Chapter Text
WISKAYOK, NEW JERSEY - 2013
The attic stairs creaked under Callie's weight, each step a reminder of her mom's latest punishment for talking back. Clean the attic, Callie. Organize these boxes, Callie. Think about your attitude, Callie.
Her eyes rolled almost involuntarily, dust motes catching in the slant of October sunlight through the single window. If nothing else, at least up here she didn’t have to pretend to be sorry.
"You better actually be cleaning up there," her mom's voice drifted up from below. "I don't hear any boxes moving."
"I'm organizing ," Callie called back, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. She'd learned that lesson already today – sarcasm would only add another hour to her sentence. "Just figuring out where to start."
The attic stretched before her like an abandoned library, cardboard boxes and plastic bins creating canyons of forgotten things. Sunlight sliced through the space, highlighting swirling dust and the cobwebs that draped from the rafters. It smelled like old paper, with undertones of mothballs and that particular scent all attics seemed to have – the smell of things left behind. Gross.
Callie pulled her phone from her back pocket, checking the time. Two-thirty. Her mom would be starting dinner prep at five, which meant at least two hours of quality time with whatever secrets the Shipman family had deemed worthy of keeping but not important enough to keep downstairs.
"Great," she muttered, tucking her phone away. "Just great."
She started with the nearest box, labeled "CHRISTMAS" in her dad's messy scrawl. Ornaments clinked against each other as she shifted it aside, revealing another box behind it. This one's label had faded, but she could make out "High School" in handwriting she didn't recognize.
The box was lighter than she expected, and the cardboard felt soft with age. Callie settled cross-legged on the dusty floor, sneezing once as she lifted the lid. Inside, yearbooks were stacked like forgotten treasure, their covers various shades of blue and gold.
"Mom?" she called down. "What do you want me to do with old yearbooks?"
"Just stack them by the stairs. I'll deal with them later."
Callie waited until her mom's footsteps faded before pulling out the top yearbook. 1996. The cover was navy blue leather, the gold lettering slightly faded: "Wiskayok High School - Home of the Yellowjackets."
The book fell open naturally to what must have been a frequently viewed page. A team photo lay front and center on the spread: girls in soccer uniforms, arranged in neat rows. Callie's finger traced across the faces, stopping abruptly on one in particular.
Her mom. But not her mom.
The girl in the photo had her mom's features, but everything else was wrong. This girl was smiling – really smiling, not the careful way her mom smiled at neighbors or during parent-teacher conferences. This girl had an arm slung around another player's shoulders, their heads tilted together like they were sharing a secret. They looked invincible.
Something fluttered from between the pages – a newspaper clipping, yellowed with age. Callie caught it before it could slide to the floor. The headline made her breath catch:
"SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER TEAM"
Below it, a smaller headline: "Hopes Dim as Winter Approaches."
And there was her mom again, but in a different photo. School portrait, serious expression, those same features Callie saw in the mirror every morning. The caption read: "Shauna Shipman, 18, among missing."
Callie's hands trembled slightly as she carefully smoothed the clipping. She looked back at the soccer team photo, at her mom and the girl she was laughing with. The caption identified them: "Back row, L to R: Jackie Taylor, Shauna Shipman..."
The attic suddenly felt colder.
"Mom?" Callie called down the attic stairs, trying to keep her voice neutral. "How much longer do I have to be up here?"
"Until you stop acting like a teenager every time I ask you to do something," Shauna's voice drifted up. "Another hour at least."
Perfect, Callie thought. Just enough time.
Callie waited again, counting her mom's retreating footsteps. When she was sure she was alone, she pulled out her phone and opened Google. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she considered her search terms. Finally, she typed:
"1996 Wiskayok High School soccer team crash"
The results loaded slowly – their WiFi barely reached the attic. But as Callie began to read, she forgot about the dust, forgot about being punished, forgot about everything except the stories unfolding on her screen. Stories about her mom. About survival. About secrets.
She looked back at the yearbook photo, at those two smiling girls with their arms around each other. At her mom, before she became Mom . At Jackie Taylor, whoever she was.
"Okay," Callie whispered, taking a picture of the team photo with her phone. "Let's find out what really happened to you."
A floorboard creaked somewhere below, reminding her she wasn't supposed to be investigating anything. Carefully, she positioned the yearbook at the top of a stack by the stairs, making sure the newspaper clipping was secure inside. Then she turned back to the box, wondering what other pieces of her mom's past were waiting to be discovered.
Outside, the October wind picked up, rattling the attic window. The light was shifting, taking on that peculiar golden quality unique to autumn afternoons. Callie pulled another yearbook from the box, this one from 1995. She had time. She had questions.
And somewhere in this attic, she was going to find answers.
ALBERTA, CANADA - 1998
Everything is too clean.
