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Nat was exhausted. Hours and hours spent wandering around the woods in search of Javi, first without and then eventually with Travis. An endless, sprawling miasma of despair that was simultaneously the domain over which the Yellowjackets now exerted their rule and the prison that was solely but surely tearing all of them apart, breaking down that which once tethered them to man and society and replacing it with something far more raw and primal. And those that tried to leave it, find a way out, like poor Laura Lee? Tai and Van? Fucking ashes and a face that’s perilously close to Freddy Krueger. They’d gone out to the lake, trawled through moss and clumps of grass, searched the wreckage of the plane all over again, shit, even gone back to Coach Martinez’s grave, but… nothing. Javi, at least as far they could tell, was completely in the wind. Not a great scenario for a 12 year old kid to be in, back in the civilized world, the old world. Out here? Though Nat would sooner kill herself than say it, Javi was good as dead.
They were going in circles at this point, roaming around the same small alcove where Akilah and Mari foraged for berries, tracing and retracing their steps, yelling for Javi, bone tired and weary to the point that were close to forgetting why they’d started all this in the first place. Still, she couldn’t go back, because to do so would be an avowal of failure, to do so would be to validate and worsen Travis’s lingering emotions and fears.
“It’s late, and it’s getting cold out, too.” Travis cut into Nat’s worries at this point, thank god.
“Yeah, but we can probably cover a little more ground. I was thinking, maybe we retrace our steps around that dirt path where we shot that deer a week or two back? It’s only half a mi-”
“Nat, we’ve been wandering around for fucking hours looking for him, and that’s not even counting earlier in the day when we were searching for him separately. He’s-” Travis paused and took in a deep breath and just as Nat was about to lean in and ask if he was OK, he continued, “No matter where he is, I don’t think we’ll be able to find him tonight, especially when we’re already so exhausted as is.” He sighed, before finishing with, “Let’s go back and rest, this isn’t helping.”
“You’re sure you want to go back to that madhouse? For all we know they’ve already set up some kind of goddamn cannibal ritual trap for us, just waiting to finish you off and then me as payback for not letting them go through with whatever the fuck it was they were planning last night.”
Travis laughed a little at that, the real, unguarded one that Nat loved hearing rather than the acrid and cynical one he usually had. “Even for those bitches, half a day seems a little quick to set all that up.”
Nat wasn’t quite so optimistic. Maybe in the old days, back in the real world, back when there was still the semblance of rules, that’d be the case. Out here, though? All bets were off. And with Lottie seemingly at the helm, too?
Nat hadn’t known Lottie very well back in the old days, none of them did aside from maybe Laura Lee. Sure, her house was always the designated spot for whatever crazy shindig they’d throw after either a big win or a devastating, tight loss (Oh, who was she kidding? They threw ragers after every match, ever) and she was always a solid part of their defense on the field, but nevertheless she was generally the quietest of the seven, either her or Shauna, content to quietly observe the proceedings around her while soaking it all in, dropping in just the occasional barbed comment or two that would make you laugh out loud at its piercing accuracy, at least when you weren’t just flat out wincing at it. All the same, though, Nat recalled how during group meetings Lottie’s gaze would frequently wander over everyone else, a beguiling presence that always seemed just a little detached and removed.
And she’d had a calculating side, too, even then. Marika Swayer had taken out Shauna for a week or two with a hard, dirty foul fall of their junior year. They’d sat and stewed in the locker room after the loss, trying to figure out the best way to get even.
After a while, though, Lottie finally spoke up and said cryptically, “I’ll deal with it. I know just the thing.”
“You’re gonna give her the silent treatment for 15 minutes and drop a really choice insult?” Tai, always the skeptic.
Lottie smirked at that, laughing ever so daintily. “No… but that’s not a bad idea, either.” She paused. “Trust me, I’ve got it covered. Now, vodka shots in honor of Shauna, yes or no?”
(The answer was yes, of course; Nat could still recall Jackie and Tai shrilly chanting “Avenge Shauna!” while she and Laura Lee awkwardly chatted about school.)
Lottie’s mysterious words made sense a couple of days later, when it hit the news that David Sawyer had been arrested for tax fraud and would likely be going down for a long, long time. Nat recalled Jackie and Tai, always the two most assertive in the group, asking Lottie if she had something to do with it; after all, Stephen Matthews was a close friend of the DA.
Lottie never gave up the ghost, though, batting away all inquiries on the matter with a sly smile and a “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but things have a way of working out, don’t they?”
(For someone that loved complaining about her parents and the decadent lifestyles that they partook in, Lottie was remarkably unapologetic about using them when necessary.)
“And that was then.” Nat muttered internally.
She turned back to Travis. “Well, I’m not sure I’d take my chances, personally… but, it is getting late, so yeah, let’s go back and hope that there haven’t been any new pagan rituals cooked up?”
With a short laugh from Travis signaling assent, the two made their way back to the cabin, relying on nothing but muscle memory and exhaustion to point them home.
She had passed the front steps and was about to open the door when she first heard her. A low, guttural moan that reminded Nat distinctly of her father at his drunkest, that stage when he passed angry and just became sad and pitiable.
“What the hell was that?” Travis, sharp as ever.
Nat reacted instinctively. “Hand me the flashlight.” They were all trying not to use them unless absolutely necessary to conserve batteries, but Nat figured a situation where someone (or something, who the fuck knows at this point) was making that kind of noise was pretty goddamn worthy of being investigated.
