Archive of Our Own

On Valentine’s Day, Jackie pulls all of her clothes out of her closet and spreads them on the floor, like the scene from an action movie when the hero unrolls a map and they plan the heist.

“Any of these,” she says, dragging skirts and tops into one pile by the bed. She kicks some coats under her desk, “Fair game. I think the red shirt would look better on you. It’s too big for me.”

Jackie’s bedroom is only neat because her mom makes her clean it. Jackie Taylor is messy. She spreads herself out, encroaches on as much space as she needs. She picks up her makeup and drops it down again like shrapnel round her sink. She leaves her half-finished homework open on her desk like the act of glancing at it, moving it out of the way to make space for other things, having it present in her periphery, will magically complete it. She leaves clothes on the floor and knocks pillows off her bed and sits in the middle of it all, the eye of the storm of stuff, and smiles, happy in the chaos she’s created. Shauna wonders if she even notices. She likes this about Jackie. She likes her domestic imperfection. She likes that she’s one of the few people privy to it.

Shauna picks up the shirt. “It's not really my style.”

“It’s a red shirt, Shauna. What’s not to like?” She shrugs. She smiles. Easy and content. 

Shauna holds it to her torso. Jackie doesn’t look up from where she’s sorting through her underwear.

“It’s meant for someone with boobs. It doesn’t look right on me.”

There’s a lot of that - compliments that make Shauna bristle even though she doesn’t think Jackie meant anything by them. In fact, Jackie probably thinks drawing a comparison between their bodies where Shauna comes out on top is basically as good as a compliment. Never mind how it lands. Shauna should maybe take it as a compliment: Jackie getting giggly-drunk and crooning “I am so jealous of your tits. They’re like, big. And nice. So womanly. I’m like a fucking plank.”

Jackie treats Valentine’s Day like New Year’s, but they’ve never talked about why. She gets rid of things on Valentine’s Day. She cleans her bathroom or moves her furniture around. She cuts her hair. Shauna is usually there to bear witness and not ask why. 

Shauna folds the shirt up and drops it off the bed, near her backpack.

“When’s Jeff coming?” She asks, like prodding a bruise.

“Later.” Jackie says simply, on a sigh.

“I should head then.” Shauna says, not moving.

“Mn.” Jackie nods. She’s peering through the cream gauze of a bra. “Later, though.”

—

Jackie’s getting skinny. She’s always been skinny, but it’s never been so obvious. Her eyes sit deep in her angular face. Her chin juts out like a cliff’s edge. Her ribs push up against her skin like she’s been vacuum-packed. 

They’re all getting skinny. They might be slowly starving; the unspoken truth that sits heavy like disappointment, like shitty perfume. We’re dying.

But Shauna notices Jackie the most. Maybe that’s because it’s the most noticeable. Maybe because Shauna got into the habit of looking at Jackie years ago and even now, at the end of everything, she can’t shake it. 

“Here.” Some dried deer meat. They’ve long lost their pickiness.

“I’m fine, thanks.” Jackie says, somehow still warm. Her eyes are big and tired. 

“I don’t want it. I’m just gonna throw it away.” Shauna says, which isn’t true.

“Someone else will eat it.”

“I want you to.”

Jackie gives her a long look. Sometimes she thinks Jackie stares through her eyes and reads her true thoughts written on the inside of her skull. Sometimes she thinks Jackie barely knows her at all. 

“Ok.” She says. She nibbles. Chews. Swallows. Shauna watches it go down, watches her throat work around it. The tendons of her neck stand out more now. Her graceful neck. She thinks of Jackie’s favorite shirt from two years ago; a pale blue thing with a wide collar, that showed off her clavicle and throat. Symmetrical and well-crafted, like a mantelpiece, like the top of an old picture frame. Gilded.

Shauna swallows too.

“Thank you.” Jackie says. Her lips downturn, but she sounds sincere. Shauna feels all of a sudden maternal. She would like to draw Jackie to her and tuck her head under her chin. She would like to stroke her hair and tell her everything will be ok, because when has it ever not been? She would like to say that Jackie is doing well, and if she is not, Shauna will fix it. She’d like to feel the fluttering of her breath as Jackie’s porcelain face cracks and trembles a little under her true feelings. 

That night, up in the attic with Tai, she has a bizarre half-waking vision of chewing Jackie’s food for her, of tilting Jackie’s face up towards her, a bloody hand on her gilded neck, and feeding her like a baby bird, mouth to mouth, dripping life back into her from her own body.

—

“Don’t listen to him, he’s all pent up because they caught him jerking off in the locker room showers last year and now he can’t come.” Jackie says. They’re fifteen and Jackie seems to know everything Shauna doesn’t. 

This year was one of the worst years. Puberty hit Shauna like a freight train and Jackie like a spotlight.

“He’s told everyone. It isn’t even true.” Shauna’s lacing up her cleats. She’s started playing soccer because last year Jackie said it would be fun. Jackie is competitive. Shauna is not. Shauna thinks she is not.

“Of course it isn’t. No one believes him, anyway. You’re a knock-out. He’s already a burnout.” Jackie relishes her turn of phrase. Shauna watches her tie her hair up. She sits on the bench and allows herself to sulk.

“Shauna, c’mon. You’re not gonna let Lewis fucking Sears get you down, are you?”

Shauna’s answer must be written on her face. Jackie visibly softens. She’s so good at that, at letting herself go lax and loose, all honey and roses, soft, pink things, right when Shauna needs her to. Jackie takes no shit, but she’s impeccably sensitive when she needs to be. Hot and warm all at once. 

“C’mere.” She wraps her arms around Shauna. “Everyone knows you don’t like him. Everyone knows you wouldn’t flash him at all, let alone in public, it’s the most obvious lie ever. You don’t like any of those jerk-offs. You have taste. As you should. No one will believe it anyway, because you’re so cool and gorgeous and he’s like a little bug.”

Shauna laughs so she doesn’t cry.

“I’ll get Jeff to tell the boys that Lewis just wants you so bad he’s making shit up. It’ll take easy.”

“I don’t want to go to the movies tonight.” They might be there. Someone might be there. And apparently I need to isolate myself from this second-hand shame like an 18th Century nun accused of fornication. 