That's Shauna's first coherent thought as consciousness seeps back in, trickling through the morphine haze like snowmelt.
No. Not anything like snow.
The sheets are starched and white, scraping against her skin.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, relentless and artificial. She's forgotten how to exist under manufactured light, how to breathe air that hasn't filtered through pine needles first. The antiseptic smell burns her nostrils—too sharp, too sterile, too wrong after months of earth and blood and survival.
Someone's talking in the hallway. Reporters, probably. They've been circling for days, carrion birds waiting for scraps of story. She catches fragments through the half-closed door:
"—miraculous survival—"
"—refuses to comment on—"
"—questions remain about—"
The IV drip counts seconds in perfect time: drip, drip, drip . Keeping time in this new world where time means something again. Where minutes don't stretch like hunger and contract like fear. Where survival isn't measured in heartbeats and held breath.
She tries to eat the dinner they bring her—turkey and mashed potatoes, real food, civilized food. But it sits too heavy in her stomach, too rich after months of lean necessity. Her body's forgotten how to process abundance. Some of the others threw up when they tried to eat – she heard the nurses whispering about it. She pushes the tray away, and the nurse clucks sympathetically, not understanding that it's not about appetite. It's about knowing the cost of every calorie.
The TV mounted in the corner drones on, showing footage of the rescue. She looks away, but not before catching a glimpse of herself being loaded into the helicopter. She looks small. Fragile. Nothing like the person she became out there.
"—the search for answers continues as the survivors of Flight 2525 recover at Jasper Memorial Hospital. Sources say the girls are being treated for malnutrition, exposure, and various injuries sustained during their nineteen-month ordeal in the wilderness. Questions remain about—"
Shauna's hand finds the remote, silencing the anchor mid-speculation. The sudden quiet makes the beeping of her heart monitor louder, more accusatory. But she feels power in being able to silence the reporters – this time.
Through the window, she sees a girl who might be Jackie being wheeled down the hallway. But the painkillers make everything soft at the edges, and she can't trust her eyes anyway. Not after everything they've seen.
A nurse comes in to change her bandages. The adhesive pulls at her skin as it comes away, and Shauna welcomes the small pain. It's clean pain. Simple pain. Nothing like—
Don't think about it.
"Ms. Shipman?" A man in a suit appears in her doorway, notebook in hand. "There are some people who'd like to talk to you about what happened out there."
Shauna turns her face to the wall. "There's nothing to talk about. We survived. That's all anyone needs to know."
He starts to say something else, but she's already drifting, the morphine pulling her under again.
She wakes to find she's clawed her hospital bracelet off in her sleep. It lies on the sheets like evidence, like a shed skin, like everything she's trying to leave behind. She should throw it away. Should destroy every piece of physical proof, every tangible reminder.
Instead, she tucks it into the small bag of belongings they salvaged from the wilderness. Someday, someone might need to understand. But not yet. Not for a long, long time.
The doctors talk about trauma, about PTSD, about the importance of processing what happened. Shauna nods in all the right places, plays the role of cooperative patient. But she's already building walls in her mind, compartmentalizing, sectioning off the wilderness like quarantined territory. She's good at survival—she proved that out there. This is just a different kind of surviving.
Years later, her daughter will find that hospital bracelet in a box in the attic. Will trace the letters of her mother's maiden name and start asking questions that Shauna's spent a lifetime burying. But that's a future problem. Right now, she just has to remember how to exist in civilization again. How to be the kind of person who sleeps in beds and eats with forks and doesn't know exactly how long it takes to freeze to death.
The hospital doors slide shut behind her with a hiss. Ahead, her mom waits with open arms and careful smiles, ready to take her home to a life she doesn't know how to live anymore. She straightens her shoulders, adjusts her face into something that looks like recovery.
She's survived worse than this. She'll survive being saved.
But her children—the theoretical, future children who exist only as possibility—they'll never have to learn what survival really costs. She'll make sure of that.
She steps into the sunlight, leaving the hospital bracelet and everything it represents safely buried in the past. Where it belongs. Where it has to stay.
They can never know.
The mantra follows her home, a prayer, a promise, a lie she'll spend the next fifteen years perfecting.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - 2013
The plastic chair squeaks when Nat shifts her weight. It's the kind of sound that would have meant death in the wilderness—too loud, too artificial, too much like prey. But this isn't the wilderness. This is Better Paths Recovery Center, where everything is calculated to be non-threatening: pastel walls, inspirational posters, and half-caf coffee.
Seventeen faces arranged in a circle, all carrying their own versions of rock bottom. Nat counts them automatically—old habits—then counts again. Seventeen survivors. No, not survivors. Patients. That's what they're called here.
