get this out. I can’t just… I’m so close. I’m so close, and I didn’t even think I would ever get here. When I thought about planning for tonight I figured I might not even need the Valium. It was just a backup if I needed help. I didn’t even think I’d actually take it. I figured I’d chicken out and return it, but once he told me I just… I couldn’t believe it. This was a last resort, and now it's all I’ve got.”

‘This’?

It was like she spoke with the sole intent of leaving out as much vital contextual information as possible so that Natalie would be profoundly confused. She felt frustrated immediately, but it didn’t outweigh her care for her friend. 

“Hey, Jackie?” she spoke as Jackie’s eyes began to do that thing where they zipped around because she was nervous, “I said slow down. Complete sentences. One thought at a time, okay?”

She nodded along after she prompted her friend with the rhetorical question, allowing Jackie to pick up on it and do it with her in tandem. 

For a few seconds, she just took some deep breaths. Natalie watched Jackie’s chest rise and fall beneath her shirt. She couldn’t help but wonder how many people had ever seen Jackie Taylor like this, or if she was just among the privileged few that got to see her without all the labels. It was only fitting she took them all off for Nat. 

“Natalie,” she ultimately said, regaining the stability in her tenor, “I didn’t bring the Valium because I was nervous about Jeff. Or even nervous about nationals. I brought it because… I knew he’d shoot me down, on some level. I expected him to put up more of a fight, but, I guess I didn’t count on him meeting someone. I just knew he’d be dismissive and weird because… of course he didn’t really care about me. If he did, he wouldn’t have been waiting on me to say something, and he certainly wouldn’t be patient enough to wait this long. I know I missed my chance. If I even had one.”

Nat felt bad. It almost sounded like a few of her worst tendencies were rubbing off on Jackie and how she dealt with things. She loved to tout her ‘don’t expect anything = no disappointment’ mentality as being the secret to her nonchalance, but it was only strictly useful advice in fits and starts. She didn’t want Jackie to handle things the way that she did. 

But there remained one vital question at play.

“So… why take the Valium and drink if you knew? Damage control? Put on a smile for everyone while you secretly veg out?” she speculated. 

Not exactly the most clear-headed series of choices, but far from truly objectionable considering the circumstances. Wanting to be crossfaded when you were pissed and upset was logical- it just also wasn’t very smart, either. 

Jackie looked down the outline of her own body, eyes fixing on her socks as her toes curled and then subsequently straightened, over and over again. If this was a nervous tic, it was a new one. 

“Because… I needed it for the hard part,” she said, turning just her head to face Natalie, “I needed it to tell you that I think I like girls too.”

Natalie’s mouth hung open. Not quite in an unflattering way, but enough for it to be unmistakable. Jackie wasn’t done, either.

“I just… wanted to tell someone. And I needed to ask someone who… ‘was’- just how they knew. I always kinda suspected you might be, and I figured if I recognized what you told me, then I’d know,” she stated, “It might have been a little vague but, what you said? You know, before? About it making a bunch of littler things make sense? I feel like… that’s true.”

Jackie was… Jackie was gay? Bi? Jackie liked girls?

Her brain was an overloaded nuclear reactor. 

The entire reason she hadn’t ever entertained her intrusive thoughts regarding her over the last few months was because… well, okay, there were a lot of reasons. First and foremost, Jackie projected being about as ‘straight’ as the team captain of a girl’s soccer team could, which may or may not have been a useful barometer for this whole thing. Second, Jackie was her friend. As of that moment, she was her only friend. Sure, she could be friendly with her other teammates, but those guys? They were acquaintances. Positive ones, but it didn’t extend that much further beyond. Jackie was very different. Different in such a drastic way that deep down, Nat knew someone like Jackie likely wouldn’t ever enter her life again. She valued her. Sure, college was probably going to tear apart the seldom few connections she’d survived high school with, but that didn’t mean she wanted to just eschew her friend altogether. 

Maybe part of her, against all odds, hoped for a miracle. Not even a huge miracle. Just something that could keep them close together. Maybe they’d end up working near each other? Maybe they’d keep in touch… people were doing that more now, weren’t they? 

She knew that this was in vain. Natalie didn’t believe in miracles. She had yet to see one. 

Except for her

Some intrusive thoughts were louder than others. 

“So… w-what about Jeff?” Natalie asked, trying to shake her head free of the jumbled, tangled, wiry mess of thoughts she was sifting through. 

She shrugged. 

“I think I just sorta told myself… if it’s meant to be, it’ll be. If he wants me, then he wants me. That’s how it’s supposed to go. Whatever happens happens. If not, then it’s a sign. From what, I don’t know, but when it happened, part of me was relieved. I think that’s when I knew. When I knew I had to force myself to tell you. Backing myself into a corner is ‘freedom’ now, I guess.”

She was clearly still working through the kinks of… well, everything. No wonder this had all sent her spiraling. Nat could only imagine the alternative, depressing course of events where a ‘yes’ from Jeff yielded a night of disappointing sex, possibly a lost championship, and a net loss for the lesbians of the world because Jackie Taylor took it as divine providence that demanded she lose her virginity to some schlub. 

Unfortunately, this opened a whole new set of problems. 

“Jackie, this takes a lot of-“

Jackie abruptly cleared her throat. Not in a ‘shut up I need to correct you about something’ way, in a ‘I know you don’t like it when people interrupt you but this is important’ way. With her, it was always about the subtle differences.

“Can I finish?” she asked, more apprehensive than impatient. 

Nat sealed her mouth shut. She could get over her pet peeve for an evening. 

There was a part of her that did wonder just what the hell she could possibly have left. Nat felt as though her life had irreversibly changed two separate times in the last hour. 

She nodded.

Natalie was not often legitimately ‘stunned’ in her life. It took a lot to impress her, in most cases. But, what came next did nothing short of stun her. 

Jackie proceeded to look down into her own lap, her fidgeting now extending to the digits of her hands as well. It was like she was overflowing with excess energy, her body now compensating by trying to move as much as possible, even while borderline immobile, just to burn it away. 

She looked up at Jackie for what must’ve been the fifth time that night, tears in her eyes that seemed to stubbornly cling to her tear ducts and eyelashes, refusing to follow the existing set path of the streaks on her skin from earlier. Even her tears didn’t want to leave her. 

Jackie tilted her head and smiled. She looked smaller than Nat had ever seen her. 

“D-Do you think I’m pretty, Nat?” she asked. 

Natalie had never been stabbed before; but she was all but certain it was a more pleasant experience than hearing those words from that girl.  

Nat’s heart was in her throat. Her sneaking suspicion that she might throw up after all returned with a vengeance. Her eyes instinctively got all watery. Her nerves felt like live wires all sparking at high intensity beneath her skin. 

Did she want validation? Or something… else?

Normally, one of the things she loved about her was that she spoke, well, like an adult. She was smart, but there were a good many high schoolers who seemed like their brain just hadn’t properly been switched ‘on’ yet, and thus they couldn’t hold a conversation to save their lives. Jackie had been thrust into various mini-spotlights throughout her adolescence that forced her to get pretty good at talking to people. Nat was the same, if by opposite means. Her status as a lonely outcast predictably led to a lot of her social development being found within the pages of books and in old VHS tapes. The universe gifted each of them with their equal, it seemed, which is why this was all the more baffling to Nat. It was such a blunt, childish sentence. ‘Do you think I’m pretty?’ was usually a sentence spoken by a character who was vain or insecure, but Nat detected none of that. In this case, it was just honest. There weren’t many better ways for her to ask what she wanted. Still, this felt… uniquely inelegant. 

Natalie didn’t have anywhere else to go. No conversational detours. No jokes. No anecdotes. She couldn’t divert this. Before this night was over, something big in her life actually was going to change, and her spending two months with Jackie when they got back seemed like nothing in comparison. It wasn’t just a vague feeling anymore.

She only had one tool left in her arsenal: stalling, with some earnest curiosity for good measure. 

“W-Why would you ask me?” Nat clumsily responded. 

It hadn’t been the answer Jackie was looking for, or an answer at all, but not hearing a ‘no, ew’ was, believe it or not, somewhat encouraging to her. 

Nat did not expect her answer to make her feel even more complicated. 

“Because I really want you to think it,” Jackie said, her fragile but casual whisper masking a legitimate, tangible desperation. 

She didn’t care that her phrasing wasn’t elegant right now. 

Natalie, in a rare moment of absolute clarity, where the stars all seemed to align for once in her life, to allow her one moment where she could discard everything that caused her to doubt herself, instantly knew her answer. It was like raising your hand when you knew the answer to the question the teacher asked. She didn’t have to think about this. 

She’d already thought about it. A lot. 

“You’re the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,” she whispered with utter certainty. 

Neither of them knew what was supposed to come next. 

She could hardly believe she’d been reduced to saying something that sounded so ridiculous, but as long as it was just Jackie there to hear it, she didn’t really mind. 

After what must’ve been a full minute straight of staring at each other, completely overcome by multiple forms of paralysis that kept them locked into a torture chamber of tension, their inaction ceased. It was tension which, thankfully, dispersed when Jackie carefully, slowly looked to both her right, then to her left. She leaned towards Nat, neck craning up so that she was almost perfectly eye-level.

She brought her right hand up to her mouth, shielding her lips with a cupped hand as though she was whispering a secret during class that couldn’t risk being found out. 

“I think you’re pretty too, Nat,” Jackie whispered, trying to smile but not really succeeding at portraying any single emotion as she was currently in a deeply unfamiliar state of mind.

They both couldn’t help but chuckle. Who was she whispering for? Why was she still being so… animated? It was just the two of them. 

Nat blinked slowly, her face scrunching up briefly before she forced the wayward thoughts out of her head forever. No. There was no problem with it. She was doing it because that was who Jackie Taylor was. That was precisely why she’d done it. Nat’s presence made it okay for her to be just a little bit more… herself.

She was so infinitely, deeply thankful for it, too. Had she not brought some humor into the mix, the two chronic overthinkers currently occupying Jackie’s bed may have found a way to talk themselves down from the casual admittance that they each found the other attractive… and probably more than that.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie said in her normal voice, scooting over a few inches closer to Nat as she angled herself more towards her, “I didn’t really know how else to say that… and I knew I probably wasn’t gonna work up the courage unless you said it first.”

Nat was simply happy that one of them was able to engage in critical thinking without blowing a gasket. Even if she’d been partially verbally coerced into it, that part didn’t matter so much. She could worry about that stuff when it wasn’t the end of what had felt like the longest day either girl had ever lived through.

She mimicked exactly what Jackie had done, making them just a few scant inches from one another now, both girls allowing their sudden clarity to affect their postures accordingly- which was to say, as soon as they straightened themselves up, they each pulled their legs up underneath their chins, and leaned forward, resting their chins on their knees. Jackie wobbled over, brushing against Nat’s arm, physical contact she wouldn’t have thought twice about an hour ago, but now felt like it had the potential to mean lots of things.

It was a method of sitting that Nat recognized. She sat that way whenever she was thinking too hard about something. It was awfully peculiar, as she’d be deep in thought, standing on the sidelines of the field, and suddenly, she’d blink and be sitting in the unusual pose on the ground. She didn’t really know why she did it, or how it may or may not have helped her, but clearly Jackie had been around her enough to notice she did this frequently, as she wasted no time doing exactly the same thing. Without a word, she had signaled to Nat that she paid much closer attention than people gave her credit for… and made her feel a little less silly now that they were both doing it. 

“Say something, chatterbox,” Jackie chuckled, the plea only sounding a little forlorn as her syllables dragged a bit.

With appropriate reservation, Natalie did finally allow herself to smile. Not only that, but whatever feeling usually came with the act, she let it flow into her veins and circulate throughout her. 

“This was like, the clunkiest, most needlessly complicated way to ask me if I like you. I’m legitimately impressed,” she said, now captivated by the sight of her rich, hazel-tinged, wonderstruck pupils, “Just so we’re totally clear: I do. Like you, I mean,”

Natalie felt her heart melt when Jackie smiled, her obnoxious, perfectly-white teeth finally fully visible to her. She looked so relieved. So thrilled. So happy.

She could hardly believe it. This was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the happiest Natalie had ever seen the other girl. There was no one and nothing else in that room with them, so she was saddled with the notion that it was, in fact, her that made Jackie look like this. She couldn’t turn away from it. There was nothing to deflect to. 

I’m gonna fucking shoot myself if this is a dream. I will believe in God just so I can kill him if I wake up.

Jackie breathed an enormous, exaggerated sigh of relief before finally caving and leaning on Nat, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her tightly. The warmth of her body wasn’t something she was a stranger to. They’d shared tight spaces, they’d been on buses and tightly-packed cars, they’d hugged a couple times when it felt warranted. Now, the context surrounding the feeling of her body was… different. She was so cozy. So warm. The way her shirt bunched up as it brushed against Natalie’s own clothes made her already rabbit-quick heart do a couple extra laps. She settled her head into the crook of Nat’s neck, and in an act that Nat considered quite bold for herself, she proceeded to rest her own head on Jackie’s.

“I like you too,” Jackie finally said, “I… really didn’t make it past that part when I went over all this stuff in my head, so forgive me if I’m flailing even more now. I was worried I was just gonna fall apart or give up out of frustration but… you make me feel safe.”

She’s gonna have to stop or I’m going to propose before the first date. This is insane. I’m insane. She’s so pretty. I bet she’s soft… God, I hope I’m soft. Maybe she even wants to touch me. I really hope she does. I hope I’m enough. I need to be. I want to be. I will be. 

She couldn’t just let that hang there. It was so sweet! Nat didn’t like to take pride in her accomplishments very often, but this? This she would own until she died. 

“I f-feel really good that I make you feel safe, y’know? I want you to feel that way. Does that… uh… am I… I’m fumbling, aren’t I?” she ultimately asked, tripping over herself at what felt like every opportunity.

All it did was invite more shared laughter. As Jackie pulled away from their close contact to hold her heaving sides, Nat panicked when she thought something was wrong, her face stricken with terror upon feeling unprovoked movement. Thankfully, she caught that she was merely repositioning herself right next to her instead. 

That was close. She almost appeared so needy she might’ve cried if the lack of contact went unexplained. She was just moving. Just getting comfortable.

Natalie wasn’t comfortable before when she rested her head on Jackie, but she didn’t care one bit. What mattered was physical contact. Touch.

“A little bit,” Jackie said, winking at her, “Nah, you’re okay. Do you… have anything else? Or is this it? Have we hit our quota for dramatic confessions?”

Jackie chuckled, finding the notion rather funny. She could probably kick that quota’s ass if she put her mind to it. Tonight would’ve put them in the hall of fame.

“I… think I’m good?” Natalie said after feigning being deep in thought for a brief moment, secretly doing exactly what she pretended to mock, and thankfully came up empty, “So, not to go from the frying pan to the fire so fast… what happens now? I’ve never done the whole dating thing before. I don’t really know if that’s what you want. I mean, college is right around the corner, so I’m just trying to count my chickens before they roost here.”

Jackie’s good luck was somehow her worst enemy tonight, as it really robbed her of her foresight that she typically tried to apply in all the cases- when she was able to. This had been such a massive, unimpeachable thing, a fixture in her life that she needed to finally deal with- so everything else just kinda came second. 

Thankfully, it was far from a hopeless endeavor.

“Well… how about when we come back, we have ourselves a trial run?” Jackie asked, lighting up as soon as the idea entered her head.

Nat had to make an effort not to be as invested as she presently was. She felt like she radiated raw intensity. She so precariously guarded her own happiness that she was still on her toes in case they were moving too quickly by even entertaining being together, even casually.

Casually? What would that look like?

“I’m listening,” Natalie encouraged.

“I take it you won’t have to worry about your mom saying no?” Jackie led off with.

It was funny in a sad kind of way. Neither girl had, at any point over the course of their conversation, even thought to consider her mother’s agency in all of this. When she got the bits and pieces of information she did, Jackie could at least glean that her mom was not really the type to care if Nat literally just up and disappeared. She’d actually been gone for similar stretches of time without so much as a note. 

“Not even a little bit,” Natalie assured her, “I’m eighteen, so she can pound sand if she wants to tell me what to do.”

It had been the first time she saw getting older as a positive thing, rather than just inching her ever-closer to having to pay income taxes. 

Jackie’s smile widened enough for Nat to know the reassurance was more than successful. The notion that this was going to coincide with her staying with Jackie was almost too much to bear. She knew it was far from a carefully devised plan, but with the way it was working out, Jackie could’ve gotten away with the lie that it was all ‘part of the plan’ to some extent. 

Jackie was beaming. Nat had only seen her look like this the moment the team knew they were headed to nationals.

Do I actually mean that much to her?

She didn’t want to burden herself or Jackie with the weight of any sort of expectations. However, it was hard to not at least feel a little proud of herself. 

“Then… once you’re over here, we give it a shot?” she offered, “Obviously, we’ll have to keep quiet, like, graveyard quiet. My parents don’t know and it would be… really weird, right now. I’m not opposed to telling them in the-”

It was Nat’s turn to interrupt.

“Jackie, you’re all good,” she said, moving a little closer to the other girl, “You came out to me less than a half hour ago, we haven’t even had a date yet, we do not have to have a comprehensive plan for this, you got me?”

Jackie nodded, thanking whatever her parents believed in that she managed to crush on someone this understanding. It was probably going to be a while before she was able to say anything to them about it. She could always cushion it with the ‘but I’m bisexual so maybe you will have grandkids!’ but was worried that would give them false hope. She may have been bi, but her preference leaned heavily towards, well, Natalie, for one.