Jackie wants to go. She likes hanging with the boys. She likes attention, and why shouldn’t she?

“Alright, let’s bail. We’ll get some of that gross candy you like from Paulio’s and watch Top Gun.”

Shauna expected Jackie to concede her evening, but even so she still feels like she’s been given a gift, with wrapping too pretty to tear open. 

“We can wallow in embarrassment together, and then it’ll all go away over the weekend, I promise.” Jackie says, and when she says things like that, with all the certainty of a girl that gets what she wants simply by asking for it, Shauna believes her.

It does go away over the weekend. By Monday, everyone’s bored and has moved on. Jackie walks arm-in-arm with Shauna down the school halls and no one sniggers. 

—

“I think that’s the worst of it over. I did warn you not to scratch.” Misty Quigley shakes her head disapprovingly and pulls the skin of Jackie’s thigh taught with her thumb, peering closer at the rash. 

“It was itchy. What was I meant to do?” Jackie drawls. Her hair is coming out of its ponytail. Her chin is on her hand, eyes permanently rolled. Shauna cleans some deer skin of residual gore on the floor a few paces away.

“Scratch the area around the infection. Or apply light, general pressure to a clean piece of fabric over the top of the rash.” Misty says, like it’s obvious.

“I tried that.” Jackie says. She’s cranky today. Shauna reminds herself to make her eat later.

Her leg does look a bit better. It’s stopped oozing, at least. That’s got to be a good sign.

Misty squeezes a pearl of precious antiseptic cream out of the nearly-empty tube and touches it to the rash. Jackie flinches. Shauna gets distracted from her task by watching the minute expressions play across Jackie’s face; the twitch of pain near her upper lip, the release of her brows to relief, the tension in her jaw where she’s being brave.

Misty rubs the cream in with gentle fingertips, watching the wound weep. The circular motion of the pad of her index makes the breath leave Jackie in a silent sigh. Her jaw works. 

“Thanks, Misty. You don’t have to - “

“I do now, or you’ll scratch it off again.” Misty says, all obsessive, exhausting pragmatism, as usual. 

“I’m gonna wrap it up while this sinks in. Then we’ll air it out tomorrow.” She says. She has bandages on hand. Jackie stretches out her long leg, presenting Misty with the raw flesh on her thigh. Jackie watches Misty wind the gauze around it, stopping to adjust, to lie it perfectly flat and neat. She watches with an emotion she can’t describe.

Risking an infection because she can’t resist scratching an itch might be more Shauna than Jackie. Jackie’s impulsiveness is mostly performative. She’s patient. She plays her part well, and waits for her rewards. Shauna stifles herself and then it all comes at once, gorging on it until she’s stuffed, until she explodes.

“You’re a life-saver, Misty. Literally.” Says Jackie. And perhaps Misty fucking Quigley is the only person here except Shauna who hasn’t become completely immune to Jackie’s charm. She blushes a little, grins a little, pushes her glasses up her nose.

“I just want to help.” She says. 

It’s like they get off on it, Shauna thinks. Misty wants to love and Jackie wants to be loved. Misty wants to be needed and Jackie, from her glittering ivory tower, is all too happy to need.

And Shauna is happy to watch it all play out, apparently. Getting off on the superiority complex she knows festers within, despite being no better than either of them.

—

After the quarter-finals, a game they could have won in their sleep, Van gets out the booze she stole from her mom and they wait until the coach has gone and get playfully drunk in the locker room.

It’s a weeknight, but a Thursday, and their parents expected a celebration meal. Instead, Jackie leads the charge out of school and onto the streets. 

“Cal Donovan is having a party. Let’s double up, ladies!” She cries into the night air. They stagger through suburbia, cackling and singing, swigging from probably-expensive bottles of wine. Shauna’s with Taissa, thinking of excuses to give her parents for the inevitable hangover. She looks ahead at Jackie, her arm slung around Laura Lee.

“We kicked ass today, what do they expect?!” Shauna says. The streetlamps pulse and blur, like she needs glasses. She grins. It’s humid. The neighborhood is so quiet it’s satisfying to rupture its perfect surface. Like a ripe grape. Sweet. 

“That we’re serious sportswomen who don’t jeopardize our education by getting wasted on a school night?” Taissa says. 

“I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.” Shauna says. Van tucks herself in next to Tai and joins the conversation.

“Just tell them you’re sick. The whole of the Yellowjackets came down with a mysterious flu that comes and goes in a day. The only cure is fried chicken and bedrest. A terrible tragedy, but can’t be helped!”

“All the Yellowjackets but Misty.” Shauna says.

“Well it’s a good job she wasn’t invited to the afterparty, then, wasn’t it? She was spared!” Taissa laughs loudly. Van relishes the opportunity to be mean. Shauna smirks too.

Up ahead, Jackie whoops joyfully, throwing her arm up in the air like a flagpole. Her bracelets slide down it, knocking into each other just above her elbow. Laura Lee looks a little concerned, but Jackie’s smiling so widely that no one could be worried in the glow of it. She’s got no makeup on, none of them have, and despite a shower they’re all still frazzled from the game. It doesn’t matter. In the shifting lamp light, under the warm buzz of alcohol, the simmer of victory, they’re the most beautiful people Shauna has ever seen. And she feels more beautiful by just being close to them.

We could do anything. We’re young and talented and we love each other. Imagine such a thing. Complete belonging. 

And they have to stop so Lottie can throw up in a bush, and they get lost on the way to the party, and Mari’s shoe breaks and Tai and Nat start bickering again. And it’s as messy as it is perfect. Jackie kisses her cheek, stinking of alcohol, and says “I hope I remember this forever and ever.”

—

“Our parents must be so worried.” Jackie says one day, out of the blue. 

“Mine probably hasn’t noticed.” Says Van dryly. 

“That’s something, at least.” Says Laura Lee. “They’ll be so worried. They won’t stop looking until they find us.” 

“And the teachers. And the other girls.” Says Jackie. She’s sharpening a stick to a point. That’s one thing she’s good at. “And Jeff. Jeff must be inconsolable.” 