Travis passed it over wordlessly, and Nat walked back down to the ground in front of the cabin and shone the light.
She was utterly aghast to see Jackie in front of her, pale, shivering, looking more unkempt than ever. She was perched on a set of rocks, with logs and twigs in front of her. There was a faint whiff of smoke in the air, as if a fire had been going ever so briefly before being cruelly extinguished. Jackie was one of the last ones who continued to try looking decent, so to see her like this was a jarring sight. What was most disturbing, though, was her eyes. They appeared haunted and hollowed out, as if she was already accepting death.
It was obvious to everyone that Jackie wasn’t adapting well, thrown out of her natural habitat and into a landscape over which she no longer had control, but this level of pure despair was nevertheless a depressing sight for Nat to witness. What the fuck was everyone thinking, letting her stay out here like this? And what was it with Jackie and getting trapped in weird situations, two days in a row; first the closet and now this?
“Jackie! What the fuck are you doing out here?!”
Nat was greeted with silence, just the barest flicker of acknowledgement that marked itself through Jackie’s eyes twitching ever so briefly before returning to a state of passivity.
Goddamn it. Time for something more drastic.
She shone the flashlight directly into Jackie’s eyes, causing her to wince just a little. “Hey! Did you not just fucking hear me?”
Jackie finally stirred. “Natalie, leave me alone… for fuck’s sake.”
“How the hell do you expect me to do that? You’re out here by yourself for god knows what reason on the coldest night yet, you clearly haven’t even been able to get a fucking fire going, do you want to die?”
“At this point? Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking good. At least it means… I won’t have to deal with any of this crap anymore.”
Nat stopped cold in her tracks. That’d be another death on the group’s conscience, on her conscience. The memories of her mother’s screams briefly overwhelmed her, before she forced herself to turn back to the present.
“Jackie, come on.” She tried for a softer tone. “I know this sucks, but you can’t give up, OK? All of us, we care about you, we need you, I need you, alright? Jesus.”
A little more effusive than usual from her, sure, wearing her heart on her sleeve, but hey, when a princess is in a slump, you have to go a little over the top.
She was greeted by a hollow laugh.
“Come on, Natalie,” and Nat wondered to herself how just the simple utterance of a name could come out so damn bitter as Jackie continued, “It’s just a shame that you weren’t here to witness this afternoon’s fun little ‘Let’s shit on Jackie in as many ways as possible’ party, because everyone in there? They made it pretty fucking clear that I’m useless, lower than dirt, resigned to peaking in high school, complete dead weight and fucking… blasphemous??? So your words, as nice and sincere as I’m sure you meant them to be?” and Jackie snarled at that, just a little, “They don’t ring very true, especially since they’re coming from a person whose ex-boyfriend, or are you guys back together again, I can’t fucking tell, I just fucked last night.”
A minute pause, then, “We had a good time, by the way.”
Everything about the rant was off-putting, and confusing too (blasphemous?) but what disturbed Nat most was the pure venom located behind it. Jackie was naturally the sunniest among the group, rivalled only by Van and Laura Lee; it was one of the many reasons why she made such a good team captain. On the rare occasions in which she did get angry, she always bounced back from it quickly. Even out here, when she seemed to be in a state of perpetual moping, it was different; moping wasn’t angry, it wasn’t poisonous like this was.
Still, though, Nat tried to regroup her thoughts and level with Jackie. It looked like she was a tad deeper into self-loathing and anger than she’d expected, but that didn’t change her obligation to try and help.
“Wowww… OK, I don’t know the fuck happened with you and the others this afternoon, but it’s not true, alright? Yeah, you did a fucked up thing with Travis, but that doesn’t… that doesn’t mean I want you to fucking die, all right? Also, think about how Shauna’s going to feel-”
“Shauna?” Jackie let out a disbelieving snarl at that, one that made her earlier utterance of Nat’s full name seem positively quaint. “Shauna’s the fucking person that said all that to me. She-” Jackie abruptly trailed off, and Nat tried to avert her eyes from the faint glistening of tears that she saw emerge from her eyes.
It was at that point that Nat knew the situation was even more fucked than she thought.
For all the time that Nat had known Jackie and Shauna, she’d known them as a package deal, whether it was their instinctive communication on the soccer field as they worked to execute a play, drunken screaming at the top of their lungs in Lottie’s backyard or giggling in class at some joke that was known to many but funny only to them. They were codependent, neither one working without the other. All the same, though, thinking back Nat recalled quite a few times in which Shauna appeared to show lingering signs of resentment about the fact that this was perhaps not an equal partnership; out here, to be sure, but even before that, late in the season and at a couple of parties, when Shauna would roll her eyes, just a little, at Jackie’s pep talks or at her “newest” anecdote about soccer camp in middle school that everyone had heard before. When two people were as close to one another as Jackie and Shauna were, the intensity of their dynamic frequently became an all-consuming one, with many layers to it beneath the surface: resentment, envy, obsession, two scorpions in a bottle. Nat wondered to herself about what had finally pushed Shauna over the edge, the perpetual runner-up finally stepping into the spotlight. Judging from Jackie’s reaction, the outburst must have been one for the ages, catching her totally by surprise even as it probably shouldn’t have.
Nat groaned as she realized what she had to do. She gestured toward Jackie and quietly but firmly said, “Wait here; I’ll be right back.”
Ignoring Jackie’s mutters of “Where the fuck can I go anyway?” she walked back toward Travis who had been observing the entire scene with a mixture of horror, fascination and just a tiny bit of amusement. What was it with dudes and getting off on female drama?