"Today we're talking about trust," says Dr. Perez, her voice warm and professional. Everything about her is warm and professional, from her sensible cardigan to her careful way of making eye contact with each person in the circle. "Who would like to start?"
Nat's phone buzzes in her pocket. She should have turned it off—that's the rule—but she's never been good with rules. The screen lights up with a news alert: 15th Anniversary of Flight 2525 Crash Approaches: Survivors Still Silent.
"Natalie?" Dr. Perez’s voice cuts through her thoughts. "Would you like to share today?"
The fluorescent lights hum overhead, a steady drone that sometimes sounds like airplane engines in her dreams.
"The thing about trust," she says, surprising herself by speaking up, "is that sometimes the people you trust most are the ones who've seen you at your worst. And sometimes that's exactly why you can't face them anymore."
The words hang in the air like smoke. Someone shifts uncomfortably. Someone else nods. Dr. Perez leans forward slightly, professional interest perfectly calibrated.
"Can you elaborate on that?"
Nat's phone buzzes again. Lottie's name appears on the screen, then fades. Third text this week. All unread.
"When someone's seen you at your worst," Nat continues, "they know what you're capable of. And maybe you're not that person anymore. Or maybe you are, and that's worse. Either way, trust becomes about... managing expectations. Controlling the narrative."
"And how's that working for you?" Dr. Perez asks, gentle as a knife.
Nat almost laughs. How's it working? She's in rehab for the third time, courtesy of Tai’s mysterious financial resources and Lottie’s even more mysterious sudden interest in her well-being. Her phone keeps lighting up with anniversary notifications like wounds that won't heal.
And somewhere in New Jersey, Shauna is probably making dinner for her perfect suburban family, pretending she never learned how to hunt.
"It's working great," Nat says instead. "Really stellar life choices all around."
Someone in the circle chuckles—quickly stifled, but real. Nat catches the eye of the laugher, a woman with faded tattoos and kind eyes. For a moment, there's understanding there. Not the kind that comes from shared trauma, but maybe the kind that comes from recognizing another person's defenses.
"Forgiveness," Dr. Perez says, redirecting the conversation, "starts with—"
"Bullshit," Nat interrupts. "Some things aren't about forgiveness."
"What are they about then, Natalie?"
Nat touches her phone, feels Lottie's unread messages like a pulse. "Survival."
"And after survival?"
"Nobody tells you what to do after you survive."
The room goes quiet. Even the fluorescent lights seem to hold their breath. Nat can feel the weight of seventeen bodies pressing in, seventeen different versions of survival and its aftermath.
"Would you like to talk about what survival means to you?" Dr. Perez asks, and for the first time, Nat hears something like real curiosity under the professional calm.
Her phone screen lights up again: Charlotte Matthews' Wellness Empire Expands: Survivor Turned Spiritual Leader Opens New Center.
"Survival," Nat says slowly, "Survival means staying alive at the cost of everything else. And then you have to figure out how to live with what's left."
She remembers Lottie in the wilderness, eyes fever-bright. Remembers her now, polished and powerful, talking about healing and purpose. Both versions are equally terrifying in their conviction.
"The programs here at Better Paths emphasize moving forward," Dr. Perez reminds her. "Finding healthy ways to process past trauma without letting it define us."
"Yeah?" Nat leans forward, elbows on knees. "What if the trauma isn't past? What if it's sitting in your pocket, sending you texts about how it's all going to be okay if you just trust the process?"
The woman with the tattoos makes a sound of recognition. Others shift in their seats, maybe remembering their own versions of trauma that won't stay buried.
"Are you referring to someone specific?" Dr. Perez asks.
Nat's phone buzzes again. This time it's not Lottie—it's another news alert: Wilderness Survival Expert Analyzes Flight 2525 Mystery: How Did They Last So Long?
"You want to know about trust?" Nat says instead of answering. "Trust is what happens when you're starving and scared and someone looks you in the eye and says they know how to keep you alive. Trust is what happens when you believe them because the alternative is unthinkable. And then—" She stops, swallows. "And then trust becomes about keeping secrets. Because if you tell the truth about how you survived, nobody will ever look at you the same way again."
The room is absolutely still now. Even Dr. Perez seems caught in the gravity of Nat's words, her notepad forgotten in her lap.
Her phone screens lights up one more time:
Thinking of you. The darkness isn't forever. - L
"Natalie," Dr. Perez says carefully, "it sounds like you're carrying a very heavy burden."
A laugh escapes before Nat can catch it. "Burden? No. A burden you can put down. This is more like... gravity. It's just there, whether you acknowledge it or not."
"And the person texting you—they're part of this gravity?"
Nat thinks about Lottie's new wellness center, all clean lines and promised salvation. Thinks about the way Lottie looked at her last month, across a coffee shop table, saying I can help you like she believed it. Like she still had all the answers, just like in the wilderness.
