Chapter Text
Natalie has this recurring nightmare where Lottie Matthews shows up at her front door.
It always starts the same way: hurried rapping on the outside of the trailer, Nat’s bare feet beating against linoleum, hinges squealing in protest. And Lottie’s always standing there, amazonian and doll-faced, in something girlish and expensive. Nat’s gaze meets those melting brown eyes and her stomach lurches like an airplane knocked out of the sky.
Sometimes Lottie laughs at her: at the trash on every surface, the decaying furniture, the smell that never goes away, no matter how many locker room showers you take. Lottie’s dainty features contort with spiteful mirth, with aching condescension—it sits all wrong on her face, like someone vandalized a renaissance masterpiece with middle school graffiti. Lottie laughs for what seems like hours, and it rings in Nat’s ears and wakes her up in the early morning, long before her alarm.
Most times Lottie just looks disgusted. Her nose wrinkles and she swallows thickly behind gritted teeth, taking the place in with the expression of someone looking for a polite way to spit out a bite of rotten fruit they’re holding in their mouth. When her eyes come back to Natalie, Lottie’s throat bobs as she fights the urge to gag. Nat opens her mouth to say something—some excuse or justification or resounding “Fuck you”—but she knows immediately she won’t be able to make any words come out of her mouth. She wakes up fighting for that inhale, that preamble to a defense that never comes, because what is she supposed to say?
Yeah, I live in a total dump, so what? I’m proud of it, actually.
Oh, if you’d only told me you were coming over, I would’ve cleaned up. I swear I don’t really live like this.
I’m sorry about the mess. Please don’t look at it. Please don’t tell anyone. Please—
Sometimes Lottie just bows her head, avoids Natalie’s gaze, refuses to acknowledge any of it. Like she’s trying to give Nat privacy. Like she’s worried about being rude. Like she pities Nat for the miserable little trailer where she spent the majority of her miserable little upbringing.
Those are the worst times, by far. But they’re all pretty fucking bad.
Tangled in cool, sweat-damp sheets, Nat stares at her ceiling and asks, relentlessly, why it always has to be Lottie. Why not Taissa, who likes to act all tough even though her kitchen has one of those two-door fridges with the pullout freezer on the bottom, every inch of it covered with ugly kindergarten art and perfect report cards? Why not Jackie, who thought it was impossible for sheets to be less than 800 thread count? Nat wouldn’t take it from either of them. She’d knock their shitty, braces-built smirks right of their faces, send them crying to their orthodontists.
Lottie has this little fang that sticks out on the right side of her smile. Natalie will find herself thinking about it every so often, wondering why she never got it fixed. Not that it needs to be fixed. Some people might think it should be straightened out, but Nat likes it. It adds something special to Lottie’s smile: a sincerity you don’t get when you can tell someone spent years painstakingly warping their grin to perfection with brackets and rubber bands.
When Lottie smiles at you, it feels like you’re an apple and she’s sinking her teeth into you, piercing your skin, carving a hollow in your flesh. Which shouldn’t be a nice feeling, but it is. It’s the feeling of someone saying: you have value, you have worth, you can nourish me and I want you to. Nat likes that feeling—craves it really—more than she cares to admit.
And ultimately, of course, that’s why it has to be Lottie. Because Natalie likes her. Because Lottie never gives her any shit about cutting class or drinking or doing whatever the fuck she wants with her own body. Because Lottie will buy Nat’s weed off of her without asking any nosey questions about what Nat needs the money for. Because Lottie lives in a house where most of the bathrooms are bigger than Natalie’s living room, but she doesn’t act like it.
It’s gotta be Lottie, because that’s the only way it hurts so much.
When the initial adrenaline rush rocketing her to consciousness subsides, Nat always feels like an idiot, because you’d think she’d stop being fooled by it at some point. You’d think she’d know better, that there is no possible way Lottie Matthews will ever set foot within the abysmal acres of gravel and poverty where Nat so unfortunately lives. The very ground would reject her; her fuzzy jacket would sprout wings to carry her back to the right side of the tracks. The smell would get in her hair and she’d have to cut it all off, and that would honestly be a damn shame.
But Natalie has the dream, over and over, and never once on her way to the door does she recognize the danger that lurks behind it, the rude awakening that awaits her behind that unassuming rectangle of white-going-gray wood. She grips the handle with a naive hand, again and again, never remembering that she’s been here before and it’s always awful and she can’t keep doing this shit to herself, it’s gotta stop, it’s always, always awful.
The dream never stops, and Nat never learns to not open the damn door.
—
Natalie should have left the party when her friends did.
She doesn’t even go to these team bonding things half the time—she gets enough bullshit about togetherness and group cohesion at practice without hitching a ride to one of her teammates’ houses for extracurricular lecturing. But the whole team could tell when their fearless and unceasing captain proposed this get-together that she was only using bonding as a cover for the fact that she just broke up with her boyfriend, again , and wanted to get really fucked up about it. And while Nat had no particular interest in watching Jackie Taylor get sloppy drunk over Jeff Sadecki of all the unworthy people, she also felt like maybe she ought to start making an appearance at these events. She’s a senior now, you know? Maybe it’s time to start like, caring or whatever.
The flimsy facade of team bonding collapsed as soon as word got out about a party at Lottie Matthews’ house, and half the school decided that they too wanted to bond with the girls soccer team. By the time Natalie showed up with Rich and Kevyn in tow, the living room of the Matthews’ mansion was already packed to the brim with sweaty, intoxicated high schoolers flinging their limbs at random to some ear-splitting dance beat you could feel in your ribs.
Which was rough.
But also, marginally closer to Nat’s typical scene than sitting in a circle with her teammates and talking about their deepest insecurities, such as how big their pores were getting and whether some jackass on the basketball team would ever call them back. Nat would take a rager over that any day. Quite frankly, she’d take being waterboarded over that any day.
Natalie loitered at the edge of the party with her friends, nursing a beer and ignoring Rich’s constant hints that they should leave because his cousin scored some illegal fireworks and was going to set them off at midnight and it was going to be so sick, they had to see it. After about an hour of not being nearly drunk enough to put up with that, Nat told them to go ahead and that she’d find another ride home. Rich was thrilled; Kevyn looked like he was about to ask her if everything was okay. She ditched them to go get another drink before that could happen.
It is only after acquiring that drink that Natalie realizes she didn’t exactly have a plan for what she was going to do next.
She hovers in the kitchen, trying not to look like too much of a loser and vainly hoping that something really cool and interesting will magically present itself to her—like the angel Gabriel appearing before Mary in that one window at the church she went to for Christmas and Easter when she was younger. Though, ideally, Nat’s really cool and interesting thing would not involve getting pregnant, be it with the messiah or otherwise. That is the fucking last thing she needs. But given this is a high school party, and given Nat is herself, she’s probably a lot more likely to get pregnant tonight than to be visited by an angel who will deliver unto her a holy purpose and honor from the Lord.
But like, whatever. She doesn’t want that any of that shit anyway.
Natalie’s mind turns, not for the first time, to a scene she witnessed earlier in the evening. Some of the Yellowjackets had managed to overcome the impossible odds and team-bond in spite of the crowd: Jackie, utterly plastered as promised, had dragged Shauna onto the dance floor with her, joining Laura Lee and Lottie in an enthusiastic rendition of some song that always made Natalie change the station when it came on the radio. As Nat watched, Van coaxed Tai into the circle with them, and they were all jumping together and throwing their hair around and generally tearing it up like the world was going to end tomorrow.