“That was… dramatic as shit. What the hell do you think happened this afternoon? ‘Great job last night, guys, only issue was we should have chopped up and consumed Shauna and her baby instead?’ After spending all this time with Jackie, I’m really starting to wonder how the hell she ever led you guys to do anything.”
“Her people skills aren’t that bad; she got you to fuck her, after all.” They had talked things out earlier in the day, sure; Nat knew it was done more out of anger than anything, and she had reluctantly admitted to herself that it wasn’t quite cheating, but the moment still stung, an implicit reminder that maybe she wasn’t really welcome, wasn’t really anyone’s first choice, be it back in the urban jungle of high school where she was regularly labeled as trailer trash, or out here where she was still considered leftovers, to be thrown aside when something better and more enticing came along.
Travis blanched at that. “Jesus, you’re right, and I’m sorry, again, but-”
“Dude, I’m kidding.” A pause, then after an awkward snort from Travis, “Well, kind of. Don’t fucking do it again.” Nat sighed briefly, then: “I need to go inside for a couple of minutes and get my shit, cause I have a feeling that I’ll need to stay with her for a while.”
“You’re not seriously gonna keep trying to help her? Even after all that?”
Nat paused, trying to find the right words. After a while, “It’s the right thing to do. It’s what she would have done for any of us back in the old days, maybe even now. Just because everyone else is sliding off the deep end doesn’t mean I have to.”
It was true, Jackie gave the best pep talks. The great comeback of April 1994, where they’d come storming back from three goals down to win in extra time? She’d inspired that one at halftime, and trite though some of her lines were (Nat exchanged many an eye roll with Tai and Van as Jackie rattled off lines that may or may not have come from an after-school special) there was something about her indefatigably positive can-do attitude that rubbed off on a person and made you feel like you really could do it, be a winner, something more than what you actually were. Nat thought back, too, to Lottie’s party the night before the crash, the last full day in the “before” part of their lives. Fucking Jackie, how did she do it? She’d somehow gotten all of them to not only make up, but also engage in a genuine verbal lovefest with one another in response to something she didn’t even know about.
(Nat wondered idly about whether or not anyone ever clued Jackie in about the cause of the argument that day. How small it all seemed now, and how funny it was, that even their arguments back in the “before” still had the consequence of fucking splitting open someone’s leg. The memory struck her, too, that Shauna and Tai hid the plan from Jackie because they knew she wouldn’t have approved of it, seemingly the first example of Nat and Jackie vs everyone else, even if none of them knew it at the time.)
Although Travis tried to hide it, an unusually tactful moment from him, Nat could see the skepticism on his face. Nevertheless, he shrugged and opened the cabin door for the two of them to enter.
Nat flinched as she stepped inside and was hit by a sudden burst of overwhelming heat that pricked her skin. Even so, she didn’t feel particularly warm inside, with the formerly cozy and inviting cabin now appearing detached and spartan. She quickly strode over to the corner of the cabin where she slept and gathered up her things, while Travis quickly collapsed on the floor in exhaustion. While the idealistic possibility still faintly existed that Jackie might be convinced to come back in the cabin, thus obviating the need for Nat to gather up her things, Nat knew it wasn’t going to happen; idealism barely ever worked out back in the old world, let alone out here where it was probably more likely that Coach Scott would hook up with Misty than have things work out perfectly. And speaking of that equipment manager psycho…
“Natalie! So good to see you again! I was beginning to wonder if you’d been devoured by vultures! And you came in with Travis as well! You two must be peachy again!”
Good lord.
“Nice to see you too, Misty. Can you move out of my way, please?”
“Oh, but where are you going so late? It’s chilly out, too…” She delivered the last part of this sentence in her typically overly-dramatic and cloying fashion, adopting a mock shiver.
Nat shouldn’t have been, logically speaking, but she nevertheless found herself taken aback.
“Uhh… hello? I’m not sure if you all have forgotten, or are just purposely trying to ignore it, but Jackie’s still out there freezing her ass off cause she evidently didn’t get the last five months’ worth of memos on how to get a fire going. Did any of you try to, you know, get her to come the fuck back in?”
“Oh, yes, our dear Jackie. What a pity it is to see her outside, so small and frail like that, but I do have to tell you, she decided to go out there herself. None of us made her do that, and the door’s not locked, either.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but she’s clearly not in her right goddamn mind! What the hell happened this afternoon?”
Misty paused briefly at that, considering her words, before recovering with, “Oh, you missed a good one! Many truths were revealed, oh, yes, they were.” She paused briefly, before her eyes and the pitch of her voice took on an even more wild fervor than usual. “In fact, perhaps you could say she’s meant to be out there right now, seeking a penance of sorts.”
What was with all the religious references today?
“Misty, you can say and think whatever you want, but it’s not going to change the fact that Jackie needs help, and if none of you plan on giving her any, I’ll fucking do it.”
Nat then fell silent briefly, before memories from the past struck her anew, leading her to ask Misty pointedly, “Jackie was nice to you, wasn’t she? Back in the day. You may not have a functioning moral compass, at least as far as I can tell, but don’t you at least remember that?”
At this, Nat noticed a brief flicker of real, human guilt as Misty undoubtably found herself thinking back to the many times throughout high school where Jackie would tell off someone (OK, maybe Nat herself on occasion) for making fun of Misty, for commenting on her lack of fashion sense and obsequious demeanor. Sure, it was always in a slightly condescending manner (“Oh, she can’t help not having any friends, it’s just who she is”) but that was Jackie for you, and the intention was always there. It must have been a nice feeling for Misty, to have a protector of sorts, so where the fuck was that loyalty now?