“Right,” she nodded along, “But… basically, I say we keep things under wraps. A summer fling. I know you aren’t the mushy type, but it does kinda sound romantic, doesn’t it? I’d like to have some nice memories with you.”

God, Nat was going to swoon. What the fuck?

“We did kinda build the foundation of our friendship on… a lot of bad shit happening to us,” Nat commented, genuinely surprised such a strategy yielded this outcome.

It seemed to provoke a thought in Jackie. 

“I think… maybe I wanted to talk to you about all the bad shit first, so I only had the good shit left. Then, I realized I knew what I was doing all along. If I told you everything about me and you didn’t change how you treated me, then I knew I actually had a chance. I didn’t have to worry about you one day realizing I’m a disaster with like, maybe five genuine friends in my life. If you knew… then you chose to stick around. At least, that’s what I told myself,” she explained, “I’ve definitely given myself worse advice, and I still managed to get here, I guess?”

Nat couldn’t help but think about the old adage about ‘opposites attracting’ and how she always thought it was bullshit. Now, she had to reconsider. Maybe it wasn’t broad opposites per se, but instead, opposites when it came to specific tenants of your personalities. For example, Jackie clearly wanted her baggage to be front and center. No surprises. Nat, conversely, hid her baggage. There were still one or two stories and characters she’d omitted from her own grand narrative that would have to come out one day, but that was just the thing. Nat had to make sure the other person was ready for all of that, and it took time. Both equally valid approaches, seeing as there was no real ‘right’ way to handle all this beyond ‘make enough money to afford a therapist’ or something of the sort. 

Despite all of that, this was all so… doable. In fact, more than doable. Now that she thought about it, Natalie wasn’t sure she had ever looked forward to participating in anything that could last one month or longer. Soccer? Who was she kidding, she knew the real reason she didn’t mind being there. School? Ugh, pass. Camp? Better, but not by much. For once, Natalie Scatorccio had something to genuinely, actually look forward to. 

Even if things didn’t work out… Jackie was right. It was kinda romantic, wasn’t it? The final summer before true adulthood. The two of them, lazily doing whatever they wanted in Jackie's big, nice house was already enough to make her want to fast-forward through nationals. There wasn’t a whole lot to do where they lived, but Natalie would’ve been content taking her to the movies or getting ice cream with her, simple, sappy shit that she wrote off being a pipe dream years ago. 

“Then what?” Natalie asked, desiring to push through the details so she could reap the rewards of whatever this was as soon as she could, “Do we make our final decision or something? Sounds a little dramatic. I mean, I’m absolutely not saying no here, I just wonder what happens if we decide we want this to keep going. You’ve got school, I don’t even have a job yet.”

That part did put a damper on things, much to both of their chagrins. It was something they each would’ve happily shoved aside to emotionally procrastinate the matter, dealing with it only once it was imperative. But, even though they were talking like a couple lovestruck idiots, they knew they could be practical. They had built-in survival instincts for their hearts, and leaving this unaddressed could prove damaging to them both in the long run. They knew that.

“Well… I wasn’t going to say anything because- are you gonna think I’m weird?” Jackie asked, interrupting her own train of thought.

Natalie just sat there and grinned.

“I already think you’re weird. I love that about you,” she said.

Every opportunity she could take to make Jackie blush was going to be taken. It was too fun and too adorable for her to give up on the tantalizing sight. 

Jackie cleared her throat, not knowing what other noise to make to segue her back on topic. Natalie hoped she never stopped being like this. 

“I mean, I guess I sorta already brainstormed about this,” she admitted, “I don’t just walk around looking for trees to carve a heart with our initials into, believe it or not, I’ve just been thinking a lot about it lately. If you don’t have any definite plans and just need a job, you know my parents are paying for an off-campus apartment, right?”

Natalie’s eyebrows shot up.

“I did not know that,” she stated plainly, hoping this information was insinuating what she thought it was.

“We still haven’t found a roommate,” she explained, “I don’t have to room with a student since it's not student housing. It’s actually cheaper, weirdly enough? I have to dip into my savings for the first few months of rent, but a certain someone might end up saving me some money if she gets a job close by. College town, so you’ll at least be able to get a solid part-time gig. It’ll be like going to university together, but you don’t have to worry about the school part.”

It almost felt like a cruel joke. It was why she had to consciously wonder if this was a dream or not. Over the course of the last few hours, Natalie watched an entirely new life open up for her. She wasn’t ambitious by any means, hell, most people would call this plan and others like it ‘meager’ at best, but she didn’t care. 

It was possible. It could actually happen. She was, hopefully, going to make it out of Wiskayok. She was going to get away from that ratty old trailer. She didn’t care what job she had to hold down in the meantime, if everything else was even half as good as it sounded, she would do it and do it happily. 

She could, realistically, go back home and swipe her suitcase, and never see her mother again. She could come back, potentially wing it for a few days so Jackie’s family could prepare, and then go straight on to the rest of her life. The mere fact that it was not a complete joke was enough to justify indulging in the hope she long denied herself. 

Jackie had saved her. 

Not only that, she’d done it in a way that felt genuinely respectful. Like Nat wasn’t some wounded animal to be nursed back to health. The notion of anyone or anything saving her was something she grew to find repulsive, and yet, as she sat there, she couldn’t really say that she felt diminished or had her agency stolen from her. She could earn her own way, maybe even possibly pay her parents back for the kindness they’d be doing for them… provided they were okay with her proximity to her daughter. 

“And, just so we’re clear,” Jackie added, “If you can’t find a better living situation and we don’t work out, you’re still living with me until we can. Wherever I might be. I’m not leaving you alone, Scatorccio.”

She tried her best ‘Natalie’ as she enunciated the syllables of her last name carefully, and at least partially succeeded.

Nat had no clue what she looked like at the present moment, and she didn’t really wanna know. In the split second before she practically leaped forward, hugging the other girl for dear life, she saw Jackie react to seeing her face. Jackie was concerned. Maybe Nat was crying.

God, who fucking cares?

Natalie Scatorccio sobbed.

Jackie allowed herself to return the embrace, not caring a bit that Nat’s grasp on her was vicegrip tight. In the short period of time where she was lucid, she felt them both inching closer to this moment. Had she done a better job of keeping her wits about her that evening, she probably could’ve got them there sooner. She was nervous because, above all else, she knew that Natalie did not want to be pitied, and she didn’t want charity.

But… Jackie did pity her. A little bit. She couldn’t really help it, so she split the difference in her head by acknowledging that she shouldn’t. She made an active effort not to treat her differently, but it remained challenging. She had a big heart. One that was already being programmed to be intensely protective of anyone in her in-group, be they teammates or friends. She could still respect her though, couldn’t she? She saw no reason why not. In that respect, she determined she was going to have to go about all this delicately, essentially having to get Nat to accept her generosity and her sympathy without being condescending. 

It nearly felt satisfying, getting to be there for when the dam finally just broke. Natalie hadn’t cried in front of anyone like this since elementary school, so she was immediately in an even weirder place. Thankfully, crying into Jackie’s shirt as the girl mimicked precisely what Nat did for her not that long ago was a good, cathartic way of powering through it.

Yet, Nat was happy about it. It was weirdly undeniable. She didn’t really understand the full scope of her own emotions, it was new for her, after all. Still, the tears felt like she was purging toxins from her system. The negativity was leaking out of her pores, but she didn’t care as long as it wasn’t inside her anymore.

When she withdrew, both of them hesitated to let go of each other, but they knew they had to pry each other apart. Before she could even ask, Jackie crawled over to reach for the tissues on one of her bedside tables, handing Nat the entire box for good measure. 

Performing maintenance on herself took longer than expected. She probably cried enough to worry about dehydration, so she’d try to remember to mention something to Jackie before they ended up going to bed. Whenever that would be.

Once she was as ‘together’ as she could be, Nat drooped back onto the bed, sitting next to Jackie, completely flabbergasted that this all wasn’t some horrific prank.

“So… when we come back, Natalie Scatorccio,” Jackie said, crawling in front of her and leaning forward so close they could feel each other breathing, “You wanna try and see if we stick?”

God, please, yes. Whatever lets me stare at you longer.

“Yes,” Nat said, already threatening to get emotional again, “I’ll even give you a money back guarantee.”

Each of them chuckled, but most of the volume came from Nat. Jackie settled herself quicker, leaving a gap that made Nat incredibly nervous as her own laughter quieted. 

Jackie reached up gently, as though she would frighten Nat if she moved too quickly, and took her cheek in her right hand. Natalie’s eyes dug into Jackie’s, the light brown saucers focused too acutely on where her hand met Nat’s skin. For a few seconds, Nat didn’t even breathe. 

“You make dumb jokes when things get a little too real, sometimes,” she said, thumbing away now-drying tear stains lingering on her, “I think it’s cute. God, I really like being able to say that.”

She was damn-near giddy. The way she said the final part of her declaration with a little less volume sent a chill up Nat’s spine. 

“It’s just as nice hearing it, FYI,” Nat said, not even trying to hide feeling distracted anymore.

“I concur. It’s exactly why you should compliment me a lot more,” Jackie playfully suggested.

Natalie noticed the way her ponytail bounced whenever she moved her head, the locks fostered by good genes and the most expensive conditioner they could afford, no doubt, a sandy blonde valley of gold shimmering with the scant moonlight that managed to make it into the room. She wanted to run her hands through it. She wanted to take fistfuls of it and pull her close.

“Hm… compliment? I said ‘pretty’ earlier… nope, think I’m out,” Nat humorously mused. 

Jackie’s jaw dropped as she backed away a few centimeters. Natalie damn near told her to ‘stop’ but thankfully caught herself in time.

“Just the one? That’s all I get? Not even beautiful? Or gorgeous?” she excessively vamped. 

Nat let out a fake, but competently melodious hum to indicate she was deeper in thought than she was.

“What if I said you were pretty… prettier than Sharon Stone?” she offered with the tone of an auction bidder.

Jackie mulled it over for a moment, tapping her forefinger to her chin as her eyes traveled upwards.

“Hm… Bzzt! Nah, I’m gonna need you to crack out the thesaurus for proper girlfriend complimenting duties. I did not spend five years dating boys, waiting for them to nut up and tell me I look nice, only to just settle for ‘pretty’ when I finally land a catch.”

Nat cocked an eyebrow.

“Land a catch, huh?” she asked humorously, “Girlfriend complimenting duties?”

Now it was Jackie who went pale.

“Uhhh yeah, I mean, I k-know how you feel about labels and everything, I was just… y’know. Being flirty,” she awkwardly explained, “I’m a little out of practice there, too. Guys think it's lame.”

Natalie was going to have to make it her business to find these boys who were stupid enough to be ungrateful, getting to hear the silly musings of Jackie Taylor as she draped herself over them, and decided that was behavior that warranted correcting. Some morons really did not know how good they had it. 

“Not lame,” Nat quickly corrected, “But seriously, don’t let the ‘label’ thing trip you up. Call me your girlfriend, I don’t fucking care, not like we actually gotta tell anybody yet. Hell, if we’re doing a ‘trial run’ for real? Get used to it, man. Sounds good leaving your lips.”

Jackie was going to make some kind of joke about one of the better terms for the two of them being ‘gal pals’ but decided against it, mainly because what Natalie had just said made her feel like there was a lit fire in her chest. 

It smoldered. She grew bold.

“Lips, huh?” Jackie asked as she stealthily laid her arms on Nat’s shoulders, “The things you’ve been trying not to stare at since we came in here? Those?”

Caught red-handed. She hadn’t exactly been subtle about it, especially not in the last few minutes, but it wasn’t like she could help it. Sure, she had agency and all that, but every part of Jackie was worth admiring. Now that she had given herself mental permission to look at her in ways they wouldn’t approve of in Sunday school, she was immediately hit with the full intensity of her near-angelic aura. 

When Jackie gave herself the same permission, she knew exactly why she held herself back. Those dark, eye-shadow-tinged, emerald green eyes of hers were so bright and beautiful they looked like some old technicolor film. If she let herself get lost in those, who knows when she’d return?

For a brief minute, there was nothing but deep, heavy, inelegant breathing. The only thing either of them could look at on the other was their lips, both pairs of eyes now stained with want. Each girl waited for the eventual moment when the part between the other’s lips would allow them to see just a little bit more. They just stared, nearly holding each other as they sat on their knees atop the mattress.

“You said you wanted tonight to be special, right?” Nat asked, “We could always have our own ‘first’ together, ya know?”

Jackie Taylor almost audibly gulped, like she was Wile E. Coyote looking at the camera before dropping into the Grand Canyon. 

“I’m… not sure if I’m ready for that. I was already worried about losing my virginity and that was before girls were officially in the equation. I’m gonna need a little time, Nat.”

Natalie shook her head quickly.

“No, no, no,” she corrected herself, “I’m… right there with you. Both girls and guys? Nada. Never dated. Never kissed anybody. I’m not trying to argue that because we’re on equal footing we should just do it, but… there’s a couple ‘firsts’ I think we might regret not giving each other if, somehow, we actually do make it and get out of here together.”

Jackie batted her unfairly long eyelashes, electing to skip her expressing her surprise that Natalie hadn’t ever been with anyone. She briefly thought she may have been judgmental, but just because she thought Nat had sex didn’t mean she judged her for it. The fact that she had a ‘reputation’ for it, too? Doubly unfair. It was probably a sore spot anyway. Besides, this was nothing but good news to her. The idea of a partner who was far more experienced was a bit daunting.

“Oh? Do tell,” Jackie played along.

Nat smiled.

“Well… going to nationals kissless virgins is a little embarassing, if you give a shit about that sort of stuff-”

Nat emphatically did not, but she knew that Jackie did.

“-so, we can at least rip off one of those band-aids. A far less scary, far easier, far more quiet band-aid.”

Had Jackie been in a better, more ‘together’ frame of mind, she would’ve thrown up her arms and cheered. Her best case scenario had somehow, officially, been achieved. More importantly: holy fuck she was going to kiss Nat. Nat was going to kiss her.

“That sounds a lot more… doable,” Jackie said, her eyes already asking Nat to lean in. 

Nat’s attention, however, was temporarily split, because no force on Heaven or Earth was going to take her attention away from Jackie. There was still one final stone left unturned. 

She was side-eying in the direction of Jackie’s desk across the room. On top of it lay Natalie’s prior clothes, but even from the bed, a tiny piece of thoroughly perforated paper with some nifty little symbols on it could be seen sticking out of her front right pocket.

Natalie slipped off the bed, sauntering over to the desk as she made a show of exaggerating the sway of her hips with every step. Jackie giggled, but even in jest, it was hard to tear her eyes away from what she so recklessly flaunted. Sizing Nat up now that she was a legitimately reciprocating object of her affections made her feel… different. She knew she was attracted to her, that much was obvious, but when she thought about her, she thought about her face. Her smile. The funny way she signaled she had no clue what she was talking about with a cute little tilt of her head and scrunching up her face like an old man. Her piercing green eyes, her scruffy mullet that she did find incredibly sexy, against what was probably her better judgment.

The other girl could feel Jackie’s eyes on her. She loved how it felt. Knowing that someone was looking at her, and that she was letting them.

She grabbed the tab of acid that was slightly torn at the bottom, mainly because she had gotten ahold of the runoff sheet, where excess ingredients were all sorta thrown together in the manufacturing process to make maximum use of your supplies. It meant they often looked wonky and didn’t cover an entire sheet, but Nat was simply not a stickler for the aesthetics of things she’d put in her body. Just seemed a trifle pointless.

She held up the tab of acid between her forefinger and middle finger, waving it rapidly for Jackie to see. Her eyes widened in a much, much different way than they had when Nat offered her the tab at the party a few hours ago.

“I think we made a lot of smart choices tonight,” Natalie said with a troublemaking smirk, “What say we make one stupid one, and scratch off two firsts?”

She hadn’t actually expected Jackie to say ‘yes’- but at this point, she was officially throwing caution to the wind. Having their first kiss that night was more than enough to make it special. The only thing about it that wasn’t ideal was that it would make the wait to come home feel that much longer. They could each power through it, of course, they had gotten this far, after all. If Jackie felt comfortable, and didn’t mind being a little… ‘out of sorts’ when she woke up, then she figured their night may as well cover one more youthful excursion before adulthood hit them like a bat out of hell.

The funny thing about acid is that after you take it, there’s an odd intermediary period where you’re expecting to feel like you're melting at any moment, when in actuality the anticipation just makes you obscenely nervous. Under normal circumstances, either of the girls would’ve taken a tab and freaked out until the trip actually started. Thankfully, with each other as company, they could at least talk to pass the time until it actually happened. It also didn’t hurt that she only actually had one tab, technically speaking, and had carefully split it with Jackie, so hopefully whatever was about to happen to them would be a little easier to handle than normal. A trial run of sorts, you might say. 

Now that they’d found themselves totally liberated from the confines of a vaguely established friendship and very strange, very particular sets of personal boundaries, talking to each other felt even easier. There were no more unspoken implications, no more moments where meaning was obscured, and minimal lingering trauma to be accidentally stirred. Thankfully, they were both still careful, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to enjoy talking to each other without arbitrary restrictions. 

Well into their conversation, the notion of other teammates potentially being ‘aligned’ with the two of them became a highly-debated topic. Jackie knew everyone a lot better, so she was privy to plenty that Nat wasn’t, but Nat was a far sharper, far more discerning judge of character. 

Then again, she wasn’t so sure Jackie didn’t also secretly possess such a skill. It wouldn’t be the first time she surprised her. 