Nat snorts. “You fantasizing about your own funeral?”

“Of course not.” Says Jackie lightly, whittling. Curled shavings of wood drop to the floor like confetti. “I’m just saying. It’s shitty for us and it will be shitty for them.”

Perhaps she’s trying to find something to justify her own suffering. Perhaps she likes thinking about the space she has left behind, the grief she has caused. Perhaps she is fantasizing about her own funeral; how her parents will weep, how they will use the prettiest pictures of her, how Jeff will fling himself over her headstone, and the bodiless ground below. Then she will never get old. Then she will be preserved as she is.

The future looms so big sometimes that Shauna would quite like to pickle the present. She imagines suspending Jackie in formaldehyde, turning her pink cheeks green, slicking down her curls. Then she would stay this Jackie, the Jackie that loves Shauna, forever. She’d never need to know about Brown, or the baby. Shauna could keep her perfect that way.  

“I don’t want to think about it.” Says Laura Lee. “I just hope they can look to the Lord for strength and persevere, as we are here.”

Nat shrugs with her eyebrows. Jackie drops the wood shavings onto the fire and watches the flames eat them.

—

Jackie’s hungover but asked Shauna to come over anyway. She’s got a shit-ton of reading to do so she’s on Jackie’s bed, holding Moby Dick up above her face while the other girl groans into her pillow.

“Never drinking again.” 

“Uh huh.” Says Shauna, only half-listening.

“Mmn…why do I do this to my body? My poor body…only ever been good to me…” She’s always mopey the morning after. She shuffles closer, drapes herself across Shauna, drops her head on her shoulder, groans again. This should be Jeff’s job, Shauna thinks, but she’s here, isn’t she? No one made her come today.

“You should be more careful. Nationals is coming up; we need to be healthy.” Says Shauna thoughtlessly, turning her page.

The sharp line of Jackie’s chin digs into Shauna’s collarbone as she tilts her face up, stares at the page for a few seconds, sighs, returns her face to the crook of Shauna’s neck.

“Your breath tickles.”

Jackie blows out a little stream of cold air between pursed lips. Shauna laughs a little.

“Pathetic.”

“I’m dying, Shauna, don’t you feel sorry for me?”

“Of course I do, Jackie.” She’s grinning now. She can feel it at one corner of her lips. Jackie slings her leg over Shauna’s. The soft skin of her thigh is covered with a peachy down that tickles. She’s warm and smells of cigarettes and shower gel. She wriggles against Shauna’s hip a little, getting comfortable.

“You wanna listen to some music?”

“I’m reading, Jackie.”

“No you’re not. You’re talking to me.”

“Be quiet, then.”

She huffs. Shauna can hear the frown in it. She lifts up a lock of Shauna’s hair and twists it around her fingers. She runs her fingertip along the line of her collarbone. Shauna reads. The clock ticks. The mood hangs heady and lethargic like incense over the two of them.

At the end of the chapter, Shauna slips in her bookmark. Jackie’s breathing has deepened. Shauna tilts her head at an uncomfortable angle to see her face; she’s sleeping, the end of her pinky still wrapped in Shauna’s hair. Hungover Jackie feels sorry for herself, but it’s worth that for the wounded kitten routine. She’s at her softest, her simplest, her most affectionate, when she’s drunk too much the night before. Shauna sometimes likes to get her fill of it.

There’s a crease in her brow as she sleeps, her lips slightly parted. You better not drool on my shirt, Shauna thinks. With their legs tangled together, they might be one person. Or conjoined twins. Or an amoeba splitting. Shauna gets a twinge of desire to separate them.

Instead of jostling her awake, Shauna puts her book down and closes her eyes.

—

“What if we die out here? Are we gonna die virgins?” Jackie says one day. Things have been weird between them. Shauna thinks it’s probably her fault. Guilt is one hell of a third wheel.

Today is better. It’s sunny. They lie by the lake, drying off. Jackie’s stomach is concave between the hard lines of her sports bra and her panties. Shauna is turning pink on her thighs, but sunburn is the least of their concerns.

Shauna sighs, looks out at the lake. Nat is helping a very reluctant Javi wash his hair. Misty is squinting at some sort of water plant.

“I guess so.”

Jackie scoffs, exasperated. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Jackie hates nothing more than when things don’t follow her plan.

“What a fucking joke. If I’d known, I would have let Jeff do me ages ago.”

“What about it being special?” Shauna consciously keeps the mockery from her voice.

“It would be special enough that it happened.” Jackie says, suddenly somber, her eyes going glassy.

“You could always ask Travis.” Shauna says, hoping that by joking about it, it will show the idea to be ridiculous beyond reasonable consideration.

“Yeah right, and have Nat gut me in my sleep? No thanks.” She tilts her head back, face into the sun. “Besides, he’s too brooding. He’d be no fun.”

The sun ducks behind a cloud. Jackie frowns.

“One of the girls, then?” Shauna says, like wading into shark-infested waters.

Jackie screws her face up. “That hardly counts, does it?”

“I don’t know. There must be a big stick or correctly-shaped stone you could use…” She pretends to look for one. Jackie laughs. It’s the first laugh in a while.

“You’re absurd.” She says. Her smile is toothy. Shauna always liked that; how Jackie seemed to have too many teeth. Like the aforementioned shark.

“I suppose someone with a vagina might know how to make me come.” Says Jackie sardonically, easily. Shauna’s eyes widen.

“Jeff doesn’t…”

“Please,” Jackie snorts. “He wouldn’t know what to do if I gave him a hand-written instruction manual. He’s so sweet but he’s hardly an expert on the female form.”

Jackie has never shared this sort of private information with Shauna before, this less-than-glossy glimpse into their perfect relationship. Like with everything Jackie offers, she eats it up.

“That’s too bad. Not even once?” To be fair, she’d never had an orgasm with Jeff, but this was hardly something she could offer Jackie to bond over.

“Maybe I’m broken down there or something.” Says Jackie, staring down at her underwear. Shauna looks away.

“I doubt that. I heard that happens all the time. Like, guys don’t know what to do. When you go all the way, I’m sure he’ll get better at it.” He won’t, but he’ll look at you like he’s dying and gasp your name like a prayer and it will be almost the same thing.