Almost as soon as the guilt appeared though, it vanished to be replaced by Misty’s customary off-kilter grin.
“Sure, yeah. Back in the day. Out here, though? There’s no back in the day, no past to hold on to. It’s just all of us under God’s dominion and what happens here today will hardly be remembered a week from now. So, go outside if you want, Natalie. Play the hero. A word of advice for the long run, though?” At this, she paused for a second to revel in what Nat was pretty damn sure was pure dramatic effect, before concluding with “Your way? It won’t work.”
And at that, she cheerily returned to her makeshift sleeping bag.
God, that was creepy. Yet another reason for her to stay away from Misty, not only for her own safety but also for her sanity. Nat shook her head briefly in preparation for what she was about to do, before stepping back outside.
To her pleasant surprise, it felt warmer out than it was earlier. She turned the flashlight on again to survey the ground outside the cabin, and to her relief what had seemed like might be an imminent downpour of snow had failed to materialize thus far, with the biting wind chill also having softened in its ferocity. Good, this would make things a lot easier.
She walked back toward the pile of logs that Jackie was sitting on, forgoing the ritual of shining the flashlight in Jackie’s eyes by instead directly sitting down next to her. Jackie wasn’t going to be rid of her that easily, whether she liked it or not.
“Jackie. Can you come in with me? Please? Whatever the others said to you, whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s not worth dying over, OK? You’re still… despite it all, you’re still our leader, still the person that brought us to Nationals, still the beating heart and soul of this team. You matter, alright? You matter so goddamn much.”
A long silence, long enough for Nat to get very worried, before finally, “No, I don’t. Maybe I never did, but I certainly don’t out here, in whatever the fuck this is. And even if you’re nice enough to forgive me for Travis-” she laughed darkly at that, “Which I think you’re crazy for, but I’ll gladly take, no one else in there gives a fuck about me. They picked Shauna over me, all of them, as if I was never anything to them at all. And Shauna? That knife has very much been twisted, clean through.”
A pause, then, “There’s something inside there, something deeply wrong with everyone else, and I’m the only goddamn one that sees it. You as well, I guess, which means it’s only a matter of time before they come for you too. Go back inside, OK? This group doesn’t deserve to lose two members in one night.”
Not that she’d expected anything less, but the words were still painful for Nat to hear. To see someone as boundlessly optimistic and happy-go-lucky as Jackie be reduced to this cut deeply. Although she’d already resolved to do so from the moment she saw Jackie sitting outside, hearing those words reaffirmed the task she’d set for herself to make things right, to be the one helping the leader out for a change.
At this silent reaffirmation, Nat got up and quickly began to gather the necessary materials for starting a fire, ignoring Jackie’s weak and faintly half-hearted protests of “What the hell are you doing?” and “I don’t need any more of your pity.” Although Nat would probably never be the most effortlessly outdoorsy of the group in the same way that Misty or Akilah were, she had the basic fire-starting skills down pat, and within a few minutes of gathering everything the two of them now had a warm, dynamic fire going to provide them with much needed respite from the cold.
Although Jackie tried to hide it, the relief and awe on her face was palpable as she felt genuinely physically comfortable for the first time in hours.
“That’s it? It’s that easy to start a goddamn fire?”
“Yupp. You may not be a genius at this stuff, Jackie, but how the hell have you been out here for five months without taking in any knowledge on getting a fire going?”
Just a little sarcastic, hopefully not enough to throw Jackie off-balance again. Nat hadn’t gone completely soft, after all.
“What can I say? It’s my Taylor charm and my good looks.”
Nat smirked at that. Signs of revival, thank god.
Quickly, Jackie turned serious again. “What are you doing out here, Natalie? You don’t have to stay with me, you’ve done enough already; you don’t even like me. Go back inside, forget being with the crazy girl. I’ll be fine out here on my own; might as well get used to it.”
Nat sighed; it was difficult to tell at this point whether or not she was being deliberately obtuse. “Well, since you refuse to go back inside with me, I’m left with no choice but to spend the night out here with you.” She saw Jackie about to protest again, and cut her off swiftly by saying, “And I’m not going back in without you, so don’t even fucking try me, dude.”
“Why?”
“Listen, I know what it feels like to fucking hate yourself and everyone around you because I’ve been there as well, too many goddamn times. Sure, your family’s a tad more well-adjusted than mine is-” (Jackie let out a derisive snort in response to that) “but aside from that, we kind of share a lot in common. The self-hatred and bitterness? Yeah, it hurts, especially so because it comes out of caring and passion. Both of us, we care a lot, though I guess you’re more open with showing it than I am.”
Nat paused, then; “Travis told me a bit of what you said to him, last night.”
Jackie grew tense but said nothing.
Nat continued, “It’s not true, though, and I think you still know that inside. Caring about things, love for others, friendship, all of that matters. Love is everything. It’s the whole goddamn reason we’re here.”
“Did you come up with that? Something from an after-school special?”
“First of all, you’re one to talk with that shit; how many times did you do the ‘Believe in yourself and just think positive thoughts routine?’ Also, that last part came from Coach, so credit him. Granted, he said all that stuff while tripping on balls, but it’s still true. Cynicism is such an easy thing to surrender to, but you have to try and fight it. You’ve never been that person, and it’s one of the things I’ve always admired about you.”