Reflecting on it, realistically, Natalie probably could have joined them. She did the sing-alongs in the locker room like everyone else, and this was essentially the same thing, just with a bigger audience and more clothing. She last saw them at it maybe half an hour ago, but the Yellowjackets don’t stop once they get started. Natalie could find them again and join their little group, scream out the lyrics to this song she doesn’t like but does know all the words to, and anybody who’d be a bitch to her about it under normal circumstances is probably too drunk to form coherent sentences right now. So Natalie could let Lottie spin her around the way she tries to sometimes and accept the ride home that Van offered her that afternoon and could have like, probably a pretty okay time doing all that.
Instead Nat finds the nearest door and slips out on to the patio. She stumbles forward, far enough to shake off the feeling of any eyes on her back, and sits down on the steps leading to the lawn, crushing manicured grass beneath her scuffed-up boots. Staring off at Lottie’s sprawling backyard, Natalie pulls a pack of cigarettes from inside her jacket and lights one up, resting her elbows on her knees and thinking about just how much of a fucking dumbass she is.
This vein of thought proves very rich. It carries her through three cigarettes, and likely would have sufficed for a fourth, but before Nat can get her lighter lit again, she hears the the door behind her sliding open. She whips around, cigarette still caught between her lips, to see Lottie staggering out of the house. She’s wearing a fuzzy purple sweater and looks like a baby horse trying to walk for the first time.
Nat ducks her head, pulling the unlit cigarette from her mouth and tapping it against her leg. When she looks up again, Lottie has spotted her, and her big brown eyes have gone soft with recognition, the corners of her mouth twitching up into a faint smile.
“Hey,” Lottie says, wobbling over to where Natalie sits. “I didn’t know you were still here. I thought you left with your friends.”
“Nah.” Nat shrugs. “They wanted to go shoot off firecrackers in a field or some shit. I passed on it.”
Lottie nods sagely. “Because you’re a firm believer in proper fire safety.”
“Because it sounded boring as hell.”
“I would’ve gone with them.” Lottie sits down heavily on the step next to Nat, close enough their hips would brush if either of them moved. “This party is pretty lame.”
Nat thinks back to that scene again: Lottie with one hand on Laura Lee’s waist, swaying to the beat. Lottie with her arms over Shauna’s shoulders from behind, singing so loud right into her ear. Lottie twirling around like she’s the only person room, in the world maybe, laughing with her head raised to the ceiling like she’s invoking a pagan god.
“You seemed like you were having fun earlier,” Natalie says.
Lottie’s lips fold into a little frown. “Yeah, but then Laura Lee got picked up for her curfew, and Jackie left with Jeff—”
“Hang on,” Nat interrupts. “They’re back together?”
“Yup.” Lottie pops the ‘p’ at the end of the word, a surefire sign that she is drunk off her ass. “Jackie’s a nice girl but she’s got a resolve made of popsicle sticks. So she left with him, and then Shauna got wasted, so Van offered to drive her home and Tai went with them. So yeah. Lame party now.”
Vaguely, somewhere amidst the chirping of the crickets and the faded boom of the speakers and the scent of sweat mingling with Lottie’s pretty perfume, it occurs to Natalie that this means she doesn’t have a ride home. But with everything else going on, she doesn’t linger too long with that thought.
“What brings you out here?” Natalie asks.
Lottie exhales slowly.
“Thought I’d take a break from my hostess duties, get some air. Stare at the moon for a bit.”
Nat glances up at the night sky, barely able to pick out any stars among the light pollution.
“The moon’s not out tonight.”
“Damn,” Lottie says softly, with what sounds like genuine disappointment. Her eyes trail from the sky back down to Nat. “Can I bum one?”
Natalie offers her the cigarette she never got around to smoking and holds out a flame so Lottie can light it. The end of the cigarette flares red, and a cloud of smoke billows out from Lottie’s lips, drifting off into the night.
“How was your week?” Lottie asks.
“Fine.” Natalie shrugs. “Typical. I bombed that history test, but whatever.”
She doesn’t know why she said that, instead of saying something cool like she did a lot of drugs or watched a movie in a foreign language. But Lottie doesn’t act like Nat said something stupid. Doesn’t act like Nat’s stupid.
“You should ask if you can retake it,” Lottie says. “I failed half the quizzes in Chem last year, but Baker let me try again after I talked to him. There’s some policy about it.”
Nat’s first thought is that this policy was probably invented on the spot because Lottie Matthews and her daddy’s money and her big brown eyes were asking for something. But she doesn’t say that, because she’s pretty sure that would be a dick move. Nat’s second thought is that it doesn’t matter how many times she takes the test, she’ll still fail because she’ll never be able to remember jack shit about the Revolutionary War. But she doesn’t say that, because that’s pathetic.
“Well, you know I haven’t read the student handbook, so I can’t call bullshit. But that sounds made up.”
Lottie puts up three fingers on the hand not holding her cigarette. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a girl scout?”
“No,” Lottie says. “But I hold their beliefs.”
Nat laughs, shoving her gently on the shoulder; the small touch sends Lottie swaying like a sapling in a thunderstorm. “You’re so full of shit.”
“Were you a girl scout, Natalie?” Lottie asks, grinning innocently.
“Fuck no,” Nat replies, almost snorting. “Not really my kind of thing.”
“If you came to my door, I’d buy cookies from you.”
“Aw, really?” Nat asks. “Would you buy enough boxes so I can get the bicycle?”
Lottie places a hand on Nat’s shoulder, meeting her eye with solemn intensity.
“Natalie,” she says. “I would sell my father’s company to get you that bicycle.”
Nat giggles, brushing off Lottie’s light touch. “Which one?”
“Eh, one of the boring ones,” Lottie says. “In like computers or whatever.”
“That’s smart,” Natalie says, nodding. “The internet’s just a passing fad anyway.”
“Exactly.”
Nat bites her lip, her cheeks aching from grinning so wide. She watches Lottie take a long drag then exhale the smoke out across the lawn.
“God, I’m tired.” Lottie rests her chin in her hand. “I’d have already left this party if it wasn’t at my house.”
“You can just kick everyone out,” Nat says. Lottie shakes her head vigorously.
“It’s only like 11 p.m. That’d be so lame.”
“I thought you said it was already lame.”
“But, I mean, there’s no coming back from ending a party that early,” Lottie says. “I’d be a social pariah.”
“Being a social pariah isn’t so bad.” Nat shrugs. “You always get your own seat on the bus.”
Lottie furrows her brow, fixing Natalie with a sort of wistful, sad expression that she doesn’t fully understand until it occurs to her that Lottie has probably never ridden a bus in her life.
“I can run around the front of the house and start making siren noises,” Nat offers. “Maybe we can convince them that the cops are here.”
Lottie smiles, laughing through her nose. “As much as I would love to watch you try and pull that off, I think I’ve got a better idea.”
Nat regards Lottie skeptically as she stubs out her cigarette on the paving stones and stands up. “I don’t see how there could possibly be a better idea than that.”
“Watch,” Lottie says, and she totters off back towards her house.
Unable to do much else, Natalie follows, watching as instructed as Lottie navigates through the sea of people in her living room. When she reaches the center of the crowd, on her shaking, newborn-horse legs, Lottie climbs onto the coffee table.
“Hey!” she shouts, managing to make herself heard over all the music and conversation. The whole crowd turns to stare at her.
“Party’s over,” Lottie announces. “Everyone get out now please.”
The crowd breaks out in confused murmurs, and there’s some top 40 pop dirge throbbing beneath it all. Natalie takes the initiative to walk over to the sound system and switch it off.
“You heard her,” Nat calls into the fray. “Party’s over. Scram.”
There’s a fresh wave of grumbling and some minor cursing, but the crowd starts to flow out toward the entrance hall. Lottie smiles down at Natalie from atop the coffee table, the gratitude in her eyes so achingly genuine that Natalie has to look away, heat rising in her cheeks as she approaches Lottie’s perch.