Ultimately, they were cross-referencing their suspicions, until a few choice exclusions made Natalie wonder if she actually knew something Jackie didn’t, not that it was some kind of impressive feat.

“So, I need you to try to be less mad about what I’m about to tell you than you wanna be: you absolutely could’ve asked Taissa or Van for advice.” Nat finally admitted.

Or Shauna, but that’s probably not a good idea right now…

Jackie’s face scrunched up, every line a visual marker to indicate disbelief. 

“What do you mean?” Jackie asked, still not putting it all together.

They laid down on their backs, now under the soft sheets of Jackie’s bed, close enough to allow their shoulders to touch but enough to have some semblance of personal space for at least their lower halves. It was easy to return to staring at the ceiling, and Nat had been told by her connection that it was best to focus on visually unremarkable things to start out with so it didn’t overwhelm you. Once Jackie asked her question, Nat finally turned her head, a look of pity in her eyes.

“Hon, they are gay. Like, Liza Minelli and Liberace having a party with Judy Garland and Harvey Milk gay. As in, one of the reasons I thought you weren’t gay was that you didn’t know those two were,” Nat pointed out, trying not to sound too harsh.

Jackie returned her dumbfounded stare towards the ceiling.

“Oh my God,” she said, bewilderment in both her eyes and voice, “They… they… I was going to be all ‘they are?!?’ but when I think about it for literally even one second? Yeah, it’s obvious. I’m a fucking moron.”

Nat pulled her arm out from under the sheets and playfully patted Jackie’s.

“It’s okay babe, the gay police aren’t gonna come and revoke your license. As far as I’m aware, anyway,” Natalie explained. 

Jackie’s face looked like it temporarily became stone, enshrining her thorough displeasure at her lack of ability to read the room. Thankfully, it allowed her to hide how unbelievably good it felt to hear Nat’s husky baritone call her ‘babe’ like that.

“Thanks for letting me know,” she sarcastically mused, “And ‘gay police’? Is the acid making you lose your edge? You can do better than that.”

Nat would’ve fought her on that one, but she was right. Natalie was simply not holding herself to the same high standards Jackie was.

“I thought ‘Pussy Patrol’ was a bit too crass,” she joked, “Just be thankful we aren’t guys. Then what are we stuck with? ‘cock cops’? Feel like ‘blowjob brigade’ sounds too jovial for pigs.”

Jackie cracked up. Natalie knew it wasn’t really because she was all that funny or anything, it was more likely because saying ‘blowjob brigade’ was deeply, unfathomably amusing to her.

“Shit, girl, keep em’ coming,” Jackie encouraged, “Especially the alliterative ones, those are always fun.”

The first ones came to her rather easily, but now being confronted with actively creating a new one proved to be pressure she wasn’t ready for. 

“Fuck, I dunno, ‘the gobbler gehstapo’?” she offered, mildly unsure. 

She’d sent Jackie into the stratosphere again, probably for the same reason as the time before. In Jackie’s defense, Nat couldn’t deny it, it was pretty fun to say.

“Okay now you’re really trying,” Jackie encouraged, “You really like to call yourself a ‘loser’ cause it means people expect less from you… not me, Miss Scatorccio. I’m gonna keep you on your toes.”

Nat’s toes curled at her voice’s mention. She kinda liked that anyone actually expected anything from her. Either because of misplaced sympathy or apathy, it wasn’t something people impressed upon her. Normally, she thought that was a good thing. Made life easier. It also made it really fucking uninvolving too, though. 

And, of course, it was for the same reason soccer did stick with her. It wasn’t because she was passionate about the sport, it was because she was, by nature, competitive. Since she’d been so lonely throughout her life, it just most commonly manifested as jealousy or frustration. Now, she had an outlet for it. It didn’t matter what it was, not really, it just had to be an outlet. 

So Natalie had chosen to compete against the very idea of her own life and circumstances. She wanted to beat them. To see ‘Welcome to Wiskayok’ in a rearview mirror and never, ever look back. Contending with concepts instead of people seemed a lot healthier, and if this was where it got her? It was the best life choice she’d ever made. 

“Can’t believe it… the burnout loser actually gets to be with the prom queen. Maybe the movies get it right sometimes,” Natalie said, losing her sense of self in the sentence just a little bit, “It still feels weird… like we’re in a movie. A good one, this time.”

Jackie agreed. She couldn’t for the life of her think of what movie their life was at the present, but she wasn’t exactly the most devout cinephile. Certainly not in the way Nat was, and all that meant was that, in order to become more well-versed on the subject, she simply couldn’t go without plentiful movie nights. Nat always seemed really enthusiastic about them when they happened to mention something they’d both actually seen, and, as deeply uninspired as the notion was, Jackie wanted so badly to have to reach for Nat’s hand as she attempted not to hide behind a blanket during a horror movie. Or to have Nat reach over and throw her arm around her as they watched something romantic. Nationals were cool, and soccer was awesome, but Jackie knew where her real ambitions were.

“We could be like that one new movie, ya know? Bound? Without the murder, preferably, but I’ll definitely take a bag full of money,” Jackie mentioned.

She’d seen the trailer at the movies months ago. One of her favorite afternoon activities was catching a cheap matinee at the expense of some cigarettes. It only stood to reason the trailer had been a major fixture in both of their minds. 

“Sorry I’m not Jennifer Tilly,” Nat faux-apologized, “I’ll take the money or her rack, either or.”

“I don’t remember who was who, I just know neither of those girls had your cute haircut,” Jackie said, turning and reaching over Natalie’s head to greedily run her fingers through Jackie’s hair.

I could die right now. I really could.

“You really like it?” Nat asked, actually legitimately invested in her opinion.

Jackie nodded enthusiastically.

“I was not kidding earlier. Mullets on dudes? Gross. Mullets on girls? Be still, my heart,” she said, more exaggerated eyelash flutters punctuating her sentence.

Natalie blushed yet again. Her haircut was not really the result of anything beyond low-maintenance. She often felt self-conscious about it, but a haircut was never worth more than a pack of cigarettes or a meal, unfortunately. 

“Whatever you say, man. I feel like we’re kinda polar opposite blondes. I got this cheap platinum dye job going on, you’ve got the dirty blonde thing going on. Looks a little artificial. Yours is so… pretty,” she said.

She cursed herself for being presently unable to find another adjective. It was just so fucking hard to finds words for her. Regardless, it made her smile.

“I think yours is cool,” she said, lifting up a few of the loose locks and letting them fall onto Nat’s neck, “It’s so bright and it doesn’t look like anyone else we know. Makes you look like there’s a halo lighting you from behind.”

Nat rolled her eyes. She wanted to be modest to a fault, but even if she let her guard down, she couldn’t possibly relate to such a comment. At no point in her life had she ever once approximated anything that would ever possess a halo

“I don’t know about that-”

It was official. Jackie could interrupt her as much as she wanted. Whatever thought she was about to complete? There was no chance it was better than physical contact with her. 

Jackie, after letting Nat’s hair be, let her hand drop onto her shoulder over the sheets. She slid it down slowly until her fingertips aligned to touch the very top of Natalie’s waist. As she tracked the Prom Queen’s movements, she briefly lost sight of her face, returning to it and finding something she didn’t expect.

Suddenly, she looked almost… afraid. Maybe not scared exactly, but she could see the whites of her eyes with such clarity. It was exactly the same shade as the brightly diffusing moon currently hung up in the night sky, seeping in through the blinds of Jackie’s room. 

Her pupils were fully dilated. 

“No,” she said, voice sounding distant to the both of them, “I mean it. Y-You h-have a halo behind your head.”

Natalie let out a relieved sigh, realizing that there was no legitimate distress. The trip had started.

Jackie gazed in awe, the more she seemed to speak of the abstract, metaphysical phenomenon, it seemed to emerge from the girl in front of her. Rising like the sun cresting over endless fields of flaxen hay, the light reflecting enough to provide the girl with a radiant sight. Natalie Scatorccio was now framed by extradimensional radiance and a saintly beacon atop her head. For all the power it looked like it emanated, it didn’t intimidate her at all. She wanted the light. She wanted to bathe in it. In it, and in her. 

Her senses flared. They seemed to fluctuate in intensity, time slowing down and speeding up all at once, the ambient sound of the room collapsing into a steady hum of static in her ears. Her trembling from earlier resumed, though neither of them had the wherewithal to even care. 

“Holy fuck, Natalie,” she whispered, unable to blink and deprive herself of the sight as it lured her in, “You’re like the sun.”

Natalie felt her own internal sense of self begin to collapse. Hers was starting too, and now, Jacky was closing in on her as she pressed her hand into the girl’s waist just a little bit harder than before, just to hold onto something more tightly. 

“I’m like… the sun?” she asked, eyes nowhere else but Jackie’s perfect lips.

Jackie’s eyes were lidded, but she wouldn’t ever dare close them. At least, she wouldn’t yet.

“Yeah,” Jackie softly exhaled, “The sun.”

She was close. She was so close. Natalie could feel her own heartbeat. She could feel the weight in her torso disappearing. 

She couldn’t do or say anything. She merely acquiesced and allowed the moment to swallow her, and in its vastness, she found something new. 

One of the final sounds she made before they took the leap wasn’t a coherent syllable or word, just a noise questioning what on Earth Jackie was talking about, as though asking her to clarify would somehow translate this overwhelming moment into something that made some kind of sense or had some kind of precedent. 

Why the sun?

She felt Jackie’s nose brush against hers. Her team captain was breathing directly into her partially awestruck mouth. 

She nuzzled Natalie, eyelids drooping just a little more as she smiled in a way no one had ever been lucky enough to see.

“...Mhm…” Jackie continued as she leaned forward, “.... warm.”

It was the last word she heard before her entire world as she knew it ended.

Very much like how each girl was socialized precisely enough to be competent, believable human beings alongside their classmates, Jackie and Nat knew enough about kissing to know what it looked like, how you did it, and at least some of the ins and outs of how it worked. With each of their respective tendencies to overthink things gone, they just acted on instinct. What felt good. And unlike Jackie, Natalie eagerly shut her eyes due to the overwhelming volley of information her brain was forcing herself to process, so she felt the apex of her drug-induced ascent begin to rise in complete darkness, with nothing but pure sensation to guide her as depriving her of this one sense seemed to vastly enhance the potency of others.

It began as most beginnings like this did, a clunky smash of their mouths together, each of them holding back as they performed the most obligatory part of the action. Just the preliminary phase as far as they were concerned, though they made no specifications about this. How long it would last, how long it would take to move from one phase to the next, these things hadn’t been established because secretly, neither one of them wanted to put limits around this. If the other girl was comfortable with it, they happily would’ve done this until their alarm woke them up. 

Natalie felt Jackie’s much less chapped lips bump into her own, the light, airy sensation of air caressing her skin as Jackie inhaled the kiss through her nostrils, tasting the cigarette smoke of hours ago with a hint of the lone shot of Tequila she did at the party. Nat responded in kind, smelling the artificial peach mango scent of Jackie’s lip gloss. It was so appetizing that it made the next part so much easier.

Tasting Natalie at that moment was like tasting black coffee, there was a bitterness that was an acquired taste, but it made you feel like you had electricity behind your eyes if you drank enough too quickly. When they parted their lips, not being able to stand not progressing this further even a moment longer, Jackie went in for the kill and basically pried Natalie’s lips apart with her tongue. Nat didn’t really know what was happening at first, hesitantly allowing her jaw to creak open and let the other girl wander. 

Holy shit, it couldn’t have been the acid. This just felt that good.

Jackie straddled Natalie with reckless abandon, throwing her momentum into one, large, surprisingly graceful movement where she hiked her leg right over Natalie’s body underneath the sheets, and planted it on the other side of her. Nat was pulled from facing sideways to being on her back, but neither of them dared let go. As far as they were concerned, they were weightless.

***

“So please put your sweet hand in mine (But I can't help)

And float in space and drift in time (Falling in love with you)

All my time until I die (Wise men say,)

We'll float in space, just you and I ("Only fools rush in")

And I will love you 'til I die (But I can't help)

And I will love you all the time (Falling in love with you)”*

***

Natalie felt possessed by the other woman. She invasively, passionately poured her tongue into Natalie’s mouth, and she simply just surrendered. She didn’t know how she was supposed to think, feel, or act, but this was about as wonderful as she’d ever felt in her eighteen years of life, so it must’ve been worth savoring.

She kept her eyes shut tight, allowing herself to try and encode every sensation she felt at the moment into the core of her brain. She could never allow herself to forget something like this. Ever. It literally was a once in a lifetime, dream come true situation that she was, in fact, still waiting to be pinched and told it was all over. That none of this happened. That she would open her eyes and find herself alone in her room, her fantasy a vivid combination of loneliness, drugs, and the notion that this really was one of the last chances she’d have to reclaim a sense of self. To hold onto something even if she couldn’t have it. At least for a little while.

But Jackie Taylor did not disappear. She had no intention of going anywhere.

Her hands roamed, carelessly fumbling beneath the sheets to slide up the sides of Nat’s torso, earning a rich, deep moan from the girl that immediately made them both experience a bolt of horrifying clarity. It wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough to start worrying that they might have bordered on being too noisy with Jackie’s parents room so relatively close. Jackie stilled the kiss, but didn’t break it, and somehow Natalie knew this diversion was an attempt to tell her to be quiet but, naturally, she did not wish to remove herself, even if it would only take a few seconds.

She continued trying her best to make this the longest, most indulgent kiss the two of them could possibly have. A first kiss couldn’t really be perfect, both of them had adjusted expectations and a mature outlook on it, but neither of them wanted it to be lazy. It was about showmanship. And maybe a few other things too.

When Nat’s courage felt tangible enough to call forth, she put her own hands on either side of Jackie’s waist, getting a soft, encouraging little growl that reverberated from her throat into Natalie’s. Both girls presently remained in awe at how the brave handfuls of flesh they’d occasionally grab over the other’s clothes was both much softer to the touch than they expected, but also firm because of their respective musculatures. Nat would've normally felt ashamed, as while she had plenty for Jackie to cling to, it was obvious she was skinnier and bonier than most of the girls due to mild malnutrition. Jackie, by comparison, was the ideal portrait of physical health.

Nat finally did her best to put forth some agency, letting their tongues apprehensively keep making contact, abruptly retreating, and then attempting to find some other part of her mouth she hadn’t yet greedily perused. Jackie finally got into the rhythm of what she was doing and smiled into the kiss, allowing a quick breath to vacate her lungs and dance on the surface of the skin around Nat’s mouth. 

As the sensations intensified, the speed at which they both operated decreased substantially. Every nerve ending soothed by the contact of another person felt like bright, explosive fireworks erupting over their heads. It nearly felt legitimately celebratory when they finally detached, panting heavily because ‘remembering to breathe’ wasn’t as high as it usually was on their list of priorities, and just went right back to making out. 

It was a delicate exercise of push and pull. Give and take. Attack and retreat. Every action couldn’t go nearly as far as the girls wanted it to, but that was the fun. Reigning in the potential energy and giving the other a sneak peak at just how eager they were, and how desirable the other was. Sliding your hands just far enough to imply what you wanted to do to the other person. Touching one body part in a very particular manner, suggesting what you really wanted to do elsewhere. Holding onto one languid kiss for as long as possible, the length of time for it to end suggesting how much you wanted the next to begin. A physical language being learned, the specific dialect of which only known to the two of them.

When they reached the inevitable breaking point, there was no telling what time it was anymore. Or what ‘time’ even was. 

Jackie pulled away, both of them moving in slow motion so they could wind themselves down, consciously avoiding the temptation to make this into more than it already was. The existing exhaustion each of them felt did help, but it was also something they knew they’d fight through if the reward was each other. She finally opened her eyes again, the sight before her about as magical as it had been when she first kissed her. Nat opened them right along with her, to see a vision just as grand, just as marvelous. 

Jackie Taylor sat atop her, looking down and smiling at her, but those beautiful hazel eyes of hers were a sight that she could not see at the moment. In their place, two beautiful roses bloomed outward, petals fraying at the ends just enough to appear like actual, organic plant life. She knew it wasn’t real. She knew they were still experiencing the trip. Yet, she felt as though she could reach up and feel every single micro-imperfection of the petals of those flowers. Somehow, it just wasn’t frightening. Jackie’s smile was too inviting for that.

“Honestly, man?” Nat finally spoke up, half spurred on from leftover courage, half spurred on by the remaining euphoria of her high feeling genuinely liberating, “Fuck nationals. I wanna kiss you.”

Another time where she felt mildly embarrassed for talking like a dumb kid… but at that moment, wasn’t that what they were? Dumb kids?

The two girls laughed into one another, Jackie awkwardly sliding off of her and retaking her place on the bed, her figure still vaguely impressed into the mattress beneath them. She still didn’t allow more than one hand to be off of Natalie at any point. 

She cradled the girl with the roses in her eyes in her arms, allowing herself to soak up the residual happiness in the atmosphere with ease. Natalie may have been exhausted, but an extra half hour of sleep was not going to be better than watching a very cute, very sleepy Jackie curl up into her and begin to get a deep, restful night’s sleep.

For the first time in what was, very likely, months, Natalie Scatorccio got a good night’s sleep. 

***

“But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

And now we ride this circus wheel

With your dark brother wrapped in white

Says it was good to be alive”

***

It really had one big practical joke after all.