A pause, then; “The first few weeks of school, I went to Coach Martinez’s office; probably the only time in my life I’ve ever willingly sought out an authority figure, but there you go. I was pretty sure he was deciding between you and Tai to be captain, and I put in a word for you. I complimented your leadership skills, to be sure,” and Nat saw Jackie look off into the flames with a wistful look as she doubtless recalled some past memory, “But more than anything, I said you were the right choice because of your passion. Sure, Tai’s passionate as well, but between the two of you, you were better for it because your passion for the game? It’s like mine, fucking raw, kinetic, so effervescently pure. Tai’s calculating; you don’t calculate. The best example of that? Allie.
“Allie? What does she have to do with any of this?”
“The night before we left for Nationals, our last night of normalcy; well, relative normalcy, anyway, when Shauna and Tai were getting into it? You don’t know what that was about, do you?”
“Should I? I mean, I guess I never really thought to bring it up considering what happened to us about, uh, twelve fucking hours later?”
Nat paused briefly to muse on that fact. “No, I guess not. What happened, though, was that Tai and Shauna; well, mostly Tai, I guess, if we’re being honest, came up with a plan to freeze Allie out-”
Jackie cut in sharply, “You’re fucking kidding me? They wanted to do that at fucking Nationals? She’s a freshman, for fuck’s sake, how was that supposed to help her confidence, or the team’s, for that matter? I just- goddamn it…” before trailing off and shaking her head in a fit of irritated disbelief.
“Yup. She came up with the plan behind your back for a reason, after all.”
“Cause it was stone-cold, nonsensical bullshit?”
Nat smirked. “Exactly. Practice that day, I fucked with Shauna and Tai hard, sent every pass I could Allie’s way.” Jackie smiled at that, a sight that warmed Nat’s heart. God, it’d been way too long since she’d seen such a genuine one from her. “It pissed Tai off, I guess, so she switched sides to mark Allie, put more pressure on her, and… well, you know.”
Jackie went silent. After a while, “She do it on purpose?”
That question hung in the air as both individuals pondered the question.
“Maybe. Honestly, I doubt Tai knows herself. The fact that she came up with the plan in the first place, though? Would you ever have done something like that?”
She let the question linger for Jackie to think about, looking her in the eye as if daring her to say something to the contrary. Jackie looked as though she wanted to protest, that Nat was wrong, that she didn’t have the moral high ground, not back then and definitely not now. Nat raised an eyebrow but said nothing, and shortly afterward Jackie sighed and shook her head.
“The answer’s no, because you’re better than that, right? You’ve had your fuckups in the past, sure, we all do, but it’s what’s at your core, that’s the shit that matters. Another example? I’ll bring it back to Lottie’s party. You fixed things, fixed us, just like that. There’s absolutely no way that Girl Scout camp bullshit, to borrow Van’s astute turn of phrase, should have worked, yet it did. You understood that it would work because what we needed above all was to remember that we were a team, you know, that we actually kind of like one another at the end of the day.”
Jackie cut in. “So, how’d that work out in the long run? The former leader gets cast out, almost freezes to death and the wino misfit who hates me and whose boyfriend I just fucked is my knight in shining armor. That is supremely messed up.”
“Well, I guess the bonding exercise worked perfectly for the 99 scenarios where we get to Seattle fine; we just happen to be the unlucky bitches in the hundredth. And I don’t hate you, OK? Sure, you frequently have your blinders on and you can be more than a little condescending at times, but I’ve always respected you as a leader and as a teammate. And as a matter of fact, that respect has actually increased once we’ve gotten out here.”
Jackie eyed Nat skeptically. “Really? That’s gotta be a first. If there was one thing the others were right about, just one, it’s that I’m dead weight out here.”
“Like I said earlier, bad luck and the hundredth scenario. Jesus, it’s not a crime to not adapt well. And yeah, maybe you should have been a little quicker on the draw, but…” Nat trailed off briefly, before continuing, “You tried to adapt, in your own way. The séance. Sure, it kind of went sideways, but we had something fun going there for a while.”
“Laura Lee throwing a Bible is not an image I will soon forget.”
“The fucking power of Christ, literally!”
Better times. Nat doubted spirits were real, either back in the real world or out here, but for Laura Lee’s sake she hoped the girl was in a better place now.
“And last night. Saving Travis. We did that, together. They were seconds away from doing fuck knows what to him, but…” Nat trailed off, before continuing again with, “Maybe you weren’t quite the first person I’d had in mind for rescue duty, but I guess you were what I needed.”
Jackie wasn’t backing down. “And what about right before that? When I fucked Travis?”
Nat winced ever so briefly, before shaking it off with,“Yeah, that was a shitty thing to do. Still, was that really the worst thing someone did last night? And ultimately, I know why you did it.”
“And why’s that?”
“You wanted to feel love, I guess. Wanted to have something to hold on to, wanted to feel as though your life mattered and wasn’t going to just amount to nothing. Well, I’m telling you that it does matter. The guilt and the cynicism and the anger, it hurts and it’s always going to hurt, but you can’t let it destroy you.”
“So how are you supposed to continue on?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out. Hold on to the people around you and the things that you love, I guess. Sometimes that’s all you can try and do.”
Jackie took on a pensive, faraway look of sadness at that.
Nat finished with, “So when you asked me earlier why I’d come out to help you? Well, the short version is that I’m a decent human being. The long version? I just gave to you. You’re still a brilliant leader, this group still needs you, I still need you.”