“‘Scram?’” Lottie asks.
Nat shrugs defensively. “It got the message across, didn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Lottie allows. “Thanks for the help.”
“I didn’t really do much.”
“If it was just me yelling, they wouldn’t have left as fast,” Lottie says. “I don’t have your commanding presence.”
“Maybe it’s just ’cause you’re a full foot and half taller than me right now, but I’m going to have to disagree with you there,” Nat says. “Need help getting down?”
“Yeah, probably.” Nat offers an arm and Lottie takes it, leaning heavily into the support as she clambers off the coffee table. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Lottie looks around the now vacant living room, taking it in with a grim sigh of exhaustion.
“This is going to be a bitch to clean up.”
“Don’t you have like, people who do that for you?” Natalie asks. Lottie shrugs.
“I mean, yeah, kinda,” she says. “But I’m not going to leave it all for them to clean up. That’s not really their job. And anyway they might tell my dad.” Lottie pauses thoughtfully. “And that would not be good.”
“No, yeah, of course.” Natalie looks around, her gaze trailing over the debris of teenage revelry: crushed solo cups and chairs tipped over, their legs splayed out in the air. “I get it. I can like, help, you know, with cleaning and stuff. If you want.” She cringes at the awkward way the words make it out of her mouth, tripping and stumbling all over each other.
“Too tired,” Lottie says, barely keeping her eyes open. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“Right,” Natalie replies quickly. “Um…”
She trails off as it fully dawns on her that she has no way to leave this house. Any opportunity she had for a ride is long gone. She can’t exactly call a cab. It’s only getting colder outside and she doesn’t have a real jacket and she’s kinda tipsy and she lives half an hour away by car, so it’s going to be a way longer trip on foot, and—
Lottie places a solid hand on Natalie’s shoulder.
“I’d drive you home,” Lottie says, her tone as serious as her inebriation allows. “But I’m really drunk.”
Natalie shrugs in what she hopes is a casual way, or will at least come across as passably casual to someone too drunk to stand on her own. “It’s cool, no worries. I can just walk—”
“Do you wanna sleep over?”
Natalie stops mid sentence, her lips parted, blinking hard. Lottie’s hand is still strong and warm on her shoulder, and she’s staring at Nat with those eyes that could melt you if you let yourself get caught in them for too long, like a helpless animal trapped in a tarpit.
Lottie adds, “You can borrow pajamas and a toothbrush and stuff.”
“Uh,” Natalie stutters, glancing down at her feet. “I mean, sure.”
Lottie’s smile goes all spacey.
“Awesome. I’m going to go change. You can call your mom on the phone in the kitchen.”
And then Lottie is gone, upstairs, leaving only the warmth all up and down Nat’s body as evidence of her former presence.
Natalie walks to the kitchen in a sort of daze, already knowing that she’s not going to call her mom but feeling at the same time like she should probably pretend to, because a normal teenager would definitely inform her mom if she was going to be sleeping somewhere else for the night and certainly wouldn’t just drop off the face of the Earth without a word, because then her equally normal mom would be worried sick. Nat is relatively confident her mom will not care if she doesn’t come home; she’s reasonably sure that her mom will barely notice her absence. She’s absolutely positive that she will get yelled at if she wakes her mom up at this time of night. Nat figures out how to operate the tap on the front of the refrigerator and fills the most plain-looking glass she can find with water, dicking around and staring at all the shiny appliances until the clock on the microwave tells her she’s been in the kitchen for five minutes, which seems like about the right amount of time to talk to your very concerned and attentive mother for.
Natalie has never been upstairs in the Matthews’ household before. She’s been going to parties there since freshman year, because when you’re the richest girl in Wiskayok—and possibly the state of New Jersey—no one cares that you’re a freshman and freshman parties are always lame as hell. Everyone wants to go to a Lottie Matthews party, and everyone can go to a Lottie Matthews party. But nobody goes upstairs.
And now Natalie is doing it. She’s going upstairs. And neither God nor some kind of high tech laser security system has struck her dead yet. It’s a miracle. It’s fucking surreal.
At the top of the staircase, there’s a huge vase on a table that fills Nat with instant anxiety. One of the doors down the hall has been left open, spilling a square of light onto the plush carpeted floor. Cursing, Natalie bends down to tug off her boots and walks slowly towards the open door with her heart in her throat and her shoes in her hand, her socked feet sinking into the rug. There’s a hole in one of them, letting her pinky toe hang out for the whole world to see. Scandalous.
Lottie’s bedroom is smaller than Nat expected it to be, but that’s probably more due to Nat’s envy-loaded, hyperbolic ignorance of upper class lifestyles than anything else—it’s not a small room. A queen bed stands against the back wall, draped with a gauzy pink canopy and covered in an impractical number of throw pillows. Collages of magazine cutouts have been pasted up over half the wallpaper, which is a pale peachy sort of print with little flowers at regular intervals. A desk in the corner is covered in nail polish bottles and homework; the dresser next to it has half the drawers pulled out, pant cuffs and loose scraps of lacey something spilling over the edges. As Nat stares around, taking it all in with mounting stress, Lottie emerges from the en suite—because of course this place wouldn’t be complete without a fucking en suite.
“Cool room,” Nat says, mouth dry.
“Thanks,” Lottie replies, seeming genuinely complimented. “I left some toiletry stuff for you in the bathroom.”
Nat nods. She’s starting to wonder if she’s a lot more drunk than she thought she was. In one jerky movement, she thrusts out the drinking glass she carried up with her, jostling the water within and nearly spilling it everywhere.
“You should drink water,” Nat says, feeling like the stupidest person on the planet, offering Lottie water from her own fridge in a cup from her own cabinet, like that’s not a ridiculous thing to do, like that’s even close to a fair trade for everything Lottie’s given her tonight. For a moment, Lottie considers Natalie and the cup of water with an indecipherable expression. For the same moment, Nat doesn’t breathe. Then Lottie takes the proffered glass and brings it up to her lips.
“Thank you.”
She’s smiling. Nat exhales.
Lottie digs around in her dresser, shoving the overstuffed drawers closed as she goes, and hands Nat a bundle of clothing to change into. When she unfolds them in the bathroom, Natalie recognizes the gray t-shirt and navy shorts distributed to all WHS athletes; she has her own set at home. Lottie’s are softer and smell like the detergent aisle at the grocery store. They’re also bigger—Nat isn’t swimming in them exactly, but she has to pull the drawstring on the shorts as tight as it goes, and they still hang loose on her frame.
There’s a green toothbrush still in its packaging on the counter, with the contact information for some dentist uptown printed on the handle. It’s a glorified business card, and even so it’s the nicest toothbrush Nat’s ever used. She wonders if it would be weird to ask if she can keep it, then decides immediately that it would be totally weird and more forcefully than necessary spits her mouthful of toothpaste into the sink.
When she comes out of the bathroom, Lottie has changed into this twee pajama set that matches the room decor like that’s the reason it was purchased, and she’s brushing her hair in front of her vanity. Natalie lingers on the threshold, so out of her depth she’s surprised the pressure hasn’t made her ears pop yet.
Lottie glances up at her. “What side of the bed do you want?”
“Whichever,” Nat says, her voice gruff. “Won’t kick you out of your normal spot.”
“Okay then.” Lottie stands up and drifts over to her bed, switching on the lamp on the nightstand. “Would you mind?”
She nods in the direction of the door, and for a brief, insane moment Nat thinks Lottie’s telling her to get lost. She’s just gesturing at the light switch. Nat pads over and turns the lights off, plunging the room into semi-darkness.
“And could you close the door, please?”
Natalie closes the door. It swings shut without a sound, the hinges operating in utter silence.
“Thank you.”