When Natalie and Jackie awoke from their sleep, they conferred with one another about the events of the previous evening. Now that they were mostly sober, they could be one-hundred percent clear with each other about how this was all going to work. For the sake of keeping themselves sane and their relationship under wraps, Nationals were going to demand everything out of them, so that was exactly what they would give. Nothing less than one-hundred percent, which meant playing it cool and acting like nothing had happened. Maybe sneaking away once or twice when they got to the hotel to make out next to the ice machine or something, but only once they were sure it was safe to. They weren’t made of stone!

Everything was clear. Jackie had nothing to worry about beyond soccer, because everything was in place. The relaxing would be what the rest of the summer was for, and she could realign her priorities properly.

But Jackie and Natalie never made it to Nationals. Nor did any of the Yellowjackets. 

Because it was all one, big, ugly, stupid practical joke at their expense. Of course Nat hadn’t caught her lucky break and ended her bad luck streak. It was all part of the larger, grander narrative to fuck her whole life up even more. Of course this was all too fucking good to be true. If it was any shade of good at all, it always was. 

She hated how angry it made her. How selfish it made her feel. People died. She almost died. Jackie almost died. All she could think about was how pissed she was that she thought she could actually let herself be happy. 

She should’ve seen it coming.

This lack of foresight had multiple implications, of course. For starters, it meant that Jackie Taylor, whose virginity was of major consequence to her before she left, did not lose it that summer. Definitely not to Jeff Sadecki.

And not to Natalie Scatorccio. 

Not yet, anyway. 

***

“With sparks that ring and bullets fly

On empty rings around your heart

The world just screams and falls apart”

***

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮
NOVEMBER 3rd, 1996
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

Life had changed a lot in the months since the plane crash, but the remaining constant of Jackie and Natalie's relationship seemed to be immovable. They were, at the very least, both intensely grateful that whatever this weird, precarious thing they had was, it couldn’t be stymied or snuffed out by even the literal worst of tragedies- which was what the crash very much was.

The first week had been solely about locating things. What had they lost? Who had they lost? Where were the contents of the plane scattered? What could help them? What was dead weight?

Occasionally, who was dead weight.

The tough decisions came early. Limited and diminished supplies, injuries aplenty, and immediate communication breakdown due to everyone being on constant high-alert. Laura Lee was constantly babbling some pseudo-religious crap, Van and Taissa were holding the group together as best they could through assumed leadership, and Misty seemed to be utterly emotionally incalculable despite being paradoxically rather put-together compared to the rest of them. 

The rather tenuous number of ‘twenty’ was their current assembly of who was left. In the crash, five people had died. Rachel had been the first one they found, impaled grotesquely and dispassionately atop a tree branch that was now stained with a seeping red-black ooze as it coagulated near the base. Thankfully, everyone was so shell-shocked that when they found their friend, they couldn’t even truly process what they were looking at. As shocking as it was to believe, no one cried or broke down until hours later. Their bodies and minds had been driven into an immediate instinctual frenzy that was designed to keep them alive. Among those who weren’t lucky enough to feel that primal pull were Coach Bill Martinez, a flight attendant, and the two pilots. Coach Ben was the only adult left, and he was saddled with a gnarly leg injury that necessitated he be carried around by at least two people. And, aside from Ben, the two remaining boys were Javi and Travis. 

It was such a funny thing to think. After six whole months, the whole period after the crash really had just been a blur. Not some ordeal, not some eternity-feeling trial of their willpower, just a blur. Incoherent. Vague. Faded. 

Thus far, they hadn’t lost anyone who’d survived, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t come close multiple times. The wilderness around was as bountiful as it was hostile, providing enough to forage and hunt while also containing enough danger that it sort of cancelled out that obvious benefit. Predators were scary and abundant. Injuries were more costly. Hunger made you slower. Weather could be the difference between life or death. 

Suddenly, Wiskayok’s simple amenities were something everyone missed. 

Teamwork, however, was not something foreign to the Yellowjackets. After plenty of debate, lots of outright arguing, and even a few fights, the order of democracy was more or less established. They wouldn’t partake in anything the group did not overwhelmingly decide on, even if a vote was not unanimous. Jackie, despite being team captain, delegated main duties to Taissa and Van, who were the types of leaders this situation called for. Her skills were far more to do with mediation, thus, that was more or less what she became. The Supreme Court to their Executive Branch, as it were- which Jackie supposed made the rest of them Congress? She didn’t remember enough civics to confidently draw the parallel. 

Of course, it didn’t take long for everyone to see how joined at the hip Jackie and Nat were, at least once they had a real system for group survival at play. Finding the cabin was nothing short of miraculous, the only real breakthrough they’d even had over the last few months that seemed to substantially mean anything, or even connect them back to some semblance of civilization. No matter how many scouting parties they sent over those months, there just weren’t any results to cling onto. They had no navigational equipment and no expertise, so they had to work strictly with what they had, hoping that they’d ultimately be found if they survived long enough. This meant that, even with this mysterious cabin as their de-facto base of operations, there weren’t a lot of places Jackie and Natalie had any privacy.

At first, everyone just seemed to think Nat had taken to being Jackie’s assistant. She’d hover, linger around her in ways she didn’t with anyone else, but it was strictly just observation at first, not quite intrusion. They all more or less had to keep together, but those two really did seem to stick whenever the opportunity presented itself. It was the laughter that ended up giving it away to most of them, even when Nat was downplaying it, she literally could not help but coax a good round of laughter out of Jackie whenever she could. It was easy to get overwhelmed by hopelessness on even the best of days out there, so a quick smile from the girl was never unappreciated.

It wasn’t really a big deal because… well, everyone had other things on their mind. Self-preservation was the top priority. It also didn’t hurt that, along with that cabin, not all was well in the wilderness. In fact…

There was something wrong with this place. And everyone could feel it.

It was first dismissed as vague, if reasonable paranoia. Everyone was paranoid out there. They had to be. It was how you stayed on your toes. However, things just kept overlapping. Symbols carved into trees, weird dreams that seemed to feature the same images and ideas between the different members, the constant, lingering feeling that something was always watching you.

Laura Lee had chalked it all up to being acts of God, divine intervention meant to show them the way, which made people want to ignore them all the more. Once they found the cabin, though, it felt like not paying attention to this exact elephant in the room might prove costly, a chance they were not willing to take… whatever the hell that ended up meaning.

It also helped absolutely no one that, as coach Ben slowly came to realize, a plane full of hormonal teenage girls was kind of a pressure cooker for very intense, very volatile urges and emotions. Javi and Travis were not strangers to these things either, but since it was just the two of them, they handled it the way most boys that age did: by not handling it. Repression. They were both kind and respectful of the girls and their boundaries, shockingly enough, restoring at least some of their collective faith in the sex. This, however, was not the issue. The collective, off-kilter spirit of the girls was way out of whack. Stress intensified with every week, hopelessness was on the rise, and even though they’d really come together as a unit in order to maintain themselves as efficiently and as safely as they could, that didn’t mean it wasn’t exhausting. And, to some extent, dispassionate. Staying alive for a life with potentially no future was difficult. 

Shocking almost no one except for the eternally oblivious Jackie, it was Laura Lee who ended up caving first.

For as many jokes as Nat loved to make about how being into women’s sports was such an obvious tell that signposted her sexuality, it wasn’t something she kid about while secretly thinking the remainder of the Yellowjackets were actually gay or queer in some way. She still knew this was America, and they lived in a small town, things were the way they were, of course. It was just a funny thing to say. It was just Taissa, Van, herself, Jackie, and probably Shauna as far as she knew. 

But the wilderness had a way of making you adjust your boundaries, it seemed.

When confronted with what could’ve very possibly been certain death for all involved, it tended to show you who you really were. And, as it turns out, without the weight of expectations and society to bring down the hammer of consequences, some people discovered the restrictions they put on themselves were… arbitrary. Or, as was more commonly the case, easily bypassed in search of relief. 

In other words, when you’re terrified and frequently horny and have none of your previous creature comforts to soothe you, sex becomes a little more transactional and less personal. It certainly was for Laura Lee, whose sweet, church choir voice woke up everyone one morning, lewdly moaning in the distance as she and Lottie had left the previous evening to attend to a session of overnight scouting where they set up a rather snazzy (considering the circumstances) outpost where it was generally agreed upon to be best to hunt. Apparently, Lottie had approached her with a bit of an arrangement in mind. Get each other off, no questions asked, and she’d pray with her for everyone’s safety as part of her nightly routine. Laura Lee, unbeknownst to likely everyone else there, would have accepted the arrangement without the prayer she was so desperate and repressed, but that was strictly between her and Jesus. 

From the sound of it, Lottie was pretty talented. 

When they returned, Lottie’s face had a very distinct smile adorning it that was as proud and carefree as she used to be. Laura Lee didn’t make eye contact with anyone that day as she timidly returned to camp behind her, and no one elected to make things more awkward by saying something about it… at least not communally, anyway. 

After it was evident that this little excursion was not a one time thing the following week, it proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back when they did the exact same thing all over again. No one had ever remotely suspected either would be amenable to such a thing, particularly Lottie just because it seemed like she cared way too much about her image, but that was the thing. Who the fuck had room to care about that stuff anymore? Even if they all tried to maintain some form of rapport or camaraderie for their collective sanity, they were simply not their normal selves anymore. By the time the precarious religious girl and the spoiled rich kid came back, half of the entire camp was beginning to wonder who the hell they would potentially ask to try to get them off. Were all, or even any of them actually gay or bi? Well, it wasn’t unlikely, and this event sure would’ve fast-forwarded that whole process of realization, but the blurry lines didn’t really matter anymore. It wasn’t about finding the other girl attractive, in some cases, it was about shutting your eyes, enjoying it while it lasted, and figuring out how to best repay the favor. 

Of course, Tai and Van caught on quickly. There were suddenly a lot of volunteers to keep watch at the outpost at night. In fact, there soon had to be a schedule for it, just because regimentation was something they valued. It was the only thing you could do there with any semblance of privacy to completely hide you from anyone else, it wasn’t as though anyone wanted to risk waking other people up or, god forbid, just getting it on right in front of the fireplace or something. 

Not that they specifically minded, as the generally-agreed-upon leaders, they were able to make their own time without many people knowing exactly when they were alone together, even if the ‘if’ part was abundantly clear. Everyone got better and better about keeping things quieter so no one was disturbed, but it soon became an unspoken tradition amongst the survivors of the crash. A few choice awakenings may have occurred, but largely speaking, everyone was just grateful to have some method of relief that wasn’t themselves- something that still wasn’t really on the table because ‘time alone’ was basically only relegated to sleeping… when you were probably beside like, three other unconscious people. Needs were rough, but Jesus, not that rough. Sure, sex made it all easier, but it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t a need in the same way hunger or thirst quite was. That being said, it was easy to make that distinction when you weren’t miserable and deeply touch-starved. For some of them, it was really just a matter of time. 

Maybe that was why it became so tantalizing to so many of them. Pursuing the one excessive method of relief at their disposal. Something had to hit those dopamine glands that normally got pushed by anything from a hot cup of coffee to hanging out with your friends at the mall. 

Lottie became popular pretty quickly. If someone could claim the title of being a ‘self-taught cunnilingus expert’ it would’ve been her. A few frequent couplings were established, either out of genuine attraction or just reveling in the comfort of another’s presence. Occasionally it was a one off thing, as it was with Akilah and Melissa, the drama on which was still somewhat cloudy.

But you know who never chose to take part? Shauna Shipman.

Natalie in particular had been closely observant, because whatever baggage Shauna seemed to have with either Jackie or her was something she brought with her. She’d been outright prickly with Natalie, and basically all but apathetic to Jackie. The only regular conversations she had were with Travis, Taissa, and, of all people, Misty Quigley. 

It wasn’t as though she wanted Shauna to ask Jackie to go out on a hunt with her, it just would’ve illuminated a lot of things that were previously unclear. Since Shauna remained curiously abstinent, it just felt… strange. She did like Jackie, didn’t she? Or did she know that yet?

Better yet, did Jackie?

She and Natalie, of course, placed the start of their relationship on an official hold, for obvious reasons. As tortuous as it was to literally put it off indefinitely in the face of actual death, it just couldn’t work even if they tried to rationalize it. Van and Taissa had more or less just dropped the act and done just that, figuring they may as well live their potential final days as honestly as they could. Both Jackie and Nat admired that. Hell, it was what made them talk about it in the first place.

They wanted more. They’d each missed out on so much that settling for a diet version of a life together like this just didn’t feel good. If they were gonna do this, they wanted to do it right, and that meant exercising a saintly amount of patience. They barely had time for anything, let alone each other, and they wanted simplicity. They wanted quiet. They wanted… domesticity.

It was nothing short of agony, knowing but doing nothing. Knowing that by now, she and Jackie should have been living together. Fuck whether or not it was wishful thinking, she had faith they could do it. She had officially missed her chance to spend that final summer of her adolescent life with the person she adored the most in the world- now she worried about one or both of them dying. If Jackie went, Nat would go too. That was just how it was. It wasn’t morbid, it was just reality.

With Shauna’s occasionally intimidating glances following her, Nat still felt… what was the word? Protective? Jealous? No, she felt territorial. Shauna wanted to infringe on them… somehow. 

It became combative rather quickly.

Passive aggressive body language became passive aggressive verbal language. Frustration became outright anger. Anger turned into sabotaging each other’s chores. Jackie felt weird about having to diffuse it all in front of everyone, especially considering she was technically involved, but they were threatening to constantly be at each other’s throats ever since it started regularly snowing. Someone had to be the adult here, and Coach’s grip on them was beginning to slip. The bitter cold brought out the worst in everyone save for Jackie, who she still slept next to because nobody could tell her otherwise. Especially not Shauna.

Nat was prone to paranoia, but when she thought about the fact that, technically speaking, any of them could theoretically get away with murder out there? She was on high alert whenever Shauna was close, now. Did she truly think she had it in her? Probably not. But the key word there was probably. She could afford to take exactly zero chances when Jackie was at stake. Could she ever become capable of it in the future? Nat hated that she immediately thought she could. That wasn’t exclusive to her by any means, though, she’d watch all of them become far more rugged versions of themselves. 

Tensions were high around the cabin, especially because they were truly on the verge of a food shortage. With everything building to a bit of a fever pitch, they were due for some kind of breakthrough or good news. Otherwise? Things were really going to start getting bad. Flaring tempers, hunger pains, and cramps combined with the sneaking suspicion that there really was someone out there, lurking while they slept… they were a ticking time bomb. 

Natalie needed a distraction. She had to focus on something, but she also needed to be productive. She had to still be present. 

One night, after Laura Lee and Akilah ended up being the lucky couple of the evening, the thought crossed Nat’s mind that… there was technically nothing stopping Jackie and herself from going on a hunt, right?

They hadn’t even discussed it. Once it became a known thing, they found it amusing, but assumed that any and all ‘girlfriend activities’ were included with their indefinite pause. They knew being openly affectionate would be a slippery slope, as bad as they wanted to. It would just make it more tempting and more heartbreaking that they couldn’t have even the most humble of futures. They had faith they’d make it out because it was the only choice they had. The few moments they got together were wonderful, but they were always fleeting, never enough. 

Or, maybe that was a little too complicated. Surely, they could exercise self-control, couldn’t they? Was there a reason they hadn’t talked about it? A reason it felt like a barrier they shouldn’t cross? Lord knew that Natalie wasn’t exactly thinking pious thoughts about Jackie when her mind wandered, so it wasn’t as though she doubted her attraction, nor own willingness. They could’ve been rescued tomorrow and she’d want to bed Jackie the moment they crossed state lines. She assumed Jackie felt the same, mostly because the little things she’d gasp and mumble when they kissed for long enough were things no woman not turned on would ever dare whisper. 

Maybe it was the reason it always was with the two of them, they were each probably too caught up in their own heads over it. It did occasionally feel like they had to talk themselves down from just making the leap and considering themselves ‘official’- but did that really matter in the cold, gnawing wilderness? Whenever either of them thought about it too long, as different of people as they were, they each thought that it may have been tantamount to organizing deck chairs on the titanic, and if one of them wasn’t making it home, they’d condemn the other to a life of ‘what if’- so they knew it was all or nothing. Both of them, or neither. 

It all just made Natalie want to pull the trigger more.

In approximately one week and three days, she would. 

***

“Sweetness in her golden hair

Said, 'I'm not scared'

Turned to her and smiled

Secrets in his eyes

Sweetness of desire

Is this desire

Enough, enough

To lift us higher

To lift above?”*

***

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮
NOVEMBER 12th, 1996
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

A lot of planning had gone into tomorrow night.

Needless to say, Natalie had been rather busy over the course of the last week. In order not to step on any toes, she knew she couldn’t throw around Jackie’s weight as the effective ‘judiciary branch’ of the survivors of flight 2525 to clear up an existing scheduled ‘hunt’ night- all of which had all been reserved for the month- as that would lead to accusations of preferential treatment and breed resentment towards the both of them. They were simply that much of a package deal. So, instead of doing it through executive meddling, she elected instead to work her way to an existing night in exchange for some chores and rations. Nat was used to foregoing a meal or two, so that problem wasn’t much of an issue. Being the one to wash clothes with cold water in the dead of winter, however? Yeah, no way around that. That sucked ass.