"She thinks she can fix me," Nat says finally. "She thinks she can fix all of us. Turn everything that happened into some kind of spiritual journey, some fucking hero's tale about transformation and purpose."
"And you don't agree?"
"I think—" Nat stops, considers. The phone in her pocket feels heavier than it should. "I think some things don't need to be fixed. Some things just need to be survived. And then you need to learn how to live with the surviving."
Dr. Perez nods slowly. "That's a very honest perspective, Natalie. But may I ask—what does living with it look like to you? Right now?"
The question hits harder than it should. What does living with it look like? Rehab centers and unread texts? News alerts and anniversary panic? Watching Lottie build her empire of wellness while Shauna plays house and Jackie... Well, who knows what it is that Jackie does now?
"I don't know," Nat admits finally. "I just know I'm tired of pretending it didn't happen. Tired of pretending we're all okay just because we lived."
"That's a start," Dr. Perez says. "Acknowledging the reality of your experience without trying to change or deny it."
"Yeah, well." Nat leans back in her squeaky plastic chair. "Doesn't make it easier to sleep at night."
"What would make it easier?"
Nat thinks about Lottie's texts, about the upcoming anniversary, about all the things they never talk about. "The truth, maybe. But nobody's ready for that. Not even us."
The session ends soon after that. People file out, avoiding eye contact, maybe thinking about their own versions of truth and survival. The woman with the tattoos pauses on her way past, touches Nat's shoulder briefly. No words, just acknowledgment. Sometimes that's enough.
Nat stays in her chair until everyone's gone, watching the light change through the high windows. Her phone is heavy in her pocket, full of unread messages and unwanted reminders. She pulls it out, looks at Lottie's last text again:
The darkness isn't forever.
No. But neither is the light.
She deletes the news alerts but leaves Lottie's messages unread. Some things you have to face sober, when you're ready. If you're ever ready.
The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, counting seconds like heartbeats, like survival, like all the things that don't end just because you lived through them. Nat closes her eyes and listens to the sound of modern civilization, trying to remember who she was before the wilderness. Before survival became a full-time occupation.
Maybe that's what recovery really is—not about becoming new, but about remembering who you were before. Or maybe it's about accepting that person is gone, and figuring out how to live with who you are now.
Either way, she's still here. Still breathing. Still surviving.
Sometimes that has to be enough.
She opens her eyes, picks up her phone, and types out a response to Lottie:
You're right. The darkness isn't forever. But neither are the stories we tell ourselves about it.
She hits send before she can change her mind. Then she stands up, straightens her chair, and walks out into the afternoon sun. One step at a time. One day at a time. One truth at a time.
It's not recovery, exactly. But maybe it's survival of a different kind.
WISKAYOK, NEW JERSEY - 2013
Callie Sadecki knows three things about the plane crash:
- It happened in 1996
- Her mom survived
- No one ever talks about it.
The fourth thing she learns is that Google has 127,000 results for "1996 high school soccer team crash." She sits cross-legged on her bed, laptop balanced on her knees, and clicks the first link. The article is from a local paper, scanned and archived, the text slightly blurry around the edges.
SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING WISKAYOK HIGH SOCCER TEAM November 15, 1996
Her mom looks different in the grainy team photo. Younger, obviously, but there's something else—a softness around the edges that Callie's never seen before. She's standing next to another girl, their shoulders touching, both of them beaming at the camera.
"Shauna Shipman and Jackie Taylor, captain," the caption reads. Callie frowns. She's never heard that name before—Jackie Taylor. But there's something about the way they're standing, the casual intimacy of their pose, that makes her save the image to a folder she labels "Research."
The next few articles are variations on the same theme: team missing, search ongoing, hopes fading. She skims them quickly, looking for details that stand out. It's not until she reaches page three of the search results that things get interesting.
r/UnsolvedMysteries The 1996 Yellowjackets Survival Story - What Really Happened?
Callie glances at her bedroom door—firmly closed—before clicking. The thread is locked now, but the comments are still visible, a digital bread trail of speculation and hearsay.
TrueCrimeObsessed: The official story never made sense. How did teenage girls survive that long?
HistoryBuff1996: My aunt went to that high school. Says the whole team was different after.
ConspiracyDebunker: Let's not spread rumors about trauma survivors.
Local_Reporter: I covered this story. Some things better left alone.
She creates a burner account—BeeSeeker12—and starts following related subreddits. It's amazing how much people will say when they think no one's listening. She learns to cross-reference, to fact-check, to look for patterns in the noise.