“I hope so.” Jackie says, lowering herself down so she’s lying flat on the pebbles. “I hope I get the chance to be disappointed again.”

“You will. I’m sure you will.” Shauna says. Jackie cracks open one eye and smirks at her. Her hand flashes out and she slaps Shauna’s thigh.

“Watch it, Shipman.” She says, and Shauna laughs.

—

There’s a new boy from Sweden: Lucas. He’s in Shauna’s Math class. He waves at her while she waits for her ride and he gets on the bus.

She starts brushing her hair before Math. He holds his pen in a weird grip. He’s always chewing gum. He gets dimples when he smiles.

At break she sees him at Jackie’s locker. Jackie is chronically dating Jeff, but she’s a flirt to her bones, and more than happy to look up at Lucas through her eyelashes, tugging on her big hoop earrings. 

Shauna watches him ask her something. There is a second, a fraction of a second, where Jackie’s eyes flick up and lock with Shauna’s. Her gaze is heavy with an invisible smirk, with smug victory. Shauna feels an unexpected shock of hatred zip down her spine, like a zap of current.

Jackie’s face smooths into perfect humility. She smiles, reaches her hand up to cover a blush that isn’t there, and then says something back, nodding her head over his shoulder towards Shauna. He turns. They both look at her. He waves again: sheepish. Shauna wishes the linoleum would turn to liquid and she would sink right through it. 

Lucas asks her about the Yellowjackets in Math, but his attention tastes like powder, now. He doesn't brush his hair properly and eats messily at lunchtime and his accent makes him so hard to understand sometimes and she wonders what she ever found interesting about him in the first place.

—

It’s mild, even at night. Jackie and Shauna are doing their regular evening sweep for berries and nuts - better to get them before the morning birds do. A lot of the edible ones teeter on the edge of ripeness, sour and hard, a few days from sweetness. Shauna has the drawings Misty made memorized. 

This has become less about food and more about having something to do. An excuse to move around, be alone together, to escape their new not-quite-home full of energy both anxious and lethargic. To have some time in the fresh air and quiet to think. Or talk. Or do neither. 

There’s a weird tension in the air recently. Maybe it’s this new knowledge that they can kill things. They can kill and eat other animals, gut and drain and roast and preserve them. It’s feral enough to knock on that door in the back of your head that says I am alive at the cost of others. Nothing matters but my own survival. It’s base compulsions. The need to consume and preserve, to assert dominance but also to form a pack. To fight. To fuck.

Everyone’s on edge. It’s been long enough that people are beginning to think about seeking comfort in something other than a warm fire and long-dead batteries. To think about consuming flesh that isn’t ripped from a carcass. 

Shauna watches Jackie watch Nat and Travis slink off together. She watches her worry her lip with her teeth. Shauna notices Taissa coming up to the attic in the middle of the night and the excuses come more and more flimsy. 

Coach knocks Misty’s touch away. Van bounces her leg around the fire pit. Laura Lee prays. Lottie stares out at the trees, lips moving around silent words. Mari and Akilah go to the lake to wash more and more frequently.

And with all this extra weight pressing against it, the door in the back of Shauna’s head groans and creaks in its hinges. 

Jackie stops on the crest of the hill to catch her breath. She leans against a tree. The sunset is in her hair, prickling in her eyes like they're full of fireflies.

“Do you want some water?” Shauna offers a flask. It’s the first thing they’ve said in a while. Her voice comes out croaky.

“Thanks.” Jackie takes a drink. She’s not built for this kind of life. None of them are, but especially not Jackie. She’s featherdown and hair rollers and bubblegum lip gloss. Despite her strength of character, her unwillingness to take any shit, she’s not practical. She’s not used to doing stuff for herself. 

Shauna wants to protect her. She wants to hiss at the others to stop rolling their eyes and whispering their criticisms. Can’t they see that Jackie’s not meant for this? She’s trying her best. Well, she’s trying. That's what’s important. Shauna will carry her extra weight, like Jackie did back in school. She’ll keep her hair soft and her smile certain.

All this feeling, this protectiveness, tastes familiar to Shauna. It tastes like subservience; bitter and addictive. She wishes she’d never slept with Jeff. She wants to tell Jackie she has, right now, out of some masochistic desire to see everything crumble around them. Prodding a bruise.

“C’mon, it’s getting dark.” Shauna says.

“Let’s stay here a little longer.” Jackie says. Quietly, with a look in her eyes that tells Shauna she won’t be argued with.

They push and pull each other, and whoever is not doing the pushing has to do the yielding, that’s how they work. That’s how friendship works. Shauna wonders what would happen if one of them goes rigid. How much pressure would they have to apply? Who would break first?

It was satisfying in a sick way to figure out that Jackie’s social standing means nothing out here. It is even sicker when Shauna realizes that it hasn't changed between them, though. She’s still under her spell. And that makes her think that maybe this simmering resentment that tastes so much like love was never about Jackie being more popular than her. Maybe Shauna needs Jackie's confidence, rather than envying it. Maybe the pinch of her prettiness was never jealousy. 

“Come here for a sec.” Jackie says. She is looking at Shauna in a new way. A dark way. She’s like a pearl in the forest, tucked up against a tree like that. None of that matters here.

Shauna does go to her, of course. When she gets close enough, Jackie lays her arms over her shoulders. She looks at her with a new kind of curiosity, something resigned and weary, but a little breathless. It’s like noticing a new detail in a painting that's been hanging on your wall for years. Shauna can feel her heartbeat in her throat.

“Are you ok?” She asks. It comes out pitifully soft.

“No.” Jackie says. She’s smiling ironically. Her lips are chapped, twisted in her usual pout. Shauna is staring at them. 

It’s the strangest revelation of her best friend’s body, all up-close and makeup-less and softened by the sunset. When Shauna imagined this - and she has imagined it, peripherally, adjacently, crushed back and shoved down, safe in the night, lots and lots of times - it was always in Jackie’s bedroom, or drunk in the corner of a party. This is wild, they are wild, now. The strings are snapping. They stand holding each other against a tree in the middle of nowhere, forgotten girls, their nail polish chipped away, their leg hair growing back, dirty and hungry and tender. Liminal. Near-feral. Not-quite-normal. Clinging onto something from the past, onto each other, perhaps. 