Of course, there were a handful of other things too. Making sure certain parties were aware, making sure other parties were unaware- which went precisely as well as you’d suspect it might. Really, this phase was just Shauna damage control, but after a little while, the other girls in the camp started noticing an abrupt shift in how often Natalie seemed to be paranoid about Shauna Shipman. Two days before she was scheduled, she just seemed to stop worrying about her, for whatever reason. The nervous glances in her eyes to see if she was being followed, her vigilant, attentive hearing that made her jump at every sound- they seemed to just go away somehow. Shauna would’ve found out eventually, of course, but keeping it under wraps was a good idea just to deflate some of the tension around camp. Shockingly, it managed to be a secret they actually kept from her, though no one understood the logistics of how or why. It was possible that the girl was just being such a notorious bummer that the rest of camp just seemed to inherently sympathize with Nat more, which was definitely new for her. 

It was so strange having to arrange everything like this, as though they were having a totally secluded rendezvous away from the whole world, when in honesty around half of the camp knew that it was happening. There was a slight air of ‘ugh, finally with those two’ that Nat had to encourage everyone to downplay, mainly because she did want to have a nice little surprise for Jackie. Jackie loved surprises, and it had been around six months since she’d last encountered a good one. 

Nat had been seen all over the place that week. Working overtime in basically any capacity she could to prepare for anything potentially going wrong while they were away that might necessitate them having to return. Taking care of chores no one had even asked her to do, checking and double checking supplies, boiling extra water every single spare second she had. It seemed that Nat had discovered that once she started to really, truly give a shit about something, she became a bit of a control freak. 

Then there came the matter of actually asking Jackie.

It would have to be a very soft surprise, much like the camp’s early speculation on the relationship status of Van and Taissa, she would get to know ‘if’ just maybe not specifically ‘when’ when it came to said surprise. Nat wasn’t thrilled about not getting to fully indulge her girlfriend-to-be to the fullest extent, but she was even less thrilled about the idea of throwing Jackie into something she wasn’t prepared for. Nat knew that of the two, she was narrowly the more confident, and even she was feeling nervous about the whole thing. That undoubtedly meant Jackie would too, so Nat figured running it by her without disclosing when she planned on doing it would be enough of a compromise. Just to give her something that wasn’t an object utterly imperative to their survival. If Jackie had objections, she’d react accordingly, but Nat couldn’t get the girl’s words out of her head from the night before everything went wrong:

“I’m… not sure if I’m ready for that,” she had said, plain as day. 

She had to make sure she was comfortable first. That was the most important thing.

Other than the fact that she had planned this, rather decisively, to occur on Jackie’s 19th birthday. 

Natalie, until she decided to perform this exhaustive undertaking, was unaware of when it was. Upon talking to several teammates, she discovered it was actually a fairly closely-guarded secret of the girl’s. Van had let slip that she knew it was in November, which sent her on a frenzy trying to figure out what specific day it was on.

Once she asked Shauna, which was its own thing, she discovered it was the 13th. At present, the very next day. As to why Jackie Taylor managed to guard this secret so steadfastly and so consistently, no one actually knew. Hell, Van only knew that she wasn’t supposed to know. It had been something she came across when eyeing a permission slip that had to be signed years ago. 

This was it. This was how she could make it special. How she could give Jackie something. 

When they teamed up to be on ‘drying the firewood supply’ duties, by far one of the most tedious and thankless jobs around the cabin- seeing as the fruits of your labor would inevitably, very literally, go up in smoke- Nat took the opportunity to discuss it with her. But, at the same time, it kept everyone warm. There were getting to be fewer and fewer jobs that weren’t thankless. 

“Nat, hon, you’ve got blood on your palms,” Jackie’s concerned, almost motherly tone tore through Natalie’s present train of thought as she used the blanket to fan her stack of piled, crudely-cut wood. 

Natalie couldn’t even remember where her mind was. She had been so caught up in everything and running on so little sleep that it was easy for anything to get away from her.

“Shit,” Nat whispered, looking to her hands, noticing the splotches of half-dried red staining her dominant hand, “I fucking hate this wood, dude. If it’s not splinters, it’s just ripping you right the fuck open. We got a cloth bandage I can steal?”

Jackie nodded in the direction of the pots that had been scrubbed clean by Laura Lee just an hour ago. The poor thing ran her hands so raw with a scrub brush they’d found in the cabin that she’d started bleeding in a not-too-dissimilar fashion. An old shirt lay bundled up next to the assortment of crude dining and meal items, torn dozens of dozens of times by various girls as they tallied their cuts and scrapes. Nat anxiously made her way over, tearing at the shirt with her teeth, wadding up what she ripped off, and blotting where the cut seemed to be.

“So, can I take a brief page out of my favorite book, ‘The Official Guidebook To Natalie Scatorccio’ really quickly and ask you if we can talk about what is so clearly, obviously, ‘bugging you’- as you would say?” Jackie mused with an air of melodrama. 

Natalie remembered. She asked her that back in her room six months ago. The question that probably served as the crack in the damn for the rest of the evening. 

She could read her so well that she literally could write that book at this point. Nat didn’t even care, just because it was her. If anything, she was just glad the cold winter air hadn’t sapped away Jackie’s sense of whimsy or humor, even if it was an echo of what it was a few months ago.

Natalie sighed as she set down the bundled up clothing, taking a seat next to Jackie, who sat cross-legged on the floor now as she allowed herself a break, setting her raggedy towel down next to her so Natalie would have something to sit on besides the old hardwood floor. 

“We can… just promise me you’ll be honest with me?” Nat posed, trying to appear as though she was more than a bundle of raw nerves.

Jackie nodded, her eyes now tinted with something more serious. She placed a hand on Nat’s knee.

“Always,” she said resolutely.

God. We have to get out of here. I need to hear you say that somewhere I don’t absolutely hate being.

Nat smiled. It was the first time she had since she last saw Shauna.

“I’m… wondering why we haven’t even talked about going on a hunting trip together,” Nat said, knowing beating around the bush was a luxury they abandoned months ago, “I’m not like, upset or anything. It’s just kinda been going on for a while and… is there a reason we’ve never even really discussed it? It just started happening and we just sorta went with it. This isn’t to put pressure on you, it’s really just… actual curiosity. Is it just weirder for us since…? Since, y’know?” 

Despite her vagueness, Nat knew what she meant. It had dawned on her that the entire reason almost three-fourths of the camp had begun to toss away their barriers in pursuit of literally any scrap of joy they could find was simple: for most of them, it wasn’t personal. At least, not yet. Less stakes, less to lose, more room to be reckless. 

It was very different with them. There absolutely were stakes. Neither girl just really understood the full potential of what those stakes meant. If they were rescued, everyone could go back to New Jersey, undergo some seriously extensive therapy and medication, and probably more or less ignore the fact that they’d all had a cluster of awkwardly horny bi-awakenings in order to literally keep them warm and mildly less suicidal during the winter. They could all chalk it up to survival and then go and marry their respective Jeff Sadeckis one day down the line. Nat and Jackie wanted to build something out of what they had. To build something, you needed a strong foundation, and they undoubtedly did not have such a thing here. A foundation built on the promise of returning to Wiskayok, spending the summer together, and maybe even living together? That was something. A foundation built of bodily needs, emotional instability, and confusing brain chemistry out in the middle of nowhere?

They both had the latent paranoia. The worry that what they had could only exist out here if they let it, however rational it was or wasn’t. What if they returned and found themselves too different from the people they started the summer as? What was left ahead of them before they got out of here?

If they got out of here. 

“I think so,” Jackie sullenly answered, “If it makes you feel any better, I have thought about it.”

The two girls side-eyed each other. They didn’t need to say that they both had. A lot. Maybe too much. 

“It does actually,” Nat said, regaining her smile temporarily, “I think that’s the most important part. Knowing you actually want to, I mean.”

Jackie’s grip on Nat’s leg tightened.

“I couldn’t keep my hands off you the night we first kissed, believe me Nat, the only thing keeping me from showing you how wonderful I think you are is the nearly-two-dozen prying eyes and ears around here. Nat, don’t ever doubt that,” Jackie said, “But… if I’m being honest-”

“Please,” Nat couldn’t help but plead.

Jackie smiled back.

“-I think the reason I never mentioned it was… Oh, God, this is stupid,” she said, no doubt with a face that would’ve flushed red had her circulation been better, “I think I was waiting on you? I still just can’t really… think of myself as, like, the instigator? It’s really weird…”

Natalie was no stranger to the notion that what the world expected out of you could hurt worse than any drunken punch from someone a lot bigger than you could. They both had trouble skewing how they saw themselves, as people, as girls, and as two girls who liked girls. Jackie was always someone who defaulted to her programming until she discovered what its limitations were, so this stood to reason. 

Girls weren’t supposed to initiate. Hell, girls weren’t supposed to be treated as though they had any desires of their own. It wasn’t about living in a male-dominated world, it was about living in a world where women didn’t feel like anything they did or said ever truly mattered. Their wants? Their needs? They didn’t come second to the man, they just didn’t come at all. Thus, when placed into a dynamic where Nat was sure to evenly split the balance of power in their relationship, she didn’t know what to do. Nat remembered how Jackie talked about Jeff, how she thought sex was supposed to go. She talked about it like she talked about going to the dentist. Now, she was struggling to know what to do after being told things were one specific way her whole life. Natalie may not have been any more or less experienced than Jackie, but she certainly understood how her own attraction and sex drive worked a lot better.

At the end of the day, it was simple. Jackie just thought it was too complicated to attempt instigating. She didn’t want to mess up a good thing when the whole world was hellbent on doing just that.

“I get it,” Natalie said, reaching up to hold onto her shoulder, “I’m sorry I didn’t say much. I’m sure it’s very surprising to learn that I sorta thought the same thing.”

Nat wore sarcasm better than anyone else did. Jackie nodded knowingly.

“Of course,” she followed-up, “That being said… if we are talking about this now, which I assume we are…?”

She looked to Nat for clearance. Nat nodded, downplaying her enthusiasm severely. 

“Then I should be crystal clear: if you want to, I am absolutely down,” Jackie said, eyes widening and smile becoming as sheepish as it was beautiful.

Nat was a little stunned. She more or less inferred Jackie would be, but it was the enthusiasm that threw her off. She expected her to be a lot more apprehensive. Maybe she’d even need time to think about it. Hell, there was also the distinct possibility that she, despite constantly suggesting otherwise in their rare moments alone, did not actually want to take that step yet. Regardless of her answer, it would be respected, but Nat could still only speculate. She was excited at the prospect of this actually happening, but mostly relieved that Jackie seemed so eager to. That was, at the end of the day, what Nat really wanted out of this. Validation.

“Really?” Nat asked, hoping this segue wouldn’t be too much too soon, “So, if, hypothetically, I went about-”

“Tirelessly working for days straight, making deal after deal after deal with the others, in order to arrange a ton of schedule shifts so that we could go out on our own? If you went about that?” she asked, blinking slowly as her voice lilted upwards.

She then looked at Nat with a satisfied smirk. God, it was below freezing, they were on the brink of starving, and Jackie still looked like a fucking Disney princess. She was idyllic in the way nothing Nat had ever seen was. 

Of course she knew. 

Some surprise…

“You knew…” Natalie said, with a minor huff of disappointment.

Jackie looked at her with the utmost sympathy. Of the two girls who lived rent free in their own heads some days, it was Natalie who usually stayed there longer. It tended to mean that time got away from her. 

She patted her on the back.

“It was hard not to. Don’t worry, nobody spilled, and last I checked, I don’t think Shauna managed to find out,” she said, her words coated with nervous apprehension.

Nat nodded.

“Right. Speaking of things we should maybe talk about…” Nat said, checking the main room of the second floor of the cabin for someone lingering in a space they shouldn’t.

Thankfully, it was just them. People weren’t eager to stay in the cabin as of late. No warmth in there was worth going stir-crazy over. It didn’t take long for all of them to realize why ‘cabin fever’ was a real saying that was commonly used.

“Yeah,” Jackie breathed out, “I don’t know what’s with her… have you talked to her lately?”

Natalie nodded.

“Yesterday,” she answered, “You… do know why, don’t you?”

Jackie looked at her uneasily. It was the kind of look you had when you knew the answer to a question and really, really didn’t want to answer it. 

“I’m not great with these things, but-”

“She slept with Jeff, Jackie,” Natalie said, her face bracing for the impact with a wince.

Jackie stopped moving her mouth. Just for the sake of posterity, she looked around the room once again to be utterly certain no one else was there. Natalie, thankfully, knew for certain that Shauna at least wasn’t there. Had she heard that, Nat would be on the receiving end of a nasty chokehold right now.

“S-She… she slept… Nat, back up, what are we talking about, here?” Jackie asked with low-volume desperation, her eyes briefly fluttering to the window and then back to Natalie.

Her stare was starting to aim itself every which way. She was growing distressed.

Nat eased her down, trying to get her to relax her posture a bit with a gentle hand. She sighed, knowing she was going to have to tell her all this eventually.

“The ‘person’ that Jeff met, Jackie?” Natalie continued, “It was Shauna. I think that’s… why she’s been mad. Now that everyone sorta kinda knows that we’re sorta kinda something, I think it’s getting to her.”

Jackie’s mouth dropped open a few near-undetectable centimeters. Nat may have been mildly worried her ray-of-sunshine best friend in the whole world would’ve actually killed someone, but she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jackie wouldn’t kill someone without enlisting her help first. 

“But why would… oh… shit,” Jackie said, realizing what everyone else already knew. 

Natalie nodded.

“Yeah. It’s not you she’s jealous of. It’s Jeff,” she said apprehensively, “Maybe she didn’t fully realize it before, but… sometimes you need a plane crash to show you that you’ve been in love with your best friend for a while now.”

Nat felt bad. As much bad blood existed between the three of them, she didn’t hate Shauna. She was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. It couldn’t have been easy, being her, especially when she seemed to be taking this whole change the hardest. Of everyone who had measurably altered their behavior out here, bright, awkward, adorable, and frequently sharp-tongued Shauna was a shell of her former self. Lottie may have been a rising star amongst the team for reasons no one could possibly anticipate, and Laura Lee may have slowly been thawing out, but they were still themselves.

“For what it’s worth,” Nat continued to a still in-shock Jackie, “I don’t think she did it to hurt you.”

Jackie hooked an eyebrow after quickly turning her attention back from the empty fireplace- one that seemed to be her default ‘stare off into the distance’ spot whenever they were up there.

“You don’t?”

Nat shook her head.

“I think… and maybe I’m just playing therapist here, but follow me, will you?” she asked delicately, “Maybe she didn’t do it to hurt you, or to stake some fucking claim. I think she did it because it was the closest thing she could get to you.”

Natalie didn’t regret telling Jackie the truth. At least, not this truth. She did regret, however, looking up at Jackie’s face after she told her that. It actually seemed to wound her.

She had to remember that not everyone was sour on Shauna. As avoidant and strange as she’d been, and even occasionally suspicious, Jackie still considered her a friend. A lot of the girls did... even if there were just as many that seemed to find her alienating. There was just no consistency with her. Hell, she was one of the only people that seemed to be able to entertain Misty enough for her to be a little quieter. They all just figured she was taking the wilderness especially hard, and that was absolutely true. She was. It just seemed like something else was too, but she wasn’t letting anyone in. Up until now, Jackie still didn’t even know Shauna felt that way.

“I’ll have to talk to her, eventually,” Jackie said, slowly reckoning with the notion, “I’m… mad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m kinda fuckin furious. And I also… don’t really care, either?”

Nat snorted.

“Yeah, I guess a complete realignment of our priorities means this shit doesn’t exactly carry the weight it did in high school,” she pointed out, “I get it. I know I’m not involved, but I’m pissed too. Pissed she hurt you, and pissed Jeff didn’t nut up sooner and spare us this whole fiasco.”

Even a billion miles from home and malnourished, there were new and exciting ways to make fun of Jeff Sadecki.

“I don’t know,” Jackie sighed, “I’m mad too, but Shauna… I hate being mad at her. I hate her being mad at me, and right now, I’m just not sure what she is. I just… I’m gonna have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Not right now.”

Nat patted her on the back.

“She’s a mess, is what she is. Feel like she’s liable to run away and start her own colony, at this rate,” Nat said, “Don’t worry about her right now. Worry about you. You need anything, babe?”

That last word really did just slip out. Both of them nearly panicked, letting the tension in their chests rise as they looked around yet again.

“It’s not like they don’t know,” Jackie finally said, exasperated with herself, "We hold all the cards here. So… in an effort to stay sane… yeah. I think we’ve been putting this off, but honestly… if you wanna do it, Nat, I do too.”

Natalie nearly forgot that was what they were talking about, so she immediately felt like Jackie had mollywhopped her with a conversational counter-jab that made her see stars. 

“Y-you do?” Nat asked, “Not just because I asked? And not because we’re suddenly feeling any lingering resentment towards certain people?”

Jackie considered the notion a moment, but returned herself to Nat rather quickly.

“I have been waiting patiently for six months for something good to happen to us. I do not need the first, and so far, only good thing about this experience to be out of spite over a guy. This is about you and about me. I promise you, whenever this happens, Shauna Shipman is going to be the furthest thing from my mind,” Jackie promised.

Well, when she put it like that, it was fairly ironclad, now wasn’t it? 

“Wait, so nobody told you when?” Nat asked, sounding way more invested in her own plan than she ever wanted to, “I can still… surprise you?”

Jackie flashed her a bright, toothy grin.

“Of course you can!” Jackie quietly exclaimed in a cute celebratory whisper, “I could do with one of those by now.”

“So… I’ll let you know when it's time, then?” Natalie asked, her question sounding like it was trying to lead her a little too obviously. 

Jackie leaned over, giving Nat a peck on the cheek.

“Just let me know, and I’m yours,” she said into her ear before pulling back.