“Mhmm.”
In the yellow light of the bedside lamp, Natalie approaches Lottie’s gigantic bed like it’s a sleeping predator that might wake at any moment and bite her head off. She clenches her hands into fists by her sides, begging herself to get a fucking grip, and slides under the covers on the left side of the bed.
Not that it matters, but that’s the side she would have picked if she wasn’t being such a chickenshit right now.
The sheets are all silky and cool, and the mattress is firm in the way where you know it’s expensive and good for your spine, not in the way where you wake up feeling like you slept on an autopsy table. Lottie tosses about twenty throw pillows on the floor and climbs into bed herself. This bed could probably fit two more people in it, if they were all comfortable sleeping chest to chest, tangled up with each other the whole night. At Natalie’s current comfort level, just two people in the bed is more than enough.
She should’ve offered to sleep on a couch. Or on the floor, or really anywhere other than in this bed. She should have gone home. If she’d had any foresight at all and chose to just walk, she might even be halfway there by now.
“Can I turn the light off?” Lottie asks.
Nat is sitting upright against her pillows, her hands folded in her lap, acting like she’s never slept in a bed before. She nods. “Mhmm.”
Lottie snorts. It’s not cruel—it has a distinct, alien air of fondness. Lottie’s hair is splayed out against her pillow in dark, shining waves, rippling in the low light.
“Okay,” she says. “Goodnight, Natalie.”
Natalie swallows. “Night, Lottie. Thanks for, uh, letting me sleep over.”
“My pleasure.”
The lamp turns off; the room goes dark. Natalie hears Lottie a few feet from her, feels her shifting around to get comfortable. Lottie’s breathing slows, evening out into a recognizable unconscious rhythm, and ever so slowly, Nat sinks deeper into the bed, her legs slipping between the sheets until her head lays flat on the pillow. She stares up at the princess canopy hanging over her head, poised like a net, waiting for the right moment to trap her.
She breathes out and closes her eyes, certain she won’t be able to fall asleep.
But it’s a really nice bed, and she can still faintly hear crickets through the cracked window, and everything smells like expensive perfume and clean sheets, and Lottie’s steady breathing reverberates through Nat’s muscles, forcing them to untense. Within minutes Nat is sleeping like a rock.
It’s just like, an insanely nice bed, alright?
—
Natalie wakes up the next morning wildly embarrassed about how lame she was acting last night and with a firm determination not to do anything that awkward today. She also wakes up feeling like her body is floating on a warm cloud, the kind heaven is made of in cartoons. Lottie is still asleep across the bed, her mouth slightly open, little snores catching on each inhale. Her lashes flutter as she rouses, and Nat realizes she’s already broken her own resolution to not be a total fucking weirdo.
“Morning.” Lottie’s voice is gravelly with sleep, her back arching up to the sky as she stretches.
“Morning.”
“How’d you sleep?” Lottie asks through a yawn. Natalie shrugs as though she didn’t just have the most simultaneously stressful and restful night of her life.
“Pretty good. You?”
Lottie frowns. “My head hurts.”
“I’ve heard alcohol can do that to you. Maybe you should stick to smoking pot.”
“Pot doesn’t sound half bad right now,” Lottie says. “But breakfast first, I think. Do you like cereal?”
“Uh, what kind?”
“All the kinds.”
“I guess?”
“Perfect.” Lottie grins. “Because that’s the only thing we have in this house that I know how to make.”
They stumble downstairs in their pajamas and bedhead, Nat making a concerted effort to be more chill about all of it than she was last night. When they get into the kitchen, she doesn’t even gawk at the stand mixer. That’s what she calls progress.
“So,” Nat starts as they sit down at Lottie’s dining table, freshly prepared bowls of cereal in hand. “You can’t cook.”
“Afraid not.” Lottie shakes her head regretfully. “I got a C in Home Ec in ninth grade. I burned pasta, which I didn’t think was possible, because it’s in water the whole time. Honestly, I feel like Ms. Thomas should’ve given me some credit for figuring that out.”
“You’ve truly suffered a great injustice,” Nat says, digging into her breakfast. “So you just eat Lucky Charms for every meal?”
“Well, as you saw, I have many options.” Lottie gestures back towards the kitchen. “But yeah, cereal’s the go to.”
(Lottie did, in fact, have a heinous number of cereal boxes in her pantry. They had their own shelf: a dozen brightly-colored, name brand boxes stocked beside each other like a city skyline in miniature. When Nat picked Lucky Charms, Lottie had given her an approving nod, which made her feel like she’d passed a test she wasn’t aware she’d been taking. A pretty solid feeling, all things considered.)
“How are you still alive?” Nat asks, aghast. “I didn’t think Count Chocula contained all the nutrients required for a balanced diet.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” Lottie allows. “But sometimes I supplement it with a handful of shredded cheese, so it all just sort of works out.”
“You’re an athlete. ”
“I’m fucking with you.” Lottie grins, sticking her spoon into her bowl with visible satisfaction. “Martha is here most of the time, but Saturday is her day off.”
“And Martha is?”
“The housekeeper,” Lottie says, unabashed, mouth full of cereal.
“And what does a housekeeper do exactly?”
Lottie swallows, tilting her chin. “Keep the house? I don’t know, she keeps the whole place running when my parents are gone. And when they’re here, to be honest. And she makes sure I eat real food.”
“That’s important work.” Nat nods sagely. “We wouldn’t want your growth to be stunted by malnutrition.”
“I know, right? It’d be a tragedy if I was just a normal height.”
Nat snickers. “Our midfield would be lacking, I can tell you that much.”
“Nah.” Lottie shakes her head. “We’ll get you on stilts. Those Ridgewood Prep girls wouldn’t know what hit ’em.”
They’re talking about soccer, which is good, which is comfortable. It’s a language the Yellowjackets all share, essentially the only dialect Nat has in common with any of them. And when they talk about soccer, they’re a team; when they talk about literally anything else, they’re a house of cards waiting for one wayward whisper to blow the entire thing to bits. Nat would prefer to avoid that drama whenever possible. Especially in the uncharted territory of Lottie Matthews’ dining room on a Saturday morning, she’s going to stick to what works.
“How do you think we’re gonna do this year?” Nat asks.
“Oh, undefeated, all the way,” Lottie replies immediately. When Nat shoots her a side eye, she says, “What? I’m serious. This is the strongest team Wiskayok has ever put together.”
“We’ve only played one game.”
“And we won that game, didn’t we?” Lottie gestures broadly with her spoon. “We crushed Spring Lake.”
“We always crush Spring Lake. Spring Lake sucks. That’s why Coach tries to have us play them first every season. It gives us an unearned ego boost.”
“I don’t know about unearned. Have you ever heard of optimism?”
Nat pretends to think hard about it. “Not ringing a bell. They teach you that big word in your SAT prep classes?”
“It’s a pretty short word.”
“I’ll give you an even shorter one: reality.”
Lottie looks unimpressed.
“That’s barely shorter and very negative of you, Natalie.”
“Barely short and very negative is sort of my whole thing, Charlotte.”
Stifling a laugh, Lottie smiles down into her cereal bowl. “Would it kill you to have some confidence in your teammates?”
“I’ve got plenty of confidence in the team,” Natalie says. “Tai’s a fucking demon on the field, Laura Lee is getting God on our side, and Shauna’s not afraid to throw some elbows when the situation calls for it. I’ve always admired that about her.”
“Whoa there, Scatorccio.” Lottie props her elbow on the table, resting her chin in her hand. “If you keep saying sweet stuff like that, someone might get the wrong impression and think you actually like us. Do me next.”
Natalie rolls her eyes. “You’re built like a tree but run faster. That sweet enough?”
Lottie smiles. “I think I’m getting a cavity.”