Jackie smiled at that, mixed in with the beginnings of tears. “Who the hell knew Nat Scatorccio was such a big softie inside?”
“Hey, desperate times call for desperate fucking measures.”
At that, both of them let out genuine laughs, mixed in with sobs from Jackie, before the two embraced one another in a long hug.
Once the hug eventually broke apart, Jackie sighed and shook her head. “God, when did things get so fucked up? The two of us sitting out here, me ostracized and you about to be. Too much fucking death and misery around us. Shit.” Jackie paused again, before singing softly, “To die by your side, is such a heavenly way to die.”
Instantly, Nat found herself hit by pleasurable waves of nostalgia, of smoking in Kevyn’s car, bonding over mixtapes and trying and failing to not give a shit. A much different presence than Travis, to be sure, softer, more open, too open.
The good (or bad) old days.
“And if a double-decker bus kills the both of us, to die by your side, well, the pleasure, the privilege is mine.” Nat joined in here, the two reveling in the moment, the fleeting melancholy of it all.
After a few seconds of content silence, “That’s a good pull. Unexpected, too. How the hell do you know The Smiths? You are in no way, shape or form cool enough to like them.”
Jackie put on a veneer of mock indignation at that particular comment. “Hey! I started the tradition of playing Shoop prior to all our events, which I seem to remember you happily partaking in.” Nat found herself smirking at that, before Jackie got serious again. “You’re right, I’m not cool enough; but Shauna is.” A sigh, then: “Why does all the best and the worst shit in our lives come from the people we love?”
Of course things would lead back to Shauna. Jesus.
Nat hesitated briefly before asking Jackie, “What exactly happened? This afternoon?”
Jackie gave a sardonic eye roll. “I think a better question would be ‘What didn’t happen this afternoon?’ It was one for the record books, starting with Misty goddamn Quigley calling me out in front of everyone cause I had the audacity to not thank the ancient gods of the sky and the dirt for giving us a fucking bear to eat or whatever, and then-”
Nat couldn’t believe this shit. “Wait. Are you telling me all this started cause you… didn’t thank the gods for delivering us a bear?”
Almost in spite of herself, Jackie let out a giggle at Nat’s obvious incredulity. “Insane, right? You get it!”
At that, Nat couldn’t help but join in and laugh as well as the two reveled in the shared absurdity of the situation.
Nat found herself snarking, “Oh, man! When did this little wilderness sojourn of ours turn into a fucking Seinfeld episode?”
“Too bad we don’t have the comfort of a laugh track and half hour episodes, right?”
“God.” Nat shook her head in renewed disbelief, before a new thought struck her. “Is that what you meant earlier, about being called blasphemous?”
Jackie rolled her eyes again. “Got it in one.”
“So what happened next?”
“Well, you could say that I found out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.” Although Jackie smiled briefly as she made the reference, it was one that didn’t quite reach her eyes as she clenched her fists just a little tighter. “Shauna stepped in at that point, told me to calm down. So I… I revealed something that I probably shouldn’t have done, but... I don’t know, I was fucking pissed.”
Jackie fell silent, before finally continuing, “It doesn’t even matter at this point, honestly. There’s… our… what we once had is completely fucked, there’s no going back. She made sure of that.” A pause, then, “I did too, I guess. Sort of, but if you ask me what I honestly think I’d still say most of that shit’s on her, she made it clear-”
Jackie-Shauna psychodrama was not something that Nat particularly enjoyed dealing with during her best, most relaxed moments, and she knew from past experience that Jackie was likely to engage in a long string of talking in circles, so she rolled her eyes and cut Jackie off at this point.
“I love you, Jackie, as you hopefully well know by now, but can you please just get to the fucking point and tell me what happened back there? I wouldn’t ask if it were just between the two of you, but from what you’ve been saying, you kind of made it to be everyone’s else business when you argued with her in front of all of them, so…spill?”
Jackie briefly appeared taken aback, before recovering and laughing. “Yeah, that sounds like you, not taking any shit.”
A pause, then: “Shauna’s baby? Jeff’s the father.”
Nat was thrown off guard. “Jeff Sadecki?”
“I’m sorry, do we happen to have another goddamn mutual acquaintance called Jeff?”
Nat smirked at that comment, before quickly trying to hide it amidst Jackie’s glower of irritation. Nat knew Shauna to be many things, but one thing that Shauna definitely was not was someone into shallow jocks playing mediocre .500 level baseball. And to commit a cardinal sin of this sort behind her best friend’s back, too…
Jesus, these two had issues upon issues to sort out.
“I’m really sorry, Jackie.” And she was, even if that pity was also mixed in with a great deal of disbelief (and if she was being honest, just the tiniest bit of amusement) about the pure absurdity of the situation, that Shauna’s reckless and impulsive side was even more reckless and impulsive than anyone could have ever imagined. Talk about a shock to the system for the former queen bee. “How’d you find out?”
Jackie paused at this point, obviously discomfited. She finally muttered, “I read her journal. She was… I could tell she was lying to me, so I just needed to know the truth. At least I thought I did, like it fucking matters anyway, no one in there gave a shit. Instead? Everyone took her goddamn side. Just… fucking took in the show as she totally unloaded on me. According to her? I’m basically the devil incarnate, tragic and boring and doomed to peak in high school. I never took her opinions in, never listened to her. She never even liked soccer, apparently, for fuck’s sake.”
“Ouch.”