Shauna wraps her arms around Jackie’s waist because she’s tired of holding them close to her own body.

“I’d be so lost without you.” Jackie sighs. It’s the perfect thing to say. It’s the kind of line she’d use on one of the football boys from another school at a house party, or to stop an argument in her own team. It’s the sort of thing she used to say to Jeff to make sure he was hers. It works on Shauna, too. Because she knows that even if Jackie doesn’t mean it, it is true.

Jackie always gets what she wants.

Blind panic courses through Shauna. Jackie tilts her chin up. Her face is open; painfully pretty this close, even with the bags under her eyes. Even with her skin sallow and her eyebrows overgrown and the weathering on her cheeks. The ground dips before the tree roots, making Shauna seem taller. It’s like a punch in the gut - the skin-deep, bone-deep manifestation of what her subconscious begs her for. For Jackie Taylor to hold her, to say ‘come here’ and then lean in close and wait for Shauna to kiss her. 

It’s a slow drifting together. Jackie knocks her nose into Shauna’s and presents her mouth. Before Shauna closes her eyes, she sees the quirk at the corner of it, feels the tiny, trembling breath against her own.

Jackie tastes like nothing, like water. Her lips are dry. After a few moments of terrified, tender contact, where Shauna’s head is full of screaming, big flashing lights saying ‘!!!’, Jackie unspools like a ball of yarn. Her arms wrap fully around Shauna’s neck. She sighs. She bends her body inwards so their chests are touching. She tilts her head and opens her mouth. Then the noise stops, and the world is silent.

There is something new in this. Something down at the base of Shauna’s spine stirs, nudges her body awake. There’s a knot of heat swelling and writhing in her pelvis. In the very core of her. She’s kissed more than Jackie thinks she has, but she still feels like a novice. Jackie’s tongue is smooth and sure. She draws Shauna further into her mouth, until Shauna feels like she’s inside her, slipping between muscle and skin, bathing in the lining of her stomach, the beat of her blood like her own. No wonder Jeff has stayed with Jackie through all her demands and prudishness and waxing and waning interest in him. She’s a genius. She kisses like she’s taken classes. She takes what she wants from Shauna and Shauna goes insane giving it to her. 

When they were kids, they used to watch the kissing scenes of movies over and over again, with almost analytical focus. Shauna would watch how the man would grip the woman so tightly. How she would swoon and sigh. How the music would swell. These were mostly Jackie’s parents' films; old Hollywood talkies in black-and-white, little more than crushing two mouths together and moving their faces around a bit. French kissing was a phenomenon that came later, when it was weird to watch it together for research. When having someone else’s tongue in your mouth stopped being gross and started being a sign of maturity. Shauna thought about Jackie’s lips in this analytical field, watching her put on chapstick, when she talked about kissing Jeff, when she bit them out of performative shyness and worried them out of genuine pre-game nerves. When Shauna first slept with Jeff, there was a flash of fancy that she might be able to taste Jackie on his lips. She might be able to take some of her from them.

It feels unspeakably good to touch someone. It feels terrifying to touch Jackie. To be touched back. Not like they normally do, with deniability and innocence, with no thought at all. Well, thoughts are coming slow now, to be honest. It is more like instinct, how she backs Jackie into the tree, how she learns to keep up with her tongue, how she squeezes her little waist and takes in deep lungfuls of the smell of her; so familiar under all the dirt and sweat and spring smells of living in the woods. 

She has wanted to kiss Jackie for so long that she barely cares that it’s only happening now, when Jackie has quite literally no better option.

It doesn’t even need to be discussed. Shauna thinks about breaking away, telling Jackie that she loves her, that she will always be there for her, that they can’t be apart even for a day, a minute, or else she’ll lose her mind. I am sorry, Jackie, for resenting you. For being so jealous and bitter and adoring. I’m sorry for thinking about you in your baby pink bra and getting drunk off your split ends, your broken nails, your inability to speak French - collecting your imperfections because I love them because they make me feel better about myself. I am sorry I fucked your boyfriend because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how else to scream what I was feeling. What I am feeling. I still don’t know how to. I don’t know what it is. I’m sorry for hating you as much as I love you. I’m sorry for wanting you all to myself. 

Jackie’s hands are in her hair. She’s pressing her hips up into Shauna’s. She’s making these little sounds of contentment, like she’s finally eaten a proper meal. If she’s feeling full, Shauna is feeling hungrier and hungrier. 

Jackie’s thin enough to snap. Brittle. She could probably break her in two. She could kill her out here in the woods and free herself and blame it on a fall, or a bear, or something. They could fuck in the dirt and the leaves, desperate and clumsy and overdue, and then brush the twigs from their hair and return to the house like nothing happened. They could become one. They could eat each other.

She’s got her hand on the high point of Jackie’s waist, can feel her ribs, can feel…her breath blooms warm across Shauna’s cheek…her nails scratch at Shauna’s scalp, she tugs on her hair, bites at her bottom lip, moves her body like she has total control, like she’s fully grown, like all the revision of old films worked. She’s perfect. Shauna bites her back, moves further into the accommodating bow of her body, slips her hand under her shirt, feels her skin - soft and warm and fragile. There’s a ringing in her ears. The knot of heat has become a forest fire. It is devastating, so fucking typical, that Shauna was doing this with Jeff for ages, sneaking around, stewing in anticipation, in the deliciousness of a shared secret - illicit and shadowed and hot - and Jackie has decided that today she will kiss Shauna, barely even had to try, didn’t even have to ask, and with virtually no effort she has staked her claim on Shauna so permanently that it retroactively ruins everyone previously. She didn’t feel this with Jeff. She hasn’t felt this with anyone. Maybe it’s the years between them, the closeness. Maybe Jackie was meant to ruin her. Maybe it figures that the only time she’d lose her mind to someone else would be her best friend, who has a vice-like grip on her that has not eased for ten years. And maybe, just maybe, none of that is deliberate. Maybe Jackie does not do this intentionally. Maybe she loves Shauna simply, curiously, like girls are supposed to, and this storm kicking and screaming in Shauna’s head is hers and hers alone.