After they finish eating, Natalie insists on doing the dishes, seeing as how Lottie was so generous, cooking breakfast for them and all. Lottie lets Nat stack the bowls, watching her exaggerated chivalry with a sly grin. She leads Nat into the kitchen, right past the sink, and hops up on the counter, just to the left of a shiny silver dishwasher.
“Why don’t you leave the cleaning to the experts, hmm?”
Natalie huffs, hoping that’s enough to cover her embarrassment. “So when the machines rise up against us, which side are you taking?”
“Oh, machines for sure.” Lottie swings her legs back and forth against the cabinets. “Humanity can eat shit.”
Nat barks out a laugh, more from surprise than anything, and pulls open the door to load the dishwasher; apparently she does it okay, because Lottie never jumps in to help her. As she stands back up, brushing her hands together, Nat notes the time on the microwave clock.
“Getting kind of late, huh?” she asks.
Lottie’s eyes flick to the clock and widen in faint surprise. “Oh, yeah, I guess so.”
“So I should probably go then.”
“I mean, if you want.” Lottie pushes off the counter, her feet landing on the hardwood with a dull thud. “Let me go get dressed and I’ll drive you home.”
Nat’s stomach lurches. “No—”
Lottie stops in her tracks, turning around with a quirked brow.
“I just meant, um…” Natalie clears her throat, gripping the countertop behind her with clammy hands. “Actually, could you drop me off somewhere instead? You know the comic store on Henshaw?”
Lottie’s brow remains staunchly quirked. “Yeah, I think I know it,” she says. “Is it going to be open this early?”
“I’ve got a friend who works there,” Nat stammers. “They do, like, inventory on the weekends, so he’ll be in early. And I told him that I’d give him this… thing.”
“This thing?” Lottie asks, dubious.
Natalie nods, and she knows it isn’t the slightest bit convincing. But either Lottie doesn’t notice or doesn’t really care, because she just shrugs her shoulders.
“Okay. I can drop you there, sure thing.”
“Thanks.” Nat’s voice is thick with discomfort and her smile comes out more like a grimace, but the gratitude is genuine. She hopes Lottie can tell that at least.
They go back upstairs so Lottie can throw on some sweats and Nat can slip back into her clothes from the night before. Lottie tries to offer her a clean outfit, then downsizes to a just sweater when she accepts that Natalie would need to either spontaneously grow six inches or fold the cuffs about a dozen times to wear any of Lottie’s pants without tripping. Nat brushes off both offers, overly conscious of how much she has already accepted from Lottie in the past twelve hours. And the sweater is this baby blue woolen monstrosity that Natalie wouldn’t be caught dead in, no matter how much Lottie says it will make her eyes pop.
Natalie has been in Lottie’s car before, but she’s never sat in the front; the seats are black leather, smooth beneath her palms. Lottie bequeaths to Nat the great honor of selecting the music, which she will quickly realize was a huge mistake, as Nat fiddles with the radio knobs for half of the drive looking for a suitably obscure grunge station, or alt rock, she isn’t picky. Lottie calls her emo—another major slip up on her part—and Natalie fills the rest of the drive with a passionate dissection of the emo and punk genres: how they align, how they diverge, and how Nat isn’t a whiny sad sack with stupid hair.
“Of course not,” Lottie says, nodding along seriously. “You’re a very cool, emotionless person with awesome hair.”
“You know it, Matthews,” Nat replies and cranks up the volume as opening chords of the new No Doubt record stream through the speakers. Lottie snorts, drumming along with her fingers on the steering wheel.
When the car parks in front of the comic store, it could not more obvious that the shop is entirely empty, but Nat forces a straight face, unbuckling her seatbelt and zipping up her jacket, as Lottie peers through the darkened front windows skeptically.
“You sure this is where you want me to drop you?”
“Yep,” Nat says firmly. “Thanks for the ride. Thanks for like, all of it, I guess.”
“No problem.” Lottie gives her a thoughtful smile. “I had a lot of fun. We should hang out again.”
“Sure,” Nat says, her hand already tugging at the handle to open her door. She slips out of the car, giving Lottie a parting salute, and strides confidently towards the side alley of the shop, as though heading for a back entrance. When she’s no longer visible from the street, she leans back against the dirty brick, tilting her head up to look at the strip of overcast sky above until she hears Lottie’s Lexus pulling away.
Natalie allows herself a few moments to reflect on what an absolutely bizarre experience she just had. Her head is still clouded with the gentle scent of cherry blossom that suffused the air in Lottie’s car. She runs her tongue over her teeth, her gums sticky with dayglo marshmallow sweetness. Her muscles hum peacefully, content from their solid night’s rest.
Nat presses her face into her hands as the first drops of rain begin to splash on the pavement, at which point she has to cut her disbelieving reflection short to start the trek to the trailer park. She’s got maybe an hour of walking in front of her and it looks like most of it will be happening in scattered showers. Fucking typical.
If it weren’t for all the physical evidence of her consciousness—the burn in her calves as she pounds the asphalt with her combat boots, the chill wind eating through her regrettably thin clothing, the rainwater turning her awesome hair into a pale stringy mop—Natlie could almost be convinced that she was still waiting to wake up from some extended, impractically vivid dream.
Wouldn’t be the first dream she’s ever had about Lottie Matthews, but definitely one of the nicest, by a longshot.
—
The rest of her weekend does not go as nicely. It’s Natalie’s mom’s fault, for having such horrible taste in men and the backbone of a starfish.
(Which is to say, none. They just covered invertebrates in Bio, and for the record, fuck Mr. Lawson for saying she’d get better grades if she just paid more attention. Hard to pay more attention when class is first thing in the morning, she barely gets to eat breakfast most days, and she has to fend off lingering looks from her teacher every time she wears shorts. Fuck him for that too, actually.)
Nat firmly believes that if Vera Scatorccio would just, for once, decide to bring home a man with a steady job and little to no thinly-veiled insecurities manifesting in binge drinking and incoherent rage, maybe her daughter’s and her own life wouldn’t be such a goddamn shitshow. Of course, no man with a steady job and minimal baggage wants to date a woman still living off of the life insurance of her gruesomely deceased husband. But if Vera could put in a little effort and stop scraping the absolute bottom of the shithead barrel, Natalie would be endlessly grateful. And probably a lot less pissed off all the time. Maybe even able to pay attention in Biology class.
The rub is, Nat didn’t even do anything this time. Yeah, she’s been known to roll her eyes and talk back when these assholes start giving her shit, but this time she was determined to keep her cool. This new guy, Pete, had been chill for the most part, no worse than Nat’s used to dealing with, and he did have a job, which was impressive for a man who couldn’t seem to figure out how to put on a shirt half the time. But then he lost the job, and he lost his chill, and Nat’s determination could only hold for so long.
When Pete corners her in the kitchen on Sunday and accuses her of stealing his beer, Nat bites her tongue—doesn’t reply that it wasn’t his beer if Nat’s mom was paying for it or that he probably drank it all himself during a blackout—just mumbles that she doesn’t know anything about his beer, but she didn’t touch it. Pete doesn’t like that answer, even though it is about as civil as Nat can get. He wants money, which Nat doesn’t have, because she’s 17, too dumb to do other people’s homework for them, and too antisocial to consistently deal drugs. He tells her she needs to learn some goddamn respect for grown ups, and at this point Nat’s eyes glaze over because she could swear she’s heard this all before verbatim—maybe guys like this have some sort of weekly meeting where they get together and workshop scripts for their meaningless confrontational tirades. Maybe the meetings happen at the same time as AA, because Lord knows that won’t cause any scheduling conflicts.
Pete likes her silence about as much as he liked her noncommittal half answers. But Nat gets out of that argument without too much trouble, just some masculine posturing and spit-soaked threats.