“Why does that almost piss me off more than anything else?” They both snorted at that briefly, before Jackie sighed anew. “It fucking hurts, of course, everything that happened, everything she said. In a way, though, she wasn’t entirely wrong, god. Fuck, she’s always had her shit together so much better than I’ve ever had, ever could have. She’s brilliant and she’s gorgeous, and if we hadn’t crashed she would have had-” at which point Jackie paused and corrected herself, “Still has a future where she’s somewhere far, far away from Central Jersey, writing the most breathtaking prose. Where she’s not looking back at high school as the best thing that ever happened to her, where she’s not looking back at all. So yeah, I tried too hard, too fucking hard to hold on to her because I knew deep down that she was going to leave me.” Although Jackie was doing her best to hide it, Nat could see her physically shaking as she struggled not to completely break down. After a moment of hesitation, Nat put her arms around Jackie, leaning in closer to her. Jackie looked up at her in surprise, before she broke into a slight grin.
“Thanks.” The single word spoke volumes.
Nat paused and sighed as she tried to figure out the right thing to say. After a while, “Everything that you just told me? You should tell her instead. Whatever she said back there, whatever resentments she may be feeling, she still cares about you. As a matter of fact, I’d bet that she cares a lot.”
Jackie challenged her with a look askance. “You don’t know that.”
“Obviously not.” Nat deadpanned. “Still, there’s two reasons why I think I’m right. For one, all those things you just said, you still mean them, even after everything she said to you, even after what she did with Jeff. That’s a real bond. The two of you have known each other since what, the fourth grade?”
“Second, actually.”
Nat knew that.
“See? That’s more than a decade of history, right there. Shit’s hard to break. I mean, when things are good between the two of you, how does it feel?”
Jackie gave a melancholy smile at that. “Like we get each other, just completely and unreservedly.”
“And how about now?”
Jackie paused at that, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. After a while, she finally came up with, “I’m not sure I have the vocabulary to describe it, but Shauna would.” She laughed a little at that, before continuing with, “Best I can describe it? One part of me, a tiny part, is still pissed. The other part of me, the part that matters? That part just wants to make it right however I can, even if there’s no chance it’ll work.”
“So just show her that. If you really get each other half as well as you think you do, then she’ll understand. After all, she’ll probably be going through the same goddamn emotions that you are at the moment, right?”
Jackie stared at Nat, pondering her words. After a long while, she finally asked, “What’s the other?”
“Other what?”
“You said there were two reasons. What’s the other?”
Nat pursed her lips briefly before answering. “I think that’s between you and her, it’s not my place to say. I guess what I’ll say is that although your relationship with her has a veritable shitload of issues to be worked through, there’s also a lot of fucking passion and love there. In every sense of the word.”
Jackie looked straight at Nat as she made that last comment, wondering and hoping about its subtext.
“No elaboration from you? You’re just gonna pull a Lottie and speak in riddles?”
Nat chuckled. “It’s more fun that way.”
“Smartass. I can’t believe it took a fucking plane crash and five months of being stranded out here for us to finally bond. I would have missed you at Rutgers.”
A pause, then; “Where were you planning on going, anyway? You never told us?”
Nat fell silent at that. That particular ambition felt like a lifetime ago, and then some.
After a while she finally answered, “I wasn’t going. Fucked if I got in anywhere.”
“You weren’t going to college?” Although Jackie tried to hide it, the surprise in her voice was evident. There was the Jackie she knew and (selectively) loved.
“In case you didn’t notice, I wasn’t exactly a straight A student.”
“Duh, neither was I, which is why I applied to Rutgers.”
Nat laughed briefly. “To be fair, there was a period where their soccer coach seemed interested in recruiting me. A very brief period that ended as soon as he realized that they’d hit their yearly quota for recruits with a sub 2.5.”
Jackie snorted at that. “And I thought mine was bad…”
Nat wasn’t entirely amused. “And you’re solidly middle-class, too.”
She saw Jackie about to protest and simply raised her eyebrows at her, inviting her to argue. After a short while, it became obvious that Jackie felt appropriately chastened as she shrugged diffidently.
“That would have sucked, though. For you. Watching all of us leave.”
Nat made a passive noise of agreement. “Shit, it was probably for the best; I mean, I barely fucking graduated high school. Druggie burnout that’s inexplicably also a kickass varsity athlete is an awesomely unique identity to have, but probably wouldn’t have carried very well over to college.”
The two laughed briefly at that, before Jackie asked directly, “So what was your plan?”
Nat paused at that, looking away. It wasn’t as though the team hadn’t tried asking her before, in the days and weeks prior to Nationals as they all prepared to go their separate ways, but she always kept her cards close to her chest. Now, though? Cards were definitely all out on the table.
Eventually, she answered with, “I don’t know, it’s kind of silly, but I was gonna travel around and hitchhike for a year or two, keep getting stoned and fucking around, but eventually I would have liked to coach girls soccer. Hopefully my old middle school team.”
The surprise in Jackie’s voice was evident. “Really? I wouldn’t have expected that from you.”
Nat laughed briefly. “It’s my deeply buried softer side. You’re getting all of it tonight.” Jackie let out an amused noise of affirmation at that, upon which Nat continued by saying, “Yeah, though, it comes from another thing I think we’ve always had in common. Out there on the field? That’s always been the place where I’ve felt most at home; maybe the only place.”