The school library becomes her second home. Mrs. Chen, the librarian, doesn't ask questions when Callie requests access to the microfiche archives, just shows her how to thread the film and adjust the focus. The headlines blur together after a while:
RESCUE AT LAST: SOCCER TEAM FOUND ALIVE WILDERNESS SURVIVAL MIRACLE: THE GIRLS WHO CAME BACK SURVIVORS REFUSE INTERVIEWS: "WE JUST WANT TO MOVE FORWARD"
But it's what isn't in the papers that interests her most. The gaps. The inconsistencies. The way some survivors are mentioned repeatedly—Lottie Matthews – now called Charlotte, now running a wellness empire; Natalie Scatorccio, spotted occasionally at LA rehab facilities—while others seem to vanish completely.
Like Jackie Taylor.
Callie finds her again in a different context, years later. A publishing industry newsletter from three months ago:
Rising PR Star Jackie Taylor Named Director of Publicity at Riverhead Books. Taylor, whose strategic campaigns have garnered industry attention, brings her unique perspective to the Penguin Random House imprint.
The photo accompanying the article shows a woman who’s much more put together, nothing like the laughing girl in the team photo. But there's something in her expression that catches Callie's attention—a familiar guardedness she sees every day in her mother's face.
She's listening to a true crime podcast about the crash ( Unsolved: The Yellowjackets Mystery, Episode 47 ) when her mom walks in without knocking. Callie slams her laptop shut, but not before Shauna catches the tail end of the audio:
"—questions remain about the nineteen months the team spent—"
"Homework?" Shauna asks, her voice carefully neutral. She's holding a basket of clean laundry, knuckles white against the plastic.
"Yeah," Callie lies. "History project."
Her mom nods once, sharp and precise. "Dinner's in ten minutes. Dad's working late again."
After she leaves, Callie reopens her laptop and creates a new document. At the top, she types:
Known Facts:
- Plane crashed May 1996
- Team rescued December 1998
- 19 months
- Mom doesn't talk about it
- Jackie Taylor exists
- Something happened between them
She starts drafting letters in her head, imagining how to reach out to the scattered survivors. Dear Ms. Matthews, I was wondering... Dear Ms. Scatorccio, If you could tell me... Dear Ms. Taylor, were you friends with my mom?
In her browser history, she finds an article about Charlotte’s wellness center. There's a contact form at the bottom of the page, but Callie restrains herself – she has to do this right. She opens a new tab and searches for "Jackie Taylor Riverhead Books." The publishing house's New York address sits at the bottom of the page, professional and impersonal.
Callie creates a new folder on her desktop and labels it "Letters." Inside, she starts a document titled "Dear Jackie."
She has questions. She's going to find answers.
And somewhere in New York, Jackie Taylor is crafting carefully worded press releases about other people's stories, while Shauna Sadecki née Shipman stands in her kitchen, holding onto a counter edge, remembering a girl she used to love in a forest that almost killed them both.
She opens another tab and starts typing: "Riverhead Books media contact information."
WISKAYOK, NEW JERSEY - 2013
The coffee maker hisses like something dying. Shauna pauses her movements—cucumber slicing for lunch prep, quarter-inch thick —and watches steam spiral up against the kitchen window. Behind the glass, Mrs. Peterson's sprinkler ticks away, marking time in artificial rain.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Six more slices to go. The knife gleams in the morning light that spills across her counters, turning everything golden. And ordinary. Safe. She's gotten good at safe over the years, good at making every movement look natural instead of calculated. Good at being the kind of person who makes cucumber sandwiches for PTA meetings without letting her mind wander to other uses for sharp objects.
The newspaper lies spread across the kitchen island, sections carefully arranged in order of importance. Local news first—she needs to know about the school board meeting, the changes to recycling pickup, the safe and normal concerns of safe and normal people. Or at least, she’s warped herself into becoming the person who needs to know that stuff. National news last, tucked away where she doesn't have to see the headline about the upcoming fifteen-year anniversary of—
No. Don't think about that.
She moves to the calendar hanging by the refrigerator.
"Book club Wednesday," she murmurs, checking the neat red notation. "Dinner with the Hendersons Friday. Callie's soccer practice—"
Her hand freezes over the green ink. Soccer practice. Even after all these years, sometimes the most innocent words can open trapdoors in her mind. She closes her eyes, counts to three, opens them again. The calendar is still there, still color-coded, still safe.
The coffee maker beeps—done. She pours a cup. The spoon clinks against porcelain like a tiny bell, like warning, like—
Stop it.
Her phone buzzes. Jeff's name appears on the screen, and she answers with her "everything is fine" voice, the one she's perfected over fifteen years of marriage.
"Hey," he says, distracted already. "Emergency at the office. I have to go in."
"On a Sunday?" But she's already adjusting, already recalculating. One less place setting for breakfast. More leftovers for Monday's lunch. The constant mathematics of maintaining normal.
"Sorry, babe. The Peterson account—"
"It's fine." She makes her voice smooth, pleasant. Unbothered. "I'll tell Callie." Callie won’t care.