But on Monday morning she stops in the kitchen to snag a Fig Newton to eat on the bus and Pete loses his shit—for no apparent reason, but that’s not uncommon. Nat learned a while ago that sometimes there isn’t even a flimsy reason for this kind of thing; no sidelong glance escalated into an insult, no meaningless mumble taken as a challenge. Sometimes men just wake up feeling shitty and decide that it’s your fault, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Pete staggers up from the couch into the kitchen and leans heavily on the counter, reeking of liquor and toxic cologne. He mutters some dark words under his breath and, when that doesn’t garner the response he’s looking for, chucks the box of Fig Newtons at Natalie’s head.
She dodges it, barely, and asks him what the fuck his problem is, which is admittedly not the smartest thing to do. But Nat’s never been the smartest kid, so who’s fucking surprised?
Her mom stumbles out of her room, bleary-eyed and nightgowned, halfway through the resulting shouting match, and she doesn’t do a goddamn thing to stop it. She just stands there, frozen like a squirrel in a hunter’s crosshairs, her jaw locked and her nostrils flaring every time she could jump in but doesn’t.
In the end, Pete gives Natalie five minutes to get out of the trailer and never come back. He has no right, and everyone in the room knows it, and it doesn’t fucking matter. Nat stuffs some clothes and her walkman and some other random crap into her soccer bag and lets the screen door slam shut behind her, because what are they going to do about it, kick her out?
She missed the bus, so she starts the walk to school, headphones capped tight over her ears to drown out the sound of passing cars honking and her own blood pounding in her head like the gavel of a trigger-happy judge on the juvenile circuit. School is closer to the trailer park than both Lottie’s house and the comic store, and it’s a well-trodden path after so many years of incredibly shaky transportation. But this morning’s trek still ranks in the top three of the worst walks she’s ever taken, easy. Natalie’s stomach growls at her the whole time, like some street cat who got attached and is just now realizing Nat hasn’t got anything to give, and she misses pretty much all of Bio. Not a tragedy to her personally, but she’s going to have to talk to Lawson about it later and she needs that like she needs another Fig Newton box hurled at her head.
Thus begins the latest shitty week in an endless line of shitty weeks that stretches all the way back to Mercer County General Hospital and ‘Here’s your beautiful baby girl, what would you like to name her? Natalie? Oh, that’s lovely.’
After a particularly unbearable day at school and two hours of soccer practice during which Nat says about eight words, she corners Kevyn at the bike rack when Band gets out. He’s holding a trumpet case that really clashes with the eyeliner and artfully ripped t-shirt, but Nat’s in her jock getup, so she can’t say anything about it. She gives him the broad strokes, and he gives her a look that makes her wish she’d just found a dry spot under some overpass and called it a day. He lets her ride on the back of his bike, but she has to hold the trumpet.
Nat lasts three nights in the Tan household. Kevyn insists she can stay as long as she needs, and his parents echo the sentiment, but she sees the strain in their smiles, the withheld frustration in their eyes. They want her gone. Kevyn knows it too, and it’s stressing him out, and Nat doesn’t need to be a burden on one of the only real friends she’s ever had. Thursday morning she tells him she worked out a new arrangement somewhere else, and the relief he can’t quite hide is evidence enough that she’s making the right call, even if she’s lying through her teeth and well and truly homeless now.
Natalie tamps down on the ensuing distress for the rest of the day—even does some Trig homework to try and forget about it, which is a new low for her—but the dam isn’t going to hold. She thought she was reaching new heights of maturity, given her even and measured response to Pete’s bullshit (to the majority of it anyway, before he attacked her with fruit bars), and she comes so close to keeping it together through practice. Really, Nat might have made it all the way to whatever bench she’s going to call home from now on without freaking out, if it wasn’t for Jackie Taylor and her big fucking mouth.
They’re all out of the showers, and Nat’s pretending to dig around for something in her locker, stalling until the rest of the team leaves so she can enjoy the luxury of a warm building and a relatively clean floor to nap on until a janitor kicks her out. Shauna’s got her backpack slung over one shoulder, waiting for Jackie, who’s been fluffing her hair in the mirror inside her locker for at least fifteen minutes, a little pout on her glossy lips because Shauna’s ribbing her about some drill Nat barely recalls participating in.
“You have to admit it was funny,” Shauna is saying. “You know the like, one rule of soccer is that you aren’t allowed to use your hands, right?”
Jackie huffs, not looking away from her own reflection, because what could be more important or interesting than that?
“It’s not my fault you kicked the ball directly into my hand. I’m not a ninja, what was I supposed to do?”
“Maybe use your feet?” Shauna offers with a shrug. “Wild concept.”
“Oh, give me a break, Shipman. My wrist still kinda hurts, you know.”
“Oh no, Jackie, that sounds really serious. Is your manicure okay?” calls Taissa from across the room. A few other team members strike up a chorus of giggles.
“Do you think they’ll have to amputate?” Van asks.
“Whatever.” Jackie rolls her eyes, turning around to face them. “Laugh it up. I mess up one drill—hilarious. At least I can score on an open goal.”
Nat slams the door to her locker shut.
“The fuck did you just say?”
It’s like someone upended the water cooler over the entire locker room, leaving the atmosphere shivering and tense. Shauna’s face goes slack, and Van and Tai quit snickering with each other to watch with widened eyes. The rest of the team—Laura Lee, Allie, even Mari—fall silent. Jackie’s expression flickers with something like panic for a second, before settling back into that peppy, plastic facade.
“I mean, we all saw it happen,” Jackie says. “That was an easy shot. You got sloppy.”
“Oh, did I?”
Natalie’s voice is quivering, and clenching her jaw won’t make it stop. Fucking sue her, for being a bit distracted and a bit out of whack and a bit shit at soccer right now. She stumbled over her feet and shot a ball wide and missed the net—who the fuck cares? Where does Jackie get off, bringing Nat into this just because people were giving her shit about her own fuck up? Why is everyone always taking out their issues on her when she didn’t even fucking do anything?
“I’m just saying.” Jackie shrugs, as though that absolves her of all her sins. “You don’t need to freak. What, are you like on drugs or something?”
Through the red haze coloring her vision, Nat sees Shauna reach out tentatively, her mouth forming the word, “Jackie-”
Jackie turns the other way, tossing her shampoo commercial hair over her shoulder, waving a coconut-scented cape in front of the bull stamping in Nat’s chest.
“Not like it’d be the first time.”
“Say it to my fucking face, Taylor!” Natalie steps forward, her muscles taught, poised to do she doesn’t know what exactly, she hasn’t thought that far ahead, but possible outcomes range from anywhere between a few detentions to blood under her fingernails. But Nat, and everyone else, is spared having to find out how this ends by Taissa vaulting over the bench and putting a firm hand on Nat's shoulder.
“Okay,” Tai says, voice lowered, “you need to calm down-”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Nat spits through gritted teeth. “She needs to watch her fucking mouth. She doesn’t know shit!”
On the other side of the room, Jackie has pressed herself up against the locker bank, uncharacteristically meek in Shauna’s shadow. Tai turns to her and says with grim inflexibility, “Jackie, go.”
And Jackie listens, which must be a first for her, following the advice of someone other than herself. She closes her locker quietly, forcing a straight face, and all but scampers from the room, her eyes round and trembling, her backpack swinging behind her.
When she’s gone, Nat realizes her legs are shaking. She lets Van pull her down onto the bench, her breathing shallow and quick. Natalie can feel everyone’s eyes on her, which makes her want to drown herself in the showers and throw up. Not in that order.
A shadow falls across her lap, and Nat looks up to see Shauna standing over her shoulder, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“What?” Nat snaps.