Nat had to swallow the intense nervousness that bubbled inside her now that that happened in combination with real, honest-to-goodness confirmation that tomorrow was, indeed, going to occur. Her plans had not been for naught. 

She couldn’t help but have some lingering nervousness about not only Shauna, but this whole birthday thing. It was the eve of her becoming 19, and it wasn’t as though this was something she’d be able to keep from Nat forever. If they lived together, would she know the reason behind the secret? She could only hope, but that hope had the stink of hypocrisy on it. Natalie withheld a lot from Jackie about herself, from before and after the plane crash, so if she was allowed to have her secrets, Jackie could have hers. She figured that she could, if all else failed, go for plausible deniability where this all just happened to occur on this day. Jackie was logical and reasonable; if Nat didn’t mention anything about the significance of the date, then it could remain unspoken. Nat could make her birthday special, give her a surprise, and as far as Jackie knew, nobody had poked and prodded about one of the only things she managed to still be closed-off about. 

“When I know something, you’ll know something,” Nat assured her, her anxiety around the event finally beginning to rev at full throttle.

I just want to make her happy. God, just let me do that. Please let this work. 

***

“I am the face

Of love's rage

Blessed be the daughters of Cain

Bound to suffering eternal through the sins of their fathers committed long before their conception

Blessed be their whore mothers

Tired and angry, waiting with bated breath in a ferry that will never move again

Blessed be the children

Each and every one come to know their god through some senseless act of violence

Blessed be you, girl”*

***

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮
NOVEMBER 13th, 1996
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

Nat began the day by washing her hands in a cold bucket of water, scrubbing herself free of grime and muck, and proceeded to double-check basically everything to do with their collective daily routine. Nothing could go wrong today, so she had to stay on top of things. If someone got injured or some other random tragedy occurred, they’d miss their chance. This date was important, and she wanted to make sure that even if it was, technically, a meaningless detail, she knew it was best to hold steady. 

It felt odd, not wishing Jackie ‘happy birthday’ despite knowing it was. Maybe, if this all turned out to be a much more insignificant problem than she hoped it would be, she’d finally get to. It was going to happen eventually, provided they stayed together.

The day was both too long and too short. Every time Natalie blinked, an hour disappeared, but between those blinks was an eon-long stretch of time where everything was business as usual. A few girls noticed Natalie walking around, occasionally even talking to herself, figuring it best to probably leave her alone. To be fair, she was far from the only girl who did that when they got stressed. She seemed to linger around one of the snow banks that had an alarmingly large blind spot if you were leaving the ‘campsite’ perimeter, so whenever someone saw her after around three in the afternoon, she managed to startle everyone who needed to talk to her just by standing there. It was a little eerie, given how ghostly a silhouette Nat tended to have, but it was offset substantially when they found a very nervous girl chewing on her nails, head cocked to the side as though she were studying you before you even showed.

After what could only be generously called ‘dinner’ (broth) was served, Natalie returned right back to her curiously lonely spot on the edge of camp. After twenty minutes straight of blank staring and foot-tapping, the only person who showed themselves to Nat that day had managed to register a lasting impact was who else, but Lottie. 

“So… where’s Jackie?” she asked, almost prancing into view in that way that only Lottie ever seemed to move.

Nat shook her head free of spare thoughts, bringing her attention to the other girl.

Lottie was a very strange person. Back in Jersey, she was cut from almost an identical cloth as Jackie. It was precisely why, at first, Natalie didn’t pay her any mind. She was Jackie with way more money. Jackie with way more of a self-impressed nonchalance. She was always flighty, but since late fall, the better term to describe her was ‘loony’ if you asked Nat. As much of a believer as Laura Lee was in Jesus, Lottie was becoming one of all the weird, freaky ‘spooky’ shit in the woods. Constantly babbling about nature, the wilderness, occasionally Gods like Pan or Artemis, it was genuinely difficult for Nat specifically to listen to. It just sounded like an obvious, unhealthy coping mechanism. 

Honestly, though? None of that on its own bothered her. Individually, nothing about Lottie did. Then you threw it all together, and that was what tripped up Nat. She didn’t make sense. She was mercurial and strange, but she could be kind and gentle. She could also be shockingly venomous, living up to her ‘rich bitch’ persona with no room to spare for much else. She was a ‘mean girl’- but she was also really nice to Nat. Nice in a way that always felt like no matter what, Natalie was being played, and never knew how. It was doubly bad because Nat was certain Lottie didn’t do this with the other girls.

And, she couldn’t lie, part of her was mildly resentful that Lottie had never offered to ‘hunt’ with her. She never would’ve accepted for obvious reasons, but back when all this started, Lottie was far from discerning when it came to her partners. She even propositioned Taissa (and Van. Simultaneously.) once, which earned her an emphatic rejection that she brushed off like it was nothing. It was more than likely because Nat knew Lottie wanted her. It was far from her assuming her own appeal was that magnetic, either. Lottie, back before the crash, was the precise type of ‘mean girl’ who would ask to talk to you after practice, corner you, get in your face about something and demean you, and then try and kiss you because it was some weird power thing. Or she was attracted to you. In Nat’s case, when it happened to her a week after she joined the team, she was fairly certain it was both.

Nat ended up running away, flustered and full of confusion as to why this was happening. If Lottie wanted to flirt with her, why not just do it? If she wanted to be friends with her the way she was friends with other girls, then talk. Why did it have to be this weird confusing mish-mash of the two? Regardless, they didn’t interact much one-on-one after that. Weirdly enough, there wasn’t any tension, either. Lottie just sort of kept on going, so she did too. 

She never mentioned this to Jackie because… well, it just wasn’t really the same thing as telling her that Lottie ‘had a thing’ for her, or something. She emphatically didn’t. She was playing with her food, nothing more than that. It was just even more confusing to Nat that, once they set up shop out here, Lottie seemed to lean into her paradoxical nature. When she was mean, she was meaner. When she was nice, she was lovely. She just never seemed to make up her mind.

Now that she was popular again, this time for very different reasons, she’d been riding rather high. She felt more and more like a camp counselor or even someone higher up on the food chain of command than she actually was. She enjoyed feeling like she had some sense of power out there, but then again, wouldn’t anyone?

“Think she’s still eating,” Nat answered, feeling Lottie’s eyes flicker as they scanned her up and down.

“Hm,” she flatly exclaimed, “And you?”

Natalie was forced to show the girl her scowl, hoping that whatever nonsense this was would end soon so the night could properly begin.

It seemed Laura Lee, to put it rather inelegantly, was rubbing off on her. In fact, a lot about how Lottie spoke reminded her of Laura Lee. Similar cadences. Originally, she thought that they might make a cute, if unlikely couple. Laura needed someone to bring her back down to Earth, and Lottie could’ve used some humility, but they seemed to exaggerate each other’s defining traits rather than balance them. 

Before, Laura Lee was all about the Devil. Satan this, Satan that. Be comforted by the grace of God’s everlasting goodness, blah blah blah. It was pretty par for course. But, once she stopped, and started using terms like ‘the curse’ or ‘nature’s curse’ interchangeably with the Devil? That’s when it started to ring some alarms in Nat’s head. When Lottie followed soon after, she knew for sure something was up.

Please keep a lid on the ‘curse’ crap.

“And me?” she repeated in as nice of a tone as she could summon, “I’m right here, Lot. Same as you.”

She probably shouldn’t have acknowledged the question at all. 

“You don’t look ‘here’ right now,” she said, careful emphasis on her syllables, “Is someone a little nervous about tonight?”

Natalie nearly sighed with relief. If she was pestering her about this specifically, the worst thing she’d do was tease her, rather than start rambling about ‘appeasement’ or ‘offerings’ or whatever. 

“Yes, actually. Very,” Natalie said tersely, “Contrary to what people like you say about me when you think I’m not listening, I’m no expert.”

She had to add in the little jab, both because Lottie deserved it, and because it was going to expedite this process to be as efficient as she could make it. If she could help it, anyway.

“Need some tips?” Lottie asked, tone more curious than anything.

Nat had to try harder than she had in six months not to laugh. She was instantly transported back to Jackie’s room the night before the crash:

“Boys’ tips? Please, Jackie. Who do you take me for, Lottie?”

Irony sure was funny. 

She was going to have to think of some girl/girl variants of her alliterative cop names. She knew that would probably make Jackie laugh later. 

Natalie… seriously considered asking her for some. It wasn’t like Nat didn’t know what to do. It was all the stuff she wanted to do. Simple. The hard part was more in the how of it all, at least to her it was.

“I’ll pass,” she said with a semi-appreciative nod, “Think I’ll survive. Just got jitters.”

Lottie’s eyes briefly peeped downward.

“I can tell, you’re shaking like a senior citizen with arthritis,” she remarked. 

Natalie couldn’t even tell. Her fingers were a bit numb at this point so she hadn’t even realized they’d been moving at all. As she flexed her fingers outward, her hand moved slower and her joints creaked a little bit. It was like she needed a can of WD-40 sprayed on her skeleton. 

“It’s just cold,” Nat said, stuffing the hands into one of her four coat pockets, two for each jacket layer.

Lottie nodded with a grin.

“Sure it is,” Lottie said before letting out a melodramatic sigh, letting her eyes droop just a bit to convey just enough lingering disappointment, as though she were still miffed that Nat didn’t kiss her back in the locker room all those months ago, “Well, I’ll let you go, then. Was just a little worried about you. Have fun tonight, okay?”

Her words were so sincere-sounding, it was actually frightening to watch her face not match them at all. Something about the connection between her face and voice nearly felt… broken?

“Take care, Lot,” Natalie said, trying not to sound bitter or weirded out.

Lottie made a show of taking some large steps away from Nat until she stopped in place, planted herself there for a moment, and then spun back around to face Nat. 

“Where’s Shauna?” she asked, her voice changing again, but into something that felt a little too eerily normal.

Natalie’s eyes widened for a brief moment, but they settled almost as soon as the question was finished being asked. 

“She not at dinner?” Nat asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lottie shook her head.

“Didn’t show. All her chores were done, but I don’t think anyone’s seen her this afternoon,” she said, sounding legitimately quite worried, which was nearly unbecoming of her, “Just wanted to ask and make sure. Taissa wanted to talk to her about switching shifts for Coach.”

Poor Coach Ben. The other member of the little rainbow brigade that had formed in the last few weeks. If only the information had been volunteered of his own volition. Unfortunately, the cold weather as of late had been kind to him… in that it numbed a significant amount of his nerves long enough for him to get a break from the pain. The guy had to be under a watchful eye to make sure his body temperature didn’t go too low. The girls as a whole probably would’ve taken the most sizable blow to their morale since the crash if they lost him, so during the colder months, he was the priority. 

“Sorry, came straight here. I’ll let you know if I see her,” Natalie offered with a curt nod, “And tell Tai that after tonight, I’ll double up on watching Coach next week. She’s busy enough.”

They absolutely didn’t want a repeat of what happened to start this routine to begin with, where they relied too heavily on one person and that ended up backfiring. Misty had some… strange form of affection for the man, and thus, nearly froze to death one night staying up late for him. She was, at present, given a pass on all duties, wrapped up in four layers of blankets upstairs. She may have been a handful, but Nat hoped she made it out of this okay. 

Lottie nodded, a glint of real kindness sparkling in her eye before she turned around.

“Night Shauna,” Lottie said as made her way off to camp.

Nat opened her mouth to object, but Lottie had already vanished from sight. As was usually the case, she couldn’t go one interaction with the girl without being reminded that she was just a little too far gone to feel wholly comfortable around.

Thankfully, this weird interaction seemed to accelerate Nat’s perception of time, as her head swirled with thoughts of the last few weeks. Everything collided in her head and subsequently burst apart, the debris and wreckage forming new images and sounds from the remnants of all the dilapidated abstract ideas. The cold seemed to numb her to all sense of discomfort, and her head became a slideshow of the events that took place over the last week, hazy and unfocused as she accelerated herself back through her memory in first-person. Most of the coherent images were of Jackie, both real and imagined. Because of course they were.

It was almost a surprise when Jackie was standing in front of her. She’d given her ‘the signal’ before dinner, telling her where to meet her and at what time, and yet, even when expected, she snuck up on her. 

Natalie jumped.

Adorned in her absolutely disparaged letterman jacket and a cute, very hastily sewn-together skirt, Jackie Taylor appeared right in front of Natalie about fifteen minutes later than they had promised to meet before heading out to the lakeside outpost. 

With her was an overnight supply bag draped over one shoulder, a standard issue one that Natalie had packed herself. She had nearly forgotten it because of her… unique state of mind. Strapped to the other shoulder was one of their standard rifles. 

Even in the chill, cold tomb that was the night weather out there, Jackie shone like the sun. Even looking at her made Nat’s nerves thaw.

“Miss me?” she asked, giving her a sly wink, “I know you didn’t sleep well last night, but damn girl, takes talent to fall asleep standing up.”

Had she fallen asleep? Shit. She might’ve. The last few hours were suddenly a strange kaleidoscope of absolutely nothing. The same image overlapping itself over and over and over again until it became nothing but lines and shapes to her brain. 

Christ. I need this winter to be over. 

“Sorry,” Nat said, letting a yawn come to her, “I guess I did. Thanks for looking for me. Freezing to death tonight of all nights would be a really uniquely ‘me’ way to die.”

Nat motioned for Jackie to begin to follow her as she turned around, nodding towards the path they’d circle around to ultimately arrive at their destination. Thankfully, they marked all their regular methods of access with color coded signs and bands, most of which were visible in the snow due to their elevation. Trouble was, it was inconsistent. ‘Most’ was not all, which means if you weren’t careful, you could still get lost. 

“Because it would be unlucky? Or uniquely tragic?” Jackie asked.

Nat grinned.

“Both,” she answered plainly, grabbing Jackie’s hand to help slowly guide her under a branch they were both too tall for.

Jackie couldn’t help but laugh. It may have sounded hollow, but it was still Nat’s favorite sound out there.

“Is that you? Uniquely tragic?” Jackie asked, “Woe is me for falling for such a tortured individual. The heart of a poet, the body of an athlete, and the heart of… what works here?”

Nat was too caught up on how thickly Jackie was laying on the melodrama. She was clearly nervous. Thank God she coped with it in far cuter ways than Nat did.

“You said ‘heart’ twice,” Natalie corrected, now making a show of hopping over a hill of snow with a collapsible layer of ice on top of it, sparing them from losing their footing.

Jackie looked up, as though she were trying to find an answer in the stars, as she found the sky too currently obscured to get results. 

“Er, I guess I did,” she said, “I guess you’d go for ‘soul’ here then? Soul of… what?”

Natalie was too focused on being absolutely certain they were, in fact, going the right way.

“I dunno,” Nat said, examining a clearing they’d arrived in as a sort of fork in the road, “Why don’t… you tell me?”

Jackie knew Nat’s mind was elsewhere for the same reason she was running her mouth, she was nervous. She wanted to let her focus, it was the thing that allowed her to endure the best back at camp. Nat was shockingly task and goal oriented, a far more self-motivated person when she had something to work for. 

“Okay,” Jackie continued, mostly to herself, “I guess it stands to reason I know you best… what kind of soul do you have, Natalie Scatorccio?”

Nat knew she was speaking rhetorically, but-

“Black,” she said, still focusing on leading ahead, but dry enough to still be funny.

Jackie rolled her eyes.

“Like I said! So tortured!” she teased, “Natalie’s edgy. She’s not your dad’s misunderstood teen!” 

Okay, that one couldn’t help but earn at least a minor guffaw out of Nat. 

“I kinda am,” she said, turning around to face Jackie briefly, “Honestly, realizing that I’m not all that unique is what got me over a lot of bullshit. Thinking you're the world’s most special, most misunderstood girl is a great way to grow up with a God complex. I’m ugly, so I at least need to worry about how I am in the personality department.”

Jackie’s smile went lopsided as she squinted, shoving Nat playfully, urging her along as they began to walk side-by-side. She nearly threw herself off-balance, causing Nat to hastily catch her and bring her back to balance as they chuckled at their clumsiness.

“You…” she said before hoisting the rifle onto her shoulder more properly, “...are cute as a button, Miss. None of this mean talk. You strike up that winning personality all of a sudden so you could still not talk to anybody?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Natalie said, a little bummed out.

Jackie grabbed Nat’s free hand, instantly locking their fingers together. Jackie’s were cold, but Nat’s were frigid, so the contact was deeply appreciated.

“I know you do,” Jackie said, “All I’m saying is, I do not believe that you suddenly decided to have an attitude adjustment out of nowhere. You want to be friends with them. Don’t deny it. I know what’s going on in that mullet-wearing noggin.”

Jackie had been attempting to try and soft-socialize Natalie. She was a contradiction in a lot of ways, but mostly in that she was certain that Nat absolutely did want to have more friends. Surviving out there together made everyone share a weird, unspoken intimacy that it was much easier to build upon, rather than the classic high school social dynamics that were as integrous as dry sand. She figured she could get her to open up and talk to people more. Frankly, it was merely something to do while they were there, not much more.

It had mixed results. Tai and Van were easy to pal around with because they all had the same priorities and a similar level of given authority. They all held some form of respect in the eyes of the team. Nat was just… stubborn. Always retreating into herself whenever she and Jackie were around anyone else. She was a punk rock wallflower, and she felt the urge to be clingier than she was rather often. Jackie knew better than to expect legitimate progress while they were out there, but she did hope that she could help her out of her malaise a bit. 