"You're the best." He hangs up before she can respond, which is fine. Better than fine. She doesn't have to maintain the expression that goes with her voice if he can't see her.
The sprinkler hits the window again, leaving trails like tears on the glass. Shauna watches them trace their way down, remembering other kinds of water on other kinds of glass. Remembering—
"Mom?" Callie's voice from upstairs. "Have you seen my history textbook?"
"Check under your soccer bag," Shauna calls back, proud of how steady her voice remains on the word 'soccer.' Progress, her last therapist would say. If she still went to therapy. If she still admitted to needing it.
The morning light shifts, catching the prism hanging in the kitchen window—a housewarming gift from Jackie's mother, years ago. She had signed the card from both of them, but even then, Shauna knew Jackie had no part in it.
Her phone buzzes again. A news alert this time: Fifteen Years Later: The Wilderness Survival Story That Captivated America
The pen makes a jagged mark across her neat writing. She puts it down before she can make any more mistakes, squares her shoulders, adjusts her expression in the reflection of the microwave door. Practice makes perfect, and she's had fifteen years of practice.
"Mom?" Callie again, closer now. "Can you help me with this history thing?"
"Of course, honey." Her voice comes out normal. Everything about her is normal. She's made sure of it.
The sprinkler continues its rhythm against the window. Tick. Tick. Tick. Like a countdown, like a warning, like all the things she refuses to remember.
She takes one breath, then another. Smooths her expression. Prepares to be the mother her daughter needs—the normal one, the safe one, the one who makes cucumber sandwiches and helps with homework and never, ever thinks about what happened fifteen years ago.
"Coming, sweetheart," she calls up the stairs, and her voice doesn't shake at all.
Progress, her therapist would say.
Survival, she thinks, and goes to help her daughter with history—the safe kind, the kind that happened to other people, the kind that stays in books where it belongs.
Behind her, the morning light catches the prism, sending rainbows dancing across her perfect kitchen, her perfect calendar, her perfect life. Like fractured things made beautiful. Like broken pieces arranged to look whole.
Like survival, dressed up as normal, waiting for someone to notice the seams.
WISKAYOK, NEW JERSEY - 2013
The biography section of the school library smells like dust. Callie chose it deliberately—no one comes back here during lunch period, and the tall shelves create an easy place to hide. Perfect for writing letters you're not supposed to write.
Her sandwich sits untouched in its brown paper bag, pushed aside to make room for the growing pile of crumpled paper on the study table. How do you introduce yourself to someone who used to know every detail of your mother's life?
Dear Jackie Taylor, she writes, then immediately crosses it out. Too familiar.
Dear Ms. Taylor, she tries again. The pencil leaves smudges on her hand as she writes, graphite collecting in the lines of her palm.
The library printer hums in the background, a mechanical heartbeat counting down her lunch period. She has forty-three minutes left to get this right. The first bell will ring, and she'll have to go to Pre-Algebra like nothing's changed, like she hasn't spent the morning trying to reach across fifteen years of silence.
Another false start: I found your picture in my mom's old yearbook and—
No. That's not right either. She sounds like a stalker, or worse, a little kid playing detective. The paper joins its wrinkled siblings on the pile.
Callie closes her eyes, remembering the team photo. Two girls with their whole lives ahead of them, shoulders touching, smiling. Her mom, but not her mom. A version of Shauna Shipman that existed before whatever happened in those woods, before she became Shauna Sadecki, before she learned to pre-measure her smiles.
The pencil moves again, finding its rhythm:
Dear Ms. Taylor,
You don't know me, but you knew my mom.
She pauses, considering. It's honest, at least. Direct. The kind of opening that might make someone keep reading.
I found your picture in her yearbook. You were standing next to her in the soccer team photo, and you both looked so happy. I don't see her smile like that anymore.
The truth of it catches in her throat. She's never admitted that to anyone—how she sometimes watches her mom when she thinks no one's looking, catches the moment her smile slips, like she's remembering it's supposed to be a performance.
I know something happened. I found the newspaper articles about the crash and about you all being rescued. Mom never talks about it. She never talks about you either, but you were her best friend, weren't you? You're standing together in every photo.
Her handwriting gets smaller, more careful.
I'm not supposed to know about any of this. Maybe you don't want to think about it either. But I had to write. I have to know if you remember her the way she was in those photos. I have to know if you ever miss her.
The printer whirs to life again, making her jump. A freshman walks past her hidden corner, but doesn't look her way. Callie waits until the footsteps fade before continuing:
I'm twelve. That's only a few years younger than you both were when everything happened. Sometimes I look at Mom and try to imagine her at my age, try to imagine what changed her from that girl in the photos to my mom.