Shauna doesn't back down; she just tangles her fingers together and says, “Nothing. It’s just…” She pauses cautiously. “Jackie’s got stuff going on right now, okay? Not that you need to care about that, but like, it’s not you.”
“I know it’s not me,” Nat says, “’cause I didn’t fucking do anything to her.”
“I know, you’re right,” Shauna says quickly. “It wasn’t cool that she took it out on you. I’m just saying, I’m sorry.”
Nat raises her brows, bitter, incredulous.
“You’re apologizing for her?” Nat asks. “Jesus Christ, Shauna, would it kill you to grow a pair and be your own fucking person for once, instead of acting like some dog Jackie Taylor carries around in her fucking purse?”
Shauna’s mouth falls open, her expression hardening.
“Fuck you, Nat.”
Natalie looks away, back to her stupid shaking legs, her mouth forcing itself into a frown, her eyes trying to well up with tears. She shoves it all down, but it’s like trying to fill a vase that’s just been shattered on the ground. She clenches her fists in her lap and makes herself breathe, like she was taught by the social worker who came after everything with her dad. That’s about the only thing she remembers from that social worker, other than the fact that she seemed to really like statement jewelry, because she was wearing a different chunky necklace all three times Nat ever saw her.
Natalie makes herself breathe and she makes herself small, as small as she can without curling up in a fetal position on the bench, while the locker room slowly empties around her. Van sits by her for a bit but doesn’t make her talk, which in the moment feels like the greatest act of mercy Nat has ever been granted by this miserable world. She doesn’t know how long Van stays there for, but eventually Tai says something indistinct off in the distance and Van gets up, mumbling, “Call me if you want,” before disappearing into the great blank space that exists outside of Natalie’s lap and her clenched fists and her stupid shaking legs.
When she’s sure she’s alone, Nat finally stands up, dragging her palms across her eyes to clear the tears she never let fall. She picks up her backpack and her duffel and slings them each over a shoulder, trudging out of the locker room like a soldier marching into the Valley of Death—like from the poem they read in English last year. She didn’t get it, but she remembers it, which could mean something, or could mean absolutely fucking nothing.
As she exits the building, Natalie keeps her eyes on the ground, watching fallen leaves skitter across the pavement. She makes it four sidewalk squares before a soft voice off to the side stops her in her tracks.
“Hey.”
Natalie’s gaze trails up to see Lottie leaning against a tree next to the path, her hands resting on the strap of her bag. Her nails are painted a vibrant shade of magenta, and it’s flaking off a little around her cuticles.
“Hey,” Nat croaks, a general sense of apathy overwhelming any surprise or embarrassment she might feel that Lottie Matthews was apparently waiting outside for her to stop throwing a little bitch tantrum in the locker room.
“You remember that thing you said,” Lottie asks, “the other day, about pot?”
Natalie furrows her brow. “No?” she replies wearily.
“Oh.” Lottie shifts her weight from one leg to the other. “Well, essentially you told me I should smoke more of it.”
“Sounds like something I would say,” Nat says, beleaguered and sarcastic.
“Do you want to smoke pot?” Lottie asks abruptly. “With me?”
“In the school parking lot?”
“At my house.”
Natalie holds in a great number of scathing and self deprecating remarks that immediately spring to mind and instead asks, “Why?”
“I don’t like doing it by myself. I get paranoid.” Lottie pushes herself off the tree, shrugging. “But if you’ve got somewhere else to be, that’s cool.”
Natalie feels hollowed out. She feels like the gritty, sand-crusted shell of a long dead sea creature, dried out and slid under a microscope for deeper inspection—inspection which will prove fruitless because there’s absolutely nothing of note or worth making up any part of her.
Lottie’s waiting for an answer.
“Nope,” Natalie says finally. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
Lottie nods succinctly and starts to walk towards her car. Nat pulls her two bags closer to her body and follows.
—
Lottie gets really giggly when she’s high. Her entire body quivers with it—with buoyant, indiscriminate glee, unfurling across her face in a sharp-toothed and sleepy grin, and when Nat calls her out on it, it just makes Lottie giggle even more. She kicks her feet in the air, her heart-patterned socks rucked up around her ankles, and combs her fingers through Nat’s hair with reverent concentration, all the while sheepishly stifling her laughter with her elbow. And Nat could find plenty of avenues by which to take that laughter the wrong way, but she doesn’t feel like it right now.
Maybe excessive cheerfulness is just a common side effect of whatever strain they’re smoking, because admittedly, it’s got Nat feeling pretty giggly too.
They’ve been rolling around on Lottie’s living room floor for maybe an hour, not that time means anything anymore. They smoked two joints between them, passing them back and forth on the couch, which was wild, because Lottie just smokes indoors, in the middle of her house, and doesn’t seem the slightest bit worried about getting in trouble with anyone. When Nat asked about the housekeeper, halfway through joint number one, Lottie said Martha’s son had a cold that he caught from some other kid at his preschool.
“I told her this morning to take the day off. She should take care of her actual child, you know?” Lottie’s eyelids were already drooping. “Not the child she’s paid to care about.”
“You’re not a child,” Nat responded. The weed was helping her forget about the overwhelming problems mounting on all sides of her life. God bless cannabis for that miracle work. “Maybe you could take this prime opportunity to learn how to cook something.”
“Oh, don’t get me started thinking about food right now,” Lottie groaned. She licked her lips. “I want mac and cheese.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Nat said. “You are absolutely a child.”
That started the first round of giggling, and everything only dissolved further from there.
Splayed out on the floor, Nat digs her fingers into the carpet, gripping tight to the soft fibers and letting her eyes roam the ceiling. Lottie’s ceiling is just white, which doesn’t feel right. It feels like there should be frescos up there, angels and demons engaged in holy battle, chubby babies, women without shirts on—the whole nine yards. It’s vaguely disappointing. But the carpet is really nice; it’s like lying on baby sheep, if Nat was really tiny and could just lie flat on a baby sheep without bothering it. Nat giggles at the thought of being really tiny and lying flat on a baby sheep.
She’s like, pretty stoned.
Lottie rolls onto her stomach and struggles to her feet, mumbling, “Bathroom,” and Natalie lets her go, even though what she really wants to do is grab onto her ankle and keep her there forever. She stretches out her arm towards where Lottie used to lie, her hand curling around nothing, and that’s a fresco, isn’t it? One of the famous ones, in Rome or wherever. Maybe Nat saw it in a library book once, before she stopped going to the library after school and started smoking weed in Bobby Farleigh’s van. Ha. Worlds collide.
When Lottie comes back, she stands right over Nat’s head, her long, long legs stretching up into the stratosphere until you get to her face, which is upside down at the moment.
“Nat,” upside down Lottie says. “Do you have a tampon? I’m out.”
Natalie squints up at her for a moment, trying to recall, then nods slowly. “In my bag. Take what you need.”
Lottie taps Nat gently on the side of the head with her foot, in what is probably a gesture of gratitude but mainly makes Natalie feel like a soccer ball. And now she’s thinking about what it’s like to be a soccer ball, dribbled between Lottie’s cleats, passed to Shauna and then Jackie and then goal! Lottie’s got the best footwork, Coach says it all the time. She’s really good. How long has she been playing soccer for? Nat’s never thought to ask before, and she’s opening her mouth to form the question when—
“Hey, Nat?” Lottie calls softly, not sounding particularly giggly anymore. “Can I ask you a weird question?”
Nat flops onto her stomach with some effort, propping herself up on her elbows. “Yeah, what?”
Lottie’s bottom lip is snagged between her teeth, and she swallows once before speaking.
“Why do you have all your earthly possessions in your soccer bag?”