And sometimes it went over better than others. Natalie was friendly with Melissa as both were fully-fledged tomboys in the way even the other members of the team weren’t. Nat respected that she still tried to hang onto some sense of style out there, even if it was literally relegated to nothing but a backwards cap. It was something. It was all you could ask for out there. 

She did want to. She just wanted to have Jackie first. Everyone else almost felt like… an obstacle? She hated saying that, but it was true. This whole stupid place was just a series of obstacles. Life was a big fucking obstacl-

“Fuck, finally. I’m freezing,” Jackie said as the two girls stepped out from the woods onto the lakeside.

It was tough to see at night, but the wide expanse of the lake did feel like a nice change of scenery, at least by their standards. It didn’t really look different, but it was open in a way the woods weren’t. The woods were suffocating. Oppressive, even. There was a liberating quality to this place. Normally, the still water of the lake would have a cool mist over top of it, with plenty of moisture in the air to attract all kinds of insects. Insects meant small critters. Small critters meant large critters. Thus, it became a hunting ground.

During the early winter, things were sparse for all sorts of reasons. Migration and general death from the elements substantially limited their food sources, which was why they were stockpiling at present. A family of deer had been hovering around this area, lingering as they attempted to migrate through the valley that seemed to bottleneck at this exact point. It at least meant that encountering them was basically, probably inevitable, but they were playing the long game. Hopefully. Two of those deer, and they’d be sitting on a whole lot less worry for the next few weeks. 

The shore of the lake seemed decorated exclusively by more tall grass, dirt, or stone across its entire circumference. The top of the water was frozen in a subzero layer of ice crust that kept them from fishing anything, which at least meant they didn’t have to split their attention between two separate tasks. 

Not that their intended goal was to come back with anything. Was it irresponsible? Sure. The thing was: not one person seemed to object to the fact that making this little ritual meant that whoever was out here would, on some level, be wasting everyone’s time. The deer arriving there would happen, and they’d probably gallivant around camp if they made into their literal neck of the woods, but that didn’t mean they could be careless.

But they were. Everything about their lives was now so tightly-wound that they had to have something to blow off steam. It wasn’t like they would be making out for fourteen straight hours, everyone always took breaks and there would inevitably be down time, but again, was this the time to risk it? Probably not, but nothing deterred their indulgence. Unless everyone at camp suddenly got real comfortable discussing some rather lurid things out in the open, it wasn’t as though they could just create a soundproof sex tent back at camp. They also didn’t want to send away any more people than necessary on a given night, because people were a resource too these days. 

In order to still be productive, but also to have their cake and eat it too, the general rule (when it was talked about in hushed tones around camp) was that you spent thirteen hours on watch for anything, and you got the remaining hour of your choosing to either rest, or… relax. 

The only even remotely manmade thing in sight was the nebulous structure they’d set up at the edge of the dead center of the crescent that was the lakeshore. A series of skinned animal hides crudely fashioned into a tent or teepee-like structure held up by a carved wooden post courtesy of Shauna and Van, driven more than a foot into the ground to provide some level of solidity. The ‘tent’ had multiple layers of hide of multiple kinds, stitched together with various other scavenged bones, muscle tissue, and all other kinds of gnarly stuff. Once it started to be a pain in the ass to take it down when it rained during the summer, they built a frame of wood beneath it to have it help retain its shape, and the handmade tarps were cleaned to avoid mildew or mold. From that, they ended up building a kind of small wooden fort to attach to the back of it for the sake of space… and more importantly,  contained a small window to stabilize their rifles if they spotted anything that escaped into their blindspot. The tent part was about ten feet in diameter, the wooden part was about five feet by five feet. Thankfully, they’d thought to ‘insulate’ it with their final remaining scraps of hide they’d saved, effectively making something that would allow you to survive the entire night… if not by a whole lot. It wasn’t like they were contractors or anything.

It was also why having sex out there just wasn’t a big deal. Sharing body heat, as they discovered, wasn’t just necessary, but vital in order to keep themselves from catching frostbite. As it turned out, a round or two with Lottie would be about as effective as a cheap space heater, which was a much greater compliment to her abilities than it sounded.

Setting up in there was an act of pure nervous expulsion. Jackie had opened the flaps of the tent, and set everything down inside the wooden area near the back, laying the rifle longways and within reach. 

Each of them took out their sleeping bags from the supply stash, unfurling them and setting them up on either side of the tentpole- which might be a problem later, but that was strictly a problem for future Jackie and future Nat. At present, they were too preoccupied with making dozens of tiny little adjustments to everything they’d set up just so they’d have something to do to distract themselves.

Nervousness and excitation were always a stone’s throw away from each other, but the lack of hard differentiation between the two was abundantly clear to the girls that evening.

When Jackie finally laid down atop her sleeping bag, she got onto her side, stretched as much of the tension from her body as she could, and propped her head up as she watched Nat fumble around the supply bag. Nat was doing that thing she did when she was hesitant where she was looking at something and had no clue what to do, so she appeared as though she were looking for something, when internally, she was in a mild panic. 

“Remember to pack your lunch?” Jackie mused.

Natalie’s eyes, funnily enough, went wide with fear for a moment after it seemed like she reached for something that wasn’t there. Upon placing her hand on several different objects still left inside, she breathed a sigh of relief so loud Jackie could nearly feel it. Her hand grabbed onto something small and plastic.

She got ahold of it, pulling the final item from the bag- a small blue and white pencil case with Laura Lee’s name embroidered onto it in cursive. 

Jackie was mildly taken aback.

“Why are you holding a pencil case I’ve seen since the fourth grade?” she asked.

Natalie let loose an awkward smile.

“So… I may have buried the lede a little bit about tonight,” she began, immediately earning a skeptical squint from Jackie, “Not about that. That is definitely still happening.”

Jackie took her free hand and flipped up her ponytail, allowing it to drop back down and swing back and forth, a look of satisfaction now emblazoned onto her face.

“Continue,” she allowed.

Natalie unzipped the pencil case, sitting down on her own sleeping bag to get roughly eye level with her teammate. 

“Well… remember what happened last time?” Nat asked, her tone of voice curiously a bit wistful.

Jackie looked off to the side, not sure if Nat meant before the crash, or when they last made out. 

“First time?” Jackie asked.

Nat nodded.

“Yeah, in your room,” she said, “We got all mushy, super handsy, but we didn’t wanna go any further. I’m just clearing things up: we’re good to go? On that front?”

Jackie nodded back, the first visible blush on her face in weeks.

“Well… I wanted to make that night special. So… I figured I’d make this one special as well,” she said with as much theatricality as Natalie Scatorcio was capable of; which was to say, not a whole lot.

She opened the pencil case, looked around to check its contents, and then revealed them to Jackie, who had to pull herself up to peer downward at the object.

Within the church girl’s ancient pencil case, one that had no doubt been handmade by her mother, hence why she’d taken it with her to nationals since she used it as a travel bag for medication and… whatever else Laura Lee had to put in something that size, was a bunch of dried mushrooms.

Jackie’s eyes went wide.

“Nat… Nat you didn’t steal food… Natalie-”

Natalie clicked her tongue, holding up the pencil case of mushrooms right in front of Jackie’s eyes.

“Not food,” Natalie quickly stapled on, “In fact, if these were food, I think at least one of us would be waking up foaming at the mouth.”

Jackie looked down at the pencil case, then up at a sly Natalie, back to the pencil case, then back up to Nat again.

“You… mushrooms? As in edible mushrooms?” Jackie asked, both fear and amazement in her voice, “Natalie, I hope you plan on explaining just how the fuck we’re even looking at these right now. Your dealer hook you up while you’re out here? How long did that take plus shipping?”

Nat rubbed the back of her neck.

“W-Well, yeah? Kinda?” she explained, “I took them with me. You know, just in case we won and wanted to… I dunno, have another cool night together? It’s not like airport security is lookin’ for em. I found them near the crash with some of my other stuff, and I’ve been… saving them. I figured actual hallucinogens being in everyone’s possession while going mildly insane wasn’t the best idea. Especially when we’re all so bored and horny.”

Jackie looked like she was about to gasp, but it just sorta became an amused scoff as she smiled ands shook her head.

“So them being in our possession while going mildly insane is a good idea?” she asked, sounding eerily close to a very well-meaning teacher.

Natalie scooted closer to Jackie, the tentpole now being host to pressing against the exterior of their thighs. Now she was precisely on eye level.

“It’s not a good idea. Nothing we have done since we crashed has been a good idea,” Natalie vented, “I figured… if this is the limit of what we’re gonna do out here, then I want it to be the most un-fucking-forgettable night of my life. It would be no matter what, as long as you were there, but I’m serious. I brought these cause… I wanted tonight to be even better than last time. I just want to be able to… to give you something.”

Natalie delivered all of that with presentation and showmanship she almost never had, even if it sounded like there was an underlying humor in her voice. Jackie didn’t even need to think about why. She knew it would be a stumbling block for them eventually. Natalie wanted to give her things. She wanted to spoil her. It wasn’t something she got to do for anyone growing up, and she wanted more to give than just… herself. Sure, that was a lot, but the simple act of gift-giving was a rite of passage.

Jackie looked taken aback in an entirely different way.

“A-And we don’t have to, for whatever it’s w-worth,” she said hesitantly, letting her hand self-consciously drop from her neck, “We’re both here, that’s all that matters. But… I think you deserve the best. I wanna give you that. Even if it’s still not a lot.”

Jackie’s heart felt so goddamn full. What the fuck had she ever done to deserve someone like this?

The prom queen winked at Natalie, plucked a mushroom from the open pencil case, and plopped it right onto her tongue in the blink of an eye. 

Natalie watched, utterly dumbfounded as she slowly made a show of how slow she rolled her tongue back into her mouth before chewing, wincing, and swallowing with an almost comical gulp.

Nat looked at her expectantly as she wrinkled her nose.

“Tastes like feet. Yuck,” she said before sticking out her tongue, “I don’t need to eat any more do I?”

Natalie didn’t recall any specifications given to her, but it was a general rule of thumb at one serving = one piece in the circles Nat ran in. She popped one into her own mouth and shrugged.

“I think it’s just the one,” she said before zipping the pencil case back up and placing it in the bag, sincerely hoping no chilly, stubborn rabbits or insects ended up OD-ing tonight, “So… just like that, huh? Doing psychedelics out by the lake? Not the most… not dangerous activity.”

Jackie frowned.

“Yeah,” she said, “It’s been… kind of a weird day. I think I could use it. It’s not like I lie awake at night thinking about the night before the crash all the time. Oh, wait, I do!”

She perked up there at the end, at least allowing both of them a laugh, but Natalie was still hesitant. She’d said something sweet, but she knew it was just a mask. Something was bothering her about today, and it seemed like she was still operating under the assumption that Natalie didn’t know it was her birthday. 

“Anything I can do to help?” Nat asked, leaning forward again to be closer to her.

Jackie shook her head with a meager grin.

“Nope,” she said simply, “Just be you. Potentially comfort me when the trip starts. Definitely never done these before.”

Natalie nodded.

“I can do that,” she assured her, “And, I know it’s sorta too late to ask but… there’s a solid possibility we both pass out? And potentially miss out on like three weeks worth of food? For everyone?” 

It wasn’t as though she was unaware of the risk she was taking, and the potential blame they’d be saddled with should they be found out. Even if the other girls weren’t coming here with the explicit purpose of doing a good job, thirteen hours of vigilance is a lot better than the two or three that Nat and Jackie were probably looking at, if they were lucid and lucky, that was.

She shrugged. 

“It’s the curse,” she said, “I really don’t think it matters.”

Natalie couldn’t help but roll her eyes.

“Not this shit, man,” she lamented, “Lottie’s got you all fucked up.”

Jackie looked… strange. Almost afraid. Almost concerned. Almost frustrated. Never wholly anything though. She just awkwardly sidled between vague emotions until she opened her mouth.

“Listen,” Jackie said, “I know you think it’s total bullshit. I get it. I’m just saying… have you ever noticed that when Lottie specifically goes out with someone, the day after they come back from ‘not finding anything’- we will always find a rabbit. Or a squirrel. Or some kind of good luck?”

She was about to do as she always did, and brush off any and all notions of anything superstitious or spooky. It was a great way to make existing paranoia much, much worse. 

But once she considered it… yeah. Yeah, that really had been the case, hadn’t it?

“So… that’s ‘the curse’?” Natalie asked, trying genuinely to follow along, “When bad things happen? Curse. Good things? Curse. I’m not trying to be a bitch, I just wanna know if you guys are scaring yourselves for no reason.”

It wasn’t like Nat was blind, either, though. She knew something was messed up about this place, but it just didn’t manifest in a way that made it totally obvious. 

She shrugged.

“It’s bigger than that. At least, that’s what I heard Laura say,” she said, “She thinks it’s just the winter in general, but think about all that means? This entire fucking… ecosystem out here feels like it’s trying to either fit us inside it with no room or shove us all out of it. Think about it, it’s November, right? We started getting snow at the beginning of October. Winter came early, and everything is leaving fast. I think… I dunno, something is upset with us. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found these deer dead somewhere soon. As like a… message, or something.”

It was easy to leap to this stuff when your perspective was as limited as theirs. 

“Okay, so something weird is happening. I’m not trying to fight you there,” Nat admitted, “Just feels a little… conspiratorial? Maybe? Are we maybe just looking for an excuse not to feel bad about tonight?”

Jackie looked as though that thought genuinely hadn’t crossed her mind, and she felt a little embarrassed, because the connective tissue absolutely was there. 

“Maybe,” she said a little glumly, “It’s not just that, though. I mean, come on. You’ve seen the weather lately. Yeah, we may have them trapped on this side of the mountains. But Nat… they’re animals. They’ll find another way. It’s been weeks since we’ve seen them… if they aren’t dead, they’re gone. Probably retreated and followed their… instincts? Sure, yeah, instincts.”

Jackie being the only person brave enough to say what was on everyone’s mind already was not on Nat’s plane crash survival bingo card. 

It wasn’t like they all weren’t thinking it already. Clinging to false hope that they would be saved by nature’s bounty being plopped in their lap. There was truth to the hostility of the environment they were in, and that made you retreat inward as a defense mechanism. Right now, that mechanism was borderline delusion as incentive not to die.

“Yeah… but there’s still hope, though? A little,” Nat unenthusiastically commented.

Jackie chuckled.

“I can just see the faith behind your eyes,” she said, voice as wooden and sterile as she could make it.

The wind howled outside, shaking the tarp for a few seconds, making the fabric ripple and bellow in the wind.

“So… how long until this kicks in?” Jackie asked.

Nat truly had no idea. 

“Give it a little while,” she vaguely approximated, sitting up and stretching as she remembered another vital aspect of their venture, “Until then, we should make sure we’re hydrated.”

Jackie nearly opened her mouth to ask why, but figured the question was a bit pointless. It was always good to stay hydrated, and half of every narcotic you could get your hands on caused dry mouth and made you dehydrate much quicker. If anything, it was a safety precaution. Especially considering how likely it was that their nightly activities might involve sweat. Plus, if the trip went south, waking up without water in a place you didn’t recognize was not fun. 

Nat fumbled around in the bag again, frustratingly trying to feel the smooth, metallic edges of the two canteens full of boiled water that she…

She…

She… left behind. When she was done boiling the water with Jackie after drying the wood. Probably exactly where she'd been standing for so long, too. 

Nat immediately panicked. Jackie saw the look in her eyes, patiently waiting to see what it was that had made Nat look like she was trying to stitch her own eyebrows together as she mumbled to herself.

I forgot water. Water. Fucking water.

“I didn’t bring our canteens,” Nat said in a disappointed exhale.

Jackie’s face elongated, her mouth making a little ‘o’ like it often did,

“That’s not great. Do you wanna-”

“I’m gonna go back,” Natalie said, only just now returning her eyes to Jackie, “Too risky to have us both out there after-”

Fuck, they’d already taken them. She was going to have to be quick, but she knew she could do it. A half hour, right? That meant a little under an hour to go to and from, right?

“Nat, you sure?” Jackie asked, “I don’t like the idea of you alone at night and… under the influence.”

Nat eyed over to her right, and leaned forward, grabbing their rifle.

“Problem solved,” Natalie said, gripping the rifle and placing the barrel of the gun against the front of her shoulder, aiming it upward and far, far away from Jackie, “And it’s a hallucinogen, that’s not a narcotic. It means that as long as I’m quick about it, I’ll be fine.”

Jackie still awkwardly sputtered, trying to verbalize something that made her paranoia feel like it wasn’t just her being overprotective. She knew Nat was capable. In fact, more than most. She had good instincts. 

“Are you sure?” she asked, “Coach said-”

“Coach,” Natalie began, “Is not here, and nothing is going to change the fact that we just did mushrooms. The only resource we need to worry about out here right now is time. Everyone in the camp is still awake, we’re definitely within distant earshot. I do not want us out here without the only thing we can still remotely nourish ourselves with.”

Jackie did not like how many of Nat’s points sounded valid, because to her, they still sounded like she was going off into the woods alone on drugs. 

“I just worry, Nat,” Jackie said, “I’ll be okay without a trip sitter, just… be careful? We’re already risking a lot by being out here…”

For you, Jackie. I just want something nice for you. No strings attached. No bad side effects. No medicine with the sweets. I just wanna be good enough for you.

Natalie got up into an unsteady crouch, caught herself, and stood up while still bending her knees the requisite amount not to hit her head.

“Less than an hour. I promise,” she assured her, “You don’t go anywhere, hear me, Taylor?”