She sits back, studying the words. They feel real in a way her other attempts didn't, like she's finally found the right frequency to broadcast on. The truth, but not all of it. Enough to maybe make someone want to answer.
You don't have to write back. But if you do, my address is below. Mom doesn't know I'm writing this.
Sincerely, Callie Sadecki (Shauna's daughter)
She reads it through twice more, checking for mistakes, for places where her desperation shows too clearly. It's not perfect, but maybe that's better. Maybe imperfect truth is more convincing than polished lies.
The envelope is already addressed—she printed the Riverhead Books contact information during first period. Her hand hovers over the return address label she brought from home, the one that reads "Sadecki" in neat print. A thought strikes her, bold and terrifying in its simplicity.
With careful strokes, she prints a different name: Callie Shipman .
It feels like picking a lock, like finding a key she didn't know she had. The name sits on the envelope like a truth she wasn't supposed to discover, but she likes the way it looks anyway.
She seals the envelope before she can change her mind, her tongue tasting like secrets and school glue. The letter feels heavier than it should, weighted with all the questions she didn't ask directly: Why don't you ever visit? What really happened out there?
The warning bell rings, making her jump. She shoves her uneaten lunch back into her backpack, tucking the letter safely between her history textbook and her math notebook. She'll mail it on her way home, at the blue mailbox three blocks from her house. Far enough that her mom won't see.
As she hurries to class, the letter burns against her back through the canvas of her backpack, a pressure point of possibility. Somewhere in New York, Jackie Taylor is probably sitting in her office, crafting perfect press releases, unknown and unknowable. But not for long.
Callie touches the outer pocket of her backpack, where she's already stored another envelope and stamp, just in case this isn't the last letter she needs to write. Just in case there are more doors to unlock, more names to try on, more truths to uncover.
The second bell rings. She slides into her seat in Pre-Algebra as her teacher starts writing equations on the board. Variables and constants, known and unknown quantities. Callie opens her notebook and pretends to take notes, but all she can think about is her letter, making its way toward Manhattan, toward answers, toward the truth about who her mother used to be.
x + y = the whole story , she writes in the margin of her notebook. Now she just has to solve for x.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - 2013
Jackie Taylor has mastered the art of being untouchable. It's a skill that serves her well in publishing, where everyone wants something and networking means navigating a minefield of agenda-laden pleasantries. Her corner office at Riverhead Books is a testament to this mastery—every award perfectly positioned, every surface gleaming with professional accomplishment, nothing personal to catch dust or invite questions.
The October sunset paints Manhattan in amber and steel, reflecting off glass buildings like signal fires. Jackie watches her cold coffee ripple with each passing truck fifteen stories below, the vibrations barely perceptible but constant.
Like memory. Like hunger. Like the things that never quite go away.
"Third quarter numbers are up eight percent," she tells the client on her phone, voice smooth as it was when she used to call out drills at practice. "The campaign exceeded projections across all metrics." She's good at this part—the performance of competence, the careful management of other people's stories. "Yes, we can discuss expansion strategies next week. My assistant will send the details."
The daily mail delivery arrives in its usual neat stack: publishing contracts, industry newsletters, advance copies requesting blurbs. Her assistant, Mark, has already sorted them by priority, post-its color-coded according to her system. Green for urgent, yellow for this week, blue for whenever. A perfect system.
But there's one envelope that doesn't belong.
She sees it immediately—slightly wrinkled, slightly askew, the paper cheaper than business correspondence. The handwriting is careful but unmistakably adolescent, each letter formed with deliberate attention.
The name catches her eye first: Callie Shipman .
The coffee cup freezes halfway to her mouth.
Shipman .
Not Sadecki.
Her first instinct is to throw it away. She's spent fifteen years carefully constructing this life, this version of herself that exists entirely in the present tense. She's good at it—so good that sometimes she almost believes it herself. Almost forgets the girl she used to be, the one who died in the wilderness and came back wrong.
The envelope feels different from the others. It smells faintly of attic dust and school supplies, of things stored away and recently excavated.
"Jackie?" Mark knocks, efficient and apologetic. "Your four o'clock—"
"Reschedule." Her fingers trace the return address again. Shipman . Not Shauna's handwriting. Adolescent, sure, but still neater than Shauna’s jagged journal entries.
"The Berlin account—"
"Tomorrow." She catches her reflection in the window, superimposed over the cityscape like a double exposure.
For a moment, she looks nineteen again—before the crash, before the cold, before she learned how many ways there are to survive something. The city lights blur into campfires, into signal flares, into all the ways they tried to be found.
The letter trembles slightly in her hands.
"Jackie, should I—"
"Clear my schedule for the next hour." She doesn't look up. "And bring me the contact information for that realtor in New Jersey again."