Soccer had always been a welcome respite for Nat throughout the years, from the first time that she ever kicked a ball on a rare outing to the park, back when her parents still maintained a slight modicum of interest in, you know, being parents. From that day forward, she was hooked, with trips to the pitch being one of the only things sure to brighten her usually sullen demeanor. It was only a matter of time before her coaches and teachers came to recognize her talent as well, and she still recalled the day she made the team at South Wiskayok Middle as being one of the best ones of her life. Things were simpler then, too, with the shared awkwardness of middle school largely insulating the team from the kind of insane drama that frequently plagued the Yellowjackets and caused Nat to sporadically vacillate between loving the team and wanting to shun them all for being totally goddamn insane. Although she only rarely saw her teammates from back then nowadays, the familiar bond and kinship nevertheless remained with Bianca and Hannah and others, in much the same way that it did now.
Once she got to high school, Kevyn and her other burnout friends frequently ragged on her for staying with the team, it being way too peppy a thing for someone of her clique to do. She always took the jokes in with good humor, pointing out that her presence on the team was a useful in for getting them into the best parties along with whatever drugs they could get their hands on. Really, though, it was the fact that at its absolute zenith, be it after a long, brutal practice that left everyone winded and showing it except for Tai still trying to prove that she was raring to go, or the unadulterated pressure and adrenaline that came with being on the field late in a close game, the experience of being on the field, of engaging in shared self-sacrifice with a group of other disparate individuals working together as one collective unit, was a perfect one. Against the backdrop of a chaotic home life and a frequently dismal academic life, soccer, and the community that came alongside it was the one constant for her.
Reorienting herself back to the present, Nat looked back up at Jackie, who wore a curious expression on her face.
Nat bit her lip and sighed. Of course there was a catch.
“I know, it was a dumb idea, obviously was never gonna pan out but-”
Jackie cut her off swiftly. “I fucking love it. Really. It’s… Shit, it’s so totally you.” A brief pause, before she continued with a grin on her face, “You like people thinking that you’re cold, not without a good reason, I guess, but really? You’re warm, and you’re genuine, and I’d say that you have your shit together better than anyone else on this team. And for what it’s worth, you’re totally right about soccer feeling like home.”
The comment made Nat break out into a spontaneous grin of her own; the rare, rare feeling of pure validation and support. From Jackie Taylor, of all people.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Jackie asked, “Why middle school, though? If anything, I would have assumed you would want to coach the Yellowjackets?”
“Two reasons, I guess. Growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, this sport, this team, gave me balance, obviously helped me in ways you’d understand, but also in ways you wouldn’t. So hopefully I would have been able to provide that same kind of support for them while they’re still willing to accept it, if you get what I’m saying?”
Jackie nodded. “And the other?”
“It’s probably fair to say that high school kind of turns teen girls into cunts, right?”
Jackie looked at Nat in what appeared to be a brief moment of surprise, before letting out a sharp, dry laugh. “We’re included in that tally, aren’t we?”
Nat smirked. “Probably, yeah, though I’d say more you than me.”
Jackie rolled her eyes fondly, giving Nat the finger. “Touché.”
Nat let out a dark laugh. “And that was back when we still had a system to constrain us; sort of, anyway. Now that we’re out of suburbia, though? It’s Bosnia on steroids. If there really are gods out here, they’re grade-A sadists, watching us slowly tear one another apart.”
“With David fucking Koresh ready to light the match.”
Nat sighed. “When people get scared, they look for easy answers, I guess. And we’re all scared, getting closer and closer to the precipice of winter, of half a year stranded out in this godforsaken place.”
There wasn’t any humor in Jackie’s voice now. “Closer and closer to a point of no return. All it takes is one little accident…”
Nat finished Jackie’s sentence for her. “Won’t be long before they stop being accidents.”
Jackie fell silent for a long while, before she finally spoke again. “Nat.”
“Yeah?”
“If something happens, you know, to me, you have to step up. Remind everyone that shit doesn’t have to be this way.”
Nat was taken aback. “Jackie, I thought-”
“Don’t worry, I’m not… you know.” Jackie meandered around the phrase awkwardly, not wanting to say it so directly. “Still, doesn’t change the fact that I almost died cause I couldn’t light a goddamn fire. So we’re definitely partners in trying to keep this group sane, but if I go down somehow, you fucking take charge, alright?”
“Shit, I… What about Tai? I’m pretty sure she’s on our side, and she’d do a better job at it anyway.”
Jackie made a dismissive noise. “It’s like what you said earlier, about why you vouched for me to be captain over her; which I appreciate, by the way.”
She smiled, before continuing, “She’s calculating, she doesn’t… she’s not going to be able to persuade people, to make a connection with their humanity in the same way that you can. Tai may be on the right side of the argument, but she’s the wrong person to lead the group. You, on the other hand? You’re the only one that bothered to come out and help me, right? You talked me back from the brink, saved me when I barely deserved it. There’s no one else like you on this team, and there aren’t many others like you out there, period.”
Nat sat in silence, pondering Jackie’s words. After a long while, she finally spoke up.
“Yeah. You have my word.” Jackie smiled in approval at her comment, before Nat continued on. “That being said, though, I don’t think we’ll need it. We’re gonna find Javi, you’re gonna fix things with Shauna, we’ll get this group to stay together before we all destroy one another, get out of this fucking place… and then maybe I’ll take a stab at coaching.”
Jackie grinned. “Do I get to make a guest appearance? Team captain of the 95-96 Wiskayok Yellowjackets, which were totally gonna win Nationals.”
“Fuck yeah, we were.”
They both laughed, and despite the long road that still lay ahead, for that one brief moment, everything was perfect.