Shauna turns the thoughts off. She slots her thigh between Jackie’s and lets herself sink into it. When she strokes her skin, fingers brushing the underside of her bra, Jackie makes a soft “mmn” noise through her nose. It’s warm and wet, it’s indescribable, this closeness that somehow scratches an itch and also makes it worse. Jackie Taylor is her best friend. She is her first kiss to feel like something. She’s hers. People would agree. Jackie and Shauna are always together. They are joined at the hip. They are a package deal. They are best friends.

There’s a life growing in Shauna. The heartbeat she’s been convincing herself for days she can feel, thudding away in her stomach, synchronizes with her pulse, the thrum somewhere near her crotch, until it is all the same. One addictive, unbelievable ball of anxiety knotting tighter and tighter. 

She’s not sure how long they stay there, making out in the woods when they should be foraging. When they break apart it’s darker. The last of the sunlight glints off the wet petals of Jackie’s lips. Her eyes are lidded low. She’s a little out of breath. It takes a second for Shauna to realize she is too. She’s still close. Jackie’s like a drug. Shauna nudges her jaw with her nose, dips down to kiss her neck, gently, with affection. Like a guy might.

Jackie lets out a long sigh, like Shauna’s given her something she sorely needed. For the first time in weeks, Shauna feels light. Happy. Giddy, almost. She wants to laugh. To shout.

“Now we can go back.” Jackie says, in this high, fragile voice, her forehead against Shauna’s. Shauna lets a flutter of laughter out, more a sigh than anything else. 

The berries are still tart. Not ripe yet. They’ll have to come back tomorrow.

—

They’d gone to Berkeley for a week in Summer Vacation. Shauna’s parents both worked so it was better that she was sent off with the Taylors so she wouldn’t be under their feet. She forgets the name of the resort as soon as she’s told it. 

There’s a pool. Her and Jackie spend most of the week in it or by it. They’re eleven, and don’t fit their bikinis yet. Shauna swims the length of the pool and bursts out on the other side, popping the swim goggles off her eyes. Jackie sits on the ledge with her feet in the water. She is sunburnt on her cheeks and chest. Her hair is half-dry and crispy with chlorine. She smiles big at Shauna and kicks water at her.

“I’m hungry.” Shauna says. She will say this to Jackie, but not to her parents.

Jackie looks to the bar. Her father is there, talking to two, balding men, holding a drink.

“We just ate.” She says. Shauna feels greedy. It makes her wish she hadn’t said anything.

“Yeah, I guess.” 

Jackie has a little gold chain around her ankle. It catches the light as it moves seemingly in slow motion underwater as she kicks her feet. 

“We could get an ice cream?” Jackie suggests, and just like that, the feeling’s gone, and Shauna’s warm and happy again.

Jackie asks her dad for two ice creams and they eat them in the shade, Shauna wrapped in a towel, Jackie pushing her too-big sunglasses up her too-small nose every few minutes. Shauna finishes quickly. Jackie takes ages, running the very tip of her tongue around the cream.

“You always eat ice cream so slow!” Shauna teases.

Jackie sticks her tongue out at her. There’s still ice cream on it. 

“I’m savoring it. Like in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

“It’s gonna melt.”

Jackie shrugs. “I don’t care.”

Shauna screws her face up, grins, darts forward and licks a big stripe off the side of Jackie’s ice cream.

“Hey!” She squeals, but her anger’s not real. She giggles as Shauna pretends to try and do it again, pushing her away with a sticky hand.

“No fair!”

“You snooze, you lose!”

“Leave me and my ice cream alone.” She sys, but she lets Shauna have another lick before carrying on her lengthy onslaught. Once she’s finished, she nibbles the cone down like a mouse. Shauna makes squeaking noises at her until she’s limp from laughing.

“Let’s have a diving contest!” Jackie announces.

“Yeah!” 

The poolside stone is hot underfoot. Jackie forgets she’s wearing her sunglasses and emerges from her first dive laughing, waving them around. She makes her mom rate them and they both get the exact same score.

Shauna remembers it so vividly. Turquoise pool and shitty buffets and peeling shoulders and melting ice creams. Jackie tanned quickly. They made friends with the other kids staying there that week. On the drive back home, Jackie fell asleep against the window and Shauna cried silently at the scenery passing by.

—

She dreams a lot. She expects they all do, but don’t want to drag it out into daylight in case it looks childish and inconsequential.

Tonight she dreams that Jackie is pregnant, not her. She feels empty. She complains about it.

“Here. Have mine.” Says Jackie. She’s thinner than ever, like the baby is leaching the life out of her. Her eyes are swallowed by the shadows of their sockets.

“No, Jackie, it’s your last one.” She says.

“It’s fine. You need it more than me.” Jackie says, smiling. She takes the hunting knife and cuts across her own bloated belly. The blood doesn’t seem to bother her. She doesn’t seem to feel any pain.

“It would look better on you, anyway.” She says, deathly white, shivering, reaching a hand into the cut she’s made, rummaging around inside her own body, blood turning her uniform red. 

When Shauna jolts awake she’s standing. She’s somehow managed to climb downstairs. She’s looming over Jackie’s bed. Jackie is awake and staring at her with eyes like saucers.

“Shauna?”

Shauna lets out a long, loud sigh. It trembles. Jackie looks scared. Why does Jackie look scared?

“What - “

Jackie stands, pulls on her sweat pants and sneakers, and drags Shauna to the door, maneuvering her around the sleeping piles of the other girls.

It takes Shauna a few paces into the woods to realize she’s barefoot. The season must be changing: she shivers. 

“Are you ok? You look really weird.” Jackie says. Her voice is pitched low. 

Jackie’s cut in monochrome in the moonlight, like an old movie. Like pop art. Like someone’s sliced bits of her off to start over. Shauna’s stomach rumbles. They ran out of meat three days ago.

Shauna’s barely showing, you wouldn’t know unless you looked for it, but she feels fit to burst with this aching emptiness. Overripe. Spoiling. Fermenting.