Mark disappears, silent and efficient as always. Jackie sets the envelope on her desk, centered perfectly between her laptop and her coffee cup. A bomb in cream-colored stationery.
She should throw it away. She should maintain the careful distance she's cultivated, the professional detachment that's made her so good at her job. She handles other people's stories for a living, shapes them into acceptable narratives, decides which truths to emphasize and which to softly elide.
But this isn't someone else's story. This is hers. This is Shauna's. This is all the things they never said and all the things they couldn't take back.
The paper tears easily under her manicured nail. The letter inside is written in pencil, the graphite slightly smudged as if the writer couldn't help touching the words to make sure they were real.
Dear Ms. Taylor,
You don't know me, but you knew my mom.
Jackie's breath catches. She remembers everything about Shauna at seventeen – and six, and eleven —the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking, the slight furrow between her eyebrows when she concentrated, the sound of her laugh before they learned to be afraid of noise carrying in the dark.
I found your picture in her yearbook. You were standing next to her in the soccer team photo, and you both looked so happy. I don't see her smile like that anymore.
The city continues its relentless motion below, but in Jackie's office, time stops. She remembers that day—the way Shauna had been nervous about the yearbook photos, the way Jackie had whispered jokes in her ear until she relaxed, the way their shoulders had touched like it was the most natural thing in the world. Because it was, then. Everything had been natural before the crash recalibrated their understanding of nature.
I know something happened. I found the newspaper articles about the crash and about you all being rescued. Mom never talks about it. She never talks about you either, but you were her best friend, weren't you? You're standing together in every photo.
"Best friend." Such an inadequate term for what they were. For what they could have been. For what they almost—
Jackie takes a sip of coffee, grimacing at the cold bitterness. On her wall, awards gleam in the fading sunlight: Marketing Campaign of the Year. Innovation in Digital Strategy. Excellence in Media Relations. None of them mention her real expertise: the art of becoming someone new, of crafting a narrative so compelling even you start to believe it.
I'm not supposed to know about any of this. Maybe you don't want to think about it either. But I had to write. I have to know if you remember her the way she was in those photos. I have to know if you ever miss her.
A laugh escapes her, sharp and sudden as breaking glass. Miss her . As if missing Shauna is something that happens in the past tense.
I'm twelve. That's only a few years younger than you both were when everything happened. Sometimes I look at Mom and try to imagine her at my age, try to imagine what changed her from that girl in the photos to my mom.
Twelve. Jesus. Jackie closes her eyes, remembering Shauna at that age—all lanky limbs and opinions, already so sure of everything. Already planning their future together, mapping out college choices and dorm layouts and the color scheme for their hypothetical shared living room.
You don't have to write back. But if you do, my address is below. Mom doesn't know I'm writing this.
Sincerely, Callie Sadecki (Shauna's daughter)
The signature hits her like a physical blow. Sadecki. Not Shipman. Of course not—that was just a trick, just a key to unlock a door that should have stayed closed. Smart kid. Too smart, maybe. Too much like her mother.
Jackie stands, moving to the window. The sunset has faded to purple, the city transforming itself for night. She watches her reflection waver in the glass—successful businesswoman, PR director, survivor. All true, all carefully constructed, all somehow insufficient in the face of this letter from a twelve-year-old girl who wants to understand her mother.
Her phone buzzes: another meeting, another client, another story to shape. The letter sits on her desk like a challenge, like a possibility, like every what-if she's spent fifteen years not thinking about.
The realtor's information arrives in her email with a soft chime. Luxury Apartments in New Jersey - Close to NYC . She's been looking for months, telling herself it's about the commute, about property values, about professional advancement.
She's never been very good at lying to herself.
Jackie picks up the letter again, feels the weight of it—more than paper, more than words.
Her finger hovers over the intercom button. She could still throw the letter away, right? Could still maintain the careful distance, the professional detachment, the life she's built out of silence and success?
"Mark?" Her voice sounds different, even to her own ears. Younger, maybe. Or just more real. "Cancel my meetings for the rest of the week. And book me a car to New Jersey. I need to look at those apartments."
The letter finds its way into her bag, tucked between her laptop and her planner. Tomorrow, she'll craft the perfect response—measured, appropriate, carefully worded. Tonight, she'll go home to her empty apartment and remember what it felt like to be sixteen and certain, to love someone so completely that even survival felt like a kind of betrayal.
You don't have to write back , Callie had written.
But of course she does. Some stories demand to be told, even if you've spent fifteen years learning how to forget them.
Jackie gathers her things, powers down her computer, straightens her already-straight desk. Professional habits, professional competence, professional distance. But the letter in her bag pulses like a second heartbeat.
She closes her office door, adjusts her reflection in the glass. She looks exactly the same as she did this morning, except for everything that's different.
Time to remember who she used to be.