Jackie’s frown became a lopsided smile as she threw a mock salute Nat’s way.

“Don’t keep your princess waiting,” she said before blowing Nat a kiss, “Not polite.”

It may have been obvious when she was compensating for being scared or nervous, but that didn’t make her any less endearing. In fact, quite the opposite. 

Natalie could only give her an awkward nod in return as she became flustered. When Nat walked through the tent’s twin flaps, Jackie allowed herself to try and scan her backside, only to remember she was currently wearing three jackets.

She threw her head back, adjusted her body, and folded her hands in her lap as she patiently waited for Nat to return, and the night six whole months in the making could begin.

***

“This machine will, will not communicate

These thoughts and the strain I am under

Be a world child, form a circle

Before we all go under

And fade out again

And fade out again

Cracked eggs, dead birds

Scream as they fight for life

I can feel death, can see its beady eyes

All these things into position

All these things we'll one day swallow whole

And fade out again

And fade out again

Immerse your soul in love

Immerse your soul in love”*

***

On her way back, Natalie thought about a whole lot.

Yes, it was a special night for Jackie. She’d managed to pull this off on her birthday, and it also seemed like it occurring on this day didn’t have any negative drawbacks for Jackie. Not ones she could glean much from, anyway. 

She moved quickly, and with purpose, retracing her footprints to an almost comically exact degree so her brain couldn’t possibly be distracted by anything else. She made her movements mechanical, which made thoughts come and go with much more ease.

Was what they were doing morally wrong? It certainly wasn’t ethical, but she felt a strange amount of guilt the closer the moment of truth became. What if their action or inaction would make the difference between life and death? Natalie didn’t take much stock in that curse at all, but things did have a way of just not really working out over there. Until they… did. God, this really all was nonsense. Regardless of the cause, the effect would be the same. They’d be starving.

Was the likelihood of finding the deer low? Absolutely. But what did the Yellowjackets do if not overcome the odds? 

Nat knew deep down her own luck was so rotten it just wasn’t something she ever had to worry about failing her. It was a guarantee, except for things that involved Jackie, of course. Jackie, conversely, had better luck, and perhaps could have been the one to wear the hero’s mantle for a little while. Was this all truly worth it?

When she thought about it for a moment, it was absurd to even entertain the notion that it wasn’t wrong. She was no better than some fucking moron at the beginning of a horror movie who got killed because of his own easily avoidable negligence. 

“Real good job making sure she was left alone and safe,” Nat muttered to herself, the sounds that escaped her lips turning into visible exhalations in the chilly night air. 

Sure, they had knives and the pistol in the bag, but Jackie wasn’t near as good of a shot as Nat was. Nothing predatory had ever bothered anyone out there, thankfully, but it couldn’t have hurt to be careful? 

Ugh, she always did this. She got too focused on wanting to do one thing, and then everything else didn’t matter. Nat would allow herself one solitary indulgence, and she’d use any excuse to justify getting to it because life had treated her poorly. She hated how it was a cycle. She especially hated how it persisted with Jackie around. She wanted to outgrow this for her. Now she was endangering potentially everyone for a birthday surprise Jackie never actually asked her for, compromising each of their safeties, if not by that much. The walk back wasn’t awful, it wasn’t as bitter of a cold as it had been, and she was going to make it with time to spare, probably before the mushrooms had even taken effect yet. 

Maybe they would clear her head. Maybe that’s what she needed. A kind of detox. Didn’t people say mushrooms did that? Or was that Ayahuasca? Maybe it was both. If Nat was being sincere, she didn’t even know what Ayahuasca was. Or how you spelled it.

It was all a mess. She was being an idiot. Jackie was too, not that it made it suddenly okay or anything. They were being irresponsible and reckless.

It was too late now, though. Way, way too late.

Maybe she could help out around more. Take the load of Van’s shoulders a bit more. She’d been recovering well, but she had to be running herself ragged considering her rather substantial facial injuries. 

When Natalie saw the first light over at the cabin, she ended up not going straight, but cutting across diagonally to arrive at the side of the perimeter of the campsite. She didn’t really want to be seen. It was embarrassing, to some extent, forgetting something that should’ve been a priority. If she left them where everyone could see, then she was probably about to get a series of verbal lashings she was already giving herself.

But she didn’t leave them out in the open. 

Tonight was stupid. She was stupid. It didn’t have to stay that way, though. She could at least still make Jackie Taylor happy, if only for just a little while.

“You can’t make anyone happy, Natalie,” her mother’s voice barked at her, somehow sending a colder chill up Nat’s spine, “Close your fucking legs already, you whore! You’re gonna get your friends all killed and it won’t be that dumb little dyke friend of yours’ fault. It’ll be yours.”

She hated when that happened. Loathed it, in fact. It was like tearing herself away from her mom made her even more likely to periodically disturb her in her thoughts at her most vulnerable. She was supposed to be out of her life now. She was never supposed to see her face or hear her voice ever again. 

Of course she managed to find her in the wilderness. Somehow, some way. Someone had to be around to say she was easy. That she was ugly. That she couldn’t close her legs. It was as though the moment she hit puberty, her father started leering and her mother started… what?

She started getting jealous. That was when it all started. Natalie had to buy tampons all on her own, and as soon as that happened, she was a woman in her mother’s eyes. A whore merely because she had the potential. 

The worst part was that it kept her in line. There were boys (and girls) she could’ve said ‘yes’ to. Dealers, Kevyn, hormonal girls around school who had low standards- not that she wanted to, but it was something she just walled off growing up. She felt butterflies in her stomach? Fleeting chance of attraction? Crush? Better kill that positivity quickly, don’t want mom to think you’re a slut! Figures. 

It was partially why Jackie stood out to her so much. She was too bright for her mother to dim. 

She approached the snow bank she’d spent nearly all day standing next to, thankfully out of view of everyone and everything because of the rather unique terrain. She’d been able to stand in a blind spot pretty much all day, only Lottie (of course) knowing where she’d scampered off to. 

Thankfully, she didn’t have to wonder very long. She had remembered them, in a manner of speaking. When Jackie surprised her as she blankly stood there, zoning out for who knows what reason, she’d just picked up everything to her immediate right, seeing that the other girl had nabbed precisely what they needed. 

She left the two canteens of boiled (but now chilled) water, gripping them by the makeshift cloth straps they used to hang them around their necks. The metal was just way too cold to the touch, but thankfully she wore enough layers to guard herself from the clanging metallic objects bouncing against her as she walked. 

She dusted off the snow, patted herself dry of it, and…

She didn’t leave. 

She couldn’t help herself. She had to make sure. It’s not like another minute or so would actually make that much of a difference. She had what she came for, after all.

Natalie got on her hands and knees in front of the lurching snowbank, which coated a shoulder-height rocky ledge with about six more feet of snow. It accumulated from both shoveling a pathway fairly regularly, and the diameter of the encampment being kind of a bowl-shape meant everything was going to collect somewhere, after all.

She crawled to the furthest possible distance to the left, facing the giant iceberg-like mass, exactly where it met the rock of the natural sounding area. 

Natalie put her fists in the dirt, palming handful after handful of slightly-loosened soil from the precise spot. She was going to have to do a better job of patting it down this time. She was supposed to do enough to hide it, but not enough so that it couldn’t be found, of course. 

As she tossed clump after clump of the cold, moistened dirt, it splotched and spattered across her face in about as unflattering of a way as was possible, not that Nat cared. She wouldn’t ever care about something like that, but she especially didn’t right now.

Not with the frozen, sickly-hued eyes of Shauna Shipman’s corpse looking back at her, she didn’t.

It took her a moment to absorb the sight.

Good. Still here.

She nodded to herself as though she had something to confirm, but she didn’t. Everything was just so on autopilot right now that movements and sounds were happening completely exterior to Natalie. In fact, it almost felt like she was watching herself do it in third person, as some disembodied spirit that was just holding onto what she could of the mortal coil.

The one that Shauna Shipman had shuffled off of with her assistance.

You smiled when you killed her, Nat. You’re a fucking monster. 

Her lips were blue. Her brown eyes faded into a color that resembled a sickly version of Jackie’s. The blood that stained her neckline was surrounded by a mixture of shadowed dirt and dimmed pink snow. 

She thought about it. About saying sorry. About apologizing in some capacity or another, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Her heart just wasn’t in it.

She patted the dirt back in a far more even distribution, abiding by the instructions she’d been given, shoving handfuls of the bank of snow onto where she’d just been, letting it dust over and ultimately cover up the ground, as though one inch beneath it, Shauna Shipman’s lifeless body didn’t rest, waiting for the thaw of spring and a choice hungry, recently-hibernated carnivore to free her.

This was too risky for her. Had she been calling the shots, she would’ve been more careful about this.

Now that she thought about it, maybe this was why the last thirty-six hours had frequently felt like a waking nightmare of some kind. Her questionable judgment that evening came squarely from the compartmentalization she was undergoing, trying to attack her two main dilemmas at once, throwing her off. She only had the bandwidth for Jackie at the present moment. 

But… she didn’t call the shots. 

All she could hope for was that the other party involved wasn’t going to meddle further, and that was it. All she had to do was enjoy the rest of the night, continue along like nothing had happened, and hope that a rescue really was just around the corner.

Because at this rate, no one was going to survive the winter. 

Thus ended Shauna Shipman’s story. The girl who couldn’t love, or be loved, by the girl with roses in her eyes, was no more. 

╭── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╮
NOVEMBER 12th, 1996
╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯

(EARLY MORNING)

Natalie was exhausted. At a ripe, crisp two o’clock in the morning, Natalie had finished basically everything she needed to get ahead for tonight. She’d been finishing up the meal cleaning duties and dishes that had to be put off because of a perimeter walk, which was delayed because she had to help Misty with bone-carving, which was then delayed by doing all the ahead-of-time water boiling. She was no stranger to some back-breaking hard work, but it was the sheer duration she’d been physically active that threw her off. Soccer was a stamina-based sport, but Christ, she had her limits. Couple it with the cold air outside, and her breathing was labored, stark, and strained. 

It was worth it. She knew it was.

Nat approached the cabin with minor dread. She was physically exhausted, but her brain was still moving. Her body wanted sleep, her mind wanted Jackie. Her bones ached, her muscles were sore, she would’ve been shocked if she was able to become comfy enough to sleep. 

Walking up to the door, she sighed, hoping that through all of this, she wasn’t coming across as needy or desperate. Maybe she was, but considering the circumstances, who wouldn’t have been? She was always caught between trying to give herself enough credit, and holding herself accountable. Constantly at war to decide whether or not she was being an idiot. It sucked. This sucked. She sucked. It all fucking sucked.

And that was when Natalie Scatorccio looked up from staring at her feet to see the cabin door, the one she was dreading opening because she knew everyone was in there, sleeping- but also because she didn’t want to expose herself. She felt like a permanent intrusion without Jackie to hitch herself to, not because she needed her, but because she just… made it easier.

God, how many of these fucking issues could I have been on my way to fixing by now if not for that fucking plane crash.

When she reached for the doorknob, she hesitated. She didn’t want to open it, sure, but now that her head was angled even slightly upward, she was able to find that… there was…

A letter. And a… bowl?

She crouched down, getting on her knees as she looked at the dirt-matted grass that had been stomped on so many times the snow, mud, and grass all just swirled together and then froze again. The note was diagonally leaning against the door, set on the ground, and the bowl was to her immediate right, just a couple of inches away. It had some kind of gruel or leaves in it, but she was apprehensive to see exactly what.

A prank? Nah. We’re all too fuckin tired for pranks.

She tentatively placed her fingers on the rim of the bowl, which looked to be carved from wood. It wasn’t impossible that it was theirs, but the carving and craftsmanship was just too pristine to have been any of their handiwork. 

She placed a piece of whatever was in the bowl between her thumb and forefinger, trying to get a careful feel for the texture or consistency. She couldn’t even really discern the shape because it was all kind of a mess of the same earth tones and it was quite dark save for the remaining kindling of the fire, burning its soft amber glow almost thirty feet away. Thankfully, the moon was bright enough to let Natalie’s owl eyes scan just enough details.

They seemed a bit dry. Flaky. But the shape was unmistakably… mushrooms?

They were dried. Likely wholly dehydrated from how it looked, but that wasn’t what was notable to Natalie. She didn’t know much about this stuff, but she knew enough that if anyone found this much of anything, it would be big fucking news and stomachs would be growling. 

So why were they here?

Maybe the note would illuminate this.

She picked up the piece of paper delicately, realizing it had been a while since she’d touched anything like it. It was an odd feeling, seeing something that used to be part of your everyday life totally divorced from that life altogether. It didn’t look like it fit. It didn’t belong there.

It was worn. Weathered. Parchment? What the fuck? Didn’t you have to go to an insane amount of effort to get that? What was it doing out here?

It was folded in half, and as she clenched her jaw, she took a look at the text that stopped her dead in her tracks. Handwriting that, like Natalie, was messy, crude, and to the point. Nothing flowery, nothing written with care or delicacy. It was sloppy, even. Written in a hurry, no doubt, but with what? This was unquestionably ink it was written in. This… it couldn’t… it was…

Had… one of them written this? This… whatever it was?

Nat halfway expected the fearful lump in her throat to disappear altogether as she opened the paper, anticipating seeing ‘fuck you Nat’ written over and over and over again just to drive home precisely how hatable they found her. 

But that wasn’t what she found at all. Instead, she found a letter addressed to her. 

***

Nat, this is not a joke. 

You need to kill Shauna Shipman. It is a matter of life or death. Feed her the mushrooms next to this note. Meet her alone at night. Cut her throat and keep it quiet. Bury the body under just an inch of dirt and pat the loose soil with snow. Hibernation ends; very hungry animals immediately find her; there’s your cover story. Use the snowbank near the south end of camp, the blind spot. You know the one. 

You have to do this. I wish I could explain more, but I can’t. Even if I could, you wouldn’t believe me. 

You’re in love with Jackie Taylor. You first kissed her the night before the crash. You’re desperate to go back home and live with her, right? 

Do you believe me now? Yeah, I thought so. 

You have to kill Shauna. I know you already want to. So just give in and let it happen. 

Everything depends on this, Nat. She depends on it. She depends on you. 

Kill Shauna and you save Jackie. Share the mushrooms with Jackie one day after you’re done with Shauna, and you’ll be out of here. I promise you. 

***

“Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore

And it's so sad to see the world agree

That they'd rather see their faces filled with flies

All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes”

***

BROADCAST INTERCEPTED #043 (CONT’D):

Transcription:

BB: How’s it going my late-night listeners? We’re nearing the end of the program for the evening, so I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this as much as I’ve enjoyed guiding you through it, keeping you awake, alert, and at peace… at peace? Whoa, sounds a little morbid, there. Bet you all can tell this is my first hosting gig, I’ll bet. Just hang in there with me, here in a week’s time I’m sure I’ll be running this place like the navy. Hope those guys have good music taste. Ah, anyway, for the final segment of the show before we close out with our last songs for the evening, we’ll be taking some calls from any of you listeners who are up and about. You don’t gotta be Johnny Carson to call in, folks, you think I’m doing a crummy job? Call in and tell me. Give the good folks listening along with you a nice show. Up late hiding in your garage, hoping the wife won’t hear ya come in late? You got any music you love for this time of night? Tell us what it is, and make sure you tell us why. Maybe I’ll slip it into rotation. Just call the number at the end of the ad station bumpers, I’m sure I don’t gotta tell you what that is at this point. We’ve got a nice, ten minute block here for you ramble about whatever’s on your-

[INAUDIBLE]

BB: Well lookit that. We got our first official caller on the line right now. You’re making’ history bud, from your lips to our ears, what’s on your mind man?

Caller: [STATIC] 

BB: Ah, I see. Well, partner, either you’re going through a tunnel, or you’re in front of a rather large industrial fan, either way I’m gonna need ya to do a little movin’ if you wanna be heard. 

Caller: [CONTINUED STATIC]

BB: … we got a signal, Carol, don’t we? 

[INAUDIBLE]

BB: Sorry about that folks, looks like a little bit of interference on our pal’s end here just doesn’t wanna let him speak his truth. Give us another call on a better phone or try your luck on a different night.

[PAUSE. APPROX 28 SECONDS.]

BB: Alright, well then, looks like he took my advice. Okay bud, we wanna go again? 

[PAUSE. APPROX 9 SECONDS] 

BB: … well, sounds like-

Caller: [STATIC]

BB: Okay, we might have to go to an ad br-

Caller: Hello.

BB: I’ll be a son of a bitch, you aren’t just a snowy TV station. How are we doin this fine evening, what’s your name, pal?

Caller: I am no good nor evil, simply I am

BB: … that’s absolutely not what I asked, man, but hey, alright, I can mess with it. Labels are pretty damn bogus. 

Caller: And I have come to take what is mine

BB: [DISTANT] Carol? The hell? Did ya screen this guy?

BB: Well, uh-huh, pal, unless you’re from the station or the network, I don’t see how I can help ya. 

Caller: I was there in the dark when you spilled your first blood

BB: … Jesus Christ, man. That’s disgusting. You’re on the radio. 

Caller: I am here now, as you run from me still

BB: [STATIC]

Caller: Run then, children

Caller: You can't hide from me forev-[STATIC RESUMES]

BB: Alright buddy, it’s time we call it a night. Sorry about that one folks-

[TRANSCRIPTION END]

***

Quoted Songs*:

• Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space - Spiritualized
• Is This Desire? - PJ Harvey
• N/A
• Street Spirit (Fade Out) - Radiohead

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