“Shauna…?” Jackie’s scared. Shauna is scaring her.

Shauna stumbles towards her. Jackie takes a few steps back but not quickly enough. Shauna gets her hands on her, sees her solidify into a real thing, real flesh and blood, tense and tight.

Jackie doesn’t say anything, huge eyes somehow huger, dark lips parted. They’re full. Still full. Shauna kisses her to stop the pounding against her temples. There’s a little noise of surprise between them. Shauna thinks she imagines howling in the distance. 

After a start of shock, Jackie seems to come around. It’s not like before. It’s dark. The moon slices through the trees leaving them fragmented. Shauna is shaking, dirt between her toes, and she’s wrapped herself around Jackie completely, trying to slot their bodies together in a way that is a perfect fit. Jackie’s got one hand in her hair and the other fisted in the collar of her shirt. She licks into Shauna’s mouth and it’s like heaven, like returning to Earth and finding it somehow better. The heat steals into Shauna’s bones and she doesn’t notice the chill of the breeze anymore.

She thinks it’s her that trips them up. They land on the cold, soft ground with a thud. Jackie’s on her back, the wind knocked out of her. Shauna puts her mouth on her neck - it shows my collarbone, which Mom said is like, my best feature, or whatever - she’s kissing and then licking and then biting. Jackie squirms beneath her, sighing a little, a hand across Shauna’s shoulders like she can’t decide what to do with herself.

Shauna wants to get under her clothes, because it’s a step closer to being under her skin. She thinks she might actually be salivating. Jackie gets kicked back into life, and wriggles upwards so she’s sitting, Shauna straddling her, trying to taste the pulse under her ear.

“C’mon.” Jackie says, exasperated, pulling at Shauna’s shirt until it’s off. Her bra’s the purple one. Jackie stares at it, face inches away from her chest. She blows cold air through pursed lips, like she used to do when they were lying together and wanted to annoy Shauna. A small, bright grin cracks across her face in the darkness.

“You’ve got goosebumps.”

“Yeah, it’s cold.” Shauna says,

Jackie lifts an eyebrow playfully, leans in to kiss the skin between Shauna’s breasts. She’s so close. She’s everywhere. Shauna cannot believe this is happening.

“Sure.” She whispers. Shauna’s skin must look like the bottom of her cleats. 

“Always liked your boobs.” Jackie muses, like she’s not-quite-here either, both of them half-dreaming, tangled together there, too, in that strange state of subconscious. She touches them, drawing her fingers over the material. Shauna’s so sensitive - probably from the fucking baby - and it is visible how heavy she breathes, how deeply she sighs.

Jackie’s drawing her cheek over Shauna’s skin, kissing her lightly, like she’s getting used to it, like she’s getting something from it. Shauna’s shaking still. Jackie’s hair is soft between her fingers. Jackie is soft all over, except for her teeth, when she nips, and her bones, where they stick out.

Then it hits her, how Jackie is calling the shots again. Jackie’s never shown the slightest interest in her beyond that slightly sticky codependency where Shauna does what Jackie says and in return gets to stand in her glow. Shauna’s been straining against her own leash for God knows how long, staring at the candy aisle and sitting on her hands, biting her tongue, and now that Jackie has decided it’s alright, suddenly this is what they’re going to do. Shauna doesn’t even own her own feelings anymore.

So she pushes Jackie back before she can get into her shorts. Jackie’s hair spreads out around her like a pool of blood. She’s like a movie poster, if the movie was a horror movie. The nerves must hit her, then.

“Shauna, I don’t think…”

“We’re both girls. It hardly counts, right?” Shauna spits. She’s surprised how hoarse her voice sounds. It makes something darken in Jackie’s face, and then she’s reaching up to drag Shauna down with her, kissing her deep and messy. It’s so far from perfect that Shauna wants to cry with relief, with heartbreak.

She peels Jackie out of her clothes, dragging down her sweatpants, feeling the warmth of the inside of her sweater. It’s the cream bra: no structure, all lace and frills. It’s gone discolored and frayed from washing it out here. Shauna counts her ribs with her tongue, swallowing around the way her mouth floods. It’s so good just to be close to her. It burns so bright. She slides their skin together, tongues tangled, sharing air and spit and sensation, sharing everything. If their skin became one, they would have to stay stuck together forever, or else rip themselves away.

She expects Jackie to say something like “be gentle” or “I haven’t shaved” or “don’t put anything in me, Jeff wouldn’t like it”, but she says nothing. Her eyes are wells of black, she props herself up on her elbows and stares at Shauna, panting, trembling, gaze so steady it’s like a dare. You want control so bad? You’ve got it now. Shauna swallows and swallows.

Between her legs is where she is the warmest. She tastes like salt and skin. Shauna’s blind with instinct, with this itching, aching kind of hunger that makes her more animal than human, than girl. Jackie’s making these noises like something wounded. The strength leaves her, and she stares up at the trees above. The hand in Shauna’s hair goes slack and soft - stroking rather than pulling. Shauna holds her hips as they make little circles and thrusts up towards her face. She has no idea how she knows what she’s doing, but she does. She knows Jackie. She knows her bone-deep. She knows how to rile her up and sweeten her through. She knows where her freckles are, what lotion she uses, what makes her laugh and what makes her cry. She knows the straight, strict movement of her body on the field, the looser, languid movement of it on the dance floor. She knows her smell. She may have already known her taste. This body might as well be hers. Perhaps it is. Perhaps she can make it hers. You can’t consume something without destroying it in the process.

“Fuck, fuck…please -” Jackie doesn’t know what she’s asking for. Shauna slips inside her. She’d like to crawl beneath her skin, sleep soundly in her bowels, swaddled in her intestines. She’d like to wear her, become her, devour her, assimilate her. She’d like to feed her, too. With her own flesh if necessary, and watch Jackie get fat and rosy and strong off of her. She wants to make her come like Jeff can’t do for either of them. The missing link clicks into place.

She tongues at her clit until Jackie’s thighs tremble, clamped on either side of Shauna’s head. She crooks her finger and licks until her muscles scream at her. Jackie’s voice pitches higher and higher until she bursts through that door at the back of her head, falling through it in a rush like a waterfall, and makes this half-groan, half-sigh sound like she’s finally figured everything out.