Nat’s brain stalls out. Her tongue is suddenly very heavy and hard to move; she finds herself blinking slowly as though that could clear it all away, or maybe send her back to five minutes ago when she was really tiny and lying flat on a lamb—that’s what a baby sheep is called—and Lottie was giggling at nothing and not looking at her like this, with her eyes all wide and round and caring.
They’re in a standoff—not with guns at high noon, but with increasingly slow blinks at about 5:30 p.m. And Nat’s too stoned to come up with a lie and far too tired to draw her pistol.
“I, um.” Natalie pauses to wet her chapped lips. “I kind of got kicked out of my place.”
“By like… your landlord?”
Nat shakes her head. “No, uh, my mom’s boyfriend. He was on some fucking power trip, went off on me about not respecting him or being ungrateful, some shit like that. He told me I could find somewhere else to live until I fixed my attitude. So I just shoved a bunch of my shit in my bag and left.”
Natalie buries her fingers into the carpet again, trying to dig down beneath this moment, sink into the ground, while at the same time wishing she could just drift away into the cold expanse of space, where no one asks you any questions and if you’re lucky, the lack of pressure explodes you before you asphyxiate. Or you could freeze to death. That’s supposed to be pretty peaceful.
“Damn,” Lottie exhales. “What a fucking dick.”
“Yeah, he’s an asshole,” Natalie agrees. “I mean, they always are, but this guy sucks pretty bad.”
“Has this…” Lottie starts. “Has this happened before?”
“Um…” Nat hums, like she has to think about it, even though she really doesn’t. “Like two or three times? It’s never really been that big of a deal though. I’d just crash with a friend for a night and then come back when the guy sobered up.”
“When’d he kick you out this time?”
Nat averts her eyes, shrugging.
“Monday morning.”
“Shit, Natalie.”
Lottie’s always had these huge baby cow eyes, and right now they’ve got this look in them like the baby cow is watching its mother get ground into hamburger meat.
“Yeah, I mean,” Nat swipes at her nose, trying to sound disaffected, “I’m gonna have to go back eventually. But I’m just so fucking sick of it, you know? I’m sick of these assholes thinking they can boss me around ’cause they’re screwing my mom, and I’m sick of her never standing up to them. I thought maybe if I was gone for a little longer this time, she might, I don’t know, call the school or something to get me to come back.”
“Do you want to go back?” Lottie asks.
“No,” Nat scoffs wetly, staring down at the carpet, “that place fucking sucks. But, um, I guess I want her to want me back.”
The living room is silent. Nat doesn’t want to look up; would actually just prefer if she could stay here forever—still as a Greek statue, staring at the carpet in the Matthews’ living room like that Narcissus guy with his own reflection—and never have to engage with another human person again. But she does look up.
Lottie isn’t watching her with discomfort, or confusion, or pity. She’s not looking at Nat at all. She’s staring off into space, lost in thought. As Nat watches, Lottie suddenly drops back to Earth, meeting Nat’s furrowed expression with a sort of hazy determination, as though she has petitioned the cosmos and they’ve delivered unto her their answer.
“Hold on just a second, okay?” Lottie says. “I’ll be right back.”
She clambers to her feet and disappears from the room again, leaving Natalie, in her addled and begrudgingly emotional state, to curse herself out for being a pussy and a dumbass and a fucking loser, crying like a baby, making messes everywhere, yelling at girls in locker rooms and spilling her guts to other girls on their living room floors. It’s so embarrassing, when your insides just slither out like that, without your permission, falling in this big, disgusting heap on the ground and demanding to be dealt with. It’s gonna make Nat have a complete breakdown. It’s gonna stain Lottie’s nice carpet.
When Lottie returns, crumpling an empty tampon wrapper into her pocket, Nat is sitting up against the couch, her knees pulled to her chest and head against the cushions, lips drawn tight in a line.
“Sorry,” Lottie says hurriedly, dropping to the floor at Nat’s feet. “I was actively bleeding. Anyway, you should stay here.”
The living room is very silent. Natalie narrows her eyes, her thoughts too dense to parse but overwhelmingly trending towards confusion. There’s a pang in her stomach, somewhere between nausea and hunger.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Lottie says, a bit breathless, “I mean, fuck that guy your mom’s dating. You shouldn’t have to stay in a house with him. Just stay here.”
“I can’t—” Nat splutters, “I can’t just stay here.”
“Why not? My parents are going to be in Tokyo until January—”
“Wait, for real?”
“—so they won’t be around to care.” Lottie plows on, ignoring the interruption. “And it’s not like there isn’t enough space in this house for another person. I could be running a fucking bed and breakfast if I wanted. Come on,” she urges, prodding Nat with her foot. “Just say yes.”
“Lottie,” Nat says, “I can’t—”
“I’ll explain it to Martha and she won’t tell anyone—”
“I can’t—”
“And you can keep taking the bus if you don’t want anyone on the team to get suspicious—”
“I just can’t—”
Lottie pouts. “I’m not hearing a real argument.”
Nat scoffs, throwing her head back against the couch cushions. “Because you’re being crazy right now, Lot, I can’t—”
Lottie looks away sharply; her gaze drops to her hands in her lap and she picks at her peeling nail polish, her face drawn. Natalie’s words die in her mouth. She gulps, feeling disoriented, and sick, and stoned—she’s so fucking stoned and she doesn’t know what she said to make Lottie look like that and how is she still fucking this up, when she’s trying so hard to do the right thing here?
“Lottie?” she asks tentatively.
Lottie picks her head up, and her lips are pursed the way they get when they’re down 2-0 going into the second half of the game, her chin jutting out and her jaw set.
“Just until your mom calls,” Lottie says. She’s not asking anymore, she’s telling. “Don’t let that asshole win.”
Nat lets out a shaky breath, her shoulders slumping forward and her eyes falling shut. She wants to argue, she really does—she wants to make Lottie see that she’s being too generous, giving too much, dumping all this kindness into a black hole that will never be able to give her anything back, but she can’t make the words come out of her mouth. Instead, she makes a last-ditch, sorry effort.
“You’re stoned,” Nat mumbles.
“I’m serious,” Lottie replies. And her lips curl up at the edges, because she already knows that she’s won. She adds, “It’ll be so fun. Come on, please?”
Nat puts her head in her hands, pressing her palms hard against her eyelids.
“…Okay.”
“Okay?”
Lottie’s grin has widened. Nat tries to be comforted by that, even as her every instinct screams that she’s fucking up big time by accepting this offer: at least—at the very least—Lottie doesn’t look so sad anymore.
“I mean, yeah, sure, whatever.”
Nat shrugs, as if she could possibly convince Lottie that she’s apathetic about this after all that—after slopping her feelings all over the living room, after obstinately and incompetently trying to clean them up, rejecting all help, denying association. Lottie’s kind enough not to call Nat out on her under-funded, public high school performance of indifference.
You know, when she’s not being a total hardass insisting on getting her own way, Lottie can actually be so nice.
“Cool,” Lottie says, leaning back on her hands. She’s trying not to rub her victory in Natalie’s face, but Nat has been in the huddle with her after a narrow win over Our Lady of Lourdes—she’d recognize that satisfied smile anywhere, sleepy and stoned as it may be. “What bedroom do you want?”
Nat arches her brows warily.
“What are my options?”
Lottie stops fighting the smile and allows it to light up her entire face. Without her permission, Natalie’s face mirrors the expression.
“Come on,” Lottie sticks out a hand. “We’ll do a tour.”
And because apparently good pot makes Natalie to lose all her convictions—because no matter how many times she calls herself an idiot, she never gets any smarter—because her back is killing her, and the thought that she might not have to sleep under a bush somewhere tonight makes her want to cry—Natalie takes the hand and allows herself to be dragged upstairs to pick out a bedroom.