“Fuck…fuck…” She’s gasping to herself, breathing like she’s run a marathon. Shauna’s hand cramps. She wipes her face on the back of it. There is mud all along the bare skin of her front and embedded into the creases of her knees.

It counts to me. Shauna wants to say. That felt like my first. I think, when I’m older and know myself better, I will count that as my first.

“How far away are we from camp?” Jackie says. She sounds wrecked. Shauna glows with twisted pride.

“I have no idea.” Shauna cants forward and spills herself onto Jackie’s stomach, still lying between her legs. She’s so wet herself it feels like she’s bleeding, but the energy has left her, like she fell over the edge with Jackie. “Van and Tai fuck somewhere around here all the time, though, and no one hears.”

“Van and Tai?!” 

Shauna rolls her eyes. She feels more grounded, now. Less dreamy. Somehow this also equates to being more tired.

“Duh.”

“How long?”

“No clue. Definitely pre-crash, though.”

It’s weird to say ‘pre-crash’, perhaps, but it’s something they’ve all started to do; refer to normal life as ‘Before’.

“How did I miss that? I must be a shitty captain.” She’s fishing for compliments. Shauna won’t bite.

“I dunno. They think they’re subtle but they’re not.” 

Jackie huffs, crossing her arms over her bare chest. She drapes her left calf over Shauna’s ass and it’s so thoughtless and tender that Shauna wants to cry. It is everything she has ever wanted - the morning after with Jackie - but it’s somehow miles away from it, too. Parallel lines of daydreaming and reality, of loving Jackie and resenting her in equal measure.

They lie like that for a while until they both start to shiver. Jackie sits up and Shauna slithers from her body, its warmth, its light.

“C’mere.” Jackie says, syrupy soft, holds Shauna’s face like she’s precious, like she’s made of bone china, and kisses her lovingly. “You’re the best friend ever.” She says, and it sounds sad. It makes Shauna’s inside writhe.

She glances down at Shauna’s shorts. “Do you want me to…?” 

“No.” Shauna says too quickly. She couldn’t bear it. What if she tastes Jeff? What if she feels the baby? 

Jackie frowns, is either genuinely disappointed or does a very convincing job of looking so.

“I’m fine. I’m tired. I just wanted you.” She says, perhaps a bit too honest. Jackie smirks at her and Shauna loses her breath again.

“Really?" She thumbs at Shauna’s bottom lip. “You are full of surprises, Shauna Shipman.”

They sneak back before dawn. Taissa cracks an eye open, but just sighs, rolls over and goes back to sleep. Shauna does not sleep. She stares at the wooden ceiling above, cobwebbed and dusty, with equal parts joy and despair.

—

“When I’m old and I start to lose it, will you just unplug me?”

“What if you’re not on life-support?”

“I don’t know, push me off a cliff or something, then.”

“And how would Jeff feel?”

“He’s a year older. He’ll already be dead. Men don’t live as long as women.”

“But then what about me? Who will kill me when I’m old and senile? I’ll be lonely.”

“Good point. Maybe we should go together, then?”

“Are you asking me for a suicide pact, Jackie?”

“What, you don’t want to make a suicide pact with me?”

“It’s a bit early to decide, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. Don’t you think we’ll be friends when we’re old?”

“We could get rooms opposite the corridor from each other in the nursing home.”

“Play scrabble and watch the same movies over and over because we keep forgetting how they end.”

“Forget our kids’ names together.”

“Ha! See! Paradise, am I right?”

“Fine, I’ll kill you if you kill me.”

“I knew you’d come around.”

—

Cold creeps in. It gets everywhere. In everyone’s bones. It turns the ground to rock and the water to ice.

Jackie always hated the cold, felt it more than others. Shauna watches her shiver in her Doomcoming dress, the shade of Easter eggs and Spring sunshine. She sees her shoulders go up and her face close off. She feels the ice between them. The Winter.

And it’s in her, too, because she is Jackie sometimes, and Jackie is her. They are locked in a silent battle of their own making. The guilt tastes like alcohol, like the bitter, addictive delirium of mushrooms. It ferments into anger. Summer love turns to hate in the cold. 

Somehow, Shauna feels like she must know. Why else would she impose this distance? Her sweetness stings Shauna’s teeth. It’s too much. It’s all chemicals and nothing real.

If I came clean, would you see that I only fucked Jeff because you were too perfect? Why don’t you understand that he’s irrelevant, and the hurt I caused was intentional because you deserve it? You deserve some pain for the pain you’ve caused. You’ve wounded me invisibly and I don’t even have the luxury of knowing how, or why. I scraped power back by any means necessary, but it was you who made it necessary.

Jackie’s eyes are swollen. She’s like a leaf in the breeze. On the ground. So skinny you could see through her. She’s fading. The cold turns the overripe berries to stone, to rot.

The rest of the group turns from her because what does her influence matter out here? She’s just a girl who can’t start a fire, who won’t skin a deer. The bags under her eyes get bigger. Shauna swells. 

She loves her so much that it is basically the same as hate. That instinct to nurture becomes an instinct to destroy. When she says ‘ I’m not dying a virgin’, Shauna wants to scream at her, feels see-through and hollow. When she goes through with it, Shauna can taste the bitterness of her own medicine. When they finally come to blows, the rage is so hot and addictive, so easy, so righteous, that it feels like the love never did. The love was once simple and blanket-like, fresh fruit and honey and homework and pinky-promises, and now it’s choking Shauna. She can’t speak it. She can’t bear to feel it. It is digesting her.

The apology tastes so bitter. So impossible. 

She could have said ‘I am sorry’, or ‘I will do anything to heal you from my mistake’ or ‘I am in love with you, and have been for years’. She could have said ‘we need each other’ or ‘we are part of the same thing’ or ‘please for the love of God eat something, even if it’s me’ or ‘this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, is it? We are supposed to be girls. We are not girls out here’. She could have said ‘come inside’.

She could have thawed.

Shauna knows that you can’t eat something without destroying it. That doesn’t make the fruit any less